Online Blogucation

Over the past month I’ve consulted with both K-12 and higher education leaders in the U.S., Mexico, and the Middle East. Tracking student achievement and the value add provided by an academic program is high on nearly everyone’s priority list. In fact, in a time of shrinking resources this is one area that is still receiving budgetary support.

In his October 26 article Assessment vs. Action on the Inside Higher Ed website, Scott Jaschik summarizes the results of a survey sent to senior academic leaders at 2,809 regionally accredited institutions in the U.S. The survey was commissioned by the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) which is a joint project between the University of Illinois and Indiana University.

Academic leaders and assessment experts should read the Jaschik article and also bookmark the NILOA website which is an excellent collection of resources and current thought surrounding learning outcome management. Conclusions from the NILOA survey were just released in a report titled “More Than You Think, Less Than We Need: Learning Outcomes Assessment in American Higher Education”.

Essentially, the survey found that nearly all U.S. institutions are actively measuring student learning outcomes driven primarily by accrediting body requirements. The gap that remains, however, is to actually use this data to improve student achievement.

Forward thinkers are actively developing a culture of assessment on campus. They’re using assessment data to drive decisions about everything from curriculum and instruction to admission standards and to inform the strategic planning process (Kuh and Ikenberry, Jaschik, 2009).

Over the past year I’ve been fortunate to work with progressive thinkers who are leveraging technology to enhance the outcome management process and to maximize the time that faculty spend providing meaningful feedback and support to students. I look forward to continuing this work and to identifying and publishing best practices in outcome management.

References

Jaschik, S. (2009, October 26). ‘Assessment vs. Action. Retrieved November 2, 2009 from Inside Higher Ed, Web site: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/10/26/assess

National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (October 2009). More Than You Think, Less Than We Need: Learning Outcomes Assessment in American Higher Education. Retrieved November 2, 2009 from Web site: http://www.learningoutcomeassessment.org/NILOAsurveyresults09.htm

Brian McKay Epp
Academic Trainer and Consultant

We try really hard to come up with new and innovative ideas at eCollege.  It’s actually even more creative around here since Pearson took over.  We get to flex our academic muscle against technology and financial viability on a regular basis.  We talk about CBL (confidence based learning – basically where competence and confidence meet), we discuss programatic and institutional data mining (correlating, comparing, and contrasting grade data, completion metrics, user activity, etc.), and much, much more. 

A lot of this has gone relatively unnoticed by the general population.  Purdue University recently made a splash on CBS about how they are finding ways to get data across the institution out of the LMS and how it’s leading to actionable, data-driven decisions.  We’ve actually done that for years…

But one area that our academic training & consulting team first talked about at a conference 2 years ago is starting to get some traction.  It’s the notion of alternative reality games for education – ARG’s for short.

I happen to get Wired magazine – I highly recommend it!  A few years back there was an article about Nine Inch Nails lead singer Trent Reznor and how he created an ARG to market a new album, as well as to try and enlighten folks about the government, global warming, and other things.  Without repeating the whole article, the group essentially had thousands of players engaged in a game that they didn’t know they were playing.  It started with a shirt that had bolded letters on it which spelled out a website and ended with people coming to California to get on buses with blacked out windows and head to a “rally” that turned into a N.I.N concert.  But the idea stuck with me.

Why couldn’t teachers create games for their students with the students having no idea they were playing?  I started by creating a list of learning objectives in my class.  Each starting letter of the list was a corresponding letter of my personal website.  To my surprise, several students found it, went to my site, and got a small bit of extra credit!  So, I started trying other things.  I placed “hot spots” on my pages – white text that blended into the background – the when rolled over sent students to a YouTube video.  Some students found it.  Meanwhile, other students found a puzzle that I created and, upon solving it, found their way to a wiki.  There were 4 sets of students working the game from different angles and they didn’t realize it until they were well into the game.  But here’s the cool part…the game was all about the educational stuff I was teaching normally! 

Yep – these same students who complained regularly about not having time to dedicate to my class, became entrenched in a game that forced them to learn specific concepts in order to “unlock” puzzle clues.  By the time they were into my alternative reality of speech communication, they were already learning!  So, my team and I created a game for our user’s conference that incorporated many of these same elements.

Fast forward 2 years.  At our last user’s conference a teacher explained how he played a game of educational clue with his students.  He was really just testing the theory – replicating the action to see if it worked.  And you know what?  It did.  He said that students got involved immediately.  Students were engaged from start to finish.  And he was able to teach them important concepts through the game. 

The bottom line is that there are several types of games you might play with your students.  But the ramifications are real.  Games work.  Just Google, “Serious games” and see what you find.  You’ll find research, data, comprehension statistics, retention numbers, etc., all of which illustrate the power of a game in an educational setting.  So give it a shot.  Try creating a game that students don’t know they’re playing until they are in it.   You’ll be the clever, cool instructor who uses social networks or puzzles or whatever.  They will be the enlightened students who remember the details about the theory.  You both will be winners.

Jeff D Borden, M.A.
Senior Director of Teaching & Learning

Most of us strive to be relevant. In his keynote address at Pearson eCollege’s CiTE 2009 User’s Conference, Michael Wesch talked about the crisis of significance and how education technology can help us be more relevant to our students. As formal educators we are all digital immigrants but more of us everyday are teaching to digital natives or immigrants that are assimilating quicker than we are.

As I’ve participated in education conferences over the past year I’ve noticed that sessions that include Web 2.0 or gaming are packed. This speaks to our collective desire to continue to be relevant to students. Personally, I’ve struggled to become an avid user of many Web 2.0 technologies. Perhaps it’s because I don’t feel like I’ve had anything to say. I had been perfectly content as a passive recipient of information and hadn’t felt the need to actually participate.

A few months ago I tried to commit to tweeting at least once a day. It lasted for two or three days and then sputtered to a stop. It felt like I was whispering into a vacuum.

Over the Summer I went to see the movie Julie and Julia. Most of us have heard of Julia Childs, the gourmet chef who taught us the art of French cooking. The movie wove her story into that of a young woman who was struggling with significance and decided to cook her way through Julia Child’s cookbook in one year as a way to become more engaged with life. She began to blog daily about her experience and then desperately hoped that someone would care. I won’t spoil the ending for those who haven’t seen it but she did eventually get a few fans.

The noise from Twitter continues to grow. Over the past few months alone we’ve heard about this tool being a primary outlet for the seeds of revolution in Iran following their disputed presidential elections. There was also a major hack attack against the platform which speaks to its stature as an important medium.

A distance education list serve I follow recently has a post about tweeting in the classroom. A stats professor had offered his students the opportunity to earn extra credit by tweeting about good and bad uses of statistics in the media. I also thought about how K-12 educators could ask students to tweet ideas about writing prompts. They may actually be motivated to write!

So, I’m making it public. Does anyone read this blog? I’m going to try to Tweet my way through the next 30 days. You can follow me @bmelearner to see how I do. I’m actually traveling in at least four different countries during that time span so if I meet my goal it will be quite an accomplishment.

Brian McKay Epp
Academic Trainer and Consultant

Flu season is right around the corner and many are contemplating flu vaccines. However, as I’m dealing with yet another situation of academic dishonesty (which unfortunately seems to happen about once a semester… so hopefully this is it for a while!), I’m reminded of a great article from our Educator’s Voice newsletter on “Vaccinating against the plagiarism plague” by Charlotte Redden. I like the idea of a vaccination as something we do to in an attempt to prevent an uncomfortable situation we’d rather avoid. So rather than being reactive to situations of academic dishonesty, why not be proactive and try to create a preventative regimen to prevent it in the first place? The main preventative strategies proposed by Redden include educating students about your expectations, warning them that you do monitor for academic dishonesty and also to create less plagiarism-prone assignments in the first place by giving specific directions and scaffolding stages of the assignment.

Whether or not cheating is more common in online courses is a matter of debate (and see some comments here about a recent study suggesting that students are less likely to cheat online than in a traditional classroom). However, whether we teach online or in a traditional classroom, we should all consider our “vaccination” and take a look at our teaching materials. Are there any of Redden’s suggestions that we can implement?

– Gail E. Krovitz, Ph.D. –
Senior Academic Trainer & Consultant

Redden, CA. May 11, 2005. Vaccinating against the plagiarism plague: design and techniques. Educator’s voice Volume 6, Issue 5. Accessed online at: http://www.ecollege.com/Newsletter/EducatorsVoice/EducatorsVoice-Vol6Iss5.learn

09/08/09: I’m on a plane on my way to perform my first Project Tapestry training. After in many ways suffering through the curriculum meetings and organized “meet and greet your child’s new teacher(s)” sessions that accompany the beginning of the school year in my own children’s schools, I finally get to say all of the things to teachers in another state that I wish I could say to my own children’s teachers here in my own (Denver Public Schools) district. Things like, “Yes, you can see test results immediately after administering the test (or even just a test question), and here’s how to do it.” Or, “differentiation just got a whole lot easier—here’s how to find and distribute online remediation and enrichment to members of the same class, and then to easily monitor and document their progress so that you have more time for teaching them.” Or “this is how you can leverage those eager parents who want both insight and engagement in their child’s day to day learning– in less time, and with more parental satisfaction.” This is a tool I wish our school district had.

As a teacher, I’d love the integrated approach. I’ve not had long exposure to the inner workings of a K-12 school district, but in the past few months on Project Tapestry, I’ve heard about more tools that don’t “talk” to each other than I ever knew existed. I’ve heard about the woes of Scantrons, the difficulty of reaching out to struggling and high-achieving students, and the plague of paper. I’ve also heard about the crazy things parents do to teachers in order to try to understand what their kids are learning and not learning and how they can help. (OK, I have had long exposure to this last one…I can totally be THAT parent….)

Project Tapestry facilitates the daily reporting of attendance and lunch count and the use of the ever present but now electronic Gradebook with which we are all familiar. It adds to the up and coming technologies of online and Smartboard/clicker-based instruction and assessment (this is much easier when conducted through one interface), and it allows sharing of assessment materials between schools in the district (like benchmark tests that can be authored by lead teachers throughout the district, then released and administered across all schools). Teachers can see the results of these tests immediately, so that curriculum adjustments that used to wait weeks on collective test results reporting can be made the next day. And, standards based assessment results can be looked at over time through a data analytics tool—if Johnny is struggling with reading, when did that start to happen? What step was missed or where do we need to backtrack and pick up again to get him on course? Having an easy interface in which to get this sort of historical information on a student or a class is the first step in the teacher identifying Johnny and getting him remedial content that will bring him back up to grade level.

What if Johnny not only reads, but exceeds? Rather than allowing his exceptional learning abilities to languish, Tapestry’s enrichment materials repositories can aid in giving Johnny the extra challenge that keeps him in his seat at school. We can reach into materials that allow Johnny to push ahead while not taking a lot of instructional time from his classmates.

At the end of the day, all of this prescription and progress lives in the same place, under the same happy URL. The Assessment Manager talks to the Gradebook and to the online classroom, feeds the Data Analytics tool so that it can help the teacher move in the appropriate direction for each child without rewriting the whole lesson plan. Student work is held in a secure, electronic environment that is secure from dogs and the things that can happen to it on the way to school, as well as on the way home where parents can see the grade. Soon, parents will be able to check in “at will” in a way that a mere portal doesn’t allow. All of this without an email snowstorm for the teachers, without a phone, and on an ongoing basis that takes the “SURPRISE” out of report card day.

Anyway, I know I’m excited. Not just for the parents, the teachers, the school districts, but for the students. I know of so many students who don’t know where their grades come from, who have no idea that their efforts are measured against standards and not just some idea a teacher has of what is “good.” Being able to use and share this tool with our students will help our kids to understand that they have control over their learning, that the measurement of learning has a logical face to it, and that they can get help or move ahead as their learning dictates. They will be able to work from home, from the library, and from school on material that appeals to where they are at in a given subject, and they’ll be able to know when they’ve succeeded and quickly go on, or recognize where and how they are challenged and go back. I can look at my own kids– one who struggles and one who speeds ahead of the others– and I see how this can work.

09/09/09: First training completed, and there are now some excited teachers and admins in this district! Yep, this is going to be good.

“Where’s my instructor? Am I being taught by a computer?” “I got an 80 on my paper and the only comment was good work—how do I improve?” Sad to say that these are not uncommon questions, they are all too frequently raised by students in some online courses or at some online institutions. Over the years my colleagues and I have “reviewed” hundreds of courses for our Educational Partners and have, more frequently than we would like, asked similar questions – where is the instructor presence that is so necessary to the success of students in a course and the retention of students in a program.

I once had a professor, in a brick-and-mortar classroom, tell us on the first day of class that we wouldn’t be meeting during the term because we had our textbook and we only were required to come to the classroom for the midterm and the final. I wondered at the time, what is he being paid for? I transferred to another section but other students didn’t and they received no value for the tuition they paid (beyond the credit hours) – only value for the textbook they purchased. How can a similar, completely undesirable scenario be avoided in online courses. How can we provide students with an answer to the question – where is my instructor?

As some wag might say, “it’s not brain surgery!” Any instructor with the desire to actively “teach” students can be “present” in the course and provide students with that desirable presence and support that are the hallmark of a good instructor. As our Academic Training and Consulting staff has said in many venues, you can achieve a strong instructor presence by following some clear best practices:

Welcome your students to your course:
• Send a Welcome Email the week before your course starts and then send a very similar First Day Email the day the course opens.
• Post a Welcome Announcement that students will see when they enter your course.
• Respond with a personal “welcome” to each student in the Introductions discussion site which we recommend be placed under Course Home.
• Place a “welcome” message with the course overview statement on the Course Homepage.

Tell your students who you are and how to contact you:
• Post contact information in the Syllabus and in an Announcement referring students to the Syllabus. We recommend an Office for course-related questions and email for personal issues. And, don’t forget to tell students to use the Help Pages or to contact the Help Desk for assistance with technical issues.
• Post a biographical statement and a photo in the Syllabus with your contact information. Here you might also add a link to an audio clip. An alternative is to have an Instructor Introduction content item under Course Home with this information.

Communicate regularly throughout the course:
• Respond within 24 hours during the week to course-related questions posted in the Office discussion site which we recommend be placed under Course Home.
• Respond within 24 hours during the week to personal issues sent to you by email.
• Post a Weekly Announcement, at a minimum, to keep students informed of course events and consider sending a Weekly Email with the same information to ensure that all students are seeing your “messaging.”
• Actively facilitate unit or weekly discussions with a presence on multiple days in the discussion – many institutions require an instructor presence in discussions a minimum of three days a week but we recommend more active facilitation.

Provide constructive feedback on assessed course items:
• Provide constructive feedback on assignments in the Gradebook or the Dropbox comment areas.
• Provide constructive feedback on assignments themselves if you download them to your desktop and make comments using track changes or a similar program.
• Provide constructive feedback on discussion participation in the Gradebook.
• Provide constructive feedback on exams and quizzes in the Gradebook comment area unless you allow students to see both questions and answers on the review date.

As you may have heard our Academic Trainers and Consultants say before, “Good teaching is good teaching – in the classroom or online.” Much of what is recommended above would be a carryover from the classroom of any good instructor.

Our advice is to be proactive in establishing and maintaining an instructor presence in your courses. Get actively involved and let education happen for your students.

Ken Switzer, Ph.D.
Senior Academic Trainer and Consultant

Like every just about every week for the past 7 years, I was at a college talking to faculty about how to effectively use education just a few days ago.  I’ve become quite the e-vangelist in my time and I enjoy it immensely.  It’s especially satisfying when I get to speak to instructors who have very little experience with the Internet and who don’t seem to see the tidal wave of technology coming.  Showing them things they have literally never dreamed about is fun.  I truly get to blow their minds!

But as enjoyable as my time was with these teachers, I came face to face with what I’m starting to consider my own personal Newman.  (Sorry if the Seinfeld reference isn’t obvious…)  While setting up for a 3 hour stint showing teachers how to make interaction a legitimate component of their online courses, I ran across the local I.T. guy.  You know, the teacher / technology “support” specialist.  The conversation went something like this:

ME: “Hi, I need to switch out your desktop for my laptop.  I’ll be projecting it to the participants in the lab today.”
IT Guy: “Uh, no you won’t.”
ME: “Excuse me?  I don’t think I heard you right.”
IT Guy: “Yeah, we don’t let people do that here.  You’ll have to use our machine.”
ME: “But I have software on my machine that I need to show your instructors.  Stuff that will let them create audio files, screen recordings, movies, and mind maps.  I looked at your machine and it has none of that.”
IT Guy: “Sorry, you’ll just need to make due.”
ME: “What about wireless?”
IT Guy: “Yeah, you won’t get that in here.”
ME: “In the computer lab?  I won’t get wireless in the computer lab?”
IT Guy: “Right.”
ME: (Frustration mounting)  “OK, can I at least download that stuff to your machine so I can show it?”
IT Guy: “No way – not sure what kind of viruses might be associated.  Besides, you can’t download anything unless you’re a system admin.”
ME: “Ok, so can’t you do it?”
IT Guy: “Nope.”

And with that he walked away.  I stood there dumbfounded as I tried to scramble my presentation in my head. 

It was about that time a teacher approached me.  She explained that the lab was actually her typical classroom and that she could show me how to get around the system.  We could pull a few wires from various machines and get me onto their network with her password, then I could do what I needed to do.

We were 30 seconds into our clandestine operation when he returned to the room.  Caught red handed, the teacher simply said, “We’ve done this before…”  The techie was obviously put out.  He walked straight to my computer and asked to see my virus detection software.  He pulled it up and found that I’d had 3 virus attempts in the past year.  He looked at me like I was carrying ebola and gave a little smirk.  “See…”

Wow.  Here’s the worst part.  This story is consistent campus after campus.  You’d think I was trying to get onto the Pentagon’s network with my laptop based on how I’m treated by some IT groups.

Now you may be asking what the big deal is.  Perhaps you’ve drunk the Kool-aid here and believe your IT department’s who treat your campus network like a magical black box.  You know, the kind of system that raises far more questions than creates solutions.  The kind of system that only an elite few can access, only after lengthy assessments of software, hardware, dna, and possibly a urinalysis.   The kind of system that enlightened IT Directors realize is silly…

But here’s the rub.  I speak all over the world.  I’ve spoken to our government – in a government building – in DC.  I’ve spoken in hotels, businesses, high schools, universities, and even a court building.  And in every case, I connected to their Internet. 

Forget about me for a minute.  Let’s focus on the real crime here.  How do students connect?  I was at a prestigious California university a few months back and I had some time to kill before I was to meet my contact.  I sat down in a commons area and fired up my laptop.  There were 2 students sitting there with me. 

Me: “I’m trying to get on the Internet, is there a guest login for the campus?”
Student 1: “Are you kidding?  They don’t give access to students, let alone guests.”
Student 2: “I’m taking 3 online classes this semester and I have to go to Barnes & Noble to do my stuff every day because I don’t have Internet at home.”

Yep.  Barnes & Noble.  Of course, if they wanted to, students could go to Starbucks or several McDonalds these days.  They can find Internet access almost anywhere but their own school.  These students can find Internet at airports during Spring Break, at Kinko’s for X cents per minute, or by going to the public library, but they can’t access the world wide web, including their online classes from school.  Ugh.

So it is with all sincerity and seriousness that I say, “It’s time to figure it out.”  It’s time to get with the program and offer Internet access on our campuses and to our students.  How is it that the digital divide actually exists on our campuses?  That’s crazy.  And while we’re at it, let’s make it a quality experience.  I was at an airport the other day with Wireless G – for free – which actually came into my wireless card at 300 mbps!  Blazing fast! 

Oh, and while we’re at it, knock it off with the super safe guards – you’re preventing students from learning.  It’s one thing in a K-12 environment, but these are adults we’re talking about.  I was recently at a school where I recommended a YouTube video by an amazing educator (Ken Robinson) and the faculty told me they couldn’t watch that from campus – YouTube was blocked.  GOOD GRIEF!

It’s time for our schools to figure out what everyone else seems to have figured out already.  “Safe” web access is a smokescreen.  If you can’t figure out how to protect your campus while at the same time giving appropriate access to all of your students, teachers, and even to guests, then it’s time to find an IT director who is capable of that.  I’ve talked to some of those executives at BIG institutions.  The kind of institutions where they have million dollar budgets and a staff of 100 people and they get it.  Like they get how important it is to outsource their LMS needs, they understand that access and permission is just as important.  It’s not about building an empire and it’s not about holding the campus hostage with technology – it’s about giving an amazing educational experience to their students…their customers…who need it.  

To those of you who really get it, I salute you.  To those who do their best to help technology and education blend seamlessly, I applaud your efforts.  You are more important than you realize in the educational culture.  However, to those who use technology to control, manipulate, and scare…well, let’s say I don’t salute you.  You are impeding progress and education at a school.  Much like impeding reading at a library or stopping the sale of gas at a fuel station.  

By the way, the harder it is to get onto your site…the more enticing it seems to be for hackers to try.  So Google transparency, accessibility, and academic technology, and step aside.  Education is trying to happen. 

Jeff D. Borden
Senior Director of Teaching & Learning

My summer courses are winding down again and I wanted to try something different for my final discussion topic where students reflect on what they’ve learned that term. I decided to try using Wordle as a visual tool for summarizing text, instead of simply using the typical discussion board posts.

For those of you who haven’t used Wordle before, it’s a fun tool that creates “word clouds” from text that you provide. The largest words in the cloud are ones that are used the most in the text, and the smallest words are used the least. You can experiment with different layouts, fonts and color schemes (as well as editing your original text to eliminate words or make others more prominent). The resulting clouds are visually interesting, and provide many opportunities for educational use.

Some of the advantages of using Wordle include that it is free and easy to use, and that you don’t need an account (so no additional passwords to remember!). A downside is that Wordle is not “policed” for content, so it’s possible that younger students could find inappropriate content if they search the gallery images. Also, you cannot save your Wordle directly as an image, although you could save it to the online gallery or print it. If you want your Wordle preserved as an image you could take a screen shot and then edit that using image editing software.

Many blogs brainstorm on educational use of Wordle, and here are some interesting lists of ways to use Wordle:

Using word clouds in EFL ESL

Ways to use Wordle

Top 20 uses of Wordle

And this site goes into a little more detail with an actual classroom example of using Wordle to determine the gist of the original articles used to generate the Wordle text.

So how did I decide to use Wordle? I used it as a reflection tool at the end of the semester. Students were instructed to compile a list of the main terms or ideas they had learned over the term, and to “weight” the list by repeating the most important terms to make them more prominent. They then entered the text into Wordle, and saved a screenshot of their word cloud to attach in the discussion board. We then discussed the differing student takeaway messages as illustrated in their Wordles. Two sample student Wordles are given below and you can see that they both emphasize different words and use different layouts to express themselves (although students did seem to love the color schemes with black backgrounds). The student creating the example on the right focused some of the main ideas on the controversies we explored (using ‘vs’ to show different points of view), while the student who created the example on the left focused on how evolution was a theme throughout the course. All in all, I was happy with the assignment and I hope the students enjoyed it.

So go ahead, give Wordle a whirl and let us know how you end up using it…

– Gail E. Krovitz, Ph.D. –
Senior Academic Trainer & Consultant

 
According to http://screentime.org the average American watches 4 hours and 35 minutes of television every day.  The same organization cites a study saying 1 in 4 children under the age of 2 have a television in their rooms.  In fact, a 2009 report by ABC News found that back in 1999 a survey of seventh grade students in Montreal revealed that 50% of boys and 25% of girls self-reported spending at least 42 hours a week in front of a screen (Dotinga, 2009). Given the advancements in technology one can only assume this number has increased since then.

As an educator, I continually hear teachers at all levels mourning the loss of attention spans among students caused by excessive screen usage.  But is there a way to leverage this tendency to actually motivate and engage students in learning?  Bryan Alexander, a researcher at the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education, explains that games can nurture the following list of pedagogical principles: “repetition, scaffolding, multimedia reinforcement, assessment, taking learners to the edge of their zone of proximal development, and increasing challenges over time” (2008).

Creating a culture of gaming on campus requires faculty to be engaged in uncovering quality games for their content areas along with university libraries acquiring digital game assets and promoting them to students.  Finally, IT staff must be consulted regarding the bandwidth required to support high-demand software on campus. 

As I researched this topic I found myself easily distracted by the wide variety of gaming options for a wide variety of content areas.  The first to catch my attention was developed in the UK to educate the pubic on the spread of the swine flu virus http://www.clinical-virology.org/killerflu/killerflu.html.  Be careful, you may end up entranced for hours.

Here are some sites that have been highlighted by thought leaders in educational gaming:

• http://www.bogost.com/games/
• http://www.persuasivegames.com/
• http://seriousgames.ning.com/
• http://www.seriousgamessource.com/ 
• http://www.watercoolergames.org/

A good first step would be to search for a game that would be appropriate for your course and then include it as an assignment with a threaded discussion follow-up activity where students reflect on the content that was presented.  Just try not to spend too much time in front of a screen as you’re putting this activity together.

References

Alexander, B. (2008). Games for Higher Education: 2008. EduCause Review, 43 (4).

Hall, B. (2009, January).  Five Learning Trends for 2009.  Retrieved August 5, 2009 from Chief Learning Officer, http://www.clomedia.com/take-five/brandon-hall/2009/January/2503/index.php

Dotinga, R. (2009).  Teens Spending Too Much Screen Time.  Retrieved August 4, 2009 from ABC News, Health http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthday/Story?id=4510769&page=1

Brian McKay Epp
Academic Trainer and Consultant

I am a member of the WCET community and receive their very well researched bi-weekly article digests per email. This week, glancing through the names of the articles being researched, I decided to pull three that seemed to present differing views on the same topic, that of using technology in the face to face classroom. Given my job duties, I only teach online right now, quite happily, but I have very fond memories of my face to face days and like to keep a finger on how those classrooms are evolving.

I have to admit, the titles of the articles had me ready to align them neatly on the “anti technology on one end, distracting technological bells and whistle use on the other” continuum that comes up in my head when the topic of classroom technology use comes up. When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom in the Chronicle of Higher Education tripped my Luddite alarm (which turns out to be a false alarm, no Luddites in the whole article), Classrooms Go High-Tech to Engage Students (US News and World Report) brought on a “I hope they did it the right way and didn’t just sink tons of money into difficult to master toys” internal commentary, and Online and Interpersonal (Inside Higher Ed) gave me that happy, Goldilocks “just right” feeling.

I like it when I’m wrong on all counts and still feel validated! First off, I encourage you to check out SMU Dean Jose Bowen’s mission in When Computers Leave Classrooms—what it really talks about is getting away from PowerPoint (or, PowerPointless as some like to call it) in favor of using technology to force students to be active learners. Bravo! The best, fully online instructors have been doing that all along; the essence of online learning for a student is the shift to active learning. Bowen promotes using technology as a preparation mechanism (some of us call this the “entry ticket” strategy)—students view video or listen to podcasts of the info to be discussed (not lectured on, as the lecture is contained in this prep) in class, then take a short assessment to make sure they listened to the material. (I would use the assessment as a mastery quiz to help them gauge their understanding of my main points—there are still points to be won by those who spend the study time in the lecture, but this is less punitive for those who don’t “get it” the first time and, given ample feedback and resource suggestions in the quiz, they can go back to the lecture and work on understanding these points….) I have to admit, I like the catchy “Teach Naked!” call to arms. Hybrid instructors and instructors who use companion classrooms will be right at home in this article and will likely have other great online to classroom strategies of their own to share.

In Classrooms go High-Tech to Engage Students, Professor Beth Simon (UC San Diego) encourages whispering to your neighbor in class—as long as that whispering is texting, tweeting, or research on the web. Where some instructors in the Computers Leave Classroom article comment that the most resistance to the idea of lecture-free classroom comes from students who don’t know how to be active learners, the professors quoted in this article say that students expect technology and lots of it. This is more than a “if you can’t beat them, join them” mentality because the instructor is party to the whispering and it informs the class discussion cum lecture. One of these profs, Scott McLeod (Iowa State, Ames), has an established “backchannel” (I gather that it is through Twitter) for students to use amongst themselves during his class times. This is in stark contrast to schools that, “have an Internet kill switch in the classrooms and some professors ban laptops altogether” (which, by the way, I would complain about as a parent—my son has small motor issues and types much faster and more legibly than he writes. He is encouraged by his teachers to use a keyboard note taker in his middle school classes. In this context, banning laptops is akin to discrimination, eh?).

The third article, Online and Interpersonal, which I thought would be my “happy place,” was actually just OK. I almost didn’t read it because it began with the sentence “It may seem paradoxical, but educational technology as a supplement to face-to-face learning could personalize the educational experience.” Nope, this shouldn’t seem paradoxical in 2009. The rest of the article presented an interesting pilot program at the University of Westminster that acknowledges student need for voluminous feedback (isn’t the desire for feedback, on every little thing, a huge part of what social media is all about??). Anyhow, the profs surveyed in the study think the students don’t want feedback. The students surveyed said they highly value feedback. So, how to get feedback to them without overwhelming the prof?

The solution involves a little more in the way of backup than most online instructors have and we still manage to give voluminous feedback. But yes, if you have access to tutors or TAs, this article is an interesting study and something to consult if you want to move to using online resources to increase feedback to students. The results of the (ongoing) study provide assurance that your plan will likely meet with success: “They like [sic] the fact that they were getting this feedback, but that it wasn’t replacing face-to-face contact. They don’t see it as a process whereby we are trying to avoid them.” Indeed they don’t, because today’s students understand that technology does personalize their world, quite nicely. Being able to access that feedback anytime, anywhere is equivalent to making yourself available, not to avoidance.

Vicki Galloway Harsh
Sr. Academic Training Consultant