Category: Pedagogy

Yes, I change stuff every semester (Jen Dalby likes to watch me prep, cuz it makes me tweet crazy things). Here’s what’s on for spring semester:

Expectation zone: percentage changes 

I believe students expect the quizzes (based on reading, and factual retention) to count for more. This semester, quizzes are only 30% of the grade. I’m raising it to 50%. Primary sources, which they like and which require some research, have been only 20% – I’m raising it to 30%.

Back to the future : shorter and more frequent writing

Having gone the other way, from weekly writing, to every other week, to six assignments, to five, I am going back to the way I had it at first – weekly writing. The big change is that it won’t be as formal, even though it still scaffolds up to the final essay. The other big change is it won’t be “graded”. Rather, writing will be part of the “A bit of writing and conversation” forum. Students will be encouraged to post a short piece of writing based on their choice of primary sources, and converse with each other.

But I did it!: contribution grading will be based on completion

Instead of the Contribution Assessment, which I have used successfully for awhile (I admit it, I get bored), I am counting 20% of the grade (10% for each half of the semester) for the writing and conversation, all together. I intend to base this primarily on completion, but want flexibility for quality issues and to touch base with students in the middle of the class, which is what I liked best about the assessments. If I change my mind, I’ll do self-assessments.

Autobots roll out: automation for completion

I am turning on the Activity Completion feature in Moodle, and using it for the first time. The “bit of writing and conversation” is a checkbox on the main page – a single post marks it complete. Same for the primary source. For the quiz, completing it and getting an (automated) grade completes the task.  Very few of my students fail the class because they can’t do the work – most fail because they don’t complete the tasks. Since I believe the tasks are important elements of practice, each one is low stakes but all need to be done. The green check (or lack thereof) on the main page will be obvious.

What I’m not changing

In a survey earlier this semester, students indicated that what they liked best were (1) my lectures, and (2) posting their own primary sources. So those aren’t changing at all. They didn’t like discussion, so that’s now optional and part of the writing forums.

But why change anything? (apart from, like, the boredom thing)

I am trying to answer a concern I have about this semester – the drop rate has been very high in all but one section. The drops mostly came at the beginning of the class. When I surveyed students who dropped, they told me the class was too much work. Interestingly, some wanted a class where they only had to log in once a week. I have not reduced the work at all, which I may regret later, but I am going to dare to use my experience to interpret what they’ve said.

I think part of the problem is that the class looks like too much work on the main page. Using Activity Completion makes the work more instantly visible, so they can see their progress and what’s lacking immediately. I am also removing the “labels”, or titles, for each section, so there is less text (a shorter list) to see for each week, while keeping the interactive syllabus format.  For those who think they can do the class only logging in  once a week, they can if they’re smart, by taking the quiz, posting their source, and posting their writing all on the same day. Since I don’t plan to “grade” conversation, if someone really doesn’t want to participate or talk to anyone, they don’t have to.

As with everything, we’ll see what happens!

Each semester, most of my online classes fill and have a wait list. I usually email the top several people on the wait list, and invite them to join before the class starts. Then I let in about 5 over the limit (which is 40 – too many, but that’s another post). This way the enrollment will balance down to about 40 by the time our official census occurs, at three weeks in.

But in two classes this semester, I’m down to 33. Usually only one section gets that low, and not until much later in the semester.

Why is this a problem, when 40 is too many for them to get to know each other, and 32 is about right? Because online classes are under the microscope everywhere. There are still people who don’t believe college classes can, or should, be taught online. I just last week heard about a college department all ready to go online, with skilled teachers, and then changing their mind upon hearing from an administrator that the subject just can’t be taught online. At our place, there is concern about the gap in “student success” (defined as those who finish with a grade of C or higher) between online and on-site classes.

Those of us doing this awhile know there are many reasons students might not be as successful online as they are on-site. We know that many students take an online class assuming it will be easier, or require fewer hours. We know they confuse flexibility with total workload. We know some don’t have the technical skills to know where to click or how to submit work. We know that some who aren’t prepared for college are even less prepared online.

But all this knowledge is based on experience, while admins like to focus on the less messy numbers. We do have some studies (like this one from 2005) that indicate some predictors of failure in online classes – students with a low GPA, young age, not taking an orientation, and a habit of dropping classes tend to fail. Another (from 2006) indicates that success online depends on time spent on the class, student initiative and student competence.  This one from 2007 concluded that “self-regulated learning strategies” are essential. A 2011 study concluded that individual student attributes (including persistence, academic achievement, and time management) plus life factors (including resources, skills and time) predict both student satisfaction and success. By 2013 we see a study claiming that self-efficacy and “task value” are the biggest predictors. Some studies note which types of students fail more often: males, younger students, AfricanAmerican students, and low GPA students (here). And “students with higher levels of technology self-efficacy and course satisfaction” earn higher grades (here).  Specifically referring to students who dropped out, another recent study showed that those who stayed in the class “had higher levels of academic locus of control and metacognitive self-regulation skills than dropout students” (here). An even more recent study decided that in addition to employment and academic preparation for the class, just the fact that the class was online was a predictor of final exam performance.

All of these suggest that the greatest predictors of student success reside in the student. And yet the pressure is on faculty, and the focus on instructional design. The implication is that if students succeed at high levels, it’s because we’re doing something right. If they don’t succeed, we’re doing something wrong. This view creates more pressure for cookie-cutter, idiot-proof, publisher-developed, team-created courses with no academic freedom or creativity for instructors.

So with such a high drop rate and such high stakes for me, I am surveying (anonymously, at a colleague’s suggestion) the students who dropped on or after the first day of the semester. So far, results are interesting. Most of them are saying that the class looked liked too much work, and that they wanted a class where they could log in just once per week. One said s/he dropped because the class wasn’t in Blackboard.

After years of designing my classes to provide quick, low-stakes assignments for the purpose of immediate feedback, so students can track their progress, this is a blow. I have no mid-term exam and no research paper – rather the writing is scaffolded, the quizzes are short and weekly, and the primary source posts take about half an hour of student time. The final exam is an essay they work on for several weeks, with feedback from each other and me.

Does this bring us to the last thing we know, but only anecdotally: that not all online instructors are requiring a similar workload for similar number of units? That my class is now too hard because other online classes are easier? And (a horrible thought) to what extent has my encouragement of online classes led to this?

Or does this bring us back to the studies, where student success clearly resides in student self-efficacy?

As they say, watch this space…

At POT workshop presentations now and then, it is noted that I use a Tech Check for my students. It’s like a little quiz at the very beginning of the class, sort of an online version of the syllabus quiz. The idea is for them to check their technology before the class gets rolling. I put in audio and video clips in all the formats I intend to use, and they answer a question about each (i.e. “what am I saying in this audio clip?”). Whenever it comes up at a workshop, people say “oh, that’s a great idea!” and they go do it too.

But this semester I’m thinking it isn’t such a good idea.

It started like any other week-before-the-semester, the early birds coming in and doing the check, what I call the First Day Exercise. Moodle scores each question that has a correct answer (I also collect info about their ISP, browser, technology use, etc that don’t have correct answers).  I have had to turn off the feedback because Moodle insists on a “correct” answer for the general questions, and I didn’t like Moodle telling them it was wrong. So now I allow unlimited attempts – they can do it as often as they like. The feedback tells them they’re good to go, or to try it again. Formative assessment and all that.

Well, in addition to the usual Moodle-isn’t-saving-my-answers problem, this semester the students have been really stressing because the audio files aren’t working well in their systems. Many could not hear my embedded Quicktime audio, coded using object and embed tags for maximum compatibility and working fairly well for  years.

The audio files are of me reading the exact same lecture text as appears on the screen, or playing some music. As years have gone by, according to my surveys, more and more students are using the audio (there’s likely a reading level/laziness factor here). So more students want it to work.

I knew years ago that eventually those old QT codecs wouldn’t work with newer browsers, so I had a plan to use mp3s. In fact, most of the lecture audio is already converted to mp3 and zipped so students can download the whole lecture (a student request from those who listen while they drive). So I figured I’d just embed the mp3s next to the QT buttons. We’re talking hundreds of files – 16 lectures per class, from 6-12 audio files per lecture, 3 classes.

Friday night I started converting, uploading, adding code. I got through one entire class. Then a student reported that all the audio was playing at the same time, creating cacophony. After hours in Facebook with my wonderful POT social network, we discovered that this is a problem in Chrome only for PC only. And the brilliant Michael Glasser figured out mp4 would work better instead, but I had already done a whole class and had no clue what might go wrong with mp4. Plus, that would be three formats for each file (.mov, .mp3 and .mp4) when I was resisting html5 because it meant converting to both mp3 and ogg.

Meanwhile, students were panicking. Moodle wouldn’t save their answers, and the damned audio buttons wouldn’t work. Many didn’t try another browser, or notice that I’d added the mp3 button to the Exercise question, or that others had already asked the same question in the Help forum. I sent out a reassuring announcement/email, explaining that I didn’t want anyone stressing about this, that it didn’t count for points, that if a couple of tech things didn’t work, we’d deal with it later, and that I would change the “grading” on the check so that 75% correct was fine. I even put a “do it, but don’t stress it” tag on the link to the Exercise.

Several straggly student emails and anxiety-ridden posts later, it occurred to me that this is a lousy way to start the semester. And perhaps it always has been.

When a student enters an online class (or any class), there is some natural trepidation. In the online environment, some of this trepidation is caused by technological obstacles – finding the URL for the class, waiting for the registration system to talk to the class website/LMS system so you can get in, figuring out that you should use your college username and password. You enter a page with a bunch of links, and start clicking on the “Start Here” or “Class Tour” or you just start clicking. You discover the Tech Check needs to be done right away, open it, and there are a dozen more obstacles, and some things that don’t work.

This doesn’t cause a rise-to-the-challenge feeling of confidence. It causes panic and despair, loss of self-worth as you fail again and again taking the tech check over and over. By the time you receive some reassurance you might already have bad feelings about the class.

(A student emailed me today apologizing for all the technical problems, like it was her fault. I wrote back immediately that it was I who was sorry about them.)

If I bail on the Tech Check next time around, then we deal with tech difficulties as they arise. The initial tech problems we had a decade ago are now rare: inability to get into the site at all, or seeing a blank screen. Most websites and LMSs are more reliable in general. More students have taken online classes, and it’s considered normal. And is it really harder to deal with a bunch of technical problems as they come up than this panic as I try to prevent that?

There’s no earthly justification for panic and despair. And if it’s the Tech Check causing that before we’ve even started, I’m thinking of dumping it.