Communication and Feedback

One of the most telling signs that a student will see an online course through to its completion is if he or she feels connected to his or her instructor and classmates. One way to achieve this sense of belonging is for instructors to be deliberate in their course design with focuses on communication and feedback. Both of these are important, especially in the online classroom, because moments for spontaneous interaction are limited. For example, a student may see an instructor walking down the hall and ask her for clarification on an assignment.  In the online environment there’s not the opportunity for chance meetings. Thus, it’s up to the student to initiate the question, but is up to the instructor to create an environment where the student feels supported and encouraged.

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Faculty should model the communication skills they expect to see from their students. For example just as students are expected to meet deadlines with assignments, faculty should also hold themselves accountable establishing timelines for answering email, responding to drafts, or  posting on discussion boards. Moreover faculty should allow for interaction that takes advantage of synchronous and asynchronous communication tools. Many of these tools were discussed in the first two blogging assignments so I won’t repeat them here. Check out this short but informative paper on how-to effectively communicate in an online course: Lost in Translation: Importanceof Effective Communication in Online Education

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Feedback is essential to the learning process. It also lets your students know that you are listening to them, reading what they write or viewing their creations. Feedback allows the students to take your suggestions and apply them to their work in order to make it better. I offer my students the opportunity to submit a rough draft to me for my feedback before turning in their final essays. For each paper I identify areas of strength and areas that may need some additional work or clarification. Depending on the assignment, sometimes I do this via the comments function in MS Word or I use audio or audio/video feedback. For more information visit this site: Strategies for Providing Feedback in Online Courses.

Course Assignment: Creating a Digital Toolbox

My digital toolbox consists of ten tools and one website which will either help me deliver, organize, or create content for students (traditional college students and faculty). Given the number of tools available, ten doesn’t sound like very many. However, I limited my toolbox to technologies I had not used prior to this course and chose to include only those that I thought would be useful in my position. So while I find Camtasia, Diigo, Twitter, and Feedly to be extremely useful, because I use these on a regular bases I did not include them in this toolbox. Those that made the cut included Animoto, Audioboo (Audioboom), Blendspace, DiRT Directory (formerly BambooDirt), Explain Everything, Google+ Communities, Kahoot!, ThingLink, and TouchCast. The website I chose to include is called the Centrefor Learning & Performance Technologies and contains articles and lists of tools which will be helpful to me.

I used the list of criteria we collaboratively created as a class to evaluate each resource in my digital toolbox which is housed in Diigo. When we created this list, we considered frameworks such as TPACK, SAMR, and the ISTE standards. The most important take away from this discussion was to remember that while we were building toolboxes containing useful technology, this technology should be used to enhance content and pedagogy and not be the driving force behind either. Each of the tools I chose to include was user friendly, accessible on multiple devices, free, and web-based. These were the criteria in the list most important to me when deciding to jot down a tool for later use or dismissing it. Since this type of selection of useful tools has long been a part of my job as well as my hobby, it wasn’t difficult for me to quickly evaluate the merit of these potential tools. It really helped to have an assignment connected with the use of some of these as well so I could get a sense of practical application.

I keep Google spreadsheet with categories and tools that I find useful. Since this has been working for me, I probably will continue to use it instead of adding to this toolbox. Mostly, I just like the structure of it better. I do realize that by not using a social software, I'm not allowing others to benefit from my findings, so maybe I will also add tools to Diigo. I see there's a new layout, but I haven't tried it yet. Perhaps as a change for the future, the class as a whole could brainstorm criteria then each individual student would create their own evaluation criteria. Many of them didn't apply to me so something custom to each student's situation may be better. I love the idea of the toolbox though. If I didn't already do something like this, it would have been a most valuable idea!

E-portfolios -- To Be or Not To Be?

It seems like within the last five years or so digital or e-portfolios have come to stay in the world of education. There are many for-profit companies vying for a spot in the market. Many of these are to ensure quality and access for program or university accrediting bodies. However, there are also many free products that can be used by students to create an online portfolio of their accomplishments, philosophies, projects, and more. I'll consider e-portfolios used by students in this post.

I think an e-portfolio could be beneficial for students seeking jobs. In addition to a c.v., a digital portfolio offers actual examples of what a student reports he or she can do or create. Also, an e-portfolio in the online environment allows the instructor easy access to student work to help him or her connect with students. I imagine they would also be handy when an online student asks a professor for a letter of reference or recommendation -- in this case the instructor can job jog his or her memory by visiting the student's e-portfolio. Additionally, being forced to construct an e-portfolio for a class, assures that student has some grasp of digital technologies.

A challenge I've hear posed against the use of e-portfolios is their ability to be changed by the student. Since the student has control over the content, he or she can add or subtract from the document at will. So let's say they get a less than stellar evaluation on a performance review, they can erase this content or choose not to include it for potential employers to see. This begs the question, who else besides the student should have access to his or her portfolio?

I'm creating an e-portfolio as part of this program, but other than the purposes of degree completion, I'm not convinced it will be helpful to me. There are many free tools that could be effectively used to build an e-portfolio. Personally, I would choose Weebly or Google Sites over other choices such as VoiceThread or Wikispaces. The first two sites seem to be more streamlined, look more professional, and are easy to navigate even if you haven't used them before. For example, I've watched someone try to view a project made with VoiceThread and though they were reasonably tech-saavy, they had trouble grasping the navigation. I wouldn't want to have an e-portfolio that was skipped over because the reviewer couldn't easily figure out how to access my content.

A Sense of Community in the Online Classroom

Ensuring a sense of community in online classes directly affects how students rate their satisfaction with online learning (Liu, Magjuka, Bonk, & Lee, 2007; Ouzts, 2006; Rovai, 2002a, as cited in Shackelford & Maxwell, 2012). This article looked at what instructors could do to make their students feel part of a community specifically with regards to learner-instructor interaction. This can include the instructor attempting to stimulate student interest in the course content, motivating the student, and facilitating the learning process (Swan, 2003 as cited in Shackelford & Maxwell, 2012). Two types of learner-instructor interaction mentioned in the Shackelford and Maxwell study that I value the most are providing timely feedback and participating in and guiding discussions. The study itself identified as the top two learner-instruction interactions, instructor modeling and support and encouragement.

Scholarly research agrees that instructors should establish a community of learners for their students (Tallent-Runnels et al., 2006, Barr & Miller, 2013). They can do this by modeling good communication skills (Tallent-Runnels et al., 2006). Classroom culture is influenced by small groups (Tallent-Runnels et al., 2006). This classroom culture is also developed through employing learner-focused course design (Tallent-Runnels et al., 2006, Taylor & McQuiggan, 2008). Learner-focused course design involves a variety of teaching methods which challenge the instructor to facilitate student learning rather than impart information. This takes into consideration the flow of an online course, instructor feedback, matching student learning styles to instructional design, and student to instructor interaction (Tallent-Runnels et al., 2006).

When considering instructor immediacy in the online classroom, studies have been done that focus on social presence. A study by Schutt, Allen, and Laumakis, 2009, set out to test several hypotheses. Their findings suggest that communication of immediacy behaviors is made possible through video-enable computer conferencing, but is not ensured by it (Schutt, Allen, & Laumakis, 2009). Therefore, the use of video on the side of the instructor positively impacted how the participants perceived the instructor, only when the instructor is adept at the use of immediacy behaviors.

Most of the experiences I've had from the student side concerning instructor-student interaction have been positive. In most of my experiences feedback has been timely and relevant, instructors have made themselves available for any follow-up questions, they have been supportive and competent in organizing the class and content. In my own online classroom I would be sure to take this research into my planning and to create an environment that fostered a sense of community. This could occur through synchronous discussions, video conferencing, ice breakers, timely and useful feedback to students, clear guidelines, and a sense for the students that there is indeed a real person running the course.

Barr, B. A., & Miller, S. F. (2013). Higher education: The online teaching and learning experience. Online Submission. Retrieved from: ERIC, EBSCOhost (accessed September 01, 2014).

Shackelford, J. L., & Maxwell, M. (2012). Contribution of learner-instructor interaction to sense of community in graduate online education. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 8(4), 248-260.

Schutt, M., Allen, B. S., & Laumakis, M. A. (2009). The effects of instructor immediacy behaviors in online learning environments. The Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 10(2), 135-148.

Tallent-Runnels, M. K., Thomas, J. A., Lan, W. Y., Cooper, S., Ahern, T. C., Shaw, S. M., & Liu, X. (2006). Teaching courses online: A review of the research. Review of Educational Research, 76(1), 93-135.

Taylor, A. & McQuiggan, C. (2008). Faculty development programming: If we build it, will they come? Educause Quarterly, 3, 29-37.

TouchCast

I just read about a tool called TouchCast which allows you to make interactive videos (for free). They have an iPad app and beta version for Desktop or Mobile. It's kind of like ThingLink on speed. You can produce a video, that allows you to add anything from the web such as YouTube videos, articles, images, basically anything. Your video pauses and minimizes itself when your learners click on the interactive feature which then becomes the full screen. I'm really excited to try this out myself. For a demo visit TouchCast.com/ or visit their blog at TouchCast Blog/.

Learning Objects

I vividly remember taking a test in the eighth grade that measured spatial reasoning. We never got the results back but I’m pretty sure I failed it. One part of the test was a bunch of gears drawn together with an arrow showing the direction in which one of the gears was turning. From that drawing we were to decide which way another gear (selected by the test) would turn. I pretty much just guessed on every single question. While I was searching for some learning objects, I came across this one on gears which would have been helpful for me to see many years ago.

Gears by nevit. http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/752459/

Watching this learning object, I can easily see that every gear turning clockwise causes the adjacent gear to turn counterclockwise. Seeing these gears in action one time would have allowed me to perform much better on the spatial reasoning test.

The interactive learning objects are probably my favorite. They allow learners to select the content that is new to them without making them revisit what they already know. Simulation allows the learner to dedicate his or her time in exploration to acquire new knowledge. Interactive learning objects are also beneficial to learners as they give immediate feedback and sometimes allow users to manipulate their learning environments.

Uses and Examples of Digital Storytelling

There are many websites floating around in cyberspace on the topic of digital storytelling. At the same time there is also scholarly literature available on this topic as well. Many of these works I surveyed agreed that digital storytelling is best used for personal narratives, memorial stories, educational stories, and topics related to medicine and health.

Even with all of this information at my fingertips, I had a difficult time coming up with examples of applications for digital storytelling in my learning or teaching environment. Since we have creative faculty I thought a good way to use digital storytelling would be to show the faculty a few examples and let them come up with ideas of how it might be used in their classrooms. Simply making them aware of the concept and the tools to create a digital story would be enough for them to get started thinking about how they could use it to present information to their students or to receive projects from their students in a sort of dialogue.

In the online teaching and learning world in general, digital storytelling could be used to create a digital essay, a final project for an experiential learning course, or to express an opinion – fodder for a debate. For example student nurses could create a digital story of their experiences with home health nursing including photos, care plans they have created, and a voice over of what they learned from the experience. Following is a moving video created by a high school student in Papua New Guinea at a workshop facilitated by the Center for Digital Storytelling's Silence Speaks program. His video titled "Washed Away" chronicles his discovery of a baby aborted by a young girl. Told through this medium is difficult to watch.

For additional ideas this wiki offers some great examples of how digital storytelling has been used in the classroom. Examples are organized by content area or discipline followed by a description of the project and links to additional information or examples. This website titled "Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling" is also a useful resource for ideas on how to integrate digital stories into the classroom.