Online Instructors are Lazy and Make Students Teach Themselves (False Assumptions Series, #1)

There are many false assumptions abut online learning and the purpose of this blog series is to clear them up. My caveat is that these assumptions are only false when the online teacher is trained* to teach effectively in the online environment. One of the most dangerous assumptions is that a good classroom teacher will be a good online teacher. I believe this to be true with proper training, but without it, classroom teachers often fall short and it's the students who suffer most.

The assumption that instructors are lazy and make students teach themselves probably comes from experiences unfortunate students had with untrained teachers. Some untrained instructors think that to teach an online course you simply need to post readings, PowerPoint slides, quizzes and assignments, assign due dates and grade. This sounds like a face-to-face class without the classroom component. I could certainly see how a student in such a course would feel as if the instructor were absent and she is teaching herself.

So what's missing? The student may say that the teacher isn't teaching anything, which is sort of true. But that's not due to the fact that classroom component is missing. There are many highly successful online courses being offered and none of them involve physical presence. So again we ask, what's missing?

1. Clarification on content
2. Timely feedback on demonstrated performance and understanding 
3. Spontaneous activities and explanations
4. Interaction with the instructor and classmates
5. Student-driven discussion and Q&A
6. A sense of community and humanity

If an online instructor could find a way to incorporate these elements into his course, I am confident that his students would be satisfied with the instruction, support and engagement they experience. And it is certainly possible!

Am I missing any elements? Or do you have a different opinion? Please share your thoughts.

*I do not wish to discount or belittle self-trained instructors. I simply want to emphasize that learning the strategies and techniques for teaching online often leads to success, whereas instructors who do not learn and apply best practices often fall short, even if their intentions are good and their classroom teaching skills are noteworthy.

Tips for Synchronous Learning (Collaborate sessions)

In my online course Successful Teaching Online Mentoring Program (STOMP), my instructors (aka my students) were discussing the use of Collaborate as a virtual synchronous teaching tool, and had a few questions I would like to answer here.

Whenever you incorporate a new technology tool into your curriculum, it is important to evaluate how effectively it helps your students meet the course outcomes. Utilizing a synchronous learning tool like Collaborate could certainly add positively to your course, since it allows for real-time discussion, lecture and collaborative engagement. Collaborate is probably the closest we get to offering the face-to-face classroom experience in an online setting. 

Snow Day Solution

Some of the instructors I work with use Collaborate when there is inclement weather and they still wish to hold class. The session can be accessed live for anyone with the technological capacity to join the lesson, and the archived recording is available for those students who were unable to join the live session. Chicago had a terrible winter this past year (January 2014) and in response, many instructors came to me trying to figure out how to make up for the lost time; Collaborate was one of those solutions.

Office Hours and Study Sessions

Other instructors use Collaborate regularly for office hours; they tell students they will be available online during certain days/times of the week and any student can "drop in". They may also offer midterm and final review sessions via Collaborate. Personally, I use Collaborate for one-on-one student meetings, and so far my instructors have appreciated the opportunity and support.

Tips for Teaching with Collaborate

Ideally, if you teach an online course and wish to incorporate Collaborate (or any tool for synchronous learning), you will hold regular sessions. With any online tool, there is a learning curve to consider. It may be rather frustrating to your students to go through the (potentially stressful) process of learning a new technology tool just to use it once and never again. If you are going to require the use of Collaborate, assign a few synchronous sessions so that your students can feel the sense of accomplishment that comes from becoming comfortable and familiar with the new tool. Furthermore, if you "require" participation in synchronous learning (as opposed to just offering optional study sessions or office hours), include the dates/times of the sessions in the course description so that every student is aware of the time commitment before enrolling in your course.

Should you decide to utilize Collaborate or another synchronous learning tool, it will help if you provide your students with tutorials so that they can prepare for the experience and hopefully have less to troubleshoot during the session. Admittedly, I have found that even with my students, who are all college instructors, it is hard to get them to watch/read the tutorials prior to the synchronous learning session. To ensure they do the prep work, you may want to assign a brief quiz that tests them on troubleshooting techniques.

How to Proceed with Developing a New Online Course from Scratch (in 4 easy steps)

Recently, an instructor asked me for a brief outline of how to proceed with designing and developing an online course from scratch. Here was my advice:

To give a really general outline, here is how I would proceed:
1.    Review the course objectives/student outcomes
2.    Determine what topics need to be covered and in what order to meet those objectives
3.    From there, create an outline covering 16 weeks (or however long your course will be) and then fill the info in week by week. What outcomes are met each week? (Write those down) Then what assessments will you assign to show that the students have met the student outcomes? Finally, what activities will the students need to complete in order to succeed in the assessments?
4.    Build the assessments, rubrics and activities

Do not simply go by the book because often times the topics emphasized by the text books are not the ones that best meet the outcomes, and some areas that the text glosses over are actually more important for your students to learn. Therefore, always use your course objectives and the outcomes assigned to each week as your guide.

I hope this helps!

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.

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!

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.