Monday, December 5, 2011

Summary of Learning EC&I 831

As my semester of EC&I comes to an end I have summarized my learning in a whirlwind 5 minute youtube video.  It was difficult to say everything that I wanted to say to summarize my learning in five minutes.  Aside from the video I wanted to add how the slide below really summarized my learning in this course.


This was a slide that came from Alec's video slides on week 5.

In the diagram the Course Management System (CMS) is represented in comparison to the Personal Learning Networks.  In the distance learning courses that I have taken as well as have those that I have delivered the CMS model is the one I have experienced.  It certainly was a whirlwind of information and a quick learning curve where at the end you left your course community behind.  Of course there were always those people that you work with that in the CMS's that end up in your PLN but they were more the exception rather than the rule.

I have always enjoyed my courses with the CMS model.  I learned a  lot in a short amount of time and always knew what the end goal was.  I was always able to tailor the assignments to meet my needs and I knew how long, how many, and the marking rubric for every assignment.  It met my needs very well.

Dave Cormier spoke on one of our classes about Nomadic, Worker, and Soldier learners.  To be honest I am not sure I am ready to be a Nomadic learner and I am not sure that we should all aspire to be all the time.  For what Alec was asking us to do in this class, namely to make this class your own, one had to become a Nomadic learner to some extent. There had to be a period of floundering around in circles for a bit until we decided on our direction, until we decided what our learning path would be.  We weren't given rubrics, expectations on the number of blogs and responses, or even topics required to study.  We were simply asked to make this course our own without limit to our creativity and needs.  That sounds pretty Nomadic to me and I wasn't sure I was ready for the trek.  I have to say that as much of a paradigm shift this was for me, I think I get it now.  This was the type of learning that you couldn't possibly predict the outcome lest you squash the potential of what it could be for each person. 

It has become clear to me throughout the class that Alec has been trying to get us to develop our own personal learning networks.  This class has been a catalyst to set us on our way through creating traffic to our blogs and creating a support network through twitter.  Twitter certainly added to my sense making and way finding in the class.  We will take this network with us when we leave the class rather than comming together for a brief period of time and then have the community die out when the class is done.  This has been a huge paradigm shift for me and I feel that I am only just starting to realize the potential of the gift of having my own Personal Learning Network. I am thankful that we will be leaving with this community rather than leaving it behind. 

Thank-you to everyone who posted on my blogs and for everyone for having such great blogs to learn from as well.  I cannot thank everyone enough for their participation in my journey, whether it has been through leaving a blog comment, tweeting information, or sharing your journey.  I am looking forward to a continued journey.

Alas, here is my five minute summary of my learning in this class.  Keep in mind that this is a finite artifact for the beginning of my infinite Personal Learning Network.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Major Digital Project EC&I 831


Well my last master’s class is coming to an end.  It is bitter sweet as I am not sure where I will find something else to fill the energy that has been created.  I worry that there will be a void left, or that I will not find the time to continue on my lifelong journey of learning.  I know that I will always be a lifelong learner but will I challenge myself to such high standards as have been required throughout the last year and a half?

In any case for EC&I 831 we had to create a major digital project of our choosing.  What I decided to do was to create a blog for my school.  In my PLC we have been talking about how to increase student success in online learning and one of the items that we talked about was how to generate community with the online teachers throughout the division.  It was our hope that the blog would support our online teachers and empower them to incorporate best practices in their courses that will create a learning community and help to engage students ultimately leading to excellence in learning.

            Ok, creating a blog is not the issue, which is about a 10 minute job.  How do we get online teachers to buy in?  I wanted to create a blog for our school as it would fit the needs of this major project and also the needs of my PLC but this wasn't something that I wanted to be mine.  I wanted this blog to take on a life of it's own where each cyber school teacher felt ownership of and wanted to contribute.  The first step in making that happen was to have our principle talk about the blog at our video conference staff meeting.  She let the staff know about the blog and that we would be discussion some of the posts at our meetings.  The first meeting we had generated some interest but we ran into issues such as schools not being able to access blogs. 

           
            The content of the blog to date has ranged from teaching practices such as creating meaningful online discussions and how to get participation in online classes, to providing useful resources such as how to site Creative Commons pictures and how to do a proper bibliography.  Many of the articles that were presented on our school blog I took further and elaborated on them in this blog such as using the CREST model to write Effective Discussion Board Questions.

          I did create a place on the blog for commen assessment items but I it has not been added to and at this point I am not sure if there is interest.  I will leave up the tab but it may have to be another initiative to get people to post resources to the blog.  Right now the focus is on generating traffic to the site and getting people participating in the discussion.  There is also a site for plagiarism resources with a few items there.  I added a document on how to use compfight and imagecodr (information from one of our ECI class sessions) as well as a good website that explains what plagiarism is and how to avoid it.  Again, I am not sure at this point that people see the blog as a place to get resources but as long as we are generating discussion then I think that we are on the right track.

There were initially two of us committed to posting to the blog and trying to generate interest.  I tweeted the blog each time a new post came up and my principle would send out an e-mail to all of the Cyber School teachers.  At our school staff meetings we were going to go through the book What if your ABC's were your 123's.  One of the other staff members suggested that we post up a summary of each of the chapters on our blog as we discussed them.  This seemed to be the turning point for the blog. 

The first blog entry on the book was done by our school math lead teacher and she did such a good job (and I think she enjoyed writing it) that we volunteered her to write each of the blog entries for the book.  I e-mailed out to our entire division the blog telling them about our chapter summaries, since it is a book that our entire division is suppose to be reading. Our technology  teacher sent an e-mail out to the publisher of the book to see if the author wanted to post to our blog, and the rest is history.  We had our last staff meeting and there was excellent discussion around our division math initiatives and the blog supported that conversation and learning. 

Where as I still post to the blog on average of once a week, reply to each person’s postings, and try to generate traffic through twitter and e-mail, the blog is not mine.  It truly has taken a life of its own where other people have taken ownership and are looking forward to creating that professional community. 

Our school blog can be found at http://chinookcyberschool.wordpress.com/

Thursday, November 17, 2011

More Research on Why Blogs and Wikis are Effective for the Classroom



I have previously blogged about using blogs and wikis in the classroom (see previous posts on wikis and blogs ) but in this post I want to share a bit more about the pedagogy behind their use in the classroom.

In a time where teachers may be questioning their own technological skill it is important to remember that not only are today’s student ‘tech-savvy’ but and already proficient with social networking and interacting online “so most students not only understand how to use Web 2.0 teaching tools, they thrive in the environment when Web communication solutions are integrated in the classroom”  (Driscoll, 2007, p.10).  So in case you haven't tried using blogs in your classroom yet, here is yet more compelling research to encourage you to give blogs a try.
Moundridou and Goulioti’s (2010) study found that 73% of students  “felt that the blog helped then understand the corresponding topics of the lesson" and “nearly 2/3 of the students stated that the blogging activities made them feel closer to their classmates through supporting each other in learning” (p. 6).  The instructors in their study found that “the blog managed to gain students’ attention and interest and motivated them to work on the activities, ask questions and participate in both online and in-class discussions” (p. 7).  

Moundridouand Goulioti (2010) site the following benefits of using blogs: They can be used as a student portfolio and a collaboration tool.  They allow students to reflect on their thoughts before they publish their work.  Blogging can connect students with an unlimited amount of expertise that would not otherwise be available (the teacher can invite experts to comment on students blogs), and “the interactive nature of blogging motivates students to write and communicate” (pg. 3).  They commented that due to a number of factors such as time and curriculum that not all students get to comment in class and they may feel as though they have to compete to participate, where as a blog gives them the time and space to have their voice heard (pg. 3).

“Given that many online students miss the face-to-face contact realized in a traditional classroom, blogging offers particularly opportunities for learner-centered feedback and dialogue” and further to that “the opportunities for each student to post substantive comments to other students’ blog entries add an additional tier of interactivity and social interaction” (Glogoff, pg.1-2, 2005).

A good rule of thumb when using student blogs in the online classroom is to make sure that the students blogs receive feedback. Glogoff (2005)reported that students will have a tendency to quickly abandon their blogs.  He offered guidelines and suggestions for students in the line of requiring students to make three comments on others blogs each week to ensure participation and validation of students’ work (pg. 3).  

In a search for effective web tools to use in the online classroom wikis show up as relatively easy free tool that allows users to readily upload and share resources and information.  Many learning management systems have been “criticized for being too static and do not take into account the diverse learning needs of the students” (Laughton, 2011).  

Laughton (2011) found that wikis have a slight edge over traditional learning management systems (LMS) due to the fact that they “strongly encourage interaction and communication amongst the learners” compounded by the fact that no cost or license is needed to use the software and that they are flexible and easy to use.  This source does however site the shortfall of wikis in that they do not have extensive administrative tools.  Hazari, North, and Moreland, (pg. 189, n.d.) also note that grading of assignments on a wiki can be a challenge.  This is one reason that for the Visual Art 20 online course that I created I use both a wiki and the LMS Moodle to deliver the course as it allows the discussions and grading of assignments to occur in a closed private space.

Wikis also allow students to co-construct knowledge and publish their knowledge in a public domain for others to view and learn from.  Caverly and Ward (2008) site this opportunity as a “powerful teachable moment” (pg. 36) Students and instructors can, with ease, contribute to discussion boards, collaborate, and track progress and contribution (Hazari, North, and Moreland, pg 189).  
 Good teaching develops reciprocity and cooperation among students, encourages active learning, gives prompt feedback, emphasizes time on task, communicates high expectations, and respects diverse talents and ways of learning.  Some of these principles can be used when developing Wiki-based instruction.  Technology has initiated an overall shift in pedagogical emphasis from teaching to learning (Hazari, North, and Moreland,pg 190). 
For a closer look at how wikis and blogs are being used in the classroom click on any of the links listed below:



Other Resources not linked above:




Driscoll, K. (2007), “Collaboration In Today’s Classroom: New Web Tools Change
 The Game” Multimedia & Internet @ Schools, Vol. 14, No. 3, p.9-12
 
Laughton, P. (2011). The use of wikis as alternatives to learning content
management systems. The Electronic Library, 29(2), 225-225-235. doi:10.1108/

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Onsite Support Person Instrumental

Perhaps I am using this blog post as a way to say loud and clear that the role of the On-Site Facilitator or support person is very important.  I want to shout it from the rooftops:  A key factor for the success of an online student is the on-site facilitator. You are valuable!  I wonder why so often this partnership between Cyber Schools and the home school is weak.  How can we support the support people? I think that for some there are unclear boundaries as to what their role is, perhaps they have been given no extra time to support their students (it is seen as an extra job that they don’t  have time for), or no one ever trained them in their role.  I don’t think that it is a natural God given talent to be a good on-site facilitator.  Since my PLC goal is to increase online student success I need to be looking at all of the areas that contribute to an online student’s success and focus on how to strengthen it. 

In de la Varre, Keane, and Irvin’s research, Dual Perspectives on the Contribution of On-Site Facilitators to Teaching Presence in a Blended Learning Environment,  they look at the role of the On-Site facilitator through interviews with both online teachers and their facilitators. 
In their article(pg. 2) they site that Roblyer, Freeman, Stabler, and Scheidmiller (2007, pg. 11) found “ the role of the facilitator is critical.  Students at remote sites are less independent than first thought and a facilitator should be available…to offer support and guidance”.  They discuss in the article, and I also see it in my role as an online educator, that it is ideal if the on-site facilitators are knowledgeable in their role and that they have had some training on how to support the online learning environment; however, that is not always the case.  In my school division it varies from school to school as to who the on-site facilitator is.  It could be the librarian, an educational assistant, a teacher, or the principle.  The students in our division are not allowed to enroll unless there is a support person listed for each student.  In many cases a person is listed but the reality of how much they are willing or expected to assist varies from being given scheduled time to help the student to it being one more thing on a long list where distance learning falls to the bottom.

I found it very interesting that de la Varre et al. (p. 3) state that “from the learner’s perspective, the student is in a blended learning environment even when a course is delivered completely online, because the local setting influences the student’s online experience”.   

“Students in an online course are constantly traversing the space between the virtual and the local learning context and teaching presence cannot be isolated to the virtual domain.  The assumption often made that when a student takes an online course it is entirely the responsibility of the instructor and the overall course structure to create a viable learning community.  However, K-12 students take virtual courses in other learning contexts, i.e., the school classroom, library, or home-school environment. As one instructor noted, “People forget these are high school kids. You can’t just say ‘there’s your computer; now I’m going to sit here and ignore you.’” (p. 12)

 This is what their research through interviews of on-site facilitators and online educators says in terms of the roles and responsibilities:

On-Site Facilitator’s Role:

·         Student Support- “listen, be supportive and accessible, but not stand in the way of what the instructor does” (p. 8)
·          Establishing and maintaining relationships with the students
·         Encouraging, acknowledging, or reinforcing student contributions.  They cited that “these were necessary to guide students through two simultaneous and challenging learning experiences: academic rigor and online learning” (p. 8)
·          Keep current with students’ assignments, be knowledgeable about the course schedule and content, and communicate regularly with the instructor” (p. 9)
·         Encourage the students to contact their teacher directly


The roles for the support people as outlined by the Chinook Cyber School are:
  • Track students' progress and reporting to the school's administration when a drop might be necessary
  • Monitor progress of students and ensuring the timely completion and submission of course work.  Students should be handing work in regularly as part of continuous feedback.  Leaving all work to the end of the course for hand in limits the student's opportunity for self assessment and improvement.
  • Communicate student progress to school administration, especially if there are concerns
  • Ensure students have all the necessary materials for their courses
de la Verre et al. argue that the above learner support is vital along and that along with on-site facilitator training, there should also be a conversation at the beginning of each course with the on-site facilitator and instructor to talk about things such as communication preferences, facilitator to student support, local school issues, and anything else that may affect the learning of the student. 

I would certainly note that from my own personal experience the school support is much more effective if the teacher and the support person establish a relationship outside of just contacting each other when things are going wrong.  As part of our PLC to increase online student success we are trying to make it out to the support schools to meet the support people face to face as well as to include them in any student intervention through adobe connect.  We are trying to create a team environment rather than an us vs them attitude.  If there can be a partnership between the home school and the distance learning school where there are positive interactions focusing on the support and success of the student then the entire distance learning experience is much smoother. 

What strategies to you have for building that relationship between the distance learning school and the on-site school?  The sink or swim model would certainly be easier that trying to create a PLC for online students but the student PLC is so critical for student success.  Support people play a such a key role in online student success.  Do you think they know that they are key players in student success?  How can they be supported?



Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Increasing Student Success in Online Classes

This year my PLC goal is to increase the success of online students.  We first had to brainstorm what we felt a successful online student looked and in complement to that what the components of a successful online course looked like.

The model that we came up with for online learners was similar to Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs.  We had the basic needs at the bottom to be a successful online student and unless these were met the further levels of student success were not going to be met.  So for example, if a student was not handing in assignments (bottom level) there was no point in trying to address academic excellence until the student could hand in an assignment. 



It was from this pyramid that we developed our PLC goal of trying to address the bottom level of student needs first.  So we asked ourselves if we were setting our students up for success in the first place.  How could we make sure that before a student even enters into an online course that we have set them up for success?  To be honest, there have been times and students that I have felt that we set up for failure:  online learning did not fit into their learning style, the student wasn’t an independent learner, no time in the school day was allotted for the course, etc. 

As I dove further into the research I was surprised to see that I was not alone with the issue of student retention and success. 

In Ivan L. Harell II’s article Increasing the Success of Online Students he addresses five issues:  “student readiness, student orientation, student support, instructor preparation and support, and course structure”.  The article goes on to give specific suggestions for the first three.
·        Determine if students are ready to be online learners. 
o       Fast Track consulting would suggest that left brain, visual learners would learn best in an online environment.
o       Dewar and Whittington would suggest that introverts would be more successful than their extroverted counterparts because they would not need the ‘social presence’.
o       Manochehr’s research suggested that “Assimilator (these learn best through lecture, papers and analogies) and Converger (these learn best through laboratories, field work and observations) did better with the e-learning method…students with learning styles Accommodator (these learn best through simulations and case study) and Diverger (these learn best through brainstorming and logs) received better results with traditional instructor-based learning” (p. 13)
o       Harrell suggested that “Institutions may consider the possibility of limiting enrolment to those who are not considered to be at-risk students and who have the characteristics that are needed to be successful in online courses”.
·        Ensure that there is a student Orientation
o       In Wojciechowski and Palmer’s (2005) study they found that “The second greatest factor (for online success) was that of having attended an orientation session for the class”, the greatest factor being GPA.
o       Harrell quoted Bauman P. (2002) as saying “Bauman (2002) wrote that after offering a required, week-long online orientation “bootcamp,” students reported increased confidence levels, decreased experience with technical problems, and better preparation to take their first online course.  The course also allowed faculty to focus more on course content, instead of spending class time educating students on how to properly navigate the online environment.”

·        Provide Student Support
o       Provide technical support
o       “providing online opportunities for students to become involved in student government forums, learning communities, and study groups”
o       Providing students with mentors to help them through the course


Our action plan for increasing student success at the Chinook Cyber School has three components:

Setting up our students for success
·        Create a pre-course for online students to identify if they are good candidates for online learning.
·        Create a database of tutorials for students, support people, and teachers to help with any technology issues and to create a unity between course expectations
·        Create clear course descriptions for every course so that the students are clear about what time and skill requirements are necessary before they register in a course.

Supporting students who are not learning
·        Create a plagiarism course for students.
·        Setting up video conferences for student who are struggling

Building a team environment with other schools/ supporting the support people

·        Visiting the support schools, support people, and students in person at least once in a semester.

Supporting our online teachers
·        Create a CCS blog for online teachers that addresses the issues involved with online learning (supporting our online teachers to implement best teaching practices)

I think that perhaps we have set lofty goals for ourselves but we are so excited about moving forward and providing the best education possible for our students.

What are other strategies that you use to increase student retention or success in your school?

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Effective Online Teaching


As I venture through my online teaching and course development I have been drawn to the question, what does an effective online teacher look like? If I am to develop a good online course then I will need to know what aspect I need to include in the course that would facilitate good online teaching practices. 
Tallent-Runnels, Cooper, Lan, Thomas, and Busby (2005), wrote an article called How to teach online: What the research says and they highlight seven basic concepts to successful online teaching:
1.      Provide helpful resources on the course site:  their summary indicated that “guiding questions helped students focus and develop their projects” (pg. 21)
2.      Let students have control over the pace that they work through the course:  they did indicate that their findings were mixed and that the more successful students finished the work sooner than the less successful students.
3.      Have lots of discussions:  their research included suggestions such as “keeping the interactions high in discussions, modeling and reinforcing effective communication, identifying potential problems, and designing a plan for dealing with them” (pg. 23)
4.       Provide timely feedback to students about their performance:  “Instructors must learn to teach almost daily in smaller time blocks, because students want and need individual feedback in a timely fashion” (pg 23)
5.      Provide technical support for students
6.      Online study aids and step-by-step presentation may not make much difference in achievement:  They quoted a study done by Mayer and Chandler in 2001, where they compared the “benefits of adding simple user interaction to a multimedia presentation” (pg. 23) and found “little difference between retention rates” (pg. 23)
7.      Evaluation can be enhanced in online courses:  They suggest that “the formats of assessment that they have been using in traditional instruction, such as term papers and multiple choice questions, may not provide valid and comprehensive information on students’ learning” (pg. 23).  “Questionnaires administered in online courses and correspondences between instructors and students provide instructors with enriched information to evaluate not only what students learn but how they learn” (pg 25)
Lewis and Abdul-Hamid (2006) wrote an article called Implementing effective online teaching practices: Voices of exemplary faculty and they site four broad categories for effective online teaching practices: 
1.      Fostering Interaction:  Their study emphasized the need for “vibrant interaction among students and between the instructor and the students” (pg. 87).  Among their findings was that of beginning each course with an introduction through an introductory conference and/or through an introductory discussion board where they have to introduce themselves and respond to others.  The continuous interaction should be kept up through conferences, chat rooms, and e-mail.  One of their faculty participants gave a caution about discussion boards, “they have to be interesting issues.  They can’t be no-brainers that 30 people have the same answer to and post 30 similar answers.  They have to be interesting enough that people can come at the questions in a little different way and have a little different interpretation” (pg. 88).  They also suggested a discussion board just for student interaction so that the students have the opportunity for social interaction where the teacher presence was absent.  They called these discussion boards “The Café” or “Harmony House” (pg. 88).  In addition to creating interaction through discussion boards their participants commented on the need for group work among students through group projects or study groups.
Cole and Kritzer (2009)  also commented on “Getting to Know You” discussion boards and stated that “some students feel more comfortable participating in electronic discussion boards because they may feel more anonymous in their postings, they can post their thoughts at a pace that is comfortable to them, and they do not have to compete to be heard” (pg 37).
2.      Providing Feedback:  “Participants resoundingly reported that providing quick, quality, and in-depth comments is critical in maintaining a presence in the online classroom, they also acknowledged that providing such feedback to students can be a lengthy and challenging process.  Most faculty reported that they are online very frequently in order to provide a high level of attention to their online students” (pg 91).  They gave the example of cutting and pasting comments to students in a FAQ section for other students to access.
3.      Facilitating Learning:  Of importance was to reinforce the course goals through a syllabus and then periodically throughout each unit.  Suggestions for this were to have a quiz based on the syllabus to reinforce the course goals (pg. 93).  Other faculty in the study used personal experiences and current events to supplement the course material in order to make the content relevant to students (pg. 93).  Another strategy was to use video clips and digital resources that offer a different approach to understanding the material (pg. 93).
4.      Maintaining Enthusiasm and Organization:   “Given the reality that most of the communication in online courses must be written and clearly presented to students without the assistance of bodily cues or facial expressions, many participants stressed the need for faculty to be organized and energetic and to have a visible persona in the classroom” (pg. 94)  Faculty from this study commented on how they sent out weekly e-mail greetings that remind them of the current topics. 
Cole and Kritzer (2009) in their article
Strategies for success: Teaching an online course also sited discussion boards as useful in maintaining an instructor presence and facilitating community in addition to weekly video messages (pg. 40).

Cole and Kritzer (2006) expressed the need to create each unit as a module where all of their objectives, readings, presentations, questions, and activity were presented in one complete block.  They commented on the advantages of organizing the course into modules:  “Everything is together and ready for the students to do on their own time…Once the faculty member has the modules set up, the remainder of instructional time can be spent addressing student questions, providing feedback on the interactive activities and projects, and problem solving any issues that may arise” (pg. 39).
 As I reflect on these practices and suggestions I am encouraged that I do implement a lot of these strategies but I also struggle with the schools that just want the old correspondence courses where there is no interaction and community and the student learns in isolation.   Is there still a place for correspondence courses or should the schools that are looking for corespondence courses have to 'get on board' with the best practices as listed above and encourage more student interaction and discussion?

 

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Writing Effective Online Discussion Questions

3D Character and Question Mark by SMJJP, on Flickr

Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License  by  SMJJP 


As I am venturing more and more into the notion of how to create community in online classes I have been lead down the path to developing weekly discussion boards in each of my online classes.  I have often wondered what it would take to keep students on track with their online courses.  It seems that no matter how clear I am on due dates, I inevitably get almost half of the class behind by the time we are a month and a half though.  I have recently joined a PLC group with my school to try and see how we can improve student success online.  As we are reading more literature on the subject an emergent theme of class participation comes up.  My answer to class participation has been to create a weekly discussion board in each of my classes with the hope that if the students have to log in at least twice weekly to participate in the discussion forums (they are only open for one week), then perhaps they won't forget that they are enrolled in a distance learning course and they will feel more engaged in the learning process.  So far it seems to be working quite well but there are certainly some discussion board that generate much more participation than others.

Since I don't think we are born with the ability to instantly create good online discussion questions I turned to an article that I first found sited in the Chinook Cyber School blog.  The article is by Lynn Akin and Diane Neal called CREST+Model:  Effective Online Discussion Questions
They use the acronym CREST to outline effective strategies for creating online discussions:

  • C: Cognitive Nature- Do you want the students to be able to relate the material back to their lives?  Do you want to get to the higher level thinking questions as in Bloom Taxonomy? Do you want them to construct their own meaning of the content (constructivism)?  Are you trying to build community?
  • R: Reading Base- Is your question going to be textbook based, literature based, or non literature based.
  • E: Experiential Element- Try to make your questions relate to the students live and experience.
  • S: Style of Question- Will you have students working in pairs to answer the questions or will you assign students a role in the discussion board?
  • T:Type of Question- Will your question be metacognitive, follow up, student created, evaluation and reflection, or hypothetical questions?
I think this is a great start to looking at effective online questions.  Right now I am just shooting in the dark with the questions that I ask in my discussion board.  I have learned that asking questions that require everyone to answer the the question the same do not generate a tone of participation where as the controversial questions with no right or wrong answers tend to get a lot of participation, although they need the most moderation to make sure that they don't get out of hand.

Another tip that was suggested in this article and also in this video from Simple K12 about how to engage students online is that you need to be clear about the expectations from the start.  Do you want your students to have a 150 word response, well you had better let them know.  Do they need to respond to others posts, and how long do the responses have to be?  Those questions all need to be dealt with at the beginning of a discussion board, likely done at the beginning of the course and set clear start and end dates for the discussion board. 

Some of the expectations that I have for the students responses uses the SEE acronym:

S: Statement- State your response
E: Example-  Give an example to support your statement.
E: Explain- Explain how your example supports your statement

Please add suggestions or tips that you have for creating a good discussion board  or any other frustrations that you are having with discussion boards.







Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Teaching Visual Art Online: Seeking Advice


48/365 by Jiuck, on Flickr
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License  by  Jiuck 
My post this week has to do with my reflections as I venture on my quest to create an online Visual Art 20 course for my school.  I have wrestled with how much I have to 'teach' them online and how much I have to guide them to find the best resources for their own learning.  I am not an art teacher but I have given all of my effort to dissect the curriculum make sure that I am actualizing what is in the document.  I am at a struggle in my course creation as to how much prescriptive teaching materials I can give them.  I can post up good videos that I have found on certain techniques but I could not create a video on that technique because I do not know it myself.

I struggle with how much I need to be a sage on the stage or a guide on the side with PAA courses.  It was no trouble to create a PAA Cosmetology course because this was an area that I had some skill that I could video in hopes of helping and leading the students through the projects that I created for them.  In Visual Arts however I am wondering if I am selling the students short by providing the students an open assignment that is something along the lines of : research an aboriginal artist that is of interest of you and then create an art work that is inspired by this artist.  Of course the assignment would be much more detailed in terms of expectations and marking rubrics etc.  But in terms of providing a video that shows a skill and then says try to replicate it, I am at a loss.

Am I selling my students short to have an open ended assignment that they choose that interests them, where they will have to find their own resources and videos for tips and techniques, or am I providing them the opportunity to follow as other artist have done before? 

The barrier to leaving the student to choose their own topic and their own creation is the question:  what if they don't learn anything?  What if they just 'muck' around for awhile and don't actually produce anything or increase their skill in any particular area?  Will that be my fault for not providing enough skill techniques to follow or will the ownership be on the student for not taking ownership of their learning?
Sechsbeiner by schoschie, on Flickr
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License  by  schoschie 

Does anyone have any advice?  How does a hands on class work online?  Is the pedagogy different than in a face to face class?  Does online learning mean taking ownership of your own learning and not relying on the teacher as the expert?  I am a bit scared of letting go of control; however, in a subject area where the student may have more skill in this area than the teacher can an effective learning environment still be created?

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Creating a PLN

Working Together Teamwork Puzzle Concept by lumaxart, on Flickr
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License
  by  lumaxart 

How do you think education can change the world?

I have just finished my weekly session in EC&I831.  As always my head is spinning.  Tonight our guest speaker was Shelley Terrell  and she lead us with the question  ‘How do you think education can change the world?’  To be honest it has been a while since I have allowed myself to indulge in that type of idealistic questioning.  I am not sure at what point in ones career or life that they tend to loose site of those ideal questions that lead us into our careers.  There seems to be a point where there simply isn’t enough time to have ideals as there is a job to be done and deadlines to be met.

If we all believe that education can change the world (and I would love your comments on how you see education changing the world) then the next question that Shelly Terrell posed was ‘How do we help each other?’  Her focus was on how we cal help each other through connecting online.

I think what became evident to me was that connecting online is not a passive activity.  I can be an online lurker and find all kinds of information that may help me but without that community it seems as though something is missing, that personal growth.  Having that Online Community adds another dimension where a person experiences personal growth rather than just gathering of information.  Richard Schwier commented in our last weeks session and he talks about it in his e-book Connections: Virtual Learning Communities, that in order to be a community there needs to be trust and forgiveness.  Shelley spoke of the Professional Learning Environment as the place where the community takes place and she offered up the alternative acronym to PLN to be Passionate Learning Networks.  What a great way to look at it.  Participating in a learning network or community with passion.  I also believe that it is this passion that will lead to personal growth rather than just the acquiring of information.

So what are some tools to help build that PLN?  Facebook is an ideal place that we can’t just limit to our social network.  One can find join a group with people of similar interest such as an Artist group, or a Math teachers group.  When looking at the tools that are necessary for creating that PLN one cannot leave out twitter.  Before this summer I had not given twitter much thought.  I was told once to start following one person at first so that you get the hang of what twitter is all about. There was no one in particular that I wanted to follow so I descided to follow Tito Ortiz.  He is an MMA fighter in the UFC (I think his contract may be up now but that is beside the point).  In any case I wasn’t that interested in him or twitter so I lost interest.  Then this summer I was taking a course through the U of S by Richard Schwier where the students in the class used twitter a lot.  I felt very out of the loop to not be on twitter so my need to belong kicked in and I joined the twitter revolution.  I must say that from an educational standpoint I have never felt part of a community so quickly and had so many resources at my fingertips in such a short amount of time.  One only has to use the hashtag #edtech or the hashtag for whatever course you are taking at the current time to get links to all kinds of great resources and ideas.  The only trick now is to learn how to manage my time to really dive into it all. 
Thankfully Shelley addressed how to deal with some time issues.  If people use their mobile devices and a few quick downloadable apps one can be checking up on twitter or Facebook updates while standing in line at the grocery store or traveling to work (as a passenger in a vehicle of course because texting while driving is illegal).  Some helpful tools suggested were tweetdeck, echofon for the iphone, google reader (one of my favorites) and twitterfall.

Once we find the time and have become as efficient as possible with the tools, then one must ask 'Is that all there is to creating a PLN?’  I have to also go back to the original title of this post “Can education change the world?”  There is no point in creating a PLN if we don’t intend to grow or change.  What would be the point?  Schwier would say that there needs to be some motivation to want to belong in a PLN.  For educators at some point I think we would all agree that we got into education to make a change.  O.k. maybe we didn’t think we were going to change the world but there was at least the possibility that we could change someone’s world for the better, that we could make some sort of connection.  I think that many educators would also agree that we work in an often isolating profession.  If PLN’s can connect us with people who can support us and who we can support in our journey to reach our ideals, however forgotten or pushed back that they may be, then we should be doing more than learning how to efficiently receive information but also how to engage, educate, and report. 

 I am entering on my journey to create my PLN.  I have appreciated all of the comments and suggestions that people have given and shared with me just since I have started my course.  I don’t think that I am at the stage yet where I am fully engaging, educating, and reporting yet but I am getting my feet wet and starting on the journey in hopes that my education will change the world even if it is only my world.

It seems that my initial reflection question has lead me on a bit of a tangent going from changing the world, to supporting each other through the process, to creating your own PLN, but I want to come back to the original question:  I would love it if you would share your ideals that may be forgotten or put aside about how you see education changing the world.