Studying Online;Succeeding through Distance Learning at University

162 Studying online 
something of an issue but there are other potential areas for cog-
nitive overload. For example, if you are asking people to use the 
chat, you need to stop talking. Tey cannot type and listen at the 
same time. Similarly, if you are asking the audience to look at 
some data on a document you have uploaded, you cannot expect 
them to do that at the same time as looking at some slides. You 
need to prepare your online presentations so that your audience 
is efectively only doing one thing at a time. Otherwise, they will 
sufer from cognitive overload, and your presentation will not 
have the impact you wanted. 

 deaLing with recOrded 
presentatiOns 
Not all of your presentations will be live. You will often be re-
quired to record a presentation and upload it to the VLE. Tis is 
particularly the case if your presentation is going to be assessed. 
Recordings mean that assessment can be fairer as two or more 
lecturers can assess the presentation and agree on a mark. Also, it 
means that external examiners can verify the assessment of pre-
sentations to make sure everything is fair. With face-to-face pre-
sentations, that isn’t possible. So, you can expect to be asked to 
record presentations. Quite how you will be asked to do this can 
vary, depending upon the lecturer’s requirements. For example, in 
a group presentation, you may be asked to record a Zoom call or a 
Microsoft Teams meeting. Or you may simply be asked to record 
a PowerPoint presentation. Sometimes, it will not even be a video 
recording. You may be asked to record audio only, like a podcast. 
Indeed, I include a podcast recording as one of the assessments in 
a module I teach. Te students are put into groups of three, and 
they are expected to record an audio discussion of a specifc topic, 
rather like a chat show style radio programme. 
Organising your recording is relatively straightforward as long 
as you have thoroughly checked the requirements. Students of-
ten get into difculty with recordings because they haven’t read 
the instructions properly. Tis wastes time and can also lead to a 

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