still here

In case you didn't notice, the blogs are on summer hiatus, but I'm still working and will talk up the summer news in late August. Until then, relax.

we interrupt this message for the medium

Taking a one-post break from the flip that course series to think out loud.

I don't know what exactly I was doing in 1964 when Marshall McLuhan published his Understanding Media (New York: Mentor, 1964). Probably listening to "She Loves You" on my little turquoise transistor radio that I could carry around wherever I went--y'know, going mobile before The Who made it fashionable.

McLuhan's celebrated "the medium is the message" strikes me as being more and more realized every day, at least in the sense that we can see better what he meant by "the form of a medium imbed[ding] itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived, creating subtle change over time" (thx to our good friend Wikipedia). I bristle when I hear anyone, but especially academics, say that technology is just a tool, because technology today is clearly influencing the message, whether you call that message communication or document or assignment or learning outcome, etc.

You know you have opinions about how messages conveyed through text messaging or blogging or wikiing (?) are perceived, maybe negative opinions. Nevertheless, here we are awash in technology-mediated messages/content/essays/exams. Is it changing your views on how to present material and design assignments? Shouldn't it be?

If we think we can ignore technology in education as an influential partner in scholarship and be the master of its influence, aren't we as naïve as the Communist Chinese who think they can use a little capitalism? If so, then some rethinking is in order.

flip that course 6

Sixth in a series on how to translate a face-to-face course into an online course.

PACKAGING CONTENT

Following from the last post on addressing learning styles in an online environment, faculty need to think about how to package the materials of their course to present to students, allowing those read, reflect, display, and do activities to take place.

Reading and Listening: Your presentation of concepts and background information, of anecdotes and history, of facts and issues--generally called a lecture, even if you don't pontificate from behind a lecturn--can be offered in multiple formats. And not only is that a good idea in itself, but it can help you break up a long presentation into multiple shorter ones that are easier to digest. Here are some examples, but consider using more than one:

1. PowerPoints with narration. Whether narrated directly into PowerPoint or using another software that imports your PPT slides, this is a good way to interest students. Your voice provides a point of contact that is absent from online text. Your inflection, clarifications, even your laughter and mistakes, help create a connection that adds to understanding. We are all familiar with how hard it is, for example, to use humor in writing, or to be sure that our readers are reading sentences as we wish. Here, you have a chance to use verbal cues to ensure understanding.
2. Audio podcasts. Maybe you don't need PPT slides, maybe you usually just lecture and don't even write on the board. Then you might want to simply record a lecture and post it directly on Blackboard or on our iTunes U site as an mp3 file that students can download to their mp3 players.
   
3. Print lectures. Many students appreciate reading a lecture at their own pace and marking it up as they read. If you lecture from notes, you could either offer those notes or expand them into a prose version. Even if you offer a multimedia lecture, you might want to provide a script to go along with it.
   
4. Video podcast. If you have the equipment or the time to go where there is some recording equipment, a video lecture can be another way to make a connection, one that is more like being in the classroom. Students will see and hear you and take notes as usual.
5. Discussion boards. If you usually break up lectures with question and answer periods, you can provide those experiences in a discussion forum. You will have to be clear about structuring when students should participate in them, by noting how many lectures or readings should be covered before participating, for example: "After reading ch. 1 and listening to the first lecture, begin your participation in the first discussion forum, called Ch. 1 Discussion. Be sure you know the guidelines for participating, found in the assignments list."

Reflecting and Observing: Generally, your students get a chance to reflect between classes, and your online students who need to think before they speak will surely follow a schedule that suits them. But at some point, you need to see the results of reflection to know how the material is being processed or internalized. If you are used to seeing student writing only on two exams and one paper per term, you may want to consider several smaller writing opportunities where more frequent feedback is informative for both you and your students.

1. Discussion boards. You get double duty from discussion forums as they appeal to both of the Rs in the R2D2 model. Students can observe the conversations between their peers and you, and can also put their own reflections into writing--remember the old, I don't know what I think until I see what I've said? Such forums can be a significant part of the course grade or a minor part, and you can get out of it what is good for your subject.
2. Reading/watching/listening reflections. Short reflective writing assignments, which can be as formal or informal as you like, give students a chance to think-out ideas away from the eyes of their peers, although you could decide to create small groups that would share reflections. This is slightly less immediate than a Discussion Board, where some students will respond as soon as they read a post. These writing reflection might encourage more self-editing and more polished ideas.

Consider such assignments as responses for all the media you assign--films, audio podcasts, performances, scholarly articles.

Display: "For visual learners, who prefer diagrams, flowcharts, timelines, pictures, films, and demonstrations." Imagine how many times in the face-to-face classroom you ask students to look at something, whether it's a website you bring up on the screen, your own diagram of an idea on the board, a handout of a photograph or drawing, or a library book you pass around. You know how such visual artifacts affect students' understanding by illustrating new perspectives, and you need to replicate these moments online, as well. Incorporating the visual may be more regimented from your point of view, but remember that students can look again and again, whenever they need to look.

1. Ask students to submit photos and other "graphic representations" that they find related to a topic. They can attach images to Discussion Board posts or submit them to you to post.
2. Create a slide show or folder of images with clear connections to readings.
3. Consider creating at least one video of yourself, either presenting content that includes showing a visual object or demonstrating a process.
4. As suggested in the second post of this series, create a visual representation of your course in diagram, map, game board, story board, or whatever creative way you can imagine. There's a terrific textbook on how to use critical theory in writing about literature, Texts and Contexts, 3rd. ed. (New York: Longman, 2001), that illustrates each theory with a drawn landscape, complete with roads and landscaping and buildings that represent critical concepts (stop by the office to see and example). I can't tell you enough how these visual landscapes have helped me in my own understanding and articulation of complex theory.

Do Something! "For tactile/kinesthetic learners, who prefer learning by active doing, experiencing, hands-on, and often also group work." Some task that requires a complete cycle of gathering, analyzing, producing, particularly in a group, will add not only a dimension of doing, but will go a long way in creating a communal experience. (I hear all the naysayers about group work, and you will have to set out your strict guidelines for group behavior.)

1. Assign case-studies to groups on the main topics of the course. Ask for their input on how to present their findings to the class.
2. Invite audio and video presentations. These could include narrated PowerPoints, interviews with relevant people in the field of study, personal performances.
   

flip that course 5

Fifth in a series on how to translate a face-to-face course into an online course.

ADDRESSING LEARNING STYLES ONLINE: THE R2D2 MODEL

Bonk, Curtis J., and Zhang, Ke. "Introducing the R2D2 Model: Online Learning for the Diverse Learners of This World." Distance Education 27.2 (2006): 249-64. [This article is available in full text from the Hammermill Library Academic Search Premier database.]

In our face-to-face classrooms, we might be more aware of the need to address diverse learning styles, or it might be that we have just become accustomed to mixing up the presentation of material without really thinking about why we do it. It's the fashion today to present speech, text, media, collaboration, feedback--we live this way and so, maybe, we work this way, too.

There is a danger in online courses of missing opportunities to create such experiences. We might be tempted to present all material using one method, whether it is a PowerPoint with a text script or narration, a video lecture, or a written lecture. In doing so, we also miss the opportunity to address learning styles.

The article referenced here offers "an easy-to-apply, practical model" (250) particularly for online learning. Bonk and Zhang's model focuses on "the type of tasks, resources, and activities that one may want to embed in an online course . . . to address different human learning strengths" (251). Here's a diagram I created from the article's tables to highlight the 4 areas in the model, read, reflect, display, and do. Click on the image to enlarge:










I have not worked in the technologies from the article, just the tasks. In 21st-century technology terms, we are moving too fast for a scholarly article to keep up. But check out the entire tables in the article, then make up your own activities around the technologies that will make them possible.

The point is that we are still responsible for addressing our students' learning styles in online environments. The environment does not dictate a single method of presentation or work any more than our classrooms should. The R2D2 Model works with your own course design instead of prescribing a pattern of organization and serves as a reminder of the variety we can add to online courses.

flip that course 4

Fourth in a series on how to translate a face-to-face course into an online course.

** Let me begin by adding a link that I added as an update at the end of the last post: "Dialogue-Intensive Learning" by Richard Dool, D.Mgt, Assistant Professor, Seton Hall University. This is an excellent article for those subjects that really require strong participation in classroom discussion. Moving online doesn't mean that we have to give up discussions that allow students to learn to articulate what they think and what they are learning. We all know that it's through such dialogue that we turn information and opinion into knowledge. A dialogue-intensive online course does require strong commitment and participation by the instructor--if you usually meet students for 4+ hours a week in the face-to-face classroom, are you willing to put that much time into participating in an online discussion?

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COMMUNICATION BETWEEN STUDENTS AND TEACHERS
In the last post, we looked at how you can create a sense of teamwork and community among students in an online course. And even when you are playing a significant role in those activities, there are other ways that online teachers need to be attentive to communicating with students, often on an individual basis.

There will be times when students need to talk--about assignments, about quality of work, about absence, the typical conversations that students and faculty have during a term. Online students, though, may not live on campus or even in the region, and they will likely have diverse schedules that make the typical office hours unsatisfactory. How will you handle those demands? How will you re-imagine your office hours?

Let's look at some tools first:

• Instant messaging can be an option, but are there IM tools that allow users in different systems to communicate with each other, or will your students need to download and join the system you prefer?
  
• Google Talk is compatible with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), for example, so you can login to both at the same time on Google.
  
• Apple's iChat is also compatible with AIM, but you can only login to one account at a time.
• BeeNut is a multi-compatible IM service, but only for Windows PCs. It is compatible with AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger (Y!), ICQ, and QQ. If you determined that none of your students used a Mac, this might be a useful solution.
• Email will always be a standard for communication among groups with widely diverse schedules. Just make sure that you set up good rules for making emails effective and for expectations of replies.
• Model an effective email for students, showing how specifics and thorough details will result in fewer back and forth clarifications. For example, if a student wants to have a live chat via one of the instant message tools, but cannot meet your posted time, he or she needs to make a specific request:
• "Ms. Smith, I would like to talk to you before the weekend about the next paper assignment, but I am working during your office hours. I can be available from 9:00 to 9:30 PM on Monday or Wednesday, and between noon and 3:00 PM on Thursday. Let me know if you are available during these times. If we cannot chat, I am willing to carry on an email discussion." It might also be nice to hear the topic of the discussion, so you can be prepared without wasting time.
• You might set up a period of 12-24 hours for expectations of replies to email from you or your students.
  
• Discussion Board Open Forum. Whether or not you are already using your Blackboard Discussion Board, an Open Forum can be a place where questions of a general nature about the class can be posted for all to see. It would allow students and faculty to respond to questions that more than one student needs to have answered. It's a much better way to convey information to the group than a series of individual emails. It must, however, be restricted to questions that are not urgent or personal, as discussion boards are not places for immediate responses, much like email.

Office Hours might seem like an out of date concept for an online course, although it is possible that some of your students are in the area and can actually meet face-to-face. But for those students you will only meet online, the structure of set hours when you are available, whether by IM or email or telephone, can at least serve as a reliable anchor of contact. Even if you work flexibility into your contact arrangements, no one can be available 24/7.

flip that course 3

Third in a series on how to translate a face-to-face course into an online course.

COMMUNICATION

Who would have thought that this concept, so central to the face-to-face classroom dynamic, would be such a necessary feature online, where perhaps none of your students are working at the same time? You might have thought of an online course more like those old correspondence courses, in which students sent you papers and you graded them and sent them back.

Today, we--teachers and students, both--expect a more sophisticated experience even in asynchronous environments, and communication is key to establishing the relationships that create the sense of being in a class. I will divide the topic into two areas: (1) communication among students and (2) communication between teachers and students.

Communication Among Students

At least three (3) of the "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" that I posted about last summer, principles generally known as the Chickering and Gamson principles, address communication. These principles are especially appropriate in online courses, where the lack of communication can leave students feeling isolated and contemplating dropping the course, and faculty feeling as if they don't know their students.

In a classroom, we take for granted the opportunity to ask questions, wait for responses, and participate in the back and forth of Socratic dialog that can lead students through complex material toward knowledge and understanding. We don't have to abandon our goals, but we do have to reconsider how to achieve them.

In "The Reluctant Online Professor," by Cynthia L. Corritore, PhD, Creighton University, published online in eLearn Magazine, Corritore describes the following experience using blog discussions:

There were several things that I believe made the course so successful. One key was the blog discussions. Initially, the posts read as individual, unrelated, formal discourses, even though I had provided guidelines and a movie about how to participate in a blog discussion. So, for the first two weeks of the course I graded the blog discussions very strictly and provided a great deal of individual and team feedback. I tried to convey that these discussions were analogous to classroom exchanges in which they must build on the ideas of others. It took about two weeks of low grades and extensive feedback, but they suddenly "got it." The blogs became surprisingly high-level, extremely energized discussions with application of course content, relevant life and work experiences, and examples from the students' independent research.

While posting every day caused significant complaints from the majority of students in the first week, by the end of the second week most were posting multiple times a day to each of their team blogs. It was extremely exciting to see all of this interaction happening, and it exceeded my expectations. I had never seen this level of discussion in a class, even onsite. My boring class had become exciting and engaging!

The team element of the course was another key to success. My experience with students is that they tend to become cohesive over time, but these online teams did that and more. I saw the students come together and develop into organized learning groups. Everyone was consistently positive and supportive of each other.

Whether we would use free commercial blogs or the Blackboard Discussion Board, such development of students into a community of learning would be a good substitute for face-to-face discussions, as well as a good way to assess understanding. Notice that Corritore applied strict principles for participation and grading, which clearly communicated high expectations and resulted in those expectations being fulfilled.

The lesson here is that in order to achieve communication among students, you must convey clear methods and expectations, and you must guide students as much as needed until they are able to perform on their own.

Here's a diagram and short table of findings from The Sloan Consortium on "Relationships Between Interactions and Learning in Online Environments." Specifically, the section on interaction with classmates supports the idea of community-building, the one thing we fear will be absent online.

Here's a more traditional article from Mary Ann Kolloff, Assistant Professor, Eastern Kentucky University on "Strategies for Effective Student/Student Interaction in Online Courses." As this article suggests, you must design course activities in a way that allows you to stand on the sidelines observing as much as possible, so that you are not "overwhelmed with online teaching." Just as in the classroom, you can become the only one learning the material if you cannot create situations in which students can develop their own understanding.

Update: Let me add this terrific article full of specifics on how to conduct a successful online discussion forum: "Dialogue-Intensive Learning" by Richard Dool, D.Mgt, Assistant Professor, Seton Hall University. I will mention it again at the beginning of the next post for those who miss this update.

Next, we'll tackle the communication between teachers and students.

flip that course 2

Second in a series on how to translate a face-to-face course into an online course.

So, now that you have reflected on your face-to-face course, how you teach, and what your goals are, let's talk more specifically about the course layout as expressed in your syllabus. It is a good idea to use your current syllabus as a guide.

One of the resources I suggested in the first post, Optimizing Your Syllabus for Online Students, addressed options for translating your syllabus:

• the rationale
• the classics
• the map
• the contract
• the schedule

Let's look at the map, since it might be the most unlike what you do now. I suggest, though, that if you take the term map seriously and create a visual representation of the course flow, that you also provide a typical text version as a supplement. Together, you will be addressing different learning styles, as well as urging students to think about the course in different ways.

Here's an example of a concept map that I used in a course. It was linked from the online text syllabus:
The two large blocks represented the two main texts in the course, and the overlapping small blocks represented concepts or topics that would be considered in relationship to those texts.

The map also shows the two parts of the course and that the second part is devoted to concepts in practice, whereas the first part is more theoretical.

Clearly, this is not a substitute for the components in a traditional syllabus, but there are other sorts of maps that you can devise.



Still in the model of a concept map, you can create an organizational chart that would contain all assignments and that would show the progression through the course, as well as the relationship between assignments. Here is a map distributed by Blackboard at a weekend workshop on course design. It shows more details about how course goals will be achieved through assignments and how Blackboard tools will be incorporated:




I can also imagine a map more like a roadmap or terrain map, which might not be as difficult to make today with available mapping tools, like Microsoft Visio, for example. I recently installed that software, and I can see that it will work better if I sketch out a map idea first.

Maybe the direction of your course won't change, but you should be open to that possibility in your re-design.