Effective Online Teaching

  by  giulia.forsythe 

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?

 

Writing Effective Online Discussion Questions

  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.

Teaching Visual Art Online: Seeking Advice

  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?

  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?

Creating a PLN

  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.