In my three years of university I can honestly admit that I skipped my fair share of seminars and lectures. To those currently studying, I understand the eternal battles raging within you; one side moving to motivate you out of the house and the enemy trying to convince you one of your friends will go and you can copy their notes. Whether it's a 9am on Monday morning, or Wednesday at 3pm, we have all thought, or even continue to think that we have a justifiable excuse to miss it, some place better we should be.
Sometimes the side of light would conquer us and we would lift ourselves from bed, only to be half way down the street when evil strikes and either the weather drives us back, or we’ve simply talked ourselves out of it.
Whilst I do regret my lack of attendance, I imagine I feel it less than if I had attended university from 2012 when university fees increased dramatically up to £9000 a year for all 123 universities in England. Some students must wonder whether that piece of paper (your degree) is worth a scary letter from Student Finance totalling your debt.
For that price university offers many life changing experiences, the independence, parties, events and societies. Yet when you think what you’re paying should it be such a struggle to attend 100% of all lectures? Glisser is now challenging every student to resist attending their custom- made lectures.
Excellent question Harry! Glisser are a presentation software company that are revolutionising the way we all experience and deliver presentations. Transforming “one-directional lectures into two-way conversations” with this exciting, interactive tool for the omni-connected generation. And for those of you who are glaring at the screen shouting, “I already attend all of my lectures what does Glisser give me?” First of all,
Secondly, Glisser provides a bespoke exhibition experience that you can view, vote on, and voice your opinion, providing great feedback for your presenter and taking your education into your own hands by moulding what they do differently next time!
The main premise is that you can connect and interact to an ongoing live presentation through any web connected device. Unfortunately for you stay-in-beds, no audio is delivered, so to fully participate you need to be at ground zero. Let’s face it, why wouldn’t you be there? One day you can tell your grandchildren that you were there at the forefront of this involved and unique learning experience driven and shaped by you.
It’s a truly interactive software. As the presentation is ongoing, you can ask questions by simply typing it on your device, allowing the shyer of you to not have to stand up in front of 100 other students. All these questions are seen by the resenter/lecturer and everyone else, and they can ‘upvote’ your questions if they were confused over the same thing too! Meaning you’ll never have to leave a lecture dissatisfied and wanting answers ever again. All slides can be annotated by you, and saved for revision or essay time; never again will you have to buy endless pads of paper or worry about pristine notes ruined by ink stains.
Glisser both enhances the student experience, and allows them to create much more detailed and original presentations rather than the usual sad offerings of blank desolate Powerpoint slides. However, it’s not just for students. Lecturers and professors can not only create content that will be easier and more enjoyable to learn, but the feedback option allows them to amend their teaching for the better. The chance to see which sections of modules students understand and which ones maybe need a bit more detail added, enhancing their teaching skills and saving them from having to explain the same things during tutorials. Even monitoring attendance through the data analysis provided after lectures are over. Most importantly it makes the teaching and learning experience much more open, simple and appealing.
The average attention span of a student is commonly agreed to be 10-15 inutes. This of course varies on certain factors as to time of day, motivation and enjoyment. It is said that the more involved in a lecture or lesson a student is, the more they learn and absorb. The examples seen through Glisser of the potential of their software sparks in me a vein of excitement for education to come. They are currently running an educational programme, where they are searching for ten participating educational stablishments to trial Glisser FREE for nine months, and allow themselves to be used as case studies for future development.
I spent the day creating a presentation of my own as I wanted to be able to talk honestly about the experience and scrutinise everything Glisser has to offer. At 15:38 my family were exposed to everything I know about Harry Potter (which unfortunately for them, is a lot). I enabled them to ‘like’ particular slides, share and ask questions throughout. The result was someone getting overexcited by the like button on the first page, a strange sympathy towards the negative associations of Slytherin house and a surprising show of support for Hufflepuff.
After the presentation was finished I was pleasantly surprised to find that Glisser sends out an email detailing how many attendees were signed in and watching, the interactions that occurred and how many questions were asked (a grand total of two). The most impressive detail, was that the questions were visible and they provided me with the contact details to those whom had asked them, so I could email them the answers. Whilst I imagine I would be sought after as a professor for the Harry Potter School of Knowledge, I am not a teacher. However I can say with complete certainty that it was an easy to navigate user interface. There were clear tutorial videos, step-by-step guides and an example presentation that informs you how to use all the tools available to use.
This software is going to be huge. Everything that ‘Glissers’ is gold.
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