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This paper reports the findings of a case study in which audio feedback replaced text-based feedback in asynchronous courses. Previous research has demonstrated that participants in online courses can build effective learning communities through text based communication alone. Similarly, it has been demonstrated that instructors for online courses can adequately project immediacy behaviors using text-based communication.

I liked the article in this week's reading on creating an interactive syllabus and found this article about how writing students contributed to an interactive course syllabus. This resonated with me since I teaching writing courses.

In designing my syllabus, I'm trying to decide whether to include testing like I do in the conventional version of the course, which has a midterm and a final. This resource from Iowa State is helping me think about whether a midterm will be useful in the same way for an online course as it is for a conventional one-and how I might format it if I decide to have one.

Great resource, I could have used this many times. I will keep handy going forward. Thanks

In the time I do not have, I am keeping an eye (and only that) on a Coursera online course on how to create an online course. Nowhere as exhastive as this one, but it does provide me with hunting ground for sites to suggest in this forum. Here is one of two I will post on writing SLO's

Mobile Learning: A Designer's Guide to Fighting Learner Distraction One of the biggest issues in eLearning is distractions. The brain is constantly bombarded with stray thoughts even when users exert great self-control. The problem is yet more pronounced in mLearning, as devices themselves may cause distractions such as phone calls, email alerts, and the knowledge that the user could easily be doing something different.

I follow this blog although it is primarily for course design. In any case, this topic seemed relevant to our course design assignment.

McLaughlin, Jacqueline E. PhD, MS; Roth, Mary T. PharmD, MHS; Glatt, Dylan M.; Gharkholonarehe, Nastaran PharmD; Davidson, Christopher A. ME; Griffin, LaToya M. PhD; Esserman, Denise A. PhD; Mumper, Russell J. PhD In recent years, colleges and universities in the United States have faced considerable scrutiny for their apparent failure to adequately educate students.

I read this article and found it to be enormously interesting and enlightening. The course coordinator was a seasoned veteran; there were numerous resources dedicated to this venture (full time graduate TAs, dedicated IT personnel) and yet the authors report that the coordinator still required 127% more time to prepare the online components of this course. I also noticed that many of the active learning strategies discussed (think-pair-share, as an example) are things that could easily be incorporated into a non-flipped classroom.

One idea came to mind as I read the article about offloading lecture material for students so that synchronous class time can be used for discussion and problem solving: the use of case studies. Public health, business, and development work often relies on group engagement in response to case studies. The background could be presented, along with vital tools for assessing and analyzing the situation, then on-line classes could be used for rich discussion of the range of solutions and opportunities. I'm thinking of a model of a traditional pilgrimage in which pilgrims keep coming together in larger numbers the closer they get to their destination.

This book has a chapter on creating a "student-centered syllabus" for an information literacy course, which could come in handy next week!

As we begin our peer assessment, this article from Troy who has used the Quality Matters rubric in their assessment of online courses gives great tips and tidbits for further improvement

Brief article by online instructor sharing tips on managing online courses. Two tips I think would be especially useful include: 1) using a "What's New" section for adding content so students can find it easily and 2) for large classes to keep personalized grading assignments and high tech features to a minimum.

Kristy, thanks for this good resource, I think that author has several good points. There are ways to think about the "What's New" area. There is a module page within the site that can be used, I've added one in our class, just so you can see. Learners can also use the Global Navigation at the top right of the Bb site to see all (or to filter specific courses) of all new and up-to-date happenings. There are definitely strategies of workload management including team and peer-review assignments. You can also have student-led discussions. Large online classes are there own beast - and I think SON is facing it. I believe that we can come up with some solid solutions that still meet the instructional goals without burning out the faculty.

This is a article from a colleague of mine on his experience "flipping" his classroom.

That's a pretty good overview of things to keep in mind; hopefully, going through this class will help to understand how to put some of these things into practice! I've followed a number of Coursera courses on topics related to my PhD, and I've been trying to keep an eye on what I liked and disliked about the way each course was run, so I hope to incorporate some of that into any future online teaching I do.

This paper explores the relationship between student perceptions of various aspects of the course and their actual performance and participation

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.

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."

from the 2005 ASCUE (Association Supporting Computer Users in Education) Conference. I thought this was particularly good with respect to issues of the time demands an online course places on instructors (especially in terms of development and roll-out), as well as on students.

Opinion Piece in the New York Times Online education is a one-size-fits-all endeavor. It tends to be a monologue and not a real dialogue. The Internet teacher, even one who responds to students via e-mail, can never have the immediacy of contact that the teacher on the scene can, with his sensitivity to unspoken moods and enthusiasms. This is particularly true of online courses for which the lectures are already filmed and in the can. It doesn't matter who is sitting out there on the Internet watching; the course is what it is.

An excellent guide to use when developing a course and wanting to be able to effectively reach a multitude of devices (student-content interaction)

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).