By Lisa, on May 11th, 2012
I noticed that Dave Cormier is using a single course blog for his ed366 class, with students as authors. Back in November, I was working on this issue with Brandon Davis-Shannon, whether it is better to have students run their own blogs or work on one big blog, and I’m thinking about it again as I plan my History 103 for fall.
I have done one big blog before, but never many student blogs (except for the POT Certificate Class). Dave has done both and notes:
It is interesting to me that engagement would be lost when students run their own blogs, versus posting on one big blog. It brings up questions about where students perceive the course is located, as well as the usual issues about motivation and self-motivation.
In addition, it may be about the changing world of online courses in the past year or so.
The typical online course offered by an institution is one kind, and for this model students translate their classroom thinking to the online class. The thinking is that on-site the class is held in Room 601, and online it’s held in Blackboard (or another LMS) or at a particular URL or website (though that’s more rare).
It’s hard for students to really see a course that’s held “on the web”, or one where their work is based in their own space, and aggregated somehow for all to see. That involves a mental shift much greater than just on-site to online.
That mental shift is encouraged by MOOCs, at least in their Couros/Siemens/Downes/Cormier/Groom model. Self-direction and/or connectivism are engrained in the format of the classes. (I’m gonna call it the CSDCG model, because no one can stop me.)
But there is another pseudo-MOOC model now, subdivided into two categories which sometimes overlap: institutional (think Stanford, MIT) and commercial (think Curtis Bonk’s class in Coursesites). These are beloved by the New York Times and the Chronicle, who are seeking to reframe educational trends. They are becoming the mental-shifting model instead of the original MOOC design.
That may be because they are held in Learning Management Systems or sites that act like LMSs (I’m afraid I have to count WordPress here, because of its use in this context). This model perpetuates the idea that “class is here“. Yes, you can run your own blog, but it’s preferred that you blog “inside the classrom”. It’s just easier for people to get their head around the idea that the class is at the instructor’s website. It fits with their current thinking, but expands it into the world of blogging. It also fits for instructors who need the two things LMSs are best at: enrollment management and grade tracking.
That seems to be the middle ground, and pedagogically it may be better not to push the envelope too much with students (at least if you want them to stay enrolled). Despite my own learning preferences, which are open and aggregated, most students aren’t conceptually ready for this kind of learning, and the cognitive dissonance overcomes their willingness to engage (which, for some, wasn’t that high to start with).
We can argue for years whether their lack of readiness is apathy, behavioral training in K-12, or cultural ennui, but most of us “practitioners” are interested in what works: what keeps them enrolled, encourages engagement, allows some independence, but doesn’t cause panic. Plus there are increasing concerns about asking students to create their own space at third-party sites, which collect and use student information and content in ways we may not consider ethical.
The WordPress Multi-User site, or the LMS that’s open to all, or the main blog where all blog within it but can have their content exported to save (which is what Dave is doing) may then be the preferred models for balancing these issues with those of exploration and innovation. They are being chosen because they take into account concerns of pedagogy and comfort, not because they can handle 1,000 students and use their content and personal information for other ends, but because they work.
 NB: The only obvious exception to this balanced model is Jim Groom’s (plus) ds106, with its student-run blogs aggregated to a main WP site, and where clearly something magical happens. And possibly my own POT Certificate Class, where I have no idea why it (sort of) works, but I dare not apply it to a standard college class.
By Lisa, on May 4th, 2012
 My first hybrid classes since 1999 started off inauspiciously, with low enrollments (Western Civ 31 at first day down to 22 at census, US History 25 at census). The campus is our satellite San Elijo campus, up the street from Rancho Santa Fe (a wealthy enclave) and up the I-5 from UCSD. The format in the schedule was unusual. Most classes meet twice a week in the daytime or once in the evening. These meet Mondays only 11-12:15 (West) and Wednesdays only 11-12:15 (US). A standard MW 11-12:15 class normally fills at 40 students or gets close.
My format is flipped – students read/listen to my lectures, take quizzes, and post their writing online; class time is for open discussion of that week’s topics. The syllabus and all course information is open on web pages; assigned work is submitted in Moodle, with direct assignments linked from the open syllabus. Attendance is sporadic, as has been online performance, so I did a survey. The following is based on 11 student surveys from Western Civ and 7 from US History, so n=18. They were given in the classroom, not online.
What was the primary reason they registered for the particular class section?
27% wanted to take a hybrid class because they wanted to come to the classroom at least once a week instead of taking an online class
27% needed the class and it was the only one open when they registered
22% needed the class and the on-campus meeting time was convenient
11% love history and will take whatever classes they can
6% registered late and it was one of the few classes left
6% wanted to take a hybrid class so they could do most of the work online
Comments here were heavily toward them wanting interaction with the teacher. Two students mentioned they didn’t even know it was a hybrid until the first class meeting.
My conclusion was that most students were looking forward to classroom time as the main component of the class rather than working online.
The class used the online lectures instead of a textbook, so I asked how that worked for them. The vast majority noted the convenience and price savings of this arrangement. One said s/he didn’t like reading out of a textbook, one bought a textbook anyway, one liked the audio so they didn’t even have to read the lectures, one noted it helped them focus on the “main learning objectives” (must be someone going into Education).
My conclusion was that convenience and price are most important.
Asked how they remembered when things were due, and whether they used the Google calendar I provided, several (22%) checked the online syllabus regularly, several (17% each) either remembered in their head, used the Moodle site to remember, or used the Google calendar. One used G calendar on a cell phone, one a day planner, one a calendar app on their computer. One mentioned they don’t like the hybrid, and found it hard to stay motivated.
I was surprised that so few used mobile technology to keep track of their schedule. In class one day, I asked a student who’d missed a quiz how she remembers what’s due when. She turned her iPad around to show me a fingered scrawl on the screen that said “test Tuesday”.
Likert scale questions were:
I found the online lessions and materials valuable.
72% Strongly agree
28% Agree
I found the on-campus meetings valuable.
44% Strongly agree
28% Agree
17% Neutral
6% Disagree
I asked them about this one in class, of the few (five) students who were there. The top student in the room said some students are just lazy and want everything given to them in the classroom so they don’t have to think.
I was more likely to do the work for this class on time because of the hybrid format.
11% Strongly agree
50% Agree
28% Neutral
5% Disagree
I think I have learned more about history from taking a class in this format than I would have from taking an online class.
41% Strongly agree
59% Agree
I think I have learned more about history from taking a class in this format than I would have from taking a traditional on-campus class.
17% Strongly agree
28% Agree
50% Neutral
6% Disagree
The neutrals here are most interesting (I have been learning from Chuck Dziuban‘s work at UCF that the ambivalent surveys are where the meat is). They prefer classroom to online, which makes sense since some didn’t even know it was a hybrid anyway. They may indeed prefer being “fed” information during class time. Our in-class discussions indicate they retain little from the online materials, even when they’ve taken a quiz on it the night before class and gotten a good score. Factual questions are hardly ever answered correctly in class. They are only willing to engage in enthusiastic conversation on historical topics I frame in such a way that they need know nothing but their own opinion, so class discussions tend to focus on adapting this opinion in light of what I say right there in discussion (which, to me, is kind of like lecturing).
It is possible that the informality of the in-class discussions, where I try to use the primary source readings as a jumping off point into that week’s topics, don’t demand enough. For each class, I once gave a review no-points “quiz” at the start of class, questions on factual information with fill-in answers. I had them start by doing it separately, then in pairs, then with the full (though small) class. If it had been a real quiz, the success rate would have been 40-50% independently. After the survey, one student said I should do that more. It made me wonder whether I should repeat the quiz they took on line at the beginning of each class.
They made other suggestions too, most of them based on giving them some sort of test or quiz for points, in the classroom. I asked if we really still need to do carrot-and-stick stuff in college, and got a positive response. One said that in another (regular) class he has, all the discussion is online (but few do it) and the professor only lectures for the full class time, twice a week. I asked him to be honest about in which class he was learning more. He said he got more “stuff” (i.e. information) in that class, but more depth in my class. He’s in my class for every class session, but has done only 3 of the 13 assigned online quizzes.
I have come to the conclusion from this experience that, all arguments to the contrary (because so many of our students take both online and on-site classes), there is an online student type and an on-site student type. Students who take a class at San Elijo campus are on-site students, and expect a standard classroom experience. This does not seem to be true at Oceanside campus, where the History hybrid sections are still well enrolled. I do not think these sections are flipped in terms of pedagogy. I have offered my survey to instructors at this campus so we can get some data there.
Obviously, given the enrollments, I will be unable to repeat my experiment. In fall, I will be back to a standard twice weekly class in this timeslot. I was going to flip it, but now I’m really not sure that’s a good idea. Instead, I will likely go back to having them do their computer-based research work right there in the classroom (Lab Day), on their laptops, so they will be working in class. And it’s too bad. I thought I had a great opportunity here to lead the kind of seminar I experienced as an undergraduate. But, of course, I did my work and wanted to talk about what I’d read. I simply wasn’t able to replicate that model, even with a hybrid format.
By Lisa, on April 30th, 2012
I’m leaving Curt Bonk’s open online class “Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success”, which started this week. It’s a class about retaining, motivating and engaging online students, and I’m leaving because I’m not motivated and not engaged.
It’s not because of Dr. Bonk – his work is very interesting.
It’s the classroom. I wanted to attend to see the new CourseSites from Blackboard, which is being touted as Bb’s “open” LMS. Maybe it would be innovative! A new LMS. I’m always very interested in learning management systems, and what they can do.
Well, it’s the same old Blackboard, with more white space, nicer fonts and some cool icons.
First assignment included two 44-page pdf files that were expensive to print and difficult to read online since they were double-spaced. Oh.
Well, OK. I went over to the discussion to introduce myself, and oh dear. Same threaded discussion – very 1999. With each iteration of Bb, I find it harder to believe they’ve done nothing with forums. Each person had started their own “thread” to introduce themselves, necessitating opening each one at a time or collecting those on the page.
Only those on the page can be collected. There are 30 pages of introductions.
A sense of chore, of overwhelming ennui, engulfed me. I saw that you can also blog instead. That’s good! I can blog as I go, on my own blog! And everyone will read it, and there will be comments, and I can comment on theirs! Oh….
I’m not going to blog inside a closed system, even if it’s open at the moment. Yes, I could add a link to my own blog to the wiki, but that’s not exactly integrated into the course. Pretty evident, then, that the main discussion would be in those horrible forums.
It’s only for a month. No, I can’t. I don’t use Bb anymore for exactly this reason. I will be happy to read Bonk’s works, on my own, and blog about them. I’ll miss the community. No, I won’t. I can’t miss this many people.
I’m spoiled. I blame George Siemens, Stephen Downes and Alec Couros. I blame Jim Groom. I’m used to aggregated blogs, embedded media, distributed conversation. I think of these things as being what open, online classes are all about. I blame my own class at Pedagogy First!.
You’ll say I didn’t give it a chance. You’ll say I’m being too picky. You’ll say…well, I don’t know what you’ll say, since I won’t be in the class.
By Lisa, on April 25th, 2012
I was asked yesterday if I could work on some sort of comparison between Blackboard, Moodle, and web 2.0 for college classes.
I’ve got it. They’re like Lego*.
| Blackboard is like the Lego kits you get, the ones that make something in particular using exactly the parts inside the box. You can, of course, make other things out of the pieces, but you have to ignore the instructions and exercise a bit of creativity. Of course, most people buy the Lego kit in the first place because they want to make exactly what’s shown on the picture on the box.
So Blackboard gives you all the pieces as a set collection, with a map of what you should make: course menu buttons for each type of content, places to upload and make announcements, etc. You can make changes (put the propeller on the building – or change the course menu button to say “Week 1″), but you have to consciously break away from the plan. It’s not dangerous, but it can be scary. Instructure Canvas is a smaller kit, but it’s still a kit. Pearson’s LMS is like a kit too, as are the many others being produced by publishers and other ventures. |
 Flickr cc cbcd04 |
| Moodle is like the boxes of Lego you get with a certain number of each kind of block. There is no real set plan, except that you can only use as many bricks are in the box, unless you go buy more. There are only a certain number of single-peg bricks, only a certain number of blue. You can build whatever you want, but it’s limited by the number of bricks you have of each size and colour.
So Moodle gives you a page where you can add a schedule like a syllabus or topics in the center column, and blocks (yes, blocks) on the sides with small apps or information. You put in only what you want – no need to toss propellers aside looking for something else. There are limitations but the map is more flexible. |
 Flickr cc libertyandvigilance |
| Web 2.0 is like buying a bunch of Lego at a garage sale. You don’t know what you’ll get to start with, but it’ll be fun discovering what’s in there and figuring out how to use it. You imagine as you build and try different things. Sometimes you think two pieces don’t go together, and they do. Since you don’t know what’s there as you look into the box, you are open to possibilities. You plan ahead mostly to make sure you don’t run out of the bricks you might want to use, and you can always go to another garage sale and get more.
So using Web 2.0 elements to create a class is about exploring, picking and choosing, experimenting and seeing what works. You have to be more adventurous, more open, more flexible in the face of change. And what you end up with may be surprising or unexpected, but it will always be interesting. |
 Flickr cc jemsweb |
(* I will not offend my English friend Ed Webb by using the American vernacular for the plural: “Legos”).
By Lisa, on April 24th, 2012
| Sessions attended:
Communicating Change
Lee Henrikson
Using Skype in the Online Classroom
Therese Kanai & Melissa Holmberg
Creative Crossroads: Learning Partners Collaborate
Selia Karsten
Keynote: SMILE (Stanford Mobile Inquiry-based Learning Environment)
Paul Kim
Creative Infusion: When Academia Meets Creativity
Jennifer Harrison & Crystal Hofegartner
Student Attitudes Toward the Addition of a Social Media Tool to Increase Social Presence in an Online Learning Environment
Joan S Leafman & Kathleen Mathieson
Managing Issues of Safety, Privacy, Copyright, and Technological Change in Web 2.0 Instruction: Lessons Learned from Teaching a YouTube Course
Chareen Snelson
Digital Dirt: How to Survive and Thrive in a World with Social Media
Michele Hinto-Riley & Erica Arnold-Wyche
Designing and Evaluating an Online Resource Site for Distance Educators
Billy Meinke
Technology Integration & Training for Online Course Development: A Needs Assessment
Melissa Kunitzer
Providing Qualitative Feedback in Online Teaching with Minimal Effort, yet Reaping Great Benefits
Brooke Estabrook-Fishinghawk
Going Paperless: Advantages & Challenges of the Paperless Classroom
Derek Snyder
Using Teamwork in an Online Course: Five Useful Strategies
Leanne Chun and Lani Uyeno
Promoting Continuous Quality in Online Teaching: Implementing A Comprehensive Faculty Development Program
Holly McCracken & Eileen Dittmar
Visual E-Communications to Enliven Collaborative E-Learning
Janet Salmons
OpenCourseWare and Open Educational Resources: Forward to Credentialed Learning Outcomes?
Jason Caudill
Applying Delta Theory to analyze online communities
Hery Yanto The
Organic Gardening: An Online Course Design
Rachel Kirkland and Jordan Day
Teaching with Technology Centers
Kasey Fernandez & Salynn Kam |
 I attended many sessions at the wonderful TCC Teaching, Colleges and Community conference out of the University of Hawaii (yes, everyone always groans that this conference is online instead of in Hawaii!). Several made a distinct impression on me and will change my practice.The first of these was Creative Infusion: When Academia Meets Creativity, just as a good reminder that we should encourage student creativity in all our classes and Managing Issues of Privacy, a good reminder on that subject.
But the one that really got me participating (and it was easy to do with TCC’s structure) was Digital Dirt: How to Survive and Thrive in a World With Social Media. The big concern was that students post party pictures and other questionable material all over their social media sites, and employers increasingly look at these sites before they decide whether to hire someone. The advice was that we need to share this information with students and encourage them to clean up their act. It is our job to caution them.
At first I was nodding my head. But I’ve been reading Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together. People who use social media a lot, especially young people, use it in a very personal way. Their profiles and status updates are tied to their image of themselves and their relationships with their peers. It’s not just a matter of not thinking ahead to an employment interview. It’s that the identity of some young people is embedded in their social media, and that the authenticity of these identities is extremely important in their lives and in trusting each other.
In addition, the advice seemed to encourage cookie-cutter profiles, without sins or mistakes. If I were an employer seeking a creative person, or one who’d been around the block, or one with life experience, these profiles would leave me cold. If Ray and Anderson are correct about the Cultural Creatives, then the workers who will be most in demand are those who can not only think outside the box, but create a new box. They will be artistic, open-minded, and authentic. A clean Facebook profile will be an illusion and a sham.
I suppose if you want a job that does not require a Cultural Creative, but rather a bean counter or bureaucrat, you might want to make sure your profile was free of sin. I don’t feel I should be responsible for encouraging students to create a profile designed to impress someone hiring that sort of person.
The other significant session for me was Promoting Continuous Quality in Online Teaching: Implementing A Comprehensive Faculty Development Program, because it taught me that not all for-profit institutions offer lousy faculty development, creating stables of ill-qualified part-timers to teach canned classes. I totally admit to extreme prejudice on this issue, but Holly McCracken and Eileen Dittmar are clearly doing incredible work at Cappella, creating faculty development staffed with volunteers who just want to help each other teach better. Experienced online faculty sharing with those who are new is the heart of their system as it is of our Program for Online Teaching. I was delighted.
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By Lisa, on April 24th, 2012
Sessions attended:
Blend Your Own Faculty Development Program Using Open Components from Blended Learning Toolkit
Kelvin Thompson and Linda Futch
How to Successfully Evaluate Blended Learning
Chuck Dziuban and Patsy Moskai
Openness in Blended Learning: Perfecting the Blend
David Wiley
Private Investment, Technology and American Education
Marc Parry, Tom Cavanaugh, Anthony Picciano, Alexandra Pickett and Karen Swan
Blended Learning Scale, Ambivalence & Analytics
Chuck Dziuban and Patsy Moskai
Blending with Social Media
Tanya Joosten
Faculty Blended Learning Process: How Instructors Learn to Teach Adult Students in a Blended Program
Karen Skibba
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I wasn’t at Sloan-C Blended Learning Conference in the usual sense; I was a “virtual attendee”, an experience I’ll cover in another post. Some of the take-aways for me included the leadership role of the University of Central Florida in these subjects, including the open access Blended Learning Toolkit, which provides professional development resources to UCF and beyond, with everything licensed Creative Commons. Just the whole attitude of the university seems to be right on target.
Chuck Dziuban‘s approach impressed me enormously. During the first session, about assessment, he noted that faculty trying to put their multiple-choice quizzes online said their students were cheating and his response was “duh”. One can’t simply lift an on-site element (like a paper test) into an online environment – there must be adaptation.I was somewhat disappointed in David Wiley’s keynote, not because everything he said wasn’t true, but because I had heard almost all of it before and was hoping for a newer, more radical perspective.
The plenary session on Private Investment, Technology and American Education was excellent in grappling with the moral and procedural complexities of private funding for public education. Often this funding, desperately desired by public universities having their budgets cut, comes with unwieldy, unethical, or impossible strings attached. Being told to build a building, or have results within 15 months, or perform class visits when classes are not in session, were big challenges.
In addition, Tony Picciano was very clear about the influence that donors like the Gates Foundation have over the Department of Education, and how Congress does nothing about it since many of them concerned about education want this money coming in also. Companies work through bureaucrats, not educators. Shared work doesn’t count: Tom Cavanaugh at UCF noted that the sharing they do of work like the Toolkit influences schools that aren’t partners to the grant, so it isn’t included. The goal of not “selling your soul” when accepting private grants was clearly a difficult objective, and the choice of not taking the money might be difficult when public funding sources expect the private sector to jump in.
I took the most notes on Chuck Dziuban’s portion of the presentation on ambivalence in student evaluation of blended classes, because I think his work applies to all classes. His research shows that students who either love or hate a class or teacher tend to focus only on two factors: the course landscape and instructor engagement. Those who are ambivalent (i.e. there were some things they really liked and others they didn’t) create an averaged evaluation score that tells us nothing. These ambivalent perspectives take into consideration a larger number of factors that are important to assessing quality, including the course rhythm, expectation rules, assessment of their progress. When students are only partly happy with a class, there is much more information. We tend to interpret a middling student evaluation as meaning the faculty performance is middling, when it may be instead balancing good and bad aspects. I saw a big argument here for not considering the aggregate of a student evaluation at all.
Dziuban also noted, to my relief and frustration (since I’ve been trying to figure it out) that there is no set pattern to why students withdraw from classes. The biggest indicator of the likelihood of failure, his research shows, is cumulative GPA. The modality of the class, its level, the class size, gender, ethnicity, age, etc. mattered far less or not at all.
Tanya Joosten’s presentation on social media for educators (the title of her current book) was excellent. She has done work on the things many of us know but didn’t have proof for: students spend the most time in Facebook, don’t check email at all, and use mobile technologies. Having been worried about the creepy treehouse effect, I was happy to learn that Facebook could be effective in the way I’m using it (Groups, not friending) and that I could expand use further with Pages (I need to look into how this stuff shows up on students’ Walls, which is what they want – I know Groups don’t). Finding ways to text message assignment reminders and using Facebook helps students stay organized – it’s their planner, clearly. And they don’t use Google Plus.
Overall, a good conference with some severe limitations to communications, which I’ll be discussing elsewhere. |
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