By Lisa, on October 18th, 2012% I’ve studied some about creating community in online classes, and we’re working on the topic this week in the POT Cert Class. And yet, I don’t do it. Create community, I mean, as an instructor.
Unlike in many online classes, my discussion forums are not set up for discussion. I do have a number of posts required, but each post has a purpose: one is for posting a primary source, the second one for responding to my guidance with a thesis and mini-essay, and a third to help someone else. I do not provide conversation prompts because my goal is not conversation.
However, in the very first forum, where I ask them to introduce themselves, either community forms or it doesn’t. And it stays that way the whole semester.
If, in the first forum, the first few students posting begin by responding to other students in a chatty and friendly way, instead of just introducing themselves and leaving, the others follow suit and the class takes off and community forms quickly. Participation and conversation levels remain high throughout the class, even in all the other forums where only posting their own work is required.
If, in that first forum, people only do as instructed and introduce themselves, and few comment on each other’s introductions, the community never takes off and the forum remains a posting board. This happens regardless of whether I, as the instructor, participate by welcoming people or not.
Interestingly, the level of student success in the forums doesn’t seem affected by which way it goes. They help each other at the same level regardless, because those trying to get an A are required to offer a helper reply to someone each week. Performance and learning seem unaffected by whether or not they form a community, but they clearly have more fun and make more social connections. Such support likely does have an effect I cannot see, perhaps engendering confidence and reducing fear.
But I wonder the extent to which it’s up to the students to form community anyway, even in classes where instructors are trying to force engagement and conversation?
By Lisa, on July 16th, 2012% As wonderful as the leveling effect of online classes can be, it is occasionally inconvenient for the instructor of an online class to be just another voice in the forum.
I love Moodle’s nested forums, and the way it shows everyone’s profile image, but even these visual cues aren’t enough to say, “Instructor post! Pay attention!”.
A bit of HTML to the rescue. I’m currently using a Horizontal Rule in a color to mark off my posts just a little bit, without being jarring.
The code I put at the beginning and end of my post is just
<hr size=2 color=blue>
If I wanted to be even more obvious, I could change the background color of my posts, which is what we do with the sticky posts at Pedagogy First! This would be just:
<body bgcolor="silver">
or
<bg color="silver">
depending on the LMS. One could also use all italics or a different text color, but I prefer to use something that students wouldn’t ordinarily be doing in their own posts.
Such a little thing, but it can really make a difference on a page full of posts!
By Lisa, on May 30th, 2012% It’s taken me almost a year to figure out what might have gone wrong with last summer’s class. I need to take a look since this summer’s class starts Monday.
Last summer, thrilled at having only 40 students to tend to in an 8-week class, I had students post their historical theses in the forums instead of on a closed essay exam. I graded them according to a qualitative scale that translated into points, and made comments on each directly in the forums, which took a great deal of time.
I was at first so very happy with this method, having spent much time setting it up so beautifully. Then the class was over, and I got the evaluation, completed by only 16 students.
Ignoring the typical one-person-who-hates-everything-I-do student, 5 felt class expectations weren’t stated clearly. A surprising 6 didn’t find the Contribution Assessments helpful (these contain direct feedback for each and every student, in private), and though 14 said they read my comments on their own mini-essays in the forum, 2 thought I wasn’t even present and visible during class. Some comments on the open essays said:
“It would be helpful if we received more feedback on our short essays instead of a general comments so that we could improve our writing skills.”
“For someone who struggles with the weekly thesis maybe a little more information but since it was a summer class it was face paced. I enjoyed the class the grading was fair just needed a better understanding of the thesis but that could just be me.”
“I think more feedback on the essays is necessary. The only kind of feedback that I received was if something was wrong with my essay, but it would be nice to know the things that I’m doing well so that I could continue incorporating things into the essays that worked well.”
“I wish there was more direction for the writing assignments. Especially the final assessment.”
It has thus occurred to me that the continual, extensive feedback I gave several times a week on the posted essays was not seen as actual feedback or guidance by some of the students.
 Keep in mind before you say I’m justing whining, that I give this evaluation every semester, and the overwhelming majority say my expectations are clear, the assignments are helpful, and the things they recommend tend to be things like “more content” or “less work”. Keep in mind also that my public comments on their essays were very specific, but kind and designed not to embarrass anyone. I also marked some of them with a bold For Everyone tag in the subject line, to provide more general comments at the same time. I thought this was brilliant — evidently not so much.
I can’t help but wonder whether doing closed essay grading instead, even if I said the exact same thing on each essay, would have led to a different result. Is it possible that forum postings from the instructor aren’t seen as feedback in the same way we view a private comment on a quiz?
So for the class that starts Monday, I have put the essays back into a standard, private, midterm and final exam format, with (as usual) the practice in the forums. We’ll see what happens.
By Lisa, on November 27th, 2011% This question goes way back to the first online class I ever saw demonstrated. The instructor, instead of using our one and only technology (Webboard) as a separate discussion, had embedded her lecture and instructions into the lead post for each week. And at the time (1998) I thought, “oh wow! the whole class is inside the discussion! This is great.”.
But I didn’t do it. Blackboard encourages you to put the discussion board in separate area, and even now that you can make a separate discussion forum for each unit, people still put discussion all together as one course menu item. In Moodle, I have a separate, nested discussion board (simple format) for each week/topic.
In my struggle to determine whether it’s a good idea to switch from forum post/reply to blog/comment format for clases with students, I have assumed that I would continue to integrate discussion as I do now, by week. But in my post about using One Blog, Brandon Davis-Shannon commented on his own difficulties with the format, and noted greater depth in the Blackboard forum than on blogs with comments. It occurred to me this might be because if the whole thing was together, students would feel less awkward posting on a previous topic.
But we all acknowledge it depends on how it’s designed, and what (pedagogically speaking) we’re looking for.
So I created a Google Doc and invited Brandon to help create a chart showing some of the options, and here’s what we’ve done so far:
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One big forum |
Weekly/topical forums |
One big blog |
Individual blogs |
| Advantages |
- May reward students posting on previous topics, deepening conversation, especially if design of the discussion encourages them to do so
- Easy to use
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- Ties discussion to one topic, prevents tangents
- Organizes posts and replies easily
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- Combines course info and activities in one place
- Easy to track student activity
- Easy for students to keep up with peers’ work
- Requires a single log-in to participate
- Possible feeling of collective student ownership of class blog.
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- Student ownership of their own learning space
- Acquisition of some “just in time” technical skills within the context of actual use
- Aggregating blogs can pull whole class together
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| Disadvantages |
- Artificially separates discussion and interactivity from the presented or informational content of the class
- May overwhelm students with number of topics, as class continues.
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- Format doesn’t encourage students to go back to a previous topic, leading to a more superficial discussion.
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- Student ownership is not individual
- Format may lead student posts to be lost in the shuffle
- Blog may disappear if instructor takes it down, loses account, etc[a].
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- Unless commenting takes place on an aggregated blog (thus removing ownership advantage), the inconvenience of commenting on different blogs may be a problem
- Diffuses the conversation too much
- Discourages return to previous topics because of the nature of blog posting
- Tends to require multiple log-ins to participate in commenting unless single system use (for example, Discus)
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| Pedagogy |
May be best suited for:
- classes where themes run throughout
- assignments that allow students to participate in several topics at once
- pedagogies that want to place the information and content directly into the forum to emphasize discussion
|
May be best suited for:
- topics that need to be separate
- assignments where everyone has a similar task, such as posting a particular link
- classes where topics have a definite progression or need to move on
- pedagogies that want to place the information and content directly into the forum to emphasize discussion
|
May be best suited for:
- keeping the class at one main website or page
- having students experience creation of one artifact with individual contributions
- pedagogies emphasizing collective development of the class
- situations where individual blogs may be of concern for any reason
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May be best suited for:
- student ownership of their work
- pedagogies that encourage student exploration and development of their own topics or focus
- if the instructor has a blog also and content is aggregated, embeds instructor’s content into class
- a course with centralized complementary activities
|
| Variations |
- All class materials can be available as posts
- Can choose between threaded and nested in some applications
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- All class materials can be available as posts
- Can choose between threaded and nested in some applications
|
Theme (Layout?) |
Theme (Layout?) |
Maybe this can help us make decisions on which discussion format is best for a particular class.
By Lisa, on October 27th, 2011% I have now been a student in three separate classes where I ran my own blog to do the class assignments (CCK08, EC&I831 and ds106). My classes for students are all designed with an LMS-based forum, within which outcomes have been achieved well thus far (I implemented the basic format in 2009).
So now, as I consider departing from an LMS for at least one of my classes for spring, the question is: should I have each student create his/her own blog, then aggregate them, and have them comment on each others’ blogs for discussion? That’s been the model in all three classes I’ve taken, and is the model for Pedagogy First!, where we’ve been using 90 individual blogs for the POT Certificate Class, aggregated to one central website.
But is this the best way for my own classes?
In a more typical online class, discussion takes place in a forum. This keeps things focused and in one place. People are used to forums. All the classes I’ve seen with distributed activities instead of forums have students begging for a forum, whether it’s a threaded forum in an LMS, a Google group, or a Ning. People want a central place to talk, and an aggregated blog made of up all their disparate posts can become just an information center, not a coffee house.
My brilliant colleague Jim Sullivan teaches English composition using a class blog. Students are all authors on it, and they blog there, not on their own blogs. We’ve discussed this many times, and I’ve rejected it because students don’t control their own space. I think they should, but I’m aware that the idea of helping hundreds of students with their technical problems has been a major hurdle to moving ahead. Now it occurs to me that Jim’s approach may be the pedagogically middle ground rather than just easier and more convenient for me (I like pedagogical middle grounds).
A traditional forum in an LMS is set in its pattern and closed in its format (once the class is over, you usually can’t access it). Having everyone create their own blog lets students have their own permanent space, but really doesn’t encourage discussion (as I’ve discovered running Pedagogy First!). Is the One Blog approach the middle ground?
 Is it open and available?
It can be open and as loose as I want, and since I run my own WordPress I can promise it will stay open (Jim runs his own Typepad).
Is there a sense of student ownership?
While students don’t run their own space, students may feel that the One Blog is their space collectively, rather than individually (a classroom they can help create). This could subconsciously create a feeling of community.
Does it provide a good place for discussion?
Yes — not as much as a traditional forum, but more than individual blogs, because it is in one place and everyone is signed in just once, rather than being a guest on other people’s blogs. Plus, WordPress comments are nested. I have searched long and hard and have been unable to find forum software that is free, nests the comments so you can see which comments reply to which, and will tolerate multimedia.
Isn’t Ning a middle ground?
Ning is a social networking platform, a damned good one (nested! multimedia!), but to use it for free you have to advertise for Pearson. That isn’t middle ground — if there’s any advertising in my class at all (and I think there shouldn’t be) it should be incidental, not deliberate and appearing as if I am a spokesperson sponsoring a product (in many ways, this includes Blackboard and Moodle). And I don’t have time right now to figure out how to use an open source social networking platform (such as Oxwall) on my own service.
Although until now I’ve only used blogging for class as a student, I do use the blog platforms for my History 103 and History 104 at San Elijo. They’re not actually blogging on these (in terms of reflection or graded items), but rather posting theses for papers they turn in, and working together to create collections for class presentations. I could start by expanding this set-up into the One Blog format.
Sooooo…..
what am I not thinking of here as I make this decision?
By Lisa, on September 19th, 2011% Over the last few years of developing a technique I’m happy with in discussion forums (see Discussion Goodness from 2009), I’ve also been experimenting with something similar in the classroom at San Elijo. I’ve done it for three semesters now, and I’m happy with it too.
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| Image by permission and copyrighted Lisa M Lane 2011 |
The idea is that every two weeks, we have “Lab Day”. On that day, everyone who has a laptop has to bring one (a smartphone is OK, just not as good for searching images), and Media Services brings me a batch of old clunker PCs without batteries for everyone else. There are cords all over the floor, and students arranged in small groups.
The task, during our 75 minute class, is to create a collection of three primary sources related to that week’s era, then develop athesis and present it to the class with the evidence. All work is posted on the class website.
Students search the web for primary sources related to, say, the French Revolution. They have to be sure that they really are primary sources (not a drawing of a guillotine from 1947), and the sources can be visual or textual (I usually prefer visual). They post them with citations and create a thesis for which their sources are evidence.
The class website (here’s the one from last spring) is on a WordPress platform, and the students have basic accounts. During the semester, they work on the website in two ways: by posting their homework thesis every Monday (after reading the textbook chapter) and by creating these source collections on Lab Day. I use several plugins to make it easy for students to post the media they find (mostly plugins that create a toolbar for a comment, since they’re all posting as comments). My student Nick asked me to add a “Like” button so they could rate each others’ theses, so I did that too.
Each group has their own space to work (these are Categories in WordPress), and they use comments so that all their sources appear on the same page.
At the beginning of the semester, each group just collects three sources, and talks about how they related to each other at the end of the period. Since it’s early, I often create topics for them (i.e. “find portrait paintings from the 18th century” for Group 1, and “find examples of residential architecture during the Enlightenment” for Group 2). But as the class progresses, we move from more factual discussions of sources into interpretations and theses. Near the end of the semester, they are able to analyze the sources to say something meaningful as a historical theme, with examples from many eras.
Near the end of the period, the group s present (I let them decide if they want a spokesperson or the whole group to come up — interestingly, about 80% of the time the entire group stands up front together). We have a projector that shows the website on the front screen s they present. Again, after the first time (when things are very new and strange), six groups of students can manage all this during one class period.
What’s interesting is that, as with my online classes, the students have some freedom to select the sources they want, so the focus of the presentation often reflects the interest of group members. As we get into broader theses, some groups develop a “specialty area” (say, war propaganda or women’s fashions). I also notice that there are hardly any absences on Lab Day! Students from home log in with TinyChat to talk to their group and participate because they don’t want to miss it. This is even though Lab Day is not graded directly, but rather just counts as part of Contribution.
The benefits of the exercise are several. The main one is affective: students enjoy working in groups and finding things on the internet, and they like having a self-contained class session where everything is immediate. Another benefit is that they get comfortable presenting early on – sharing becomes second-nature instead of something scary. They also get practice with the central historical skills (also our Student Learning Outcomes) of identifying primary sources, developing a historical thesis, and using the evidence to support the thesis. And they do it an environment that is quickly seen as non-threatening (I evaluate sometimes, we have peer evaluations sometimes, and sometimes we just do what we do). I can also provide in-person help as I walk around, with the website, with finding sources, with identifying sources, with whatever.
The drawbacks? I can’t really think of any, except when the network goes down or the technology gets funky. Or when there aren’t enough devices. But, in an emergency, we can do something similar with images from our textbook, or from collections I can bring up on the screen. It’s just not as cool that way.
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