Group items tagged

While this paper set out to discover what activities and/or interaction channels might be expected to lead to more highly engaged student s, what it found was a bit different. After first creating a scale to measure online student engagement, and then surveying 186 students from six campuses in the Midwest, the results indicate that there is no particular activity that will automatically help students to be more engaged in online classes. However, the results also suggest that multiple communication channels may be related to higher engagement and that student-student and instructor-student communication are clearly strongly correlated with higher student engagement with the course, in general. Thus, advice for online instructors is still to use active learning but to be sure to incorporate meaningful and multiple ways of interacting with students and encouraging/requiring students to interact with each other.

Assessment of undergraduate research (UR) programs using participant surveys has produced a wealth of information about design, implementation, and perceived benefits of UR programs. However, measurement of student participation university wide, and the potential contribution of research experience to student success, also require the study of extrinsic measures....

This particular article relates more to undergraduate research experiences and their relationship to student success than to online teaching and learning. When viewing and reading the "student as producer" content, I immediately thought of undergraduate research experiences (URE). URE in STEM fields are thought to be valuable in promoting gains in student knowledge and skills, enhancing retention of students in STEM fields (particularly underrepresented minorities and women), among other goals. A commonly reported outcome of studies on URE is that "students learn to be scientists," (to paraphrase a bit). Fechheimer et al. looked at participation in UR in all fields by UGA students for more than a single semester, and found positive, quantifiable outcomes (like increased GPA) in this study. UR is an approach to reach some of the same goals that we have in online teaching and learning. I would argue that it also is a learner-centered approach. And, it certainly allows students to produce products that require novel assessments (for example, a poster or presentation at a conference; co-authorship of a paper). Interestingly, I'm not sure that the evidence to date is clear on the ability of URE to promote and develop higher order skills in students.

The author discusses the theory behind online discussions, as well as the potential value of - and problems associated with - online discussions. Some excerpts: "The argument I offer here is that saying an online discussion is a worse version of an IRL discussion is like saying an apple is a worse version of an orange. Disappointment with online discussions because they are not like IRL discussion is like being disappointed with an apple because it is a bad orange." ... "In an IRL discussion, students look, speak, and listen with multiple objects. In online discussion, like during a lecture, students sit and stare at a single object as well: but it is a computer rather than a person speaking. The lecturer is the computer. This lecturer is a screen with a keyboard and includes a complex series of frames within which the student types sentences in varying sequences. By this I am not only talking about video lectures which students watch, but rather more perceptually. In a lecture, the lecturer is the sole object of attention. There is only one object of attention: bracketing the complex material engaged with in the screen, it remains true that students exclusively engage with the screen when learning online. Students in online courses stare at a computer when learning online the same way they would stare at a lecturer speaking, focusing their attention on a single object. At a lecture, it's a person. Online, it's the computer."... "In any case, online discussions are still discussions. It would be a mistake to say all we do during online discussion is stare intensely at a computer. Most of the discussions in my online courses occur asynchronously on discussion boards. On these written discussion boards, for example, we read and write responsively. The whole situation of online discussion is therefore more akin, in this respect, to written correspondence."

From the conclusion: "Participating well in online discussions might be more like writing a good letter or having a good phone conversation, as opposed to a good spoken kind comment in an IRL discussion. We should not expect online discussions to be anything at all like IRL discussions. They are categorically different. In other words, being disappointed with online discussions because they are not like IRL discussions is like being disappointed with apples because they are not oranges." "In planning online courses, generating online assignments, and creating materials for online teaching, it is important to remember that online discussions require students to focus intense attention on a machine, and therefore compels them to cathect and introject that machine. Independently of the fluidity of your module and software, students transfer meanings onto their machines during the learning process rather than a person. While the introjection of machines is an interesting opportunity for further educational research, as an instructor, plan for student participation with this in mind: they are interacting with a machine and not people. An online discussion is more like a computer's lecture than an IRL discussion, no matter how interactive."

This study focuses on the presence of the teacher in the virtual classroom and how the instructor interacts with the students. Can an instructor's behavior encourage more student activity? Certainly, but it has to be more than the occasional "well done," the authors say. Students want more teacher presence, specifically more frequent responses, more acknowledgement of individuals' contribution, and more suggestions and guidance related to a specific response. So the bottom line is try to respond to individual students rather than a group and customize your comments as much as possible. You will have more engaged students.

R.A.D.A.R. Learning Cycle = Read Apply Discuss And Reflect - this a template of a method that you can use to formulate learning assessment by using the discussion forums, blogs or written assignments. It is definitely a (Student-student and Student-content interaction)

It seems to me that instructional design and course design models presume that every student in the class has to pursue the same objectives and should be taught in the same fashion; yet, as universal design ideas suggest, we may need to occasionally use different assignments and allow different learning approaches. And maybe, to take this idea a step further, learning in general should be personalized and course designs become more flexible. At least that's what some educational pioneers from Silicon Valley have declared. What follows is the introductory passage of a very recent New Yorker article, an article which is ultimately quite skeptical of the new models and of the role of technology in the classroom: "Seen from the outside, AltSchool Brooklyn, a private school that opened in Brooklyn Heights last fall, does not look like a traditional educational establishment. There is no playground attached, no crossing guard at the street corner, and no crowd of children blocking the sidewalk in the morning."

As the article goes on to highlight, the founders of the company AltSchool intend to break with traditional educational models. In the older model, the founder Max Ventilla asserts, the teacher is "an artisanal lesson planner on the one hand and disciplinary babysitter on the other hand." Not just that, the teacher also creates, following Common Core for example, standards and objectives for his or her class; one teacher quoted in the article claims that "by looking for standards to pull everyone up we are forgetting to address what the individual needs." This is where the AltSchool idea intervenes. This new school's approach "acknowledges and adapts to the differences among students: their abilities, their interests, their cultural backgrounds." How so? By monitoring students and collecting as much data about each student as possible, thus personalizing plans and projects for students (sound familiar? Ventilla worked for Google before founding AltSchool). While I think the idea of personalized learning is compelling, I also read with interest about the mixed results of AltSchool and other similar institutions - plus, the schools seem to be very utilitarian, focusing on what the student purportedly needs to succeed in the workplace (languages are supposedly rather useless, for example, because everyone will carry an electronic, speaking dictionary in 20 years from now). On a slightly different - and final - note, I was also intrigued by a quote from Daniel Willingham, education scholar at UV: "The most common thing I hear is that when you adopt technology you have to write twice the lesson plans. You have the one you use with the technology, and you have the backup one you use when the technology doesn't work that day." Congratulations! If you read this sentence, you have survived the challenge of reading this epic post.

Online classes can be mechanical in nature and feel distant for students, which typically results in low student engagement and retention in the class, or it can be an environment that stimulates an interest in learning and promotes meaningful interactions.

Curtis and Lawson (2001) looked for "evidence of good quality interactions among students who are not present in the one physical site from data obtained from students' online exchanges" (p. 21). They focused on the "depth of on-task activity" (p. 21) in an asynchronous situation, which they argue is the most common form of online courses, of a small collaborative learning group. They found that "the analysis of participants' postings reveals many of the behaviors associated with collaborative learning in face-to face situations" (p. 29). However, "the students spontaneously demonstrated a need also to use synchronous communication" (p. 24). Some did this via text or email, often when they did not agree with another student and some organized synchronous chat sessions. This shows that "there is a need to incorporate among the asynchronous interactions…opportunities for real-time interactions among students" (p. 29).

Universal Design in the ESL classroom

I like this list, Jane, though I feel the author Kregg Strehorn could have elaborated on some of the suggestions to explain more clearly what is meant and what a particular method entails. Maybe there was a strict word limit to which Strehorn had to adhere. In any case, some of the ideas are very interesting but also seem to be very time-consuming and potentially confusing. Don't get me wrong, I think it's wonderful that Stehorn reads and records some of the texts they are using in the class, reads and records and transcribes lectures, gives students different assignment choices, writes detailed class outlines and shares them with students, etc. All of these ideas make sense to me, but how do you have time as a teacher (and in my/our case instructor and full-time staff member) to do all that, unless you teach the same course over and over again? I am a great supporter and believer in universal design; plus, online classes in particular are, almost by nature, using a range of tools, thus serving students with different needs. Yet, Strehorn should discuss the amount of work involved in creating this course and should also address students' responses to this course as well as potential pitfalls in terms of student assessment. Perhaps Strehorn has done so in a different place.

This website shows the work of a group of educators of theatre who, through years of experience, have come up with more than 15 assessment models that can be used in the professional theatre education. Models are templates or transportable models. I found particularly helpful that they compare "traditional" assessment of teaching King Lear ("a multiple-choice test on the play at the end of the ten weeks") with "performance" assessment of KL (including " informal check-ins, observations, academic prompts, mini-quizzes and something called a performance task at the end of the course"). Student anxiety rises with the amount of overseeing and work, but "clear exercises with rubrics" help. Bottom line: smaller, more clearly focused assessment rounds help student prepare better for the final performance. Hmm... Website has assessment models and results, case analysis, reports for audiences, and lots of ideas. Some a bit calculated, but good food for thought. Comment from the website: "The result of using TEAM's Assessment Models is a more accurate picture of student learning. For example, a more accurate picture of student learning might include a student who does not just know Shakespeare, but knows how King Lear ends and has an opinion about an alternative ending for that play based on what he or she learned in class."

This UCF website, prepared by Carissa Baker, explores the way in which many literature professors are "trying innovative technology strategies within the literature classroom to increase knowledge and engagement." With theoretical as well as practical sources, the site offers many ideas on student engagement and literature immersion; it also has a few videos with ideas for staging virtual worlds; and a starter bibliography with 10 articles on a range of topics, including virtual literature circles; native avatars, online hubs, and urban indian literature; victorian novels and technoRomanticism; using Tweeter in the Literature Classroom (hmm...); online teaching Old English; and hypertext use to enhance students reading experiences, among others.

Researchers say that some online students don't like group work. How to deal with dissonance? One idea is to have students list their reasons and then discuss. Another is to show them a video on collaboration and team-building. There are a lot of lousy team-building videos on YouTube. But here's a fun and engaging Ted Talk presentation. Why are kindergarteners better at collaboration than business school students? Tune in.

An interesting idea: student collaboration to lead and facilitate online discussions. This study says the student leaders elicited meaningful dialogue, high levels of participation and quality conversation.

This page is actually a brief (but helpful and concise) overview of the use of rubrics. The main reason I am posting it here is because the entire site (Cornell University Center for Teaching Excellence) has a wealth of information on design, assessment, student engagement and using technology in the classroom.

In brief, the study shows that yes online teaching is time consuming but NOT because of the technology involved but because it is a great time investment to interact with all students. Again brings me back to my point that YES online teaching helps to 'individualize/personalize' the student learning process. Therefore, requires greater inputs and personalize mentoring than a traditional classroom engagement.

The number of distance education courses offered by nurse anesthesia programs has increased substantially. Emerging distance learning trends must be researched to ensure high-quality education for student registered nurse anesthetists. However, research to examine distance learning has been hampered by a lack of theoretical models. This article introduces the Community of Inquiry model for use in nurse anesthesia education. This model has been used for more than a decade to guide and research distance learning in higher education. A major strength of this model lies in its direct applicability for guiding online distance learning. However, it lacks applicability to the development of higher order thinking for student registered nurse anesthetists. Thus, a new derived Community of Inquiry model was designed to improve these students' higher order thinking in distance learning. The derived model integrates Bloom's revised taxonomy into the original Community of Inquiry model and provides a means to design, evaluate, and research higher order thinking in nurse anesthesia distance education courses.

Matthew Guterl writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the alternative of open curriculum. It is a nice opinion piece in our discussion of Heutagogy.

I really like this piece, David, thanks for sharing. The conclusion asks some pretty good questions: Parents need to think about the interior work of the curriculum and understand that what is learned in pursuit of a college degree is more than the sum of courses taken. And faculty members and administrators need to be asking themselves: What sort of student emerges from our curricula? A student who can follow a map, or a student who can make one? Because we sorely need more of the latter. And, as much as I love teaching at this place, they shouldn't all come from Brown.

Teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) to immigrants and refugees who are visually impaired or blind involves complex challenges such as working with mainstream ESL programs that have low expectations of people with disabilities, coping with inaccessible intake tools and training materials, locating and recruiting students from immigrant and refugee populations that do not always believe people with disabilities can become literate and productive citizens, locating and recruiting appropriately trained volunteer tutors, and matching students with tutors.