How I Structure Classroom Video Guests so that I Love Every Conversation

Whenever I teach my Human-Computer Interaction course at Bucknell, I try to broaden the perspectives of the material through weekly video guests. But this comes with challenges. How can I respect the time of my guests, maximize engagement with my students, and also add value over simply watching a YouTube conference talk?

Over the past two years, I’ve settled on a process that seems to create an enjoyable, interactive environment for both visitors and students. Since I’ve received a couple of requests over the past few months to write something up, here’s my simple, fun structure.

What I tell my guests / the interview structure

Whenever I contact a potential guest to try and schedule them, I make it clear exactly what to expect:

• I’ll only take up 20–25 minutes of your time. Everyone is busy. A full class period is a lot to ask, but I’ve found that most people are willing to chat for 20–25 minutes.
• I’ll start with a brief “tell me about what you’re up to” question, then the rest of the time will be a Q&A led by the students. It minimizes prep time for guests down to zero. It also creates a wonderful, conversational atmosphere that is much more intimate than a talk or lecture.
• If it doesn’t come up organically, I’ll close with a career trajectory question. I’ve had a strange, wandering path to end up as a professor… and I’ve found many people in our field have similar stories. Why not hear them?

What I tell my students

• Visit the guest’s website before they call in. I typically post a link, and on the rare occasion, also post a short reading/talk by the speaker that is online.
• Every student must post a question on Slack by 5pm the day before the call in, and vote (emoji) their favorite questions before 8am. This is the secret sauce. Not every question is great, but usually the top 5 are wonderful. Allowing students to construct questions in advance encourages a level of reflection and depth that I simply never get live. It also gives voice to students who may otherwise never ask questions on-the-spot.

During the Q&A, I act as moderator — calling on students who have highly-voted questions (it’s important that they ask, not me), shifting from content questions to career questions, and then wrapping up when we hit 20–25 minutes.

What I like about it

It’s simple, but I love the format for a few reasons:

• It reduces the distance between experts and students: Usually, nearly half our time (and questions) ends up focusing on the career stories and personal experiences of our guests. Over and over again, I’ve had students reflect back to me how meaningful it was to hear these “how I got here” narratives. It’s easy to forget how impossibly distant professors at prestigious universities or employees at large tech companies can seem to a student. Hearing them reflect about their own wandering paths through life is empowering.
• We get to hear the values behind the work: This is my favorite part. I’ve heard many of our guests give conference presentations or formal talks. The questions they field after these talks often relate to experimental validity, generalizability of results, and other technical aspects. These are great, but the questions students select are often related to big-picture societal impact, or how personal experiences have molded professional decisions. These are the kinds of questions I’ve thought a lot about personally, but rarely have a forum in which I can reflect on them. I think it’s this piece that makes the experience so mutually enjoyable.
• It’s worked (so far)! Many of the people I ask to call in are extremely busy people.. but they almost unanimously say yes. Even better, both my students and our guests seem to come away with very positive experiences.