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!

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.