When Ken Hanson began working for a TV station in the Middle East in the \u201880s, he had no idea that his experience creating content across a war border would come in handy for teaching his online classes more than 30 years later.<\/p>\n
Hanson, who has been teaching Judaic studies<\/a> at 麻豆原创 since the early \u201890s, became interested in the Middle East while studying history as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois at Chicago.<\/p>\n \u201cI was wanting to research the roots of Western thought and culture, way back to the cradle of civilization,\u201d Hanson says. \u201cAs a senior, I hopped on a plane and landed in Jerusalem to study ancient civilizations. I focused on the ancient land of Israel because it also happens to be the cradle of the three western belief systems \u2014 Judaism, Christianity, Islam are all out of the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n After learning Hebrew and completing a master\u2019s degree in television and intercultural communication and a doctorate in Judaic studies, Hanson worked at an American TV station based in southern Lebanon in the midst of the Lebanese Civil War before coming to 麻豆原创.<\/p>\n \u201cI commuted over a hostile border every day to broadcast family-oriented television into a war zone,\u201d he says. \u201cWe showed a lot of American westerns and championship wrestling, but when anything major happened we had to go into news-gathering mode.\u201d<\/p>\n Hanson credits his on-camera work and travels to the Middle East with inspiring immersive lessons for his online courses. But he wasn\u2019t always keen on the idea of teaching virtually.<\/p>\n Judaic studies is a niche program that students would often struggle to fit into their class schedule due to conflicts with their required courses, Hanson says. So began the demand for online courses in the program, and the need for him to complete training through 麻豆原创\u2019s Center for Distributed Learning<\/a>, a support unit that advances online teaching and learning.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t want to go this direction at all because I take my energy from an audience, that being the students.\u201d \u2014 Ken Hanson, 麻豆原创 professor<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t want to go this direction at all because I take my energy from an audience, that being the students,\u201d he says. \u201cI developed a lot of interactive presentations, anything and everything to make a class pop, but I did it because we wanted our courses to be more accessible to the students.\u201d<\/p>\n Near the end of Hanson\u2019s training in 2015, the CDL video team presented its\u00a0production studio and he immediately recognized he could put his TV past to use to develop content that could still make his courses \u201cpop.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy first semester\/course teaching online was the History of the Holocaust<\/em>,\u201d he says. \u201cMy instructional designer suggested I go over and talk to the CDL video team because I was almost in tears about how I could interface with my students.\u201d<\/p>\n Hanson worked with CDL\u2019s video team to create a concept that repackaged his 90-minute lectures into\u00a010 to 20-minute segments while placing him at historic and archaeological sites. Eventually, he began making the productions more theatric \u2014 borrowing from his previous theatrical training \u2014 to dress up as different characters and use varying dialects for videos across five of his courses.<\/p>\n \u201cJust because I\u2019m a professor doesn\u2019t mean I can\u2019t play act and do theatrics anymore,\u201d he says. \u201cRather than just reciting a passage from the prophet Isaiah, I\u2019ll dress up as him and recite it in Hebrew and use subtitles so students can hear the ancient language vocalized. In that sense it\u2019s better than a live lecture because we can do things we can\u2019t do in the classroom.\u201d<\/p>\n When 麻豆原创 transitioned to fully remote learning last March due to the coronavirus, Hanson was already a step ahead of faculty who hadn\u2019t had the opportunity or training to develop immersive content that would be needed to keep students engaged for the next year.<\/p>\n \u201cIn that sense it\u2019s better than a live lecture because we can do things we can\u2019t do in the classroom.\u201d \u2014 Ken Hanson, 麻豆原创 professor<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cWhat the pandemic has done is shown how important this technology is,\u201d he says. \u201cWe already knew this was the future, so for me teaching during the pandemic was no problem at all. But the pandemic has really highlighted the importance of what CDL is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n With more than 125 TV segments under his belt, and no plans to stop any time soon, creating this type of content for his courses has also proved beneficial for CDL.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’ve worked together for so long that both our skill sets have evolved,\u201d says Aaron Hose, media production manager and lead video producer for CDL\u2019s video team. \u201cKen\u00a0has become a better writer, actor and on-screen presenter. Our video producers have improved as editors and compositors. We can now deliver his content more streamlined than before. We’ve found this great \u2018sweet spot\u2019 now.\u201d<\/p>\n Hanson\u2019s efforts to go the extra mile in his online courses have paid off as he earned the Chuck D. Dziuban Award for Excellence in Online Teaching in 2017.<\/p>\n \u201cKen has long been a proponent of pushing the envelope with student engagement through video,\u201d says Roslyn Miller, an instructional designer at CDL. \u201cHe recently began using a new technology that\u2019s often used in performing-arts education to enhance student interaction with his dramatized video presentations so they\u2019ll engage even more with the content, each other, and him while enjoying learning.\u201d<\/p>\n Not only are students having fun with the lessons, they\u2019re retaining them better too, which Hanson says, sometimes was a struggle for them during in-person courses.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are serious learning advantages to this,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen you lecture, the amount that is retained by students is maybe 20% and [many] students these days are not taking notes, so you hope they remember something. Here I think I\u2019ve solved this because every week I give them a TV show to watch and they take a quiz on it at the end. So, they\u2019re watching and even re-watching because they have that ability.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all about teaching and enhancing learning to the best of your ability, and resources here at 麻豆原创, like CDL, bring that into amazing focus.\u201d \u2014 Ken Hanson, 麻豆原创 professor<\/p><\/blockquote>\n He also worked with 麻豆原创\u2019s Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy in 2018 to develop a video game for his Biblical Archaeology <\/em>course. Through the game students explore an underground cavern and examine pottery fragments, which Hanson says is a big part of the course that was tough to teach online before this development. And when students encountered issues playing the game because of its large file size, he worked with CDL\u2019s Learning Systems and Technology team to make it accessible for all students on as many types of devices as possible, says Miller.<\/p>\n \u201cThe technology is there, embrace it,\u201d Hanson says. \u201cIt\u2019s all about teaching and enhancing learning to the best of your ability, and resources here at 麻豆原创, like CDL, bring that into amazing focus.\u201d<\/p>\n Faculty who have been certified through IDL6543<\/a> or the <\/em>Essentials of Online Teaching<\/a>\u00a0course offered by CDL and would like to find out how they can enhance their course materials through video can create a consultation request at\u00a0<\/em>video.ucf.edu\/consultation<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With the help of 麻豆原创\u2019s Center for Distributed Learning, a Judaic studies professor transports online students to the Middle East.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":119270,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"lazy_load_responsive_images_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[766,17023,25175,41726,41727,3507,14583],"tu_author":[],"class_list":["post-119269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","tag-center-for-distributed-learning","tag-college-of-arts-and-humanities","tag-digital-learning","tag-judaic-studies","tag-ken-hanson","tag-online-learning","tag-ucf-online"],"yoast_head":"\n