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."

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)

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.

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.

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).

I won't say that this makes shifting conceptions of assessment in one's own courses less daunting, but I appreciate that it acknowledges the significant demand that changing assessment criteria can put on teachers. I have to admit that lot of the time, when I read about new assessment techniques, they sound interesting but exhausting to implement. We've seen a lot of stage-based models for education/assessment/collaboration/etc., but this one is especially clear and I like the thoroughness of the horror story example.

Dan I greatly appreciate your view point on this and can share another horror story with you that actually turned out to be a fairy-tale situation in the end! I'll make a note to discuss in tomorrow's live session. Cheers!

The more that I read about student centered learning and assessment, the more I realize that this is the direction I have been (slowly, glacially) moving in for years. Thanks for this!

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."

Over the last decade, larger student numbers, reduced resources and increasing use of new technologies have led to the increased use of multiple-choice questions (MCQs) as a method of assessment in higher education courses. This paper identifies some limitations associated with MCQs from a pedagogical standpoint....

Trying to catch up and get ahead as I leave town this week :) I teach beginning undergraduates in typically large (150+ students) classes, often with little or no (or ineffective) TA assistance. Multiple choice questions are an absolute necessity as a management tool. I find that many of my colleagues in traditional liberal arts colleges think that multiple choice questions are unacceptable as a means of student assessment. However, I've noticed that many of the online adaptive learning tools and licensing exams required by many professional programs (nursing among them...) are also based primarily on multiple choice questions. I looked for an article to rebut the reading from the flaguide website (http://www.flaguide.org/) which stated, "...the multiple choice test..... [is] usually most effective at measuring fact-based knowledge and the ability to perform algorithmic problem-solving...However, if our goals include different student outcomes than these....then this assessment technique will not provide useful feedback about attainment of these goals." The above article gives several ideas for creating and using multiple choice questions to assess higher order thinking, my favorite being the idea of assigning scores based not only on student answers to the questions but also their confidence in their answer. I also liked the idea of the self-tests that students can take repeatedly to check their mastery of concepts, which seems to play into the instructional design loops that we were studying in M3.

This article has a follow up major piece in the June 24 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. I cannot send that one to you because it is "locked." However, this piece describes what two very famous psychologists, Gosling and Pennebaker, are doing at UT Austin with online psychology classes. They describe here a synchronous massive online course in which (as now described in the Chronicle, they have 1500! students registered. Twenty four students are invited to attend F2F classes twice per week and the rest are online live. This SMOC, as they term it, allows faculty to interact live with an audience while teaching but affords huge enrollments. This seems to me to be a way of maintaining the "feel" of F2F while benefiting from the usefulness of technology. This is a very interesting development and, with these two psychologists being so well known, teachers of large lecture classes will take notice. I would love to explore the idea further!

This is pretty amazing! I wondered to what extent this was also a flipped class - did students do their readings and watch lectures before coming to class, and in the synchronous sessions, mostly focus on solving problems through group discussion? It seems to require a lot of technological and instructional support: TV studio, laptops, apps, and tutors serving as group advisors, but the better learning outcome may make it all worth it! Of course, at 500 students a class, it could save cost in a big way, too. So, are we all prepared to face the camera? :)

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.

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.

I thought some of you might find this document helpful for thinking through your approach to plagiarism. The Council of Writing Program Administrators is a national organization comprised of college and university faculty who run or have professional interest in researching and running writing programs. This document is a statement of best practices for educating students about plagiarism and for building educational environments in which academic honesty flourishes.

David, This is very useful for those of us teaching writing intensive courses - thank you.

I like that this encourages working with students (even PLAGIARISTS) in order to help them get past bad or misguided habits and develop better, more ethical writing practices. Even in the short time I've been teaching, it seems like students are becoming both (a) less attentive to issues of casual plagiarism and (b) less responsive to punitive approaches. I think these guideline could be helpful, for both online and traditional courses, in helping students to think about the kinds of writers they want to be. (...or the kinds of writers *I* want them to be)

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.