Online Synchronous Learning: Real-Time Distance Learning

When teaching an 8-week course to instructors about how to teach online successfully, I try to include an example of every major technology and strategy. With all of the useful free tools out there and the varied teaching methods they introduce, this is truly an impossible task. But that doesn't stop me from trying! Here I introduce a difficult technology to master, but one that has endless positive potential for participating students.

Online Synchronous Learning: If you're going to use it, make it a regular event

Recently in my online teaching course, we had our synchronous learning experience. We only have time for one session, because again, it is an 8-week course and I am trying to use our limited time to introduce several different educational technologies. I explained to the participants that this is unideal... when they teach online, if they decide to incorporate synchronous learning into the online experience, it should be a regular and recurring event. The reason being that it takes a couple sessions for most people to get comfortable with the technology. If you are going to take the time to teach your students the technology, and if they are going to make the effort to struggle through the learning it, you might as well use it enough times to make the investment of time and energy worthwhile.

Make sure the tool helps your students meet the course goals and outcomes

As with all educational technology tools, synchronous learning may seem exciting and engaging, and may meet a need. But it is imperative that you evaluate whether this tool (or any other) truly helps your students successfully achieve the course goals and meet the specified outcomes. After all, when transfer schools, graduate programs and potential employers look at a transcript, they have certain expectations about what a grade is a particular course really means. It is our responsibility as teachers to make sure that our assessment of a student's performance lines up with grades given and associated outcomes.

When done right, online synchronous learning has great potential value to students and instructor alike

Not all synchronous learning sessions and instructors are created equally. I consider myself an intermediate synchronous learning instructor, but am getting better every week since I am teaching a regular online Hebrew language class. However, even if I am still honing my skills, and I believe a lot of teachers share my shoes, I have experienced many synchronous learning sessions and have a good idea of what works, what doesn't, what's engaging, what's boring and the value to synchronous learning beyond the information that is delivered from instructor to student.

Building student community and introducing a touch of humanity

A good synchronous learning series can help bring students together, establishing peer camaraderie and a comfortable, safe learning environment. It can also introduce humanity, which is sometimes missing from fully asynchronous online courses. When students work in small group scenarios (which is a possibility with all the major synchronous learning and meeting software), they are able to collaborate and interact with classmates even if one student is in Palatine, IL and the other is a soldier stationed in Germany. And like a face-to-face course, the instructor can use real-time inquiry and polling to get a sense of student interest, understanding, concerns and questions.

At minimum, participation can include raising your hands, voting and chatting... much like participation a large lecture course

Most major synchronous learning and meeting software includes the option of "raising your hand"; voting thumbs up or down; highlighting, spotlighting or marking up whatever appears on the computer screen; and even chatting from one student to another in a semi-private conversation (semi-private because only the participating parties AND the facilitator can read the chat.)

Real-time group work is a major plus

One of the best features of synchronous learning is the facilitator's ability to put students into groups to have them work on a group project or participate in a group discussion. Once the students are comfortable with the technology, they will be able to talk to one another, collaborate via the whiteboard to communicate their ideas to one another and the class at large, share their computer screens with one another, take group quizzes, and even create full presentations.

In a face-to-face small group discussion scenario, the instructor may walk around from one group to another, doing her best to listen in and observe the dynamic, making sure the students are on task.  Similarly, in an online synchronous learning session, the instructor can virtually jump from one group to the next doing the same thing without disrupting the flow of ideas or communications between students. What's even nicer is that when the instructor puts students "into groups" online, each group is able to work completely independently of the other groups. There are no background noises, conversations or happenings to distract the groups since they are basically placed into their own separate webinars.

Tips for a successful online synchronous learning experience

I am still learning to master some of these techniques myself, so don't be disappointed if they don't come to you overnight.

1. Lecture for no more than 5 - 10 minutes. Even though your webinars and online faculty development training may be one hour lectures, that doesn't mean that's the ideal. In fact, consider how engaged you really were last time you had to watch a webinar lecture that was 20 minutes or longer. The other consideration is the fact that those webinars and training sessions are independent lessons; someone is just trying to throw as much information at you as they can in the allotted time and knows that it is not realistic to expect you to commit time before the webinar to complete assignments or related work. 
2. Interact with the students every 5 - 10 minutes. This does not mean that you need to have a new full-blown activity every five minutes. It simply means that you should keep your students engaged. This should be an active and not passive learning experience. When you consistently ask your students to submit comments via chat or to share their opinion with the thumbs up/down feature, your students are more likely to stay alert and engaged with our lesson.
   
3. If possible, bring in at least one other voice to break up the monotony (even if it is only for a minute or two via a video or audio clip.)
4. Use a webcam or at least post a photo of yourself so that the students can connect with you as a person. Some people don't like to be on video so they choose to be a faceless voice. But statistics show that being able to see the instructor makes a significant positive difference for the students and adds an important touch of humanity to the experience. Also, if your students see you as "a real person", they are more likely to be respectful, gracious, and considerate when addressing you, whereas students who never get to see you can sometimes be more forceful when it comes to arguing a grade, or are more easily offended by your innocuous comments simply because a familiarity is lacking. Familiarity is a powerful tool that is in your favor.
5. In your case, assuming you are going to host a recurring online synchronous session, you can set the expectation that your students will prepare for the session by reading, watching, researching, writing, or whatever they need to gather the necessary knowledge. I also suggest having them participate in discussion boards or turn in assignments prior to the session; this allows you time to read their work and assess their level of understanding coming in to the learning session. The information you gather will help you determine the topics that need to be covered in a lecture, and those that can be readdressed through activities or a follow-up discussion.
6. Take advantage of your time with your students to have them participate in an activity that they will find engaging, and that you can use as an assessment tool. I'm not saying that you have to have a graded component to your synchronous session. What I am saying, however, that sometimes it is easier for instructors to recognize the source of student misunderstanding when we engage with our students in real-time. For example, we can give multiple choice math quizzes and realize that a student doesn't understand a concept. But when we see the student mark up the whiteboard explaining his thought process to the class, we may be able to pinpoint the exact source of his misunderstanding, which will help us offer better support to that student. Here are just three sample activities:
1. Have students research and share images or short video clips (30 seconds or less) that show examples of a concept you relayed in the homework. They can each explain why they chose the specific image or video. For smaller classes, this can be done as a whole class discussion, whereas for larger classes, you may want them to present to one another in groups after having submitted the image/video to you ahead of time.
2. You can show an image, text, diagram or video of your choosing and have the students discuss it in small groups. From there, they can present their thoughts as a group to the whole class. Their presentation may utilize the whiteboard, a screen share, and/or additional media found online.
3. Use polling technology such as www.PollEverywhere.com or a built-in polling software (if your synchronous tool has one) and ask your students to respond to the prompt. Then have your students discuss the question as a group and respond to the prompt again. They can change their answers based on the group discussion or keep their answers as they were. After you close the polls, you can share the results and the correct answers with the students.

Yes, videos are useful tools for distance learning. But it is still a passive learning experience, right? Not necessarily...

Hearing but not listening

So you developed a great online or blended learning course; it looks as if your students are watching your videos at home, like they are supposed to. But they are still not performing well in their assessments... it is almost as if they are "hearing" but not "listening," "watching" but not "focusing" on the video presentations.

Our attention span for online videos

The truth is that in this fast-paced multitasking society, it is hard to get someone's complete attention, especially when asked to watch a video. According to video marketing research performed by Visible Measures, you lose 20% of viewers in 10 seconds or fewer, 33% by 30 seconds, 45% in 1 minute or less, and almost 60% by 2 minutes. Now these are marketing statistics and are not specific to education, but they do reflect our general attention span for watching online video.

What does that mean for us online and blended/hybrid teachers? It means that our students are probably folding laundry, cooking dinner, talking on the phone, or surfing the internet while "watching" our videos.

There are a lot of techniques we can use to increase the amount of attention students put towards watching our videos and this article will focus on just one: embedded interactives.

Embedded Interactives: Turning a passive video watching experience into active learning and engagement

For many of us, if we know we will have to perform a task after watching a segment of a video, we are more likely to focus because our attention will determine our success in the task. For students, if you award points for successful completion of the task, they have added motivation to pay attention to the video content. Plus, if you make the task(s) engaging, then it's plausible that some may complete the assignment out of sheer interest. Imagine that!

The Tasks

What are these tasks? They can be multiple choice or other quiz-type questions, participation in a discussion, a hotspot activity where students are asked to click on the correct part of a graph, document, photo, schematic drawing, etc. to show understanding, and there are many other possibilities if you take some time to think outside of the box.

But how do you actually create embedded interactives for your video?

A few options for creating interactives for your videos

You have a few options. Here are just a couple, which I recommend to my instructors.

TedEd

Use TedEd "Find + Flip" to modify any YouTube video or any video of your own. Through TedEd's simple interface, you can add up to 15 multiple choice or open-answer questions, a "digging deeper" section where students can learn more, guided and/or open discussions, and concluding thoughts. These activities are presented in order (watch, think, dig deeper, finally...) This online application is very easy to use and free to all.

Camtasia Studio

Use Camtasia Studio to record your video, edit it (by adding in any number of special features such as title and subtitle pages, music, captions, high-quality audio editing, arrows and other callouts) and add in quiz questions. Your options are multiple choice, fill in the blank, short answer, and true/false. Camtasia Studio costs less than $200 if you purchase an education license. This software is relatively easy to learn but does require relative comfort with software applications. Experience with video editing software is a plus.

Blackboard (combine the powers of adaptive release with embedded video and Blackboard tests)

At Harper College, our Learning Management System (LMS) is Blackboard. By using the adaptive release feature, instructors can embed videos and then have subsequent quizzes and activities populate in the course shell after the video is watched. Blackboard quizzes can be as simple as a series of multiple choice questions, but can include more sophisticated assessment features such as hotspot activities (which is where the student is asked to identify something in an image, and by clicking on the correct zone of the image s/he is able to indicate understanding. For example, you can show an image of a skeleton and ask your students to "click on the femur bone." The students would show understanding by clicking on the correct bone in the skeleton.)

Articulate

Some schools have Articulate, which is a robust add-on to PowerPoint that allows the user to create interactive learning modules. Here is an example training module created by the Harper College Center for Innovative Instruction in conjunction with the Harper Early Alert Team (HEAT). You'll notice it looks like an interactive PowerPoint contained in a useful user interface. The presentation was in fact created with PowerPoint, and the Articulate add-on is what gave it the user interface and interactive capabilities. If you select "Module 3: Practice" from the outline on the left, you can experience the power of Articulate at its best.

Screen Sharing with Your Students

I recently read a question in the LinkedIn group, techinEDU that I thought should be answered in a public platform, so here we go!

How Nearpod works, graphic from the Nearpod website

Here is the question:

Need software recommendation (online)

Looking for software that allows the teacher, from their computer, to pull up group work or group notes quickly.

Say its a group paper brainwork session and groups are working on chromebook independently and then the teacher wants to show off each groups notes to the whole class via a projector. Is there a "whiteboard" or note sharing type program made for this?

(The fall back is Google Apps and each group sharing the document with the teacher, but hoping for a more elegant solution.)

It sounded like this instructor wants to use this technology for a face-to-face learning experience, but you can also use some of these technological options for teaching at a distance. Here was my response:

I don't know much about Chromebooks, but here are a few recommendations for screen sharing. Some cost money and some are free.

1. Screen sharing with Skype.

Have all your students create accounts and then you can "call" them from your computer when it is their turn to share their screens. Read more about screen sharing with Skype.

2. Use Collaborate or another webinar/meeting software.

If your school has a Blackboard Collaborate account, schedule a Collaborate session during your class and you can use the screen sharing feature in Collaborate to project your students' work. You can also use other webinar and/or meeting software.

3. Apple TV with Airplay

If your students have Apple devices or if you school has Apple devices it can lend to your class, you can use Apple TV with Airplay. It's only $99 for Apple TV and I believe Airplay is free. It doesn't matter if the lectern computer is MAC or PC. It's just that your students' devices need to be Apple. You can read more about it in my blogpost, iPad Apps for Education Workshop Report. (This option only works for face-to-face sessions since I believe all students need to be on the same wifi network as the instructor.)

4. Nearpod for Apple or Android

If your students have mobile devices (Apple or Android) you can use Nearpod (a free download). Nearpod has reporting tools, the ability to control student devices (so they don't jump ahead or surf the net) and it works at a distance or for guided in-class learning.

Good luck!

Capture your lecture, screen and more with Camtasia Relay

What is Camtasia Relay?

Camtasia Relay is an easy-to-use lecture capture tool, which allows you to capture your computer screen, audio and web camera video with the click of a button. One of the unique features that puts Camtasia Relay above other screen capture tools is that it allows you or your administration to automate the workflow; through the creation of profiles, instructors are able to create videos and automatically publish them to specific areas in iTunesU, YouTube, and other file destinations.

Why Use Camtasia Relay? 

For your students: 

• Video resources allow students to review course content as many times as they need and at any time in the day 
• Videos make it easy for students who were absent to review important material 

For you: 

• Videos can help you “flip” your course 
• At least for us at Harper College, you can use Camtasia Relay to record from the comfort of your home. You simply need to be on campus to upload your videos. Other colleges may have set up their permissions differently, but the infrastructure is there to allow at-home recording. 

What equipment do you need to record with Camtasia Relay? 

• To record your screen and sound, you simply need your computer and a sound device (microphone, headset or built-in microphone). 
•  To record your screen, sound and video, you need you computer, a sound device and webcam. What do you need in order to publish to iTunesU from Camtasia Relay? 
• For Harper instructors, you simply need to be on campus with access to the internet. Recording can take place at home; just bring your laptop to campus, connect to the campus wifi, and your videos will automatically upload. Again, other colleges may set up their permissions differently, but the infrastructure is there to support this and other workflows.   

Best Practices for creating video resources: Shorter is better. 

Try to stay away from videos that are longer than 10 minutes, and preferably, try to keep your videos between 2 – 5 minutes long. Why, you ask?

• The download time for five 5-minute videos is exponentially faster than the download time for one 25-minute video 
• Your students may not have the bandwidth to download large files, and the longer the video, the larger the file. Since we strive to democratize learning, we want to make sure that all our students have the ability to access our video resources. 
• Students are able to focus better on five 5-minute videos than one 25-minute video. 
• Shorter videos with titles to indicate the content of the video are especially helpful so that if students need to review them later, they can review the one or two sections they need. With a 25 minute (or longer) video, it is harder to find the right section to review since it is one long sequence with no chapter subdivisions.

The Next and Possibly Greatest Education Game Changer

There is an exciting movement that will truly be a game changer in education, and it is a movement towards openness. A key player in this movement is the OpenCourseWare Consortium, which brings together higher education institutions and organizations from around the globe in an effort to create educational resources that are free and open to all. Within this parent organization is the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER), which was established to support community college participation in the adoption of open educational resources. CCCOER started in California in 2007 under the auspices of Dr. Martha Kanter, U.S. Undersecretary of Education, and joined the OpenCourseWare Consortium in 2011. While the majority of the participating colleges are located in California, CCCOER has grown to 200 colleges in 12 states and 1 province.

So what is OER really? In a nutshell, Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under open licensing so teachers can use them for their courses without having to worry about copyright infringement. The other major benefit to OER is that they are free to access, so learners are not required to pay excessive fees to study and learn from these resources.

There are entire textbooks available for student and teacher use. The licenses vary, but the most flexible of licensing allows instructors to edit the texts to suit their course needs; they can elaborate, cut, move, and add to the content.

As a teacher, this sounds like a dream! We no longer have to create course materials from scratch. Our students will no longer need to spend exorbitant amounts on publisher packs, course cartridges, or student accounts that expire too soon. They can even save on textbooks, which have the potential to be better than what publishers produce since they can be revised and edited by the course instructor, and may have been revised by several other instructors over time.

As an instructional designer and Blackboard support team member at Harper College, instructors complain to me about their course cartridges. First, there is no consistency in the process for accessing publisher materials. But the part that really bothers them is that they have so much cleanup to do since cartridge uploads are all-or-nothing, and many of the resources included in course cartridges are mediocre at best.

I am hopeful that OER will not only help instructors provide higher quality educational experiences to their students, but will also democratize learning. The disparity of access to education will lessen if we can provide free high-quality educational materials to students and schools that otherwise couldn't afford such resources. Perhaps an appreciation for education and the role of educators will grow as more citizens are given access to quality learning materials.

Stay tuned for a blog about the CCCOER movement and a few highlights recent accomplishments. Hopefully, the ideas will inspire other colleges to take on the mission of promoting OER.

How to Ensure 'Regular and Substantive Contact'

Yesterday, I attended a discussion about 'regular and substantive contact' in online courses at the Online Teaching Conference held at Long Beach City College. In the state of California, 'regular and substantive contact' initiated by the instructor is required in order for the state to reimburse the college for that course. Correspondence courses, where information is broadcasted to the learner with minimal or no feedback from the instructor, are not funded. Ph.D. candidate Margie White led the discussion and shared some simple and practical ways to satisfy the requirement for 'regular and substantive contact' while providing a truly rich learner experience. Here are a few highlights:

1. Start in your comfort zone.

Consider how you provide 'substantive' contact to your face-to-face (f2f) students. Do you enjoy facilitating class discussions? Do you prefer one-on-one meetings where you provide feedback? Do you have journal assignments where you communicate with your students through extensive feedback on their journal comments? Do you have a hands-off approach to discussions because you want the students to direct the conversation, but then offer concluding remarks and a discussion summary highlighting the key takeaways? Whatever you already do, start with that and just apply it to the online experience. Once you are comfortable with those familiar methods, you can expand your modes of 'regular and substantive contact'.

2. Know your students, content and technology tools.

See what methods fit best with your students and content area, and can be accomplished using technology you have at your disposal.

3. Track student participation.

Have prewritten emails you can send to your students when you notice they are not participating in class, or are not engaged enough to be successful. This is especially important in the first weeks of the course when students are just figuring out how to use the technology, while learning how to effectively study for a new subject and exercise time management. Take advantage of early alert tracking technology and/or statistics tracking if your LMS offers these tools, since they will save you a lot of time and oversight.

4. Facilitate strategic discussions.

 Be actively involved in a way that shows you are present, and that encourages deeper thinking on the part of the students. Don't answer questions that your students could answer for one another, and don't ask right or wrong questions since there is nothing to say after the first person correctly answers the question. Be sure to offer incentives for participation (I.e. grades/points) and use rubrics so students know how they are being graded.

5. Offer public feedback.

Public feedback to students can take place in discussion summaries or weekly summaries; highlight the efforts and actions of individual students as you sum up the key takeaways. You can also respond to student discussion posts to offer direct feedback in a public setting.

6. Offer private feedback.

Private feedback can take place through grade feedback, virtual meetings, and through journal comments. Be sure to tell your students where they can find comments and feedback in their course.

7. Use synchronous tools.

Tools like Blackboard Collaborate, CCC Confer, and Google hangouts are great for office hours, study sessions, final reviews, moderated group work and interactive lessons.

8. Use asynchronous tools.

Create asynchronous presentations, videos, podcasts (with transcripts), and/or voice thread (with transcripts) so students can see you or hear your voice, and feel connected to you directly. For example, you can create a welcome video, weekly video summaries, and quick tutorials.

MOOCs and the Future of Education. Highlights from Stephen Downes' Keynote

As I mentioned yesterday, I am attending the Online Teaching Conference held at Long Beach City College. This report covers the keynote speech presented by Stephen Downes, specialist in online learning, new media, pedagogy and philosophy, and one of the two individuals who designed and instructed the first MOOC. Here are some of the highlights.

What is a MOOC?

MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course. While parts of this acronym seem self-explanatory, I like how Stephen Downes went deeper into the meaning of each term, since it really added clarity to its original mission and character. Stephen joked (though I think he was serious) that a student accused him of being a techno-socialist, and this is why:

M is for Massive. 

Massive does not imply the number of students enrolled, but rather the capacity to handle an extremely large number of students. The first MOOC was created with foresight; the infrastructure was designed to support massive numbers of students. Stephen emphasized that broadcasts are not MOOCs even though they are intended for massive audiences; a true MOOC involves interaction and engagement as opposed to one-way communication.

O is for Open.

When Stephen Downes explained "open" he offered a poignant definition: Open does not just mean that the course is available to the public. Rather, it is truly free. Anyone is able to attend at any time without registering, submitting credit card information, or purchasing supplies, subscriptions, or equipment. Course materials are open-source or open-licensed. Internet is needed, but in many communities, internet can be accessed for free from libraries. Language is also not a barrier; individuals can participate in their own language, and they do. Free tools like Google Translate could be used to help speakers of different languages communicate with one another.

O is for Online.

This one was self-explanatory.

C is for Course.

This was mostly self-explanatory, except for one key point; the course Stephen Downes described is one in which the core of the learning process takes place through the interaction between participants. This definition is in stark contrast to teacher-centered instructional styles such as lecturing, where an expert basically fills "empty vessels" with his or hew knowledge. In Stephen's MOOCs, students and instructor alike bring their experiences, creations, ideas, questions and observations together to enhance and deepen the learning experience for everyone. Stephen went on to explain how connectivism was the founding philosophy of the original MOOCs (which are now referred to as cMOOCs, to differentiate from xMOOCs, represented by Coursera and edX.)

What is Connectivism?

In a nutshell, the connectivist philosophy has four components:

Aggregation: 

Knowledge and information is aggregated by the students and instructor through research and creation, as opposed to traditional courses where material is developed ahead of time.

Remixing: 

Materials are reorganized through correlating and comparing with other materials found online and in the course.

Re-purposing: 

The aggregated and remixed materials are then re-purposed on an individual basis; students collect, reinterpret and re-purpose knowledge based on their individual goals.

Feeding Forward: 

Participants are encouraged to share their re-purposed materials, which are their personal conclusions and interpretations of the information researched, assembled and critically-studied during the course.

Concluding Thoughts.

Other, (arguably less altruistic) variations of MOOCs developed over the past few years, but Stephen Downes' variation is one that can change the future of education in a positive way. Along with Open Educational Resources (OER), MOOCs have the potential to democratize education and help break down the socioeconomic barriers that make it difficult for students from the lower socioeconomic strati to advance in their lives and careers. I also agree that in light of this paradigm shift, we need to rethink how we define "success" in education. Rather than having an across-the-board measure of success, perhaps we need to weigh against the goals of the individual students. Through diligent research, we may find general trends that can help administrators quantify success, while staying true to the students' objectives.

iPad Apps for Education Workshop Report

Right now, I am attending the Online Teaching Conference held at Long Beach City College. Yesterday, I attended a great workshop taught by Sam Gliksman, who among other things is the author of iPad in Education for Dummies. The workshop went over iPad apps that enhance the teaching and learning experience. Here are some of the highlights. If there is expressed interest, I will delve deeper into any of these topics.

Technology does not replace experience but rather it enhances. A great example he showed was a student presenting a poem she wrote. She presented it orally, while a related artwork (created by the student) was being projected on a screen, and music she composed on an iPad using Garage Band was playing in the background.

Apple TV combined with AirPlay is a great resource! If students have Apple devices, the instructor can use Apple TV with AirPlay to share student work on their local device by projecting on the board. The lectern computer can be any device, Mac or PC, laptop, iPad or desktop.

Socrative.com is a free resource that can replace the need for clickers and all you and your students need is Internet access on your device of choice.

Flipboard is an amazing and free curating app for iPhone, iPad and Android; it takes the news, RSS feeds, social media feeds, and any other online resources you choose and puts them into a beautiful streamlined e-magazine so that each day you can get the information that is important to you, in a single digest. Teachers can curate resources for their own research or for sharing with students, and students can use the software for sharing resources with one another and for doing their own online research.

Pocket and Diigo are apps, which allow you to save and categorize online resources so that you can reference and share them online or offline. Pocket has a nicer interface but Diigo is better for collaborative work and highlighting specific text.

Book Creator costs $5 and is the best app available right now for publishing small simple e-books, which instructors can use to make resources for students, but also students can use for creating final projects for class. If your students all publish to a single Dropbox account, you can combine all books into one. For longer books, Sam recommends  iBooks Author, which is a free download for Mac computers and can be used to create books for free distribution or for sale on the apple iBooks store. A benefit of using the iBooks store is that when you publish an update to your book, like apps purchased in the app store, the book is automatically updated for all users who purchased it.

Haiku Deck is a free app that helps students or instructors create stunning image-focused presentations (as opposed to PowerPoint, which emphasizes text).

Explain Everything costs $3 but is well worth the cost. It is a screen capture app that combines audio and interactivity for creating presentations. The creator can talk through a presentation using slides, and while showing the slides, annotate and animate. You can pull in resources, such as Haiku Deck presentations, images and video, and publish to your YouTube channel, Dropbox, LMS, and more. It can also be used for assessment.

I'll have more to report soon!

Reduce Student Anxiety About Grades Simply by Articulating Your Grading Process

This week, a couple questions came up in my online course about grading. Specifically, some instructors only received half credit for their work and were wondering why. The fact is that at the time of grading, I may have only seen half of their work for the week. They may have received 100% on that assignment, but it looks like they only got a 50%. This happened because I have a couple designated times for reviewing work and grading, and grade everything I can at those times.

I grade this way for two reasons:
1. It is more efficient for me to grade what I see during the times I designate for grading (rather than wait for all work to be submitted) so that I don’t have to repeat the process and double the time I spend grading.

2. The other reason is to bring to light just how sensitive grades are to students. It is easy for us teachers to grade using a process and at times that meet our schedules and needs, and overlook how this may affect our students. When we have classes that meet in person, you either hand back everyone's graded work at once, or you don't give grades to anyone. But it is very clear to the student if their work has been graded, what they were being graded on, and whether there are aspects of their work that are still yet to be graded or can be resubmitted for a chance at a higher grade. In an online class, you may be in the middle of grading when a student looks at his or her grade. That student may be alarmed to discover a 50% grade, which is due to the fact that you only graded 50% of the work. Or, it may be four days after a major assignment was submitted and your student is anxious because he or she does not see a grade in the Grade Center.

To ensure that your students don’t have the anxiety my instructors experienced when they did not see their complete grades posted when expected, be sure to clarify your grading process. A lot of instructors put a disclaimer in their course overview stating that they look at the discussion boards X number of times per week, or on specific days of the week, and need X number of days to grade assignments, etc. so that students know what to expect. Furthermore, it is good to use the grade notes and feedback sections to elaborate on grades if it is not clear why a student got a certain grade. To save time, I typically won't leave feedback or notes when students get 100% since it is clear how they did (unless they usually get poor grades, whereas then I would congratulate them for their improvement). However, if I deduct points and it is not clear from the rubric why points were deducted, I will explain in the notes section. After all, students will have a hard time being successful if they do not understand where they should focus their efforts for improvement. So, empower your students to "Go Forward" with success and confidence!

Peer Reviews and Post Replies... Facilitating Effective Student-to-Student Interactions

So you have this great idea... you'll exercise your students' critical thinking skills while asking themto apply what they learned in class by having them complete peer reviews. Nice! Just make sure to work out all the kinks so that the process goes as smoothly as you had hoped.

The Scenario:

I developed a project for my Teaching Online students that involved completing an assignment, posting the assignment to a Blackboard discussion board, and reviewing one other student's assignment. I also specified that students should review work that has no feedback before reviewing any assignments that have already been reviewed. Not only are the students required to reflect carefully on their own assignments, but they are asked to make effort on behalf of their classmates. One of the nice things about projects like this is that if an online community has been developed, students will put extra effort into their peer reviews, because it is not solely about the grade... it's also about helping another community member attain success.

Challenges:

Peer reviews require completed assignments to be reviewed. Only two students were able to complete their assignments well before the due date (Sunday night at 11:59pm); the rest submitted their work late Sunday night, which means that only two people were able to review those assignments, following the directions specified above. Other students were forced to review assignments that already had reviews or face the penalty of late assignment completion. (Of course, I don't penalize my students for being unable to complete the assignment as specified, but I don't let my students know that: A core goal in this class is to develop sensitivity to course structure, delivery, and expectations, and recognize how these factors affect  students.) Students who regularly go above and beyond will most certainly review some of the later submissions, even if they had already reviewed one of the original two, but since we can't count on that, potentially there could be students who receive no peer feedback.

Solutions:

Although many online courses are run by week, you may want to create a midweek deadline for any assignments or discussion threads that need peer reviews or replies. This way, students know that after that deadline, there will be plenty of fodder for their critique, and they can schedule their participation around that date.

Part of the value of this activity is the autonomy to choose the assignment to review (which can mean a wide selection of topics and areas of interest.) Students are often more engaged with an assignment when they have an element of choice. However, depending on your subject matter and class dynamic, it may make sense to assign students as partners. When the students know that they are accountable to one another, they will more likely complete their assignments on time so that their partner will have an assignment to work from. Again, this kind of camaraderie and accountability is more affective when effort was made to build classroom community.

Finally, if for some reason there is a student who does not receive a peer review, I may offer extra credit to students who review any remaining assignments that still need feedback, and I may contact individual students to ask them personally for their feedback. Some students may reluctantly turn me down due to time constraints, but generally, students are flattered that their teacher counts on them when help is needed and want to go the extra mile for that reason. Often times, this personal requests lead to even more commitment on the part of the student because s/he feels personally invested in the course and its success.

Is Building Community Really That Important?

Are We Over-Catering to Students?

One may argue that in the workforce, no one "builds community" for you as the employee. You're usually thrown in to fend for yourself. So why should we make so many accommodations for our students? Are we doing them a disservice by treating them in a manner that is different than what they will experience in a work environment? Are we setting them up for hard lessons later in life?

It's All About Your Course Goals

I guess then it's a matter of your course goals and objectives, and what you want the students to walk away with. Is the goal of the course to prepare the students for what to expect in a professional environment? Then, I suppose yes, you want to give them an accurate experience. But if the goal is more so for them to learn certain content and to critically think about and apply that content, then community building does become important.

Vygotsky's "Zone of Proximal Development"

It all goes back to Vygotsky's "Zone of Proximal Development," which he defines as "the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers." (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86) Collaborating with more knowledgeable individuals raises a student's learning potential far higher than she ever reach in isolation.

Employers Want Employees with Group Skills

Furthermore, one of the chief complaints employers have with young professionals is that they do not know how to work effectively in groups. Any guidance we can give them as instructors will better prepare them for the working world and will give them a leg up during the hiring process. Creating a safe and comfortable learning environment is the first step to successful group learning.

The Importance of Social Engagement in Online Learning

In terms of learning online, the social engagement is often what makes or breaks the class. Anyone can read resources or watch videos online. It is nice that an instructor curates those resources because then the student can trust that the resources are high quality and accurate. However, one of the core strengths of learning online is having the opportunity to interact with other students and with the instructor. A shy or quiet student has as much of a voice as the students who dominate in-person class discussions. Students have the chance to think critically and for as much time as they need before responding to a question or comment. Furthermore, groups of students tend to mix and interact, who otherwise may never speak to one another.

Work Cited:
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 86

Using Poll Everywhere for Student Feedback and Engagement

Some of the instructors in my Successful Teaching Online course asked about ways to get formative student feedback. One way that seems to work is through quick polls. Using www.Polleverywhere.com, teachers can create simple one-question polls that update in real-time. They are fun to use in class because students can vote anonymously using their cell phones, computers, or iPads and see the results immediately on the lectern projector. Poll Everywhere polls are used for surveying student opinion and preference, checking comprehension, and as stimulus for dialogue. Try it out.You can see the results populate instantly using this results link.

To enlarge this graph, type Ctrl + and to reduce the size back, type Ctrl -.

Using Pinterest for Education

People use Pinterest for a number of reasons, but we will focus on the reasons that lend themselves to educational repurposing. 

Pinning

Pinterest offers a platform for people to become curators. People process information through categorization and classification, which is the ultimate function of Pinterest. Users find resources and pin them to thematic boards, thus allowing them to group, segment, compare, and draw connections between separate resources.

As Pinterest users accumulate online resources, Pinterest gives them a visual means of organization.  For visual learners, this helps them brainstorm, process and organize their thoughts and preferences. As a visual learner myself, having an image reference for each article improves my rate of recall; I have a much better memory for the details of an article when I have an image to reference than simply a title and description. 

Many Pinterest users curate collections of items for review by their peers. For comparative analysis, it helps that one can see all items on a single board rather than having to jump from one website to another.

The “Like” and comment functions allow students to share their thoughts on their peers’ collections.

Pinterest allows users to invite others to pin to their boards, which is great for collaborative research projects.

Following

I have to admit that I was put off by the fact that I was forced to follow boards right when I made my account, but what this did was it showed me how easily I could collect information and resources that normally I would have to go out of my way to find. Rather than spending time researching the best articles on marketing or teaching ideas, in a way they come to me. In creating my account, I was not very thoughtful about the boards I chose to follow because I just wanted to get through the process. However, after some time, I have come to realize who I want to follow and appreciate the resources I get from those individuals.

For those who are busy and on-the-go, it’s nice to have the latest and greatest on the topic of interest. A designer can follow the newest trends in design. A techy can find out the latest on software upgrades. Business and marketing students can review the latest advertising campaigns that have been making waves. I like looking at marketing infographics and repin my favorite ones to my own marketing boards.

I find myself spending the majority of my time working with my own boards or looking at specific boards curated by individuals, and only occasionally look at the “following” board because I tend to value Pinterest for its curatorial potential and thus seek out specific topics and information at particular times. This is where I see the most potential for educational use of Pinterest. I am not as interested in the stream of consciousness-like flow of the following page. However, many people like that they have the newest ideas (related to their interests) in a single glance right at their fingertips, and once they choose to repin some of those resources, they are able to put those items into more organized structures.

Side Note: There are ways to control the amount of email you receive from Pinterest and you can follow or unfollow anyone at any time. You can also have private boards for your eyes only.

Additional Resources

• This article will give you some concrete ways to use Pinterst in education: Educators Guide to Using Pinterest in Education
• For those of you teaching business, Pinterest has become a very effective social marketing tool. Check out this great podcast to learn more: How to Use Pinterest to Market Your Business
• Here is a Pinterest Board about using Pinterest successfully for education

Getting Students to Use Blackboard (or other LMS systems)

I have found that instructors who require their students to take quizzes online through Blackboard have a greater success rate in terms of having students acclimate to using Blackboard in general. Since there is no way to score points on a Blackboard quiz unless they enter Blackboard to take it, they are more likely to learn the skills needed and develop the comfort required to log into Blackboard regularly. If they can take a quiz, they can learn to download a file, view a file or upload an assignment in Blackboard. However, if you only use Blackboard to provide course readings or copies of PowerPoint presentations, your students may not make the effort to learn how to retrieve these pieces of information, and my either rely on a classmate or will try to make do without them. The same is true for submitting assignments. If you only use Blackboard for assignment submission, you may find a number of students will simply email you their work. However, the more value they find in Blackboard (that they cannot access otherwise) the more likely your students will take the time to acclimate to the technology. And once they start to use it, they do get comfortable, and in may cases begin to rely upon and value it.

I know that Blackboard can seem intimidating. Where do you start? I would go to Blackboard On-Demand, where you can watch quick how-to videos and even engage in self-assessment practice activities. Find the skill you want to learn and follow the link to a brief but effective tutorial (e.g. uploading course content, which is under "Understanding and Building Your Course" or creating a rubric, which is under "Assessing Learners"). 

One Way to Find Out Early On if Your Students Are "Tech Savvy"

Some instructors use icebreakers to reveal their students' levels of comfort with technology, which helps them plan how they approach their course. They may ask their students to share their favorite online activities and/or computer programs with one another. They may have the students fill out a quiz or a survey about the technology they use on a regular basis. I am currently developing an online orientation for students that includes a technology review, which will hopefully make students aware of the technical skills they will need in order to be successful in online courses of study. A great existing resource can be found at http://www.digitalliteracyassessment.org/

Can You Really Build Online Community?

It is possible to build community online, and in fact, I have a colleague who is moving to Texas to be with his girlfriend, whom he met in an online class. Of course, the facilitator’s effort to create online community influences the degree to which students feel online courses meet those intangible needs for social companionship and interaction. For kids and teens, Facebook has become a primary mode for social interaction, so the social needs or desires of this younger generation may be evolving differently than those of older generations. I've seen many teens get together just so they could surf Facebook together and look at each other's profiles. They will all sit together in the same room but all be looking at different computers.  Others make plans to meet online even though they live in walking distance from one another! So while Facebook will never (hopefully) replace face-to-face social interaction, it has certainly become a bigger part of the social experience for younger generations than I think anyone anticipated. Similarly, online community and camaraderie has greater potential than I think some of us teachers realize. However, it is up to us to facilitate and nurture safe, supportive and engaging community interactions.

Pre-course Materials for Online Courses

When I teach online courses, I typically have a "pre-course materials" section for students to review before they get to the real meat of the course. Pre-course materials makes sense if you need to set a foundation for the course. Sometimes the materials are content-related, such as glossary lists,  terminology quizzes, and readings or videos that review basic information needed for a successful first day of class. Other times pre-course materials cover more of the administrative and/or technical areas, such as a quiz to confirm that students read the syllabus, icebreakers activities, or other assignments that allow students to slowly get their minds into the subject matter while experiencing the technology they will be using throughout the course. Pre-course materials may be graded to encourage students to actually complete them.

On the Road to Success

Welcome to the Tips 4 Teaching Online blog! This blog will hopefully be a resource to my students and to any educators who wish to learn more about teaching online successfully. This resource includes tips and tricks for teaching fully online courses, but also blended learning and flipped learning classes. Everyone is invited to jump into the conversation. My intention is to write blog posts that are short, sweet and to the point so that you can reference your exact topic of interest at any time and on-the-go. I know we are all busy people so let's see what we can do to help one another with our best tips, tricks and quick advice. Together, we can support student success through our own faculty development.