Pedagogy First!

C3, S2, Week 9: Web-Enhanced, Hybrid and Open Classes

While the toolbox approach of this chapter offers a pretty impressive summary of the range of tools available out there, my favorite elements of this chapter come at the end when our dear writers lay out some ideas about why and when to use these tools and when to avoid doing so. I have been doing a lot of thinking about those pages lately, and I do not think they are complete--I think they miss some key principles. But I do think they prod us to think about this new and exciting element of our teaching in productive ways. I look forward to reading what you think!

 Our Mission...

• # Read: Ko & Rossen, Chapter 13: Teaching Web Enhanced and Blended Classes

Points: concerns about blending, f2f time for complex issues, online discussion for an on-site class, using the web for class discussion, quizmaking, office hours, group projects, student presentations, don't make it optional, calculate total student time on task, interact with class online weekly.

• Read Article: R. Graham, J. Hilton, P. Rich, D. Wiley, . Using Online Technologies to Extend a Classroom to Learners at a Distance. Distance Education, 31(1), p. 77-92, (2010).

C3, S2, Week 7: Ko & Rossen, Chapter 10: Preparing Students for Online Learning

Chapter 10 offered some good suggestions about getting students ready for an online class. Though I have never taught an online course, I have taught using the blended format, and agree that it is essential that students fully understand what they are facing before they begin. Spelling out equipment and software requirements, possibly coming up with an assignment that requires students to demonstrate their competence in their use makes a lot of sense. I also liked their suggestion about devising a test to see if students would be able to access the type of audio or video files to be used in the course.  Even though it sounds a bit juvenile, clearly stating the computer skills that are required is good advice.

I plan on having an FAQ page, as well as clearly guiding students to tech support should they run into difficulties on the way. I also plan on using an online readiness quiz, and possibly even offer a student orientation.

The authors ended the chapter stressing the importance of establishing a presence and rapport in the classroom, while exuding enthusiasm and letting students know they are not alone in their online learning environment. It is easy to see how students might feel lost or alienated if they do not feel that their instructor is present and reachable.

Nielsen’s research and Richtel’s article, both discussed how students use technology. I found it interesting that even though students are sending as many as 30,000 texts a month (can you believe that?) in between FaceBook, YouTube and video gaming, that they are not really tech wizards. They are masters at multitasking, texting, listening to music and talking on the phone, all at the same time. They prefer simple, traditional and straightforward web pages that are easy to scan and that have pictures (so they don't have to read). A kind of depressing fact is that, giving young people a computer can actually hurt school performance, since much of the time they spend online is on Social Networking, games and entertainment, rather than completing homework. Oh well.

C3, S2, W8: Ko & Rosen Chps 11-12

I echo other positive responses to this unit on Lisa's point, especially about creating content outside of the CMS.  I've seen lost work on my end and on the students' end, so one of the first things I stress to students is to write their discussion responses in Word or something else and then copy/paste it into the CMS.   Saving everything on your hard drive is also a good tip, and lately, I've been getting into the habit of putting my work into Google Docs since cloud computing will become every more pervasive. 

I enjoyed the examples in Ko & Rosen's Chapter 12.  I actually found myself more tuned in to that chapter than the the previous one.  Though it would be nearly impossible for any author/authors to cover all aspects of online classroom mangagement, Ko/Rosen did a pretty darn good job highlighting some of the "types" of students who populate the online world.  My favorite was the "Must Have An A" student.  I actually encountered a similar one with "Must Pass This Class, but I don't want to do any work."  LOL.

There was a statement in Chapter 12 that intrigued me:  "At this time, more and more institutions have guidelines in place for student conduct online, but where online education is new, guidelines may be lacking and there may be few administrators who have firsthand familiarity with online classroom management" (353).  Does MCC have guidelines/protocols for online students?  I am sure there must be an on-ground student handbook somewhere (I haven't seen it), and I wonder if there is such a thing for the MCC online world.

C3,S2,Wk8 Classroom Management

A lot of practical information again this week.  I appreciated Louisa's comment that a course just has to be "good enough" to start out, and builds and grows with time.  Her reminder to prioritize (pedagogy first) is a good one.  Other points that stood out include: communicating expectations clearly in the syllabus (I like her idea of a syllabus quiz), creating a rhythm to when assignments are due, minimizing ways students can get in touch (to avoid missing communications), and having a discussion rubric (good to know she has a rubric other instructors can use).  The importance of regular instructor communication has been discussed in past weeks, but I appreciated the insight that lecture(video included) is not viewed as contact by students, but discussion posts and e-mails are seen as contact.

Lisa's, "Seven Things I Would Want to Know as a New Instructor"  served as an encouragement to keep up with the online teaching field.  There is so much I still don't know.  If folks are getting advanced degrees in researching the field of online learning, I won't be able to keep up at that level, but hopefully, through POT I'll be able to keep up with the essentials.  I don't know HTML.  Any suggestions on ways to learn the basics?  The idea of storing info outside the CMS sounds very wise (tied in a bit with tips in Ko and Rossen on p.302).

 

 

 

 

 

C3 W8 K&R 11&12 M10 L7

Pedagogy should trump technology every time.  I have to remember this! I can get caught up in the cool applications and forget about what I am really trying to get across.  Thank you Louisa for driving this home.  This POT program has made me realize what Lisa describes in her 4th point.  Online is not a method of teaching it is its own discipline that must be studied.  I feel like I have found my guidebook (Ko & Rossen)and am learning so much about this frontier that I thought I knew. TIME (to read) IS WHAT I NEED NOW!!  Middle of the semester and I am feeling the crunch. I have started carrying Ko & Rossen in my purse and read it while I am at various events where a parental unit is required.  I give myself a pat on the back when I read that I am handling communications as they suggest and vow to re-read sections on handling behavior problems while understanding that "each student presents a unique profile and must be responded to as an individual."..................back to the class at hand and grading.

C3 S2 W8 - Classroom Management

Life saver! This is one of the most crucial topics to have a successful online class. I would like to start with some considerations about Lisa’s post. It is great to have the most important concepts in pills, easy for a fast review. I agree on all the points 100%. I absolutely agree that it is important to save everything on our hard drive to be safe and that linking out of the CMS is crucial. I tried to do it as much as possible this semester but the one thing that happened to me is having a student who was in Afghanistan for the first weeks and he had very limited access to Internet. Specifically, he was not able to see streaming videos that I linked from my course. So I had to upload the files in a separate folder in order for him to access it. So, even if this is the ideal situation (to link everything outside), sometimes it is necessary to adapt it other situations.
Louisa’s video is a video that I should probably watch over and over, at least the first minutes. Probably because I am relatively new to online teaching I feel that I still have a lot to learn in technology, so I confess that sometimes I put more focus on the software than on the pedagogy. Pedagogy first!
The rest of the concepts made me feel good because I found myself following the majority of them. And I can say that following these suggestions helped me a lot to have an organized and well run course (or at least I think it is). Maybe I was lucky in my first attempt, but I did not have any big problems or complaints by students. I had no problems of students with a bad behavior but I can totally see how a situation can get out of control very easily in an online setting. I created a Q&A page that students used quite well and I used. I loved the examples that Ko and Rossen wrote on how to react difficult students! Especially for me, because English is not my first language, it is very useful to have an example that I can follow, especially in an e-mail on such a sensitive topic.

C3 S2 W7 - Preparing students for online learning

This is the key! At least the first important thing to do. It is absolutely vital to be not one but three steps ahead of the students in this. Unfortunately, even if we do everything to build activities and deliver the class to reach a diversity of learning styles, the online environment still requires a certain type of student. Much of this can be attributed to the popularity of the internet and the fact that nowadays youngsters spend almost 4 hours per day online, when they usually have fun, chat with friends, listen to music, check e-mails, update their status in facebook. They enjoy these activities because they are emotionally involved in them and therefore they are good at them. And these activities are fun and easy to do, so their expectations when they take an online class are very different compared to taking an on-ground class. In an on-ground class they have to make an effort in going out of their comfort and fun area and they have to enter in the campus area that is the area of education. Taking an online class, it is the educational institution that moves and goes into the area of the student, an area where the institution has no power to force them to stay focused for two hours. Actually, it is the complete opposite. Instructors are all by themselves in this adventure and only the quality, the engaging characteristics of the class, and the versatility to reach different learning styles and interests, will succeed. I think that the online environment pushes the instructor even further in focusing on student needs and in making the content relevant and engaging.
I found the two articles, Nielsen’s and Richtel’s very interesting. The first study is very informative and it helps a lot to understand the situation. I loved the three myths about students’ internet use. I think it is very true and I would like to highlight some other aspects the study highlights:

• If a site doesn't work in the expected manner, most students lose patience and leave rather than try to decode a difficult design.
• students prefer websites that are easy to scan and don't intimidate them with a wall of gray text.
• When students "multitask," they don't do so in the true sense of doing several things simultaneously. Rather, they perform frequent context-switches between various on-going tasks, but work on only a single website at any given time.

Maybe it is like discovering boiling water, because I behave exactly the same, but it is so important to remember it when planning a course.

Wk 7 Ko&Ro 10 etc

Nielsen's article was an eye opener for me.  I had heard mumblings about students not being as techno savy as one would think but this article drove it home.  Supported by Richtel's piece it is evident that the time one has to capture the attention of a student on a website is so limited.  Last semester I talked about my internet ADD, I see I am not the only one who suffers.  I find the multitasking that Richtel talks about a bit disturbing.  The inability to sit down and enjoy a book truly alarms me.  An afternoon spent reading is truly a joy that, now that I think of it, is rare for me as well.  It seems to me that the jumping from page to page and task to task results in very little productive time.  I do realize that the information the student is looking for has to pop right out at them or they will soon move on.  Another red flag raised and a lightbulb clicked on.  I see why my students are having a difficulty time with research.  Often the information in my discipline has to be teased out of research studies where much searching and rereading needs to take place.  I am re-reading Chapter 10 as there is so much I need to consider and incorporate into my online classes.  Now I must shift tasks and grade papers.

WEEK 6 K&O 8

Oh, I am so far behind and my grading is piling up and I was actually on campus today for a meeting and it is Spring Break! Chapter 8 was a bit of a review from what we talked about in Week 12 during the 1st semester. I enjoyed Robert Kelley's jing video overview which prompted me to look at http://creativecommons.org/. I certainly appreciate the filter provided that gives me a copyright safety net. Chapter 8 also suggests using PDF formatting, I have recently moved to this and have found that I have had to defend myself with my colleagues and students. Once I explained my rationale it was accepted, change is not easy for anyone. The students had been used to getting a great deal of lecture content/slides in formats where they could manipulate, the PDF created a bit of a hurdle, which they soon adapted and are now comfortable with. Once again proving Necessity is the mother of invention.

(C2 S...4?) Jumping back in (during week 7) after a long absence

it has many MANY moons since i last posted (too, too busy; my apologies), consequently, many of the Cohort 3 folks may not know me.  My name is Leslie, i teach cultural anthropology at MCC (both SEC and OC) and also teach a series of health (and health care system)-realted courses at UCSD.  i have 4 youngish children as well.  not surprisingly, i lack sleep.  thus, i will be the bedraggled (not bedazzled), weany-eyed woman occasionally seen walking about campus (the one with a fierce look of slumber-lust about her).

now i am jumping back in, trying to catch up and rejoin my helpful and knowledgeable P 1st community, as well as moderate (this week, at least) the conversation.

i read the articles and found them interesting and useful-i like this addition to the pedogogical line-up, Jim.  it helps to have a sense of students these days, and also to have a new concepts and of, and terminology for technology adopters (my favorite: laggers), and high school role categories (texter and gamer, Facebook addict and YouTube potato).  i have found, in my own interactions with different student populations (and i do find differences among the three i teach, in terms not only of age, SES and race/ethnicity, but in their use of, comfort with, and demand for IT in courses), that many at MCC prefer not to use the technology options i offer for their assignments.  i created a ning site (Culturing Perspectives) for my Anth 102 classes.  I invite students to sign up and use it to submit their own assignments, and comment on one anothers' work.  About a third do this willingly.  the rest resist and/or run into difficulties which quickly frustrates them.  i also offer the option of making a short film in lieu of a written ethnography for my fieldwork assignment.  i usually only get one taker per class, at most.  still, i somehow thought that my sample wasn't representative, and that (nearly all) students in other universities were more tech saavy.  i was surprised to find that only about half have a real comfort level with technology.

by the way, i feel like i am in a constant state of "catch-up" on technology myself, in open-faced awe of the doings of many of the folks in MCC's POT.  along these lines, i did not even understand the reference to "cloud-based applications," so i looked it up (because looking things up is something i DO know how to do!), and found this description from the back of a book on Amazon:

Computing as you know it has changed. No longer are you tied to using expensive programs stored on your computer. No longer will you be able to only access your data from one computer. No longer will you be tied to doing work only from your work computer or playing only from your personal computer.

 

Enter cloud computing–an exciting new way to work with programs and data, collaborate with friends and family, share ideas with coworkers and friends, and most of all, be more productive! The “cloud” consists of thousands of computers and servers, all linked and accessible to you via the Internet.

 

With cloud computing, everything you do is now web-based instead of being desktop-based; you can access all your programs and documents from any computer that’s connected to the Internet. Whether you want to share photographs with your family, coordinate volunteers for a community organization, or manage a multi-faceted project in a large organization, cloud computing can help you do it more easily than ever before. Trust us. If you need to collaborate, cloud computing is the way to do it.

and of course, there is always wikepedia on the topic.

i will have a look at everyone's blogs now....