Category: Pedagogy

Last week the second day of my Western Civ on-site class began with an in-class exercise in groups on the topic “What Is History?”. I had told them on the first day that anyone who didn’t log in to the class website and post their photo or avatar would have their picture taken next time!

I brought my digital camera, and as the groups finished their in-class work each stepped outside, with the group leader (appointed from students who had logged in after the first class) taking the snapshots.

Then we all went down to the computer lab, which I’d reserved for the occasion. It didn’t have enough stations so some had to share or wait. I asked who knew how to get the pics into a Windows computer? A student volunteered, and went round to the stations helping students upload their image (we put the directory path on the board once he’d figured it out).

Then I quickly created a new forum in Moodle, and asked everyone to go in and post their own thoughts about the in-class group results for “What is History?”. Then each had to respond to one other student’s post by stating the post’s thesis and giving an opinion on it. Final task was to find and read the assignment for the first homework. Right there, with all of us in the room, we’re uploading pics, doing online discussion, and going over the homework assignment for the following week.

It sounds bizarre, but the energy in the room was excellent. Everyone was helping each other, no one felt stupid, they all participated. Very decentralized; all I did was write a couple of notes on the board and help a few people. Their participation is greater now, a week later, because they all became comfortable with the system together, rather than in the unsupported privacy of their own home or library. I enjoyed this immensely!

I have just discovered the Journal of Interactive Online Learning, and an article by John R. Savery of the University of Akron entitled “BE VOCAL: Characteristics of Successful Online Instructors” (Vol 4, No. 2, Fall 2005). VOCAL is a list of attributes:

V = Visible – the concept of having a social presence online so that students are aware of an interpersonal relationship. Helpful strategies include having a website about you including a photo and hobbies, making comments in a timely manner, using Announcements to broadcast mesages throughout the semester, and using brief video or audio messages.
O = Organized – since learners have a greater responsibility to manage their time, we can help by providing good organization, providing assignments and due dates early (I recommend these at the beginning of the class), explaining the rules of the class, providing a social interction area, creating a forum topic for class procedures, offering alternative formats for information, and using “selective release” of materials.
C = Compassionate – “Email provides an unusual combination of intimacy, privacy, and distance” and compassionate management of student issues is very important, including direct communication with individual students, ice-breaker techniques to create community, making exceptions, and reminding individuals of class rules.
A = Analytical – this relates to assessment, since many factual question will only test what students have in front of them; strategies include tracking students’ progress, providing smaller and more frequent assessments, providing the opportunity for students to evaluate the course at the mid-point, and assessing participation.
L = Leader-by-example – concerns exhibiting the online behaviors you wish to see and providing helpful feedback, sharing information about yourself informally, following through with promises, modeling communication, using public and private communication channels appropriately, and creating an end-of-class activity to provide closure.

Much of this advice is very useful, in particular the first three items. If an instructor is Visible, Organized and Compassionate, success is much more likely. I had the most trouble with the last one, since it concerns the affective domain. I am not a “touchy-feely” instructor, and have had to become one in an online environment (lots of smily faces!) in order to overcome the formality of my writing and the distance inherent in the medium.

I did not agree with the entire article. I believe we instructors have a right to privacy, and do not think that discussing our personal lives and hobbies is necessary to maintain student rapport, though I will consider revealing more about myself than I do now as I continue to evolve online. I also do not agree that “asking recall type questions is pointless”, since I want students referencing their texts and materials, and excellent fact retention can rightfully earn a C-level grade in my class. Certainly a B or A requires interpretation and analysis, but I see nothing wrong with using multiple-choice tests as review and/or to assess facts. But overall a good article! 🙂

A few years ago I was influenced by a story I heard of a professor who worked hard to prevent cheating online. He created a huge test bank of hundreds of questions, from which the software selected for each quiz. One day, after adding another bunch of questions to the test bank, he found a printout containing single question (including those he’d just added) left in his classroom by a student. At first he was furious, then he decided that if a student was going to study the entire bank of almost 1,000 questions to pass his tests, they were studying anyway and what the hell.

Last semester I began making “PreQuizzes”, repeatable no-grade quizzes containing all the multiple-choice questions that would be on the real quiz. (My quizzes are 70% multiple-choice and 30% writing questions — I figure 70% is a C and if you can only answer factual questions in history that is C-level performance.) I set the software (first Blackboard and now Moodle) to not let them see the answers, just the final score, thinking if they had to take it repeatedly without knowing which ones they missed, they’d have to study harder!

Last night a student IM’d me. She said why didn’t PreQuiz #2 let her see her answers, like in PreQuiz #1? We discovered that I had accidentally set PreQuiz #1 in “adaptive mode” (I’m new at Moodle), which lets students answer each question individually, then click Submit to find out instantly whether they got that question right. They could immediately try again for a right answer. She said it had been very helpful!

My first thought was, “Yeah, I’ll bet!” That was not what I had in mind. I told her that, and she said, oh, but it had been so helpful to her to be able to look things up one at a time. She’s a good student. I asked her, if I did them all that way, wouldn’t in make the students lazy? She said, yes, the lazy ones, she wasn’t going to lie. I thought about it while she chatted with others (she carries 19 units and lives online), then decided, what the hell. All the PreQuizzes are now adaptive mode, with bunches of questions, and we’ll see how it goes!

My decision is based on current research involving quizzes as learning, which integrate assessment with the class instead of having it represent an end to learning (see in-class example). This is an important point, since MiraCosta and many other colleges are formulating Outcomes and Assessment plans to cater to results-oriented environments of accountability (such as state legislatures). Many of us learned in our own education that “the test” is the end result of studying a particular topic, and many of us discovered that we forgot the material as soon as we took the test, yet we still push this method.

To use the current edu-speak lingo, we could replace such “summative assessments” with “formative assessments” (see Penn State article).
In an online environment, immediate feedback has a role that is increasingly being recognized as crucial. At a recent conference, I learned that the high speed of broadband increases student frustration, because they see the internet as instant. They no longer go get a cup of coffee while waiting for something to download. When they don’t get an “instant” result (or an instant solution to their technical problem, email, whatever), frustration skyrockets at a much faster rate.

Perhaps my PreQuizzes will solve several problems: they provide instant feedback for every question (reducing frustration), integrate assessment into the learning process, and still force them to study bunches of questions if they haven’t done the reading fully. Maybe they’ll even drink less coffee!

It’s getting to be that time of the semester when I lose patience. From my end of the wire, it seems I’m writing the same things over and over: “Yes, the first post of the week is due Wednesday midnight, it says that on the main page”, “no, you don’t have to subscribe to the forums”, “please use Messages rather than email”. The students, of course, whether or not they read the posts of others, are asking individually and have no idea I’m answering the same damn questions for four different classes.

The solution? Frequent breaks, quantities of ones favorite beverage, and liberal use of emoticons. Sometimes adding that 🙂 at the end of the response makes me go back and change the tone of the note. So very California! Have a nice day.

Sure, it’s a done deal with a fully online class: students have to go to the internet to take the class. But what if you’re using online materials for an on-site class? I made a few suggestions to a colleague of mine yesterday. We bumped into each other at Trader Joe’s and she said students were dropping her classes because they don’t want to go on the web to do the homework she’s posted. They say they don’t have a computer, or DSL, don’t want to go to the lab…

I have done some things to force my on-site students, comfortably, onto the computer:

1. Do an orientation
The second or third class meeting I reserve a computer lab and we all go there, the whole class. We all go into the class site together.
Why? Most of them are afraid of the computer. It has nothing to do with connections, etc.

2. Demonstrate
The class website is up on the screen every day in class. I show them how to do things.

3. Sell it
I point out how cool it is for me to be able to work at night or whenever. For classes using labs, it’s more convenient than having to go the the lab and log hours there. Be enthusiastic about how they can get information any time about how they’re doing.

4. Use it as a feedback loop
Send everyone an email the first week, with the URL to the site and instructions. Post the grades and feedback there. Post homeworks and exercises that offer immediate feedback, like some automatically-graded multiple-choice items.

We hear a lot of crap about how technology-savvy these students are, especially the young ones, and it isn’t true. They don’t think of technology as we do. It’s just a way to do something. If they IM or txt message, that’s what they know. If they do email, it’s with friends. They don’t trust (or maybe even like) the incursion of school into their internet time, or vice versa.

Many of them are scared to mess something up on the computer. In fact, just this morning I found out a student had erased the entire class wiki, where we’ve all been developing the first quiz. It was no problem for me: I just went back and reset it at an earlier version, and copied and pasted the missing stuff students had added. But this student would be so embarrassed if I singled him out this morning, so I won’t. We’ll all go over the wiki together anyway today, and I’ll discuss things more generally! 🙂

I have already had e-mails from online faculty reflected what I’m thinking too — how overwhelming it is to have students enthusiastically participating and asking questions before and during the first weeks of class.

I get the sense that if we are trying hard to connect and get them involved at the beginning, it will pay off, but it’s a tremendous amount of work the first week or so. When I emailed all my students the Wednesday night before class started, I had two immediate challenges. One, my ISP (AT&T/Yahoo/SBC/whatever) didn’t want me sending emails to 200 addresses. I had to keep unplugging and replugging my modem and router to create a new IP address to get the messages out, 40 at a time. Two, students went into the classes in droves, signing themselves up for Moodle accounts and doing everything I asked them to do the first week, and more!

My IM, Messages and email have been buzzing with enthusiastic, nervous and energetic comments and questions. Almost every took the Tech Check extra credit quiz. The intro posts in discussion have been numerous and detailed (a little too detailed to my mind — why would anyone put their address and home phone number in their profile?)

But it comes down to this, an IM conversation with a student that went something like this:

Student: This is great! Thanks for doing this IM thing. It’s really helpful.
Me: I’m glad you like it, but it’s getting kinda crazy! 🙂
Student: No, it’s not crazy, it’s helpful.
Me: Well, I have 200 students, so I’m kinda going crazy.
Student: Oh, yeah, I can see that!

And I am. But it’s good to know I’m catching them early, because I want to know who’s committed and who’s not, who’s a novice and needs extra help, who can lead the others. It’s exciting…but exhausting.