Category: Online Teaching

Pedagogy and Middle Ground

Lisa M Lane 2 Comments
Adapted from Flickr cc image by yewenyi

Having begun reading Alfie Kohn’s The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and Tougher Standards (1999), with its trashing of the “Old School” pedagogies, I posted a tweet this morning:

not happy with the lack of middle ground between the PLE/open “individualized exploration” and the LMS/data-driven “rote content” arguments

Then, following a tweet from Dave Cormier this morning, I discovered George Siemens‘ slides from the Africa presentation he’s giving today, apparently. Here’s Slide 15:

I noticed that if you took out the text in the middle, the process is very much the same as what I’d call Good Traditional Learning. Certainly as a historian, this is what I do. In fact, there is even more interplay between aspects of the prospect, if you’ll forgive my doodling:

As a historian, I naturally assume that ideas are not really new, but just a revision due to circumstances. And certainly, in my various discussions of connectivist theory, I hashed this out last fall.

During the class and again today, I’ve observed the polarization of educational ideas. On the one hand, you have the “Old School” hardliners, the “back to basics” folks, the ones pushing accountability, Student Learning Outcomes, data-driven models, etc. Industrialized education. Enlightenment social science gone mad.

On the other are the highly innovative ed-techies who say schools are failing because we are failing students, unempowering them to learn. Kohn’s book, constructivist and connectivist learning theory, promoters of blogs and wikis and Personal Learning Environments. Edupunks (I’m proud to be one!), learner-centered, wired. Those who claim today’s students are different (you can put the technology horse before or after this cart), so they need different methods to learn. Some even claim to be going back to a pre-industrial model, as in this article claiming that the grading system was created as a lazy and inappropriate way to assess learning. Many in this crowd don’t like Marc Prensky, with his idea of digital natives and digital immigrants, but others start with his ideas. For those not familiar with this view, Michael Wesch‘s classic video should help:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o&w=425&h=344]

The Middle Ground seems to be somewhat different, and I intend to explore these ideas further. I see a number of elements working against the polarization of educational viewpoints:

  • Student skills
    Students today are technologically savvy only for social interaction, not academic work (see analysis of the ETS ICT report from 2007, among others)
  • Student use
    Students are not particularly avid users of Web 2.0 technologies (Kennedy et al, 2007)
  • Workplace conditions
    The conditions of the educational workplace require most of us to teach industrial-sized classes, making individualized approaches impossible unless they are almost completely student-led. (I have often been astonished by the failure of the “new” crowd to acknowledge this simple problem and deal with it on anything other than an “overthrow the system!” kind of way.)
  • Retraining
    Creating constructivist or connectivist learning environments involves re-training instructors in areas far beyond their disciplines, and such re-training is not supported by compensation in any form.
  • Student expectations
    In keeping with the cultural movement toward self-esteem boosting, open access education and reality-show social interactions, students now expect to be entertained and “engaged” in their classes. They do not particularly value self-motivation, organization, or the abundance of content available to them.
  • Anti-intellectualism
    Many also don’t value the development of knowledge, which requires reflection. The tendency toward multi-tasking and mashups of content encourages superficiality of intellectual process in a world already too accepting of snap judgements and “fly over” assessments of data.

Yes, there are certainly problems. Some students are disengaged, and today’s iPod is yesterday’s comic book or television. Some students who would succeed better in vocational education are now put through General Education, and consider a passing grade (not just equal access) to be a civil right. Many wish to be entertained, are restricted by instructors in their approach to material, and want to break away.

Some Middle Ground approaches might include:

  • Subversive innovation
    Tech-savvy, constructivist and/or connectivist instructional methods can be implemented (at least at the college level) inside the restrictive data-driven environment. This has been my solution for many years.
  • Acknowledging skills deficiencies
    It is foolish to assume that students know all the web tools, or how to use any technology (textbook, video, internet) for learning. Like the skills for a discipline, these must too be taught if we’re going to use the tools. (I don’t mean the technical skill of how to make PowerPoint slides, but rather the methods for creating new content through deep understanding of the old content.)
  • Professional development focused on pedagogy
    This would ensure that the instructor’s strengths are the focus of any method, rather than the latest trendy technology.
  • Supplemented assessment
    There are many types of success, and some, as I mentioned in my last post, have nothing to do with completing the class or earning a passing grade. To these mandatory manifestations of student success should be added “assessment” of potential and contribution.
  • Independent/alternative study
    Any independent options available to instructors could be used, including independent study, alternative assignments, and credit for outside work.
  • Thinking creatively.
baby in bathwater
No need to throw out the baby
or the bathwater
Flickr cc image from Pfau

None of these is new. All are techniques used for many years to provide instructors with approaches to respond to changing populations of students. There is no need to push the Hegelian dialectic to envision a synthesis of traditionalism with Edupunk, since a similar balance has been struck by good instructors for years. I’m sure you can think of at least one elementary or high school teacher you had who did these things. I personally recall my junior high English teacher, who let a gang of us write, rehearse and produce a play based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” instead of sit in class. We did all the standardized testing, fulfilled the curriculum, she just thought a little sideways. As a result, I always saw school as I environment I could change to fit my goals. Empowerment did not require a complete rejection of tradition, just a middle ground between extremes.

Leading Horses: notes on helping, failing and peeking

Lisa M Lane 2 Comments

I do some shocking things to help my students succeed:

  • Questions in advance: all multiple-choice quiz questions are available in advance, with two tries to check your score.
    But, I have students who don’t use them.
  • Late work accepted: All quizzes and assignments are accepted up to a week late for partial credit. For on-site classes, homework may be turned in as a replacement for the quiz for partial credit.
    But, I have students who don’t avail themselves of this and get 0 points.
  • Samples posted: each quiz is followed by real-life examples from the exams of current students.
    But, I have students who don’t read them.
  • Help available: each class features both an extensive FAQ and a Help forum open to all.
    But, I have students who write things like “I couldn’t find this cartoon at the website, so I can’t answer the question”.
  • Access to me: via IM, email, Messages, etc.
    But, I have students who don’t contact me all semester.
  • Shout-outs and encouragement: in every discussion forum, I summarize and note the contributions of particular individuals.
    But, I have students who don’t read my posts.
  • Self-assessments and rubrics: instead of just assigning participation points, students write self-assessments comparing their own performance to that of the rubric, on which I base my grade.
    But, I have students who don’t do it, or do it as if there were no rubric, or tell me what they think they should get in the class because of all the effort they feel they put into it.

So, some of them fail. I figure that among the various rights I ascribe to them is the right to fail. I’m trying to get past the point where I think every failure of theirs is because I did something wrong.

leading horse

Flickr photo by NeuralVibrance

It’s interesting to note that, over twenty years, I have experimented with many different methods, from the bizarrely open to the strict instructivist. I’ve done this both for myself, because I take pride in my work, and to increase student success. BUT the result in terms of assessments and drop-out rate is almost invariable. My retention and “success” statistics rarely shift over the long term, but my more open methods have created less stress for me and certainly more opportunities for students, if they take advantage of them.

Last week, an instructor wrote me, distressed because students who weren’t enrolled till fall were getting into this semester’s course to look at the tests (Moodle has a self-enrollment system). I discovered in the documentation that you can change your “enrolment key” to prevent this, and currently enrolled students won’t be affected, so I sent out a message to all Moodlers. Then I started to go through this semester’s courses to put in a code on all my classes (I don’t use one).

Then it occurred to me. As with all the other things I’ve done, it won’t make much difference. If a student from next semester sees the tests, they will face two sections. One is multiple-choice, where I already give the questions in advance anyone, and the other is essay, which I won’t grade, obviously. If they look at the sample essays I’ve posted, then try to copy and paste them, I’ll probably recognize them because they are the ones I selected as examples. If they use the samples to create their own, they’ll learn something anyway. I took the enrollment keys back off.

I was told once about a professor who had a huge test bank of multiple-choice questions, which he vigorously protected. He figured, as many do, that prevention of cheating could best be accomplished by having a huge test bank so students rarely got the same questions. The very day he got up to 1,000 questions in the test bank, he found a printed copy of all of the questions left behind at a student’s desk. At first he was angry. Then it occurred to him that if a student actually studied all 1,000 questions, they were learning anyway, so what the heck? I remember that story all the time to remind me what I’m trying to do, whether the students choose to fail or succeed, sideways or otherwise.

Oh goodie: extra credit in Moodle 1.9

Lisa M Lane 1 Comment

It’s that extra credit time of the semester, and here’s my workflow.

To add an extra credit assignment to a class, I first create an Assignment (offline) called EC. I select the maximum points (5) as the Grade, then select the category I use for graded items (mine is called Graded). I save.

Then I click on Grades (Grader Report) and be sure to “Turn editing on”. I click Control (writing hand) for that item, scroll to the bottom, and under “extra credit” put the total maximum points (5). That adds a column to the Gradebook in which I can manually enter the points and any comments, and add that number of points without affecting anyone else’s grades.

Seem unnecessarily cumbersome? Yup, to me too.

Shocked by the Slacking: Another Tale of Woe

Lisa M Lane 3 Comments

You’ve heard angst from me already, last month and in December, so if you can’t take anymore, leave now — there are some really cool videos over at YouTube.

I posted a question on Facebook today:

“To what extent do students care that they miss or fail tests? and has this changed over the past decade or so? “

and, having received no input inside five hours, added this:

OK, I may have found a clue. According to the new Survey of American College Students: Use of & Satisfaction with College Tutoring Services (http://www.primaryresearch.com/):
“Half of students with a full time job have used the college tutoring services while less than 27% of those that do not work at all have done so.”

What does this have to do with online teaching? After the first quiz in each of my online classes, I email those who missed it, reminding them of the schedule (a quiz every two weeks, due Monday at 5 pm) and the grading significance (10% each), asking if I can be of any help and offering the password to take the quiz late for partial points if they do it within a week. As expected, most students contacted me for the password.

But this week, Quiz 2 was due in two of my online classes, and Quiz 2 was given in my on-site class. More students missed the second quiz than the first (in my online Western Civ, a shocking 12 didn’t take it). I figured it might be the holiday, and sent a reminder inside my announcement. Only two students have contacted me to take it late, out of 19 who missed it.

At the same time, one student did contact me, having taken the second quiz, saying he couldn’t figure out the gradebook and how was he doing? He had 45% on the first quiz and 50% on the second, so I informed him he was failing thus far, and pointed him toward help: my comments inside the quiz, the correct answers marked there, the sample essays written by his colleagues posted at the site. He responded that he hoped he could still get an “A”, since his goal, after all, was transfer.

In my on-site class, the average on the second quiz (a C) was almost identical to the first test, but that doesn’t tell the story of essays so bad that I want to forbid them from leaving the 18th century to proceed to the 19th until I know they understand the former. It feels downright un-American to allow students to mosey on into industrialization when they have demonstrated an appalling lack of understanding regarding the basics of political and economic liberalism, even as it relates to our own American Revolution.

All of them have transfer as their goal. The college has excellent support systems, tutoring and student success workshops. I am available online a lot of the time to help. And yet several students arrived at the quiz without writing implements, a couple without Scantrons for the objective portion, several without their documents book (it’s an open document book test, as I expect some quotations for support and don’t want them memorizing).

As I’ve mentioned before, I do understand. I understand about illness, and family members dying, and job responsibilities. (I even understand car troubles, having been offered for the first time this week a note from the student’s mechanic for missing the quiz — you may have to be from southern California to get that one.) But I am aware that many of the students not doing their work do not have these problems. They just don’t do the work, and less than a third without an outside job access any help, according to the survey (and that’s at four-year schools with residential students — I’ll bet it’s even less at community/commuter college). I appreciate their optimism about their college career, and I’m always very honest with them about the quality of what they’re doing. I do not get angry about it, because maintaining a safe and comfortable environment for them to learn is more important. But when they’re not learning, it’s harder to know what to do.

OK, the new class format

Lisa M Lane 1 Comment

I decided to try an interactive syllabus, linked to graded activities in Moodle. My special thanks to the Moodle fairy (Mary Cooch) and Andrew Field for showing me, via Twitter, how to have a standard web page syllabus that links to Moodle exercises without hiding them and making them inaccessible. I almost had to give up the interactive syllabus as soon as I thought of it, but when I tweeted my despair, these two came through with this great suggestion.

As a result, the main page in Moodle is really focused:

Clicking on the Interactive Syllabus brings up one internal web page with everything linked from it:

They will have to bring something to class each day, and write a lot. For Mondays, they have typed homework, plus must post the thesis from that homework before class. At first I tried Assignments for that, but it didn’t let them see each other’s theses. Since thesis writing is a major historical skill, I want that more transparent. So I did it in Forums, one for each week, simple format. Then I’ll rate them using the same ratings I use for homework anyway. Because my default on my site lets students rate posts, I used the Override function for each forum to Prohibit students from “Rate posts” and “View any ratings”. That way their work is public, but their grades are private.

So I’m back to the idea that they must work online, here in the interest of sharing the most difficult task of the class: developed historical theses. I have tried small groups for this, or reading the theses aloud, but this is really more efficient. What I really wanted was to use the Q&A forum format, because they have to post first before they see what the other students posted. But the button to post said “Ask a question” (it’s supposed to be used for that), and I thought they’d be confused, since they aren’t asking a question. Just another way the technology controls the desired pedagogical method. Moodle giveth, and Moodle taketh away.

I kept it in Moodle even though I would have liked something more open. Partly this was for thesis sharing without fear, but mostly because of two issues: management (not always a big deal if I like what I’m doing) and materials. I confess: some of my materials are copyrighted by others, or not linked for attribution. For Fair Use, those should be behind a passworded system.

I’m thinking I need to design an open course from the ground up, without a textbook or other pre-conceived ideas. But for now, we’ll see how this works. As we start, I intend to let James Zull’s The Art of Changing the Brain (2002) influence what I actually do in class, as well as what I learned from Stephen Downes’ ideas of modeling and demonstrating as being a teacher’s main responsibility.

On to the England class….

Tangled in Pedagogy and Technology

Lisa M Lane 7 Comments

Still planning for spring. Online classes are set up as usual, because I need more than a winter break to plan for changes. Except for the England class — gotta get back to that.

But the class that’s throwing me, the one causing me the most post-CCK08 angst, is my on-site class at San Elijo. Last semester I did new things with lots of energy: history skill sets, portfolios, recording my lectures then adding the audio to the slides I used and posting it all on Slideshare.

Fall Results

But the students didn’t do that well. They weren’t bored, they enjoyed the class and my teaching, and even got into some very good discussions about history. But they obviously did very little work outside of class and did poorly on tests. It was clear they didn’t study, view the slideshows or review their notes. Only a few participated in the online discussions. They seemed highly resistant to using the computer for anything, even after a free-flowing, fun session together in the lab. Many, as I wrote before, turned work in quite late. I did count it, but they still did poorly overall, much more poorly than my online students.

In other words, lots of learning seemed to be happening, but real knowledge didn’t occur. This despite the fact that I developed test questions around what we discussed in class, not on some pre-set conception of what they should learn. I literally based questions on the issues they brought forward. I tried hard to evaluate learning, not just content. In short, it failed. And the extra credit blog I introduced failed too, because the students posted but refused to revise. Kind of a similar problem.

The Problem No One Wants to Discuss

Maybe I’m hitting a big issue: they don’t want to use the technology to learn. Maybe this is the Problem No One Wants to Discuss. Especially to the highly privileged students who grew up with the internet, the opportunity to create a slideshow is just another assignment. They’ve seen lousy PowerPoints for so long they are not only unimpressed, they are tempted to snooze like we used to do when a teacher got out the filmstrip machine. They actively resisted the online forum because it meant thinking about history on the “weekend” (which here is anything after noon on Wednesday). Perhaps I should leave the interactive web stuff for my online classes instead.

In our classrooms it seems to be the vivid lecturer, the riveting showman, who captures the audience. This is what students say they want (and I’ve asked them). I’ve been that person. Won a teaching award for it more years ago than I care to mention. Right after, I stopped lecturing all together for a few years, to see if I could do everything with groups and inquiry. Retention (how many students stay in the class) and scores stayed exactly the same. I’ve tried many different techniques over the years, but the numbers rarely budge (except for one totally open inquiry experiment, which had a 70% drop rate so I never did it again, even though several students who were successful still remember the class as important in their lives — it’s amazing what you can do with a handful of students instead of 200). But really, my lectures last semester were good, and we had plenty of discussion and groupwork and inquiry besides lecture. I just don’t think they learned beyond the moments in class.

The Open or Closed Decision

So I’m loathe to spend a lot of time revamping the other half of the class for spring. I didn’t like the closed nature of the website, and am considering revising it. But they didn’t use it much anyway, except (some) to check their grades, so I’m considering going backward. Not quite to quill and parchment, as I said in Twitter, but close: handouts with blanks to fill in, actual objects, pieces of paper that need to be put together in a portfolio. This desire fights with the obvious: put it online! have them blog! track their progress through journalling! open things up!

Dave Cormier and George Siemens are currently teaching an online class in emerging technologies. I was hoping I could sit in (like I did on Alec Couros’ now legendary EC&I 381 class), but it’s a closed class. I wondered why, but Dave’s blog post explained that some students might need a closed environment within which to share ideas that were not ready for fully public view. I understand that completely. So that puts the course back inside a CMS if I want them doing things online, perhaps. Or in closed blogs. Or something.

When Technology Works

Technologically, the best thing that ever happened was serendipitous: last year when they ignored me and used Moodle Messages to secretly talk (and work) among themselves. A student set that up; they never used my system. You can give a party, a good party, but it’s nothing if people don’t show up (and, hopefully, take over, serve drinks, do dishes).

The use of technology is not, as I’ve been reminded by Twitter pals Blanche Maynard and Ed Webb, the point. It’s about rendering technology transparent, putting the focus on the people and the learning. I teach that in our POT workshops all the time. Pedagogy first! The constructivists would say that the problem is that I gave them things, I lectured (even if only half the class time), I didn’t let them decide what they want to study, I didn’t cater to the Net Generation. Well, I think it’s obvious that it’s not technology that plays the catering role, and their learning is most important.

So after a decade, I’m back to debating with myself the intersection of pedagogy and technology, the development of different techniques, and the definition of a successful class. Trying to find causes and effects that may not be linked in actuality. And telling myself it’s really not the time to do that when class starts in less than two weeks.

Undoing Blackboard 8: Four-Step Recovery Program

Lisa M Lane 5 Comments

At MiraCosta, the tech folks set up a Blackboard class for every section, on-site or online, whether we like it or not. It’s set as unavailable, but students email asking where it is, and many use Blackboard like a portal. The result has been recommendations that we use our Bb course to guide students to our course if we use other places instead (i.e. Moodle, a blog, etc.).

My workflow for undoing a Bb class in four steps:

1. Create a standard web page with basic class information, including the URL to enter the real course.

2. Go into the course in Bb, Control Panel. Using Manage Course Menu, add External Link (with Name “This course is not in Blackboard”), linked to your information web page.

3. Still in Course Menu, Remove all other items.

4. In Manage Tools, Tool Availability, unclick all boxes for Communications Area and Tools Area. (This prevents fruitless clicking around the tools in the Tools box part of the Menu, which appears automatically otherwise.)

The result is a Bb page that shows your info page only, and from which students can go only to links you’ve got on that page. It’s even simpler than in previous versions of Bb, where you had to reset the entry page and could only modify menu items.

So go ahead. Lead them the heck out of there.

Now We’ve Done It

Lisa M Lane 4 Comments

After years of being accommodating to students, and providing flexibility to deal with their hectic schedules, and alternative assignments to cater to learning styles, we’ve done it. We’ve helped create an entire generation of students who assume alternatives for everything, and expect us to accommodate everything. They also comfortably assume that every instruction, limitation, restriction applied to their coursework will be repeated to them many times in a variety of formats, and are, at any rate, negotiable if they didn’t get it the first four times.

Yes, I’m to blame! Desiring a harmonious classroom, whether on-site or online, and genuinely feeling that stressed students are unhappy and do poorly, I’ve been relaxed and pretty darn accommodating for at least a decade. In my on-site classes, student homework gradually accumulates into a portfolio, so they can use their own work to reference for tests and the final exam (of which there is a take-home essay they draft in class). All due dates are posted, and reminded, and reminded again. When anything changes, which is rarely, I use email and in-class announcements, written on the board or posted prominently online or both. I don’t bother with doctor’s notes, and I don’t want to hear the excuses from their personal lives — they only upset me and make me feel I’m demanding personal revelations I myself wouldn’t be comfortable with. Instead, assignments a week late get partial credit.

So it’s kind of amazing to me that things still happen. A couple of weeks ago, I did not get a class’ weekly homework graded in time for the quiz. They are allowed to use their homework while they take the quiz, so I put the homework down for collection. I said, “I didn’t get the homework graded yet, so please use it now and then turn it in again with your quiz.” The students began to pick up their homework. “Hey,” the first one said, “how come there’s no grade on this?” I explained, so all could here, that I had not graded the homework in time, so please use it for the quiz and just turn it in again so I could grade it. Lots of nods. About 20 seconds later: “Excuse me? why is there no mark on this?” I explain again, to a chorus of nodding. About 15 seconds later, “Whoa! there’s no grade on my homework!” I say, very loudly, “For the fourth time…”

Today, the plan was to submit the take-home final essay, then sit down and take a short assessment for half the final exam grade. They had drafted the essay in class last week, then taken it home. Instructions were to submit the typed final version with the draft attached, and had been announced in class repeatedly and posted to the website in two places. I usually have a student or two that doesn’t get it, and comes in without the draft. This semester, half a dozen students did that. Two chose to drive home during the two-hour period to get their draft; the others said “oh well” and they’d take the grade they got. One only had the draft, not the final copy. Instead, they turned in the portfolio that was due two weeks ago.

And I don’t think the answer is more policy I can point to and say: “the syllabus says if you get it to me more than a week late it doesn’t get points” or “this won’t be accepted after x”. It’s about people, not policies and rules. That just justifies my power, which I hold anyway, by virtue not only of my position, but by the respect of my students. Unlike some professors, I do hold this respect, regardless of policies and grades, to be the underlying operating system of my classes. And yet, that personal respect does not extend to my artificially created deadlines, primarily intended to distribute my workload from 200 students each semester. So an increasing number of students turn stuff in, you know, later, whenever, by the end of the semester.

Enabling, that’s what they call it. I really don’t like to be harsh, but I can’t imagine them negotiating every deadline (most don’t even both to negotiate it — they just skip it and hand it to me later) and requiring instructions be repeated four times in the working world. I hope they grow up to be highly successful professional surfers, fashion designers or movie producers with a secretarial staff and personal assistants to take care of them, but some won’t. It sure keeps things friendly but, even setting aside my own mild annoyance at all this, I don’t think we’re doing them a service.

Student Tags and What They’re Into

Lisa M Lane 1 Comment

As usual, you find interesting things while trying to do something else. In this case, while trying to figure out how to tag resources for the Program for Online Teaching site, I instead discovered that Moodle tracks words students tag in their Profiles. Here’s what I got for this semester:

The size/boldness shows how often words were used. Notice how “History” is standard size, while music, beer, Beach, surfing, Travel, Photography etc. are much larger. Really shows what they’re into.

Abandoning the Idea of Distance Ed

Lisa M Lane 4 Comments

I arrive back at my blog after a stint as a student in the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge class. I created a separate blog, and found myself in an environment led by marvelous techno-utopians who believed that learning would be vastly improved if teachers got the hell out of the way and let learners find their own way among the sea of information and perspectives available via “today’s technology”, by which they meant the internet. In such an environment, I became (uncomfortably, to be sure) a traditionalist, pointing out the value of historical perspectives, 17th and 18th century learning theories, and previous media revolutions. I also became very critical of the current net hype.

The abilities of individuals to engage in this “connective” activity was assumed, rather than discussed. Even before the class I was aware that there was a perception that the “Net Generation” is different, that those born after, say, 1990 think and behave differently, that their brains are wired for speed, multitasking, simultaneous multiple inputs. I have even taught other faculty, in workshops on individual learning styles, that those who are younger (or, I was quick to add, sophisticated in their use of technology regardless of generation) didn’t see technology the same way as the other people. The net gen’ers, of whatever age, don’t see the technology itself, and only care about what it does.

While taking the class, I read Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation (2008), with its extensive research demonstrating that the younger crowd is self-centered (or friend-centered) and permanently adolescent, thanks in part to their overuse of the internet for social networking. I can easily see his research in my own students, many of which are entitled, dependent, and print illiterate. [Only just now, while writing this post, I had a student frantically contacting me because she did not submit an assignment when it was due, by 5 pm. I closed the assignment at 6 pm (an hour’s grace, I thought), so it afterward required a password. In the last few hours she has emailed me 5 times, asking why I’m not immediately answering her message to give her the password. This pecular combination of entitlement, dependency and lack of personal responsibility is endemic — this is an “A” student I’m talking about.]

Now I am reading Don Tapscott’s Grown up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World (2008), which shows research the opposite of Bauerlein’s and promises a better world led by this generation. And it was here I finally understood the word “transparency”, the idea that a technology with which one grows up is transparent: you don’t see it. Most people of my generation still see the technology, talk about “using the computer” to do something. To Net Gen’ers, that would be like “using the television” instead of “watching Dancing with the Stars”, or “using the refrigerator” instead of “getting something to eat”.

This view connected immediately into my (recently evolving) position on the role of online education. In the Program for Online Teaching, we have begun seeing the same faces at the workshops, and they aren’t the faces on our technology decision-making bodies. When I invite other faculty to a workshop, many tell me they’re not interested in teaching online, so they don’t go. A couple of months ago I began sending out the POT newsletter to all faculty instead of those on the interest list, but there was no increase in participation. Then just in the last few weeks, we’ve had people who are new to campus searching around for some online teacher “training”, as if the Program for Online Teaching, with its extensive pedagogy-based workshops, didn’t exist.

I have begun to realize that the problem is separating online from teaching. Online teaching is, in all substantial ways, the same as any other teaching. When we say it’s different, we are seeing the technology — it isn’t transparent. And the result is that we focus on the technology, the course management systems and who runs them, and how to do this thing in Blackboard, and how to “train” college instructors. We create separate Distance Education departments, with separate deans, and talk about our “Distance Education program” because we see it as separate from our other education program. And I’m starting to think that such a perspective might be hopelessly old-fashioned and backward-looking, like asking how we can improve the reception with the rabbit ears instead of wondering if there’s something better to watch on the television.

I think it’s time for some good old-fashioned desegregation. Good teaching is good teaching, regardless of venue/mode. Not every lecturer can do well with small group work, not every constructivist can give a great lecture, not every in-class teacher can teach well online. No big surprise there. The technology itself has advanced enough that we can afford for it to be as transparent as the chalkboard, the overhead, the VCR. (Did anyone ever offer training on how to effectively use a video in class?) Perhaps we can stop separating our “distance”, “classroom”, and “hybrid” thinking, and instead work on teaching and learning.

Top Five Myths of Teaching Online

Lisa M Lane 4 Comments

1. I gotta use Blackboard.

No, you don’t, even if your institution sets you up a Bb or WebCT class and has a policy saying you must use it. Blackboard, or any course management system, is just a shell. There are a zillion features you’ll never use. Or maybe you’re an innovator who’d rather teach with blogs and wikis. Solutions:

  • Learn to use the Control Panel’s Course Menu to change all the buttons. Make invisible those features you won’t use. Remove them from Tools. This makes it easier for students anyway.
  • If you want to use the web inside your class, add Course Menu buttons and link out to the URLs of blogs, wikis, etc., being sure to tell students they’ll need to set up accounts. But the pages themselves will look like they’re in Blackboard unless you tell it to open them on a new screen.

2. It takes too much time.

That depends on how you organize, and what you want to do. It is a mistake to assume you must create the entire class before it starts, and have everything visible to students as they enter. Think in terms of it being a regular class, just online instead of in a physical classroom. The same time-savers and time-wasters come into play. Yes, there is a learning curve, so it may feel more like your first year of teaching than your tenth. If you are already web-savvy, this time is negligible. If not, make time first to play on the web.

3. It’s not like real teaching.

It is real teaching in every sense, from preparing class materials, to planning for interaction, grading, and expressing your professorial personality. If you don’t believe that, ask to sit in on an online class someone else is teaching. The trick is to set up a class that demands your online presence, and use every opportunity to create a classroom personality through the way you write and what you create. Some instructors need set times to go in and add to discussion or message students on their progress, so they’re always aware of what’s going on “in class”. Others are on the web anyway and “stop by” daily.

4. The students know more than I do.

If you mean cellphones and Facebook, yes, they just might. Although you could use these technologies to teach, it’s unlikely you’d choose to do so. Students’ superior kills in social interaction technologies do not translate directly into learning online, anymore than being socially popular translates to in-class performance. You know your discipline and you know how to teach more than they know how to learn, in any environment. And anything they know that you want to know, they’ll be delighted to teach you.

5. I don’t know how.

You can learn from others, or just get started. Create a class, planning it just like you would an on-site class. For every element you do in class, look in your course management system or search on the web to figure out how to do it online. Experimentation is key — you can’t break anything. Get technical help when and if you need it. Start small, and build more into your class after you teach it the first time.

We Interrupt this Programming for a Gradebook Rant

Lisa M Lane 5 Comments

True, much of my time and writing now is being spent at my new connectivism course blog , but at the same time I am grading exams in Moodle 1.9 and am engaged in a fight to the death with the new Gradebook.

To understand this sucker seems to require an advanced degree in mathematics, and prior intensive participation in its development. I have neither. The big complaints so far are:

  • Scales in forums now translate automatically as percentages in gradebook.? You cannot stop this. You create a quantitative scale (i.e. “good post”, “pretty good post”, “needs some research”) and it translates it to the percentage grade out of how many items you have (in this case, three, so a student would get 66% for a “pretty good post”). It’s horrible. My scales are truly qualitative, and a high or low isn’t necessarily implied. For example, some of my scales for forums have “related to readings”, “reply to colleague”, “focused on lecture”. These do not have numerical equivalencies. The only way to turn it off seems to be at the full-site level, where doing so would also eliminate the possibility to have numerical scales aggregated into the grade. The only way to get scales ignored seems to be to use the simple “Sum of Grades” aggregation only. Right now I’m using the Quick Feedback to “grade” my onsite students’ homework, which is horribly clumsy.
  • You can’t have extra credit within a quiz. My quizzes all have 22 questions, with 11 maximum points, for a total of 10 points credit. Get that? One of the questions is “extra credit”, but it doesn’t matter which one. In Moodle 1.8, I could set the quiz maximum score at 11, and the maximum score for that quiz as a gradebook item at 10. Then if someone got 10.5, it would just add the extra in, but everything would calculate correctly in terms of percentage.Now I have to make my course total 110 points, and recalculate the entire letter scale so it fits properly.

And, on the page where you can edit all the various levels of grades (full course, category, category total, item — it’s ridiculously complicated), you cannot use Ajax (drag-and-drop) to organize things into categories, because of “accessibility issues”. Really, cumbersome isn’t the word. Just look at a section of instructions on how to use it:

I’m sure I’ll find more awful things. The big problem is that this is not just a situation where familiarity will solve the problems — it’s a big deal for novice users (and I’m not even one of those). I have always encouraged Moodle as being great for novices, and all novices start with the same three features (announcements, forums, and gradebook). Such complexity in the name of creating a more “robust” gradebook is unforgivable, and has undermined my encouragement to others to use Moodle.

To use a dinner-time analogy, a big hunk of meat on the table is impressive, but it is not much use if you can’t cut it with the knife you have. My carving knife broke using this new gradebook, and now I’m looking for a hatchet.

Overview of Participation

Lisa M Lane

Moodle does not let you see everyone’s forum participation all at once, unless you select only one forum. I have a forum for each week in each class, and ask the students to assess their own participation. Not that I don’t trust them, and of course I know who’s there a lot by reading their posts, but I like some stats to peruse while I assess their assessments.

Today I let Moodle’s download feature help me. Although I cannot get Moodle to sort by name when I ask for a report of all participations on all days, even limiting it to Add (to show only what they’ve contributed), it will do it when I download, in this case to Excel.

Then I can sort the entire chart by their name (Column D) and see easily whether they’ve posted the required number of times at the frequency I’ve requested.

Trying Something Less Controlling

Lisa M Lane 2 Comments

Just tonight, frantic that I hadn’t gone in yet to do all the discussion summaries I began doing over a year ago, it occurred to me that the students should do them.

I have been modeling and demonstrating (which is my job, I learned from Stephen Downes’ paper of 2006 in the crazy class I’m taking) for six weeks. Every week I’ve summarized the discussion, citing the students’ posts, noting their contributions, and suggesting leading analytical questions based on what they discussed (and didn’t discuss).

So tonight in the two classes which have the most active, intellectual, creative forum posts, I wrote instead:

We have several excellent threads, or topics, going here.

For the last several weeks, I have come in and summarized at this point, then presented some further leading questions.

This week, I’d like to have you do that.

Choose one topic/thread, and summarize that thread only (if the thread you want has been taken already, reply to that person’s post to add your input — please don’t repeat information). Use quotations and cite each other’s posts, as well as your sources from the class as needed. See whether we can develop a thesis (a statement with a point of view) for each topic area.

This is a really good class and I think you can do it! 🙂

Something feels really right about this, though of course I can’t predict whether it will work. I have been seeking places in these classes where I can turn more control over to the students. I have not had the opportunity to provide as many different options for earning points as I would like, and this technique would make it necessary for students to read the work of their colleagues and comment, rather like a blog, instead of just responding to my prompt. We’ll see how it goes…

OK, I’m a geek

Lisa M Lane

I’ve always resisted the word “geek”. I mean, after all, it’s not like I actually write code or anything. I don’t actually make my living with a computer (I’m a teacher!), I’m not an educational technologist or instructional designer.

But then it became necessary to avoid the cable company, and the world of U-Verse. I was going to boycott the Olympics, but having heard an alternate position on Tibet from my activist student from China (another post for another time), I decided to watch after all. I have a DSL modem through AT&T, and it broke. They were so awful about replacing it, I didn’t want to give them more money by buying U-Verse for my TV. And the cable company turned out not to be the cable company any more. I haven’t had cable in years, and didn’t realize they’re all divided among various vendors offering different deals. I didn’t trust the company that offered me the good deal, and the actual TimeWarner wanted me to pay a bunch for two weeks of Olympics.

So I geeked out. I had read that nbcolympics.com was going to broadcast a lot of the games. I borrowed one of those really big screen televisions (like I’d buy one), and tried to hook up my iBook to it. I had a cable for that from hooking it up to an external monitor, so no problem. But when I went to the website, it informed me that to use Microsoft’s new Silverlight technology to watch the games, I needed to be on an Intel Mac.

So I disconnected by iMac from everything on my desk, moved it into the living room, and had to borrow a special cable to hook it up to the TV. That meant setting up my iBook to the external monitor on my desk (luckily I found that cable in the old box for my iBook). But the iMac couldn’t play sound into the big TV, only video. So I got out some USB speakers I use for my iBook, and plugged them in.

Between NBC on my little antenna and nbcolympics.com, I was able to watch Olympics happily (even the equestrian and synchronised swimming events!) for two weeks. So yeah, now I’m a geek. Except for those low-tech sticky notes stuck to my computer.

Workflow for Preview of Cached Pages

Lisa M Lane

Problem: I have many links to web pages throughout my history lectures, and many change addresses or disappear over time. Logically, I have begun caching pages using Furl. Furl will save a cached (saved) version of a page, and then I can link to that. As I was looking at the lecture pages to find the downed links, it occurred to me that would be easier with a preview pop-up window, like Snap. That would also make it easier for students to see where the link goes.

So I got a Snap account, and they kindly agreed upon request to get rid of the ad links. At first, I had trouble. The Snap window clicked through to the right page, but the Snap preview window showed only the Furl log-in page, which is useless. Then after a few tries, the right page would come up. At first I thought it was Snap screwing up. So I tried Snap alternatives Thumbshots and iwebtool’s Thumbnails, but no joy. So I wrote to the Furl folks, but getting no response and taking this recommendation, I tried Diigo instead.

I have not previously been impressed with Diigo. In fact, I originally planned for it to appear on my list of disappointments in my next post. But it created archived pages faster and more conveniently than Furl, with its own pop-up window for tagging.

In the meantime, Katie at Snap.com responded to my plea. Turns out I was rushing the system (as usual). She told me that it wasn’t that I had to click so many times for the right page to show, but that the first user seeing it the first time (me) causes the page image to capture properly. It should display any cached page correctly from then on, so all I need to do is check my links when I’m done. A bit clumsy, but doable.

So here’s the workflow. First, I add the tiny javascript from Snap to the body of each lecture webpage. That enables all the Snap windows to pop up on any external link. I find the page it links to (easier if it’s there, otherwise I have to search or find a new one). Then I bookmark that page in my Diigo toolbar, tagging it with the course and lecture number. Then I use the Diigo toolbar menu -> This URL -> Cached version. That brings up the cached version of the page, which starts with a Diigo address. I copy the URL into my weblecture page.

Now I can see all the downed links using Snap, students can see a preview and then go to a cached page that never disappears. I like it!

Cats and Dogs

Lisa M Lane 8 Comments

I’ve spent much time discussing Multiple Intelligences and Learning Styles, and I usually offer Gardner’s model as demonstrated through the website at LiteracyWorks.org. It’s an easy-to-use site, and has a multiple intelligences survey that produces immediate results. I ask students to take it first thing in the semester, and post their results and reactions.

The other day I was driving past one of those places where they train dogs in classes. I noticed one instructor and about a dozen dogs in this fenced area, and I thought, “to need training, that must be a pretty unruly bunch of dogs”. But they weren’t really. They seemed to be looking around to see what the other dogs were doing, and adjusting their behavior because dogs are, after all, pack animals. And I thought of my students.

I’m thinking I can reduce learning styles to two: Cat Learners and Dog Learners.

Leave Cat Learners alone with a book in a sunny window, keep it quiet, and they learn just fine. Cat Learners are independent, and are thus either self-motivated or not interested in having anyone motivate them. They shun social learning and avoid group work. Their judgement of the value of their work is internal. They tend to fit into Gardner’s logic, language and self learning models.
Dog learners are social, learn best in a group, and need active learning exercises. They require external verification and enforcement (“good doggy! have a biscuit”), and tend to fit into Gardner’s social and body movement styles. Dogs run with the pack, and aren’t comfortable doing anything by themselves.

Yeah, it’s a massive oversimplification. And certainly there are variations in individuals, just as some cats like company and some dogs are very smart and independent. But it’s helped me distill all my problems with teaching into one image: me the Cat trying to teach classes full of Dogs. Think I’ll break out the biscuits.

The Other Research on Students

Lisa M Lane 3 Comments

Starting perhaps with Mark Prensky’s definitions of “digital natives” and “digital immigrants” in his 2001 article, online teachers hear a lot about the Net Gen students. I continually point people toward the 2005 EDUCAUSE book “Educating the Net Generation“, and there are many resources saying that our upcoming college students are tech-savvy information seekers who love technology. The conclusion is that we’d better get with the program and jazz stuff up to ensure “engagement”. I’ve been immersed in this for a long time, speaking the language, walking the walk and talking the talk.

That always felt odd, because my own experience with my own students didn’t back it up. They don’t seem to know how to do basic maneuvers on the internet, even inside a CMS. They don’t seem that interested in technology, though they use cell phones incessantly and listen to their MP3 players in class while watching skateboarding contests at YouTube on their laptops.

Now I’ve been reading things that back up what I’ve been seeing. Partly I’m relieved. Partly I want to go back to everyone I’ve ever talked to about Net Genners and say, “wait! I was wrong!” Mostly I want to reassure novice online instructors that they don’t have to worry that the students know the technology better than they do. They have to worry that they have no idea how to use it for academic work. (If you watched my video from my presentation at San Diego City College, you know I spent a lot of time on this although I hadn’t planned to!)

So here’s what I’ve been reading:

Maybe these will make you feel better too.

Seeking Workflows

Lisa M Lane

At a workshop given early this semester, I found myself teaching an instructor a workflow. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to do something in Blackboard, but that she needed a quick click-click-click task pattern to do something efficiently.

The other day I was listening to the podcast of Stephen Downes’ presentation on Personal Learning for Alec Couros’ EC&I 831 class at the University of Regina. As Downes took us through his Personal Learning Environment, he showed how he uses tools like Plex, MyGlu, RSS Writr, and Edu_RSS to sort through information (I think these tools are his own inventions). Although it was certainly not the point of the presentation, I found myself focusing on his workflow.

Then I stumbled on CogDogBlog’s post and replies about Web 2.0 gems, which led me through one of Alan’s own responses to FlickrCC (where I can find creative commons license images more quickly), which offered editing for the images in Piknik, an online image editor. I imagined a workflow when I need an image:

Find image in FlickrCC -> edit in Picknik -> download to desktop -> upload to website

Of course, when I tried it, I found I couldn’t put the attribution link in easily at all. It kept making it too big for the image. I usually do this kind of thing in html, or by editing the image in GraphicConverter. So the workflow became:

Find image in FlickrCC -> Save Image As to image folder -> open Graphic Converter -> create margin -> copy and paste attribution text and save -> open Dreamweaver -> upload image

Not fun. I know some of my current workflows are more cumbersome than they need to be. I open Dreamweaver every time I want to upload a file. But I keep stumbling on the same issues with web apps. It looks like the workflow will be great, but then it doesn’t work in a key area.

I bookmark to Del.icio.us. This should be easy, because Firefox has a toolbar button. Ideally, I go to a page, I want to bookmark it, and a window pops up to tag it:

Find page -> click toolbar button -> tag

Works fine from my office computer. From my home computer, I have to log in to Del.icio.us every time I start a new session. This is a separate pop-up window, and I lose track of what I wanted to bookmark in the first place.

Today I am seeking an online presentation tool, a PowerPoint beater. I tried Zoho Show (see previous post). OpenOffice’s presenter was too slow on my iBook. I downloaded a demo version of PulpMotion and tried Empressr, but they only seemed to accept local files, audio and video I either record on the spot or already possess, nothing from the web like embedded YouTube. I tried Preezo, but it only inserts an image (though it does let you use a URL for that) or text, no multimedia. So now I’ll keep going through other people’s tool lists. It’s not that I couldn’t go further and possibly make these other programs do what I want, but why should I have to?

So I’m thinking I’m not looking for good web apps any more. I’m looking for good workflows.

Zoho Show

Lisa M Lane 1 Comment

I created my first Zoho Show for illustrating lecture last night, and ran it in class today.

http://show.zoho.com/embed?USER=llane&DOC=Politics%20and%20Culture%20After%20the%20Great%20War&IFRAME=yes

There were a few problems with creation.

  • The text boxes were unwieldy. They did not appear at the spot I clicked, and got confused with other image boxes on the page, so that when I tried to select a text box, it chose the nearby image box.
  • Text entry was very clunky.
  • The embedded YouTube videos, even when I made them smaller, did not play in sync on either my desktop or the class computer, and the links didn’t work in class. The start-up arrow went way to the side in class too.
  • I couldn’t export; ended up with a screen of code. (That’s OK, since the publish and embed feature obviously works well!)
  • As the slideshow grew, response time got slower and slower, to the point where I’d forgetten what I was doing waiting for something to load, or got to far ahead of the software and it lost my keystrokes.

Of course, it is also missing audio narration, so it’s not ready for an online class yet unless I use another program to record.

Good aspects were that it was easy to manipulate images, slides could be rearranged, and its default image size was manageable. It also has good publish and embed features for the finished product. I’d like to see Zoho develop audio narration recording for each slide, and fix the text issues.

Preventing Fear

Lisa M Lane 1 Comment

I dreamt the other night that I went to the first day of class as a student, an upper division or graduate class of some kind. About 20 students. The professor walks in and begins an interactive lecture. I realize I don’t understand what he’s talking about.

I look around and see that each of the other students has a stack of about 7 books. Seeing I’m lost, a helpful student opens one and points to a chapter for me. But it’s obvious from the way the professor is talking that everyone has read this already. Before the first day of class. Everyone is quite literally “on the same page”, and I have no idea what’s being discussed.

I’m thinking now, as I plan for workshops next week for faculty, whether faculty feel the same way. They come to the workshops, and it seems like they were supposed to know something before they came, but they don’t know what. I need a place to start to make them comfortable.

The emphasis on pedagogy, rather than technology, is one way to do that. We all can talk about teaching, classrooms, our students. Not everyone is online. If the approach is to take ones teaching methods, and apply them in a different environment, it not only properly de-emphasizes technology, it may increase the comfort level in seminars. My colleague Jim Sullivan did this so effectively last fall, and it’s an approach we all need to take as we help faculty navigate the technology for what it is: just a toolset for achieving your pedagogical goals.

Finding the Sweet Spot

Lisa M Lane 3 Comments

The smoke in So Cal has given me some time to think about last Friday’s workshops (it’s not like I’d go outside or anything!).

Jim‘s plan for the workshop went well, though we did have to remind people that their big goals should focus on pedagogy rather on content. As people talked about their needs, I created a list of issues and possible solutions. The list was organized as we went along, according to the categories I semi-remembered from the current e-learning research. Because each presenter had different strategies, a lot of possible solutions emerged.

At the Showcase which followed, I had expected instructors to show off their online classes, but since each only had 10 minutes, they each showed one special thing they’re doing. Historian Karl Golemo demonstrated not only his PowerPoint with Audio, but also talked about having students submit assignments as PDF files, then commenting in handwriting on his electronic Wacom Intuos Pad tablet using Bluebeam PDF Revu. (This approach, it turns out, is featured in recent research by Vicky Morgan and Cheri Toledo). Julie Harland demonstrated how she’s integrated Pearson’s Course Compass CMS into her classes. Louisa Moon showed us her illustrated lectures and how she runs discussion in Blackboard (she’s been my inspiration for years!). Karen Smith showed how she structures discussion for hospitality students (who often have English as a second language). Kit Hudnutt showed how she has used Articulate software to create interactive units inside the CMS for internship orientations.

What was really apparent in both workshops was that two key strategies for online instructors are:

  • find something you love doing in class, and try to replicate it online
  • find one thing you really want to do online, and become an expert at that, whether it’s an application or a technique

For example, one instructor wants to do foreign language conversation online, and becomes an expert at Skype and Elluminate to achieve that goal. Another wants to duplicate work in groups, and becomes expert at the Groups feature in the course management system. Another loves podcasting, and begins recording lectures and posting them with RSS syndication. They ask questions, they Google things, they play with applications. After the initial learning curve, creating materials or facilitating interaction takes very little time.

In other words, each of us has a “sweet spot”, something we care about or a technology we love to use. We get really good at it, and it provides the core of our online classes. This was enlightening to me — none of us are great at all of it, but our sweet spots keep our enthusiasm going and that communicates to students, even (or especially!) in an online environment.

What would you like to do?

Lisa M Lane 1 Comment

My big plan (yeah, I have one) is to get folks to recognize that the pedagogy must come before the technology. While technology can inspire us, at its base it is just a set of tools (or toolset, in the current lingo — like Sears Craftsman).

Good classroom teachers moving into an online environment tend to let the available/popular/supported technology dictate what they do. That’s like letting my wrench, screwdriver and tape measure tell me what to build (though that would make a good Disney movie). Isn’t it more natural to look at a piece of wood, determine it needs to be cut in half, then look for the right saw?

I have seen classroom teachers who excel at discussion and interaction give it up when they get online, and instead start loading Word documents into the preset Blackboard categories. What a waste! So many free tools are now available to do these things, and if a Course Management System must be used, these sites can be linked out from inside what one presenter at Ed-Media called “BlackCT”.

So whatcha want to do? Have students work in groups to create posters and present to the whole class? Try Bubbleshare, which lets students upload and edit slide programs, using the Groups feature of the CMS for discussion, or use Skype so the students can talk to each other as a group. Have students annotate visuals? You can use Flickr for that, either uploading the images yourself or having them do it. Have them study urban growth over time? Try Trulia Hindsight. Collaborate on a paper or wiki, or use free applications for planning, meeting or writing? Zoho is good.

More tools are available all the time. It’s about what you want to have happen. Dream first. Then find the socket wrench.

Advice for Beginners

Lisa M Lane 1 Comment

Margie White‘s presentation at the @ONE conference, though supposedly about Effective Time Management Techniques, was actually an outstanding primer on how to start teaching online.Her first main area was organization. First one must organize oneself, focusing without interruptions and avoiding multi-tasking unless you’re really good at it. You organize your students by being clear with instructions and answering class questions in a public place, like a discussion forum. Organizing materials can best be done by using your own file system, instead of typing things into the Course Management System. (This was dear to my heart, as I’ve been advising folks to do this for years!). I was also delighted to hear her advise that instructors organize and learn their technology: CMS, browser, manipulating images, html (also dear to my heart), accessibility, and screenshot programs.

Next came a discussion of consistency, in materials and course design so that students develop habits of moving through your course. She recommended repeating things in multiple places, using a template for presentation pages, and creating a pattern of online assignments (i.e. “due every Wednesday”). For good instructor workflow, Margie recommended creating the schedule around the instructors’ times for grading and working on the class.

Last was planning (though of course all of this requires planning!). An important point here was Margie’s encouragement for staggering the opening times of course content, as opposed to showing the whole 17 weeks at once. An entire course calendar may be used, but materials only made available a few weeks ahead, to prevent overload. One unique recommendation was keeping a text file of “canned” comments often given on assignments, which can also help retool instructions for the next semester. Working on student boundaries was part of planning: helping students keep up, and being flexible while not allowing them to ignore deadlines.

An outstanding review of what every instructor needs to know, and some ideas I’ll be using myself!

Two Conferences

Lisa M Lane 1 Comment

I am currently attending the @ONE 2007 Online Teaching Conference, being partly webcast from Ohlone College in Fremont, CA. I was quite reassured to hear David Balch’s presentation “A View from the Trenches“, especially when he talked about his answer to faculty concerns about student identity (“how do I know the online student is the person enrolled in the course?”). His answer was the same as mine: unless we check ID, we also don’t know whether the student who walks into our class is the same one on our rosters. Other heartening elements included the new focus on interactivity and recent surveys that show that faculty resistance to online instruction is fading.

The Future of Education 2007 conference (University of Manitoba) just ended (I am still catching up on the recordings). I was fascinated by Dave Cormier‘s presentation and the reaction to it. He presented on “Snowclones, Clichés and Memes”. . . sort of. There were presentation difficulties, since the technology he was using went down during the presentation, which focused on using online community to create learning, with the attendees acting as the students. A lot of attendees were trying to understand the topic itself, which related to the use of language. Cormier used a Pageflakes site, and showed the potential of such a feed aggregator for creating online learning communities.

Also wonderful was Brian Lamb‘s “DIY: Educators Gone Wild” presentation on mashups, Open, Connected, and Social, which made me feel better about mixing up all that pure educational content.

What I always find wonderful about these conferences, in addition to the friendly and helpful colleagues, is the chance to see what pieces of technology are being used by people who actually know what they’re doing! The Future of Education conference was so professional: synchronous and recorded sessions with Elluminate, Camtasia recordings, Moodle website with discussion forums, Pageflakes site, and podcasts so I can listen now that it’s over. And thanks to the presenters and organizers, I’ll look more carefully at Pageflakes (aggregator), SurveyMonkey (for surveys), Drupal (another CMS) and MediaWiki .

I also learn what I don’t like: at the @ONE conference, they used CCCConfer, which has the bother of audio over the telephone instead of through the computer speakers (I have a dial phone and thus a crick in my neck from today’s presentation). In Firefox, I had trouble getting the webcast to work even though I had the plug-in (WindowsMedia, naturally) installed. I had to reinstall it and use Safari instead to see the video, which was of excellent quality. The people at CVC are fabulous, though, and I was delighted to see people I knew, like Andrea Henne of SDCCD, and meet new folks just starting out in teaching online. One excellent presentation by Patricia Delich focused on tips for developing ones first online class. Good resources she provided included an assessment of technology skills for instructors, 10 activities before starting development [pdf], and a good online course rubric for both design and evaluation purposes.

I confess, however, I am suffering from Web 2.0 conference burn-out. Which is too bad, since I’m off to ED-Media in two weeks!