here it is, again

Here’s that new semester, the fall renewal, even though it’s still pretty hot outside. We are all excited about starting up again, before the complexity of courses, grading, student conferences, and committee work start to fill up all those moments we had planned to learn about new innovations in teaching and learning. Some of us have new ideas we’d like to try out in the classroom, whether on ground or online, and hope to keep up our excitement long enough to put the ideas in motion.

Pardon a personal note: I’ve been reading about online teaching, since I’ll be teaching online for the first time, reading about translating face-to-face practices into online experiences, all the while trying to keep three areas in mind–student/content interaction, student/faculty interaction, and student/student interaction. That doesn’t seem like a difficult organizational plan, until you start to fill in the blanks. Assignments and due dates are easy enough, but creating experiences that engage students as they work through those assignments is the hard part. All of a sudden I feel like an orchestra conductor waiting for the sheet music, and discover that I am the composer, too. I know that if I feel overwhelmed, students may have the same reaction, so my first order of business has been to retreat from displaying all the content of the semester at once. In a f2f course, I would never hand out all the assignments on day one, so why would I try to make them all available on our LMS? I’m giving myself permission to slow down and judge how the course is going in the first few weeks, leaving room for adjustment. I’m sure it would be nice to have the whole course and its content created on day one and just turn it on, but for this first time around, I need to test the waters a little. I’ll be busy in the evenings and on weekends.

Here are a few of the things I’ve been reading online:

Instructional Design for Online Learning: http://www.ibritt.com/resources/dc_instructionaldesign.htm

Getting Started Online: http://vfc.project.mnscu.edu/index.asp

Principles of Online Design: http://www.fgcu.edu/onlinedesign/index.html

Instructional Design Handbook: http://www.psuonline.pdx.edu/docs/id_handbook.htm

Guidelines for Teaching an Online Course: http://tltc.findlay.edu/onlinesupport/Guidelines/index.html

Teaching Strategies: Online Teaching: http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tsot.php

Send me your favorites to post, whether about online teaching or not.

Filed under: 7 principles, course design, education, learning, online learning, pedagogy, student-centered learning, teaching, technology

flip that course 3

Read the entire flip that course series on translating traditional courses for online delivery:

1. Brainstorming
2. Course Layout and Syllabus
3. Communication Among Students
4. Communication Between Students and Faculty
5. Addressing Learning Styles
6. Packaging Content

Third in a series on how to translate a face-to-face course into an online course.

COMMUNICATION

Who would have thought that this concept, so central to the face-to-face classroom dynamic, would be such a necessary feature online, where perhaps none of your students are working at the same time? You might have thought of an online course more like those old correspondence courses, in which students sent you papers and you graded them and sent them back.

Today, we–teachers and students, both–expect a more sophisticated experience even in asynchronous environments, and communication is key to establishing the relationships that create the sense of being in a class. I will divide the topic into two areas: (1) communication among students and (2) communication between teachers and students.

Communication Among Students

At least three (3) of the “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education” that I posted about last summer, principles generally known as the Chickering and Gamson principles, address communication. These principles are especially appropriate in online courses, where the lack of communication can leave students feeling isolated and contemplating dropping the course, and faculty feeling as if they don’t know their students.

In a classroom, we take for granted the opportunity to ask questions, wait for responses, and participate in the back and forth of Socratic dialog that can lead students through complex material toward knowledge and understanding. We don’t have to abandon our goals, but we do have to reconsider how to achieve them.

In “The Reluctant Online Professor,” by Cynthia L. Corritore, PhD, Creighton University, published online in eLearn Magazine, Corritore describes the following experience using blog discussions:

There were several things that I believe made the course so successful. One key was the blog discussions. Initially, the posts read as individual, unrelated, formal discourses, even though I had provided guidelines and a movie about how to participate in a blog discussion. So, for the first two weeks of the course I graded the blog discussions very strictly and provided a great deal of individual and team feedback. I tried to convey that these discussions were analogous to classroom exchanges in which they must build on the ideas of others. It took about two weeks of low grades and extensive feedback, but they suddenly “got it.” The blogs became surprisingly high-level, extremely energized discussions with application of course content, relevant life and work experiences, and examples from the students’ independent research.

While posting every day caused significant complaints from the majority of students in the first week, by the end of the second week most were posting multiple times a day to each of their team blogs. It was extremely exciting to see all of this interaction happening, and it exceeded my expectations. I had never seen this level of discussion in a class, even onsite. My boring class had become exciting and engaging!

The team element of the course was another key to success. My experience with students is that they tend to become cohesive over time, but these online teams did that and more. I saw the students come together and develop into organized learning groups. Everyone was consistently positive and supportive of each other.

Whether we would use free commercial blogs or the Blackboard Discussion Board, such development of students into a community of learning would be a good substitute for face-to-face discussions, as well as a good way to assess understanding. Notice that Corritore applied strict principles for participation and grading, which clearly communicated high expectations and resulted in those expectations being fulfilled.

The lesson here is that in order to achieve communication among students, you must convey clear methods and expectations, and you must guide students as much as needed until they are able to perform on their own.

Here’s a diagram and short table of findings from The Sloan Consortium on “Relationships Between Interactions and Learning in Online Environments.” Specifically, the section on interaction with classmates supports the idea of community-building, the one thing we fear will be absent online.

Here’s a more traditional article from Mary Ann Kolloff, Assistant Professor, Eastern Kentucky University on “Strategies for Effective Student/Student Interaction in Online Courses.” As this article suggests, you must design course activities in a way that allows you to stand on the sidelines observing as much as possible, so that you are not “overwhelmed with online teaching.” Just as in the classroom, you can become the only one learning the material if you cannot create situations in which students can develop their own understanding.

Update: Let me add this terrific article full of specifics on how to conduct a successful online discussion forum: “Dialogue-Intensive Learning“ by Richard Dool, D.Mgt, Assistant Professor, Seton Hall University. I will mention it again at the beginning of the next post for those who miss this update.

Next, we’ll tackle the communication between teachers and students.

Filed under: 7 principles, communication, online learning

principles are principles

In the past few weeks, I’ve run into two presentations that relied on Chickering and Gamson’s “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education.” I suppose that you’re not surprised, given the title, but you might be surprised to know that the article that introduced these principles was first published in the dark ages of 1987. If you were all caught up in the big hair, bigger shoulder pads of that era and missed the article, here are the big 7:

1. encourages contact between students and faculty,
2. develops reciprocity and cooperation among students,
3. encourages active learning,
4. gives prompt feedback,
5. emphasizes time on task,
6. communicates high expectations, and
7. respects diverse talents and ways of learning.

I’m sure you’ll agree that these really are still good principles. But maybe you’ll be surprised to know that I heard them referenced in presentations about education and technology. In late May, I heard Steve Gilbert of the TLT Group speak at Gannon’s symposium on teaching, and his entire presentation focused on how technology can enhance these principles. You can find Gilbert’s resources here.

Then I heard about them again at the Second Life Best Practices in Education 2007 conference from Sarah Robbins (Intellagirl Tully, SL) in her presentation on “Engagement in Second Life.” You can view a clip of her presentation here, and find her slides and download them here.

Maybe I should remind you more often that using technology is not a substitute for thinking about your course design. There’s nothing worse than being presented with dazzling gizmos that are expected to speak for themselves–why are you in the classroom or online with your students if that’s the case?

Isn’t it great to allay fears that the teacher isn’t needed anymore?

P.S. I guess I’ll have to cross-post this on our new SL blog, since I mentioned it;)

Filed under: 7 principles, SLBPE2007, second life, slbestpractices07