Online Blogucation

In a traditional classroom, one way that faculty presence is achieved is through the use of humor. Humor use in the classroom contributes to a supportive learning environment, and enhances student attention, recall of information, pleasure in learning, and interest in the subject matter (James). Unfortunately, many online instructors do not make the extra planning and effort needed to make humor happen in their courses.

If you want to use humor to increase your instructor presence in your online class and help create a positive learning environment, then help is on the way. There are several good resources for crafting humor for online classes. Shatz and LoSchaivo provide detailed information on locating or creating humor for online classes, as well as guidelines for incorporating humor into online lectures and exams. The authors suggest that visual humor (such as cartoons, illustrations and photographs) and funny quotes, jokes, examples, word-play, forms of exaggeration, top-10 lists, and so on, can easily be incorporated into online courses. Shatz and LoSchaivo also recommend doing an internet search for your topic and “humor” to find humorous material specific to your discipline. Berk gives guidelines for print and non-print humor forms that can be incorporated into online classes, and also gives numerous examples and web resources. His suggested print forms include humorous course components, course disclaimers, announcements, warnings or cautions, lists, word derivations, foreign word expressions, acronyms and emoticons. Non-print forms include visual and sound effects.

If you want to get students involved in your search for new humorous material, Shatz and LoSchaivo suggest an activity called “The Contributing Editor” where students locate course-related humor and then write a report (extra-credit or for-credit) detailing the source of the material and how the topic relates to the course. Alternately, this material could be shared in a discussion area, such as the Class Lounge. Shatz and LoSchaivo stress the importance of giving guidelines for the student so they know what humor is appropriate for the assignment.

The resources and ideas discussed above should hopefully provide a good place to start with your search for relevant pedagogical humor, and it is worth some time with your favorite internet search engine to find what’s out there for your subject matter. My own search for humorous material for my discipline had me laughing out loud, and I hope this material provides me with new ways to connect with students in my own classes.

– Gail E. Krovitz, Ph.D. –
Director of Academic Training & Consulting

This text is taken from this original article: Krovitz, G.E. (2007) Using humor in online classes. Educator’s Voice 8(3), May 9. Accessed at: http://www.ecollege.com/Newsletter/EducatorsVoice/EducatorsVoice-Vol8Iss3.learn

References

Berk, R.A. (2002). Humor as an Instructional Defibrillator. Stylus: Virginia.

James, D. (2004). A need for humor in online classes. College Teaching 52(3), 93-94.

Shatz, M.A. & LoSchaivo, F.M. (2006). Bringing life to online instruction with humor. Radical Pedagogy. Accessed at: http://radicalpedagogy.icaap.org/content/issue8_2/shatz.html

Teaching, and learning, online can be a rewarding experience. To help ensure your success as an online instructor, and your students’ success in the online environment, you should take steps to effectively set up the course at the start of a term.
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Communications to Students: In all communications, particularly early on when establishing “first impressions,” strive to let students know that you are available, approachable, supportive, and actively interested in mentoring them. While this involves some effort on your part, the payoffs for both instructor and students will be worth it. We suggest you consider the following strategies for engaging your students as you get your course underway:
• Pre-course Email: This essential email is a valuable tool for getting your students into the course, and directing them to the places (Announcements and Syllabus) where they can become oriented to the course and your expectations. In this email you can instruct students to go through the Student Orientation Tutorial available from their Student Homepage, and help ensure they’re ready for your course on the first day–ready to learn. This also enables you to verify that you have valid email addresses for all students. This email could profitably be sent the week before the course opens to students.
• Welcome Email: This communication welcomes students to the course and establishes an instructor presence. You can repeat key information from the pre-course email such as gudiance as to how to get started (Introductions) and how to find essential information (Announcements and Syllabus). In this email you might reinforce how students can receive help should they need it (Help Desk for technical issues and your in-course Office discussion site for course related questions, with email reserved for personal issues). This email could profitably be sent the day before the course opens to students.
• Welcome Announcement: This communication, duplicating to a large degree the welcome email, welcomes students to the course and establishes an instructor presence. You can repeat key information from the pre-course and welcome email such as gudiance as to how to get started (Introductions) and how to find essential information (Announcements and Syllabus). In this announcement you might reinforce how students can receive help should they need it (Help Desk for technical issues and your in-course Office discussion site for course related questions, with email reserved for personal issues). This announcement should be available the day students have access to the course. Remember, students often do not check email so the announcements take on added significance in the online environment.
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Instructor Actions: There are a number of activities that you may have to take to set up your course or to ensure that your course is ready for a new term:
• Announcements: If you have standard announcements that you use from term to term then copy them from the previous term and place them in the new term. Schedule (using the display dates calendar icons) the announcements to appear and disappear from student view at appropriate times to ensure that “dated” announcements do not clutter the page.
• Course Schedule: If you have a course schedule in the Syllabus, and we recommend that it be replicated as a content item under Course Home, place the dates for each unit in the schedule.
• Introductions: Place a post in the Introductions discussion site welcoming students and referring them to the Syllabus to see your full biographical statement, contact information and photo.
• Gradebook: Check your Gradebook to ensure that it is set up correctly.
• Course Scheduler: Use the scheduler (Course Admin tab in toolbar) to schedule any items that you wish to block before a certain date, to set exam review dates, and to set unit dates that will appear on the Unit Homepages header as a further guide to students and a link to the dates in the course schedule.
• Links: Check any links in the course to ensure that they are active and that any web sites linked to are still available.
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Design Questions: Is your course designed to show an Instructor presence and to develop an online learning community involving the Instructor and the students?
• Introductions: Does your course have an introductions discussion site under Course Home. Introductions should be a required assignment that receives points toward the course grade, or at least extra credit points, to foster student participation. To achieve the best results, post a series of questions (4-5) you would like students to answer to provide a self-disclosing profile. Commonly students would post their introduction by mid-week of the first week of the course and then return later in the week to respond to two or more other students. This helps establish a desirable online learning community in the course. It is suggested that in the introductions discussion the instructor should respond to every student and personally welcome them to the course. This expands the learning community and helps establish a strong instructor presence.
• Instructor’s Office: Have you established an online Office (discussion site) under Course Home. Request (Syllabus, Announcement, Email) that students post any course-related questions in your Office, and send an email with personal issues. In the Office and other communications tell students when (day, time) you check your office (and email) and respond to course-related and personal questions.

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

How many lessons have you learned in your lifetime? 1,000? 1,000,000? I guess we have to start with what our definition of “lesson” is. Let’s take a broad-sweeping approach. For example, my daughter just learned the lesson that walking on the dog will likely cause you to fall when he moves. (Dog 1, Addie 0) But, if we learn little lessons like that every day, in addition to the formal learning that takes place in schools…wow.

Now, how many lessons have we forgotten in our lifetime? Would you guess more or less than we’ve learned? Common sense suggests that more is not only likely, it’s almost impossible to deny by anyone, even the smartest genius. So how do we remember better? That’s what educators have been trying to tackle for years. We research, we study, we come up with theory upon theory…and we make predictions.

What are the theories that we hold to today? As an Education doctoral student, I hear the current theories first hand from researchers and experts. If we want students to learn and remember, we must give them context. We must give them practical application. And we should never, ever use rote memorization, right? It must be true when both education scholars and Wikipedia agree! Here is part of the definition from Wikipedia on the topic of rote learning: “Rote learning, by definition, eschews comprehension, however, and consequently, it is an ineffective tool in mastering any complex subject at an advanced level.”

However, psychological research would suggest something very different. Rote memorization as we know it today is ineffective. This is hard to dispute. However, there is a significantly better way to use it, which actually helps the process of both learning and retention. It’s called the Spacing Effect and it works. (If you don’t believe me, ask anyone who works for Rosetta Stone. They have based their multimillion dollar product sales on it.)

The Spacing Effect was identified by Hermann Ebbinghaus in the late 1800’s. He proved that it was possible to significantly improve learning by effectively “spacing” practice sessions. This is more than just telling students about the ineffective nature of cramming. From its inception, psychological researchers have pleaded with educators to use this effect to accelerate our ability to learn. In fact, in the late 1980’s, Dempster published an article in American Psychologist called: “The Spacing Effect: A Case Study In The Failure To Apply Psychological Research.” He expresses that this concept is one of the most remarkable breakthroughs in human cognition. Yet how many teachers do you know who have ever even heard of it?

Piotr Wozniak took this concept and ran with it. He is the creator of Super Memo (www.supermemo.com) and he believes he can help you remember 95% of everything you learn. It’s all based on when you try to remember it. Try too soon and it ends up in short term memory, only to dissipate and wane later. Try too late, and you will have forgotten what you had to remember in the first place. So, there is a sweet spot. And Wozniak found a way to let computers create an algorithm that tells you exactly when that time is. (Hint: it’s different for everyone.)

I go to 20 conferences a year. I would guess that 19 out of 20 have at least one speaker who talks of the evils of repetition and practice in terms of rote learning. Even though we all do it foundationally (who learned to read without first learning the alphabet?). The key is not just the concept of rote memorization for foundational concepts. The key is how we teach and how our students practice these concepts. Of course context is important. I’m as big a proponent of application as any educator alive. But I’m also a lifelong learner. And I’ve learned something about learning recently. Holistic learning is much more than any one theory. Retention is deeper than practicality in assessment. Authentic tasks are only one side of the educational dice. There is much more to learning most of us realize. And by understanding one more piece of the learning puzzle…I’m a better learner today than I was yesterday.

(Thanks to Gary Wolf and Wired magazine for this amazing article on Piotr Wozniak that inspired this blog. You have GOT to get this magazine!)

According to a study commissioned by Psychological Science in the Public Interest titled “Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence,” a recent review of existing research asserts that scientists have failed to show conclusively that students learn better when they are taught according to their preferred modality. The researchers claim that in dozens of studies reporting the success of teaching to different learning styles there is no conclusive scientific evidence to support such claims.

They state that in order to prove that student success depends on learning style specific opportunities, a very specific type of study needs to take place and very specific data needs to be collected. For most of the studies out there, this data or setup did not exist. For those that did, the results “flatly contradict the learning-style theory.” Of course more studies are recommended.

So what does this mean for best practices 30 years or so after the development of Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence theory? What about the learning style inventories that have been conducted since the 1970’s? Should we just ignore them? Teachers at all levels, who have taught in the last 20 years have been encouraged to vary their delivery techniques and assessment methods to include multi-modal techniques to address the needs of all learners. Are we all wrong (as teachers, instructors, and professors)?

A common idea that is asserted over and over is that good teaching is just good teaching and we know it when we see it. It doesn’t matter if that teaching takes place in a brick and mortar classroom or in a fully online course. Instructors, students and administrators know who the good teachers are, seek out their courses, and succeed in their classes. Is that because they vary their delivery methods to address the needs of multi-modal learners? According to this recent study the answer is no.

Looking back on my learning experiences, when I think about my best teachers in life, they were lecturers or worksheet givers. But, if I’m an auditory learner, that may be the method that appeals to me most.

Where does this leave us? I think the article in and of itself starts many different conversations. Time and future research will tell. For now, I think we need to focus on the good teachers that we all know and try to do a little bit of what they are doing. If we do that, then all of us instructors out there are doing the best thing for our students multi-modally or otherwise.

- Pamela Kachka, M.A.Ed. –
Academic Trainer & Consultant

Stansbury, Meris. (2010, February). Learning-style research under fire. eSchool News, 1, 36.

Campus internationalization is a hot topic in higher education. While it may surprise some, many fully online universities also seek to expose their student body to multiple perspectives and have mission statements similar to traditional universities seeking to develop intercultural awareness in their graduates. While it may seem that online programs don’t belong in discussions about international education, the medium provides unique opportunities to bring students together from a wide variety of contexts. Many of the differences such as race, age, weight, general attractiveness and disabilities that we can see in the traditional classroom are invisible in the online environment.

While online students don’t often study abroad, there are some internationalization advantages in the online environment. Online programs are time and space independent so it’s possible for students to login and participate actively from all over the world. It makes for some different intercultural opportunities; especially if the faculty are looking for opportunities to draw upon the local contexts of students. I was fortunate to teach a course once with students from over 70 countries participating in the same classroom. It was the best intercultural experience of my life and something I’ve sought to inspire in other programs since then. So, step out of the box and try something innovative to internationalize your course, program, or institution.

Brian McKay Epp
Academic Trainer and Consultant

Do you want to get started with Web 2.0 tools or digital storytelling but don’t know where to begin? Maybe it doesn’t matter what tool you start with, as long as you just start somewhere.

If you’re looking for some inspiration, here’s a neat website to introduce you to 50+ Web 2.0 tools to help with digital story telling. Alan Levine created an initial story about his dog Dominoe, and then decided to try telling the same story with a variety of Web 2.0 tools. The site gives a link to the 50+ Dominoe stories (actually up to 64 now) so you can see what the same story looks like when presented with the different tools. Some tools have audio, some don’t, and some aren’t what you’d initially think of for digital storytelling … like Wayfaring (#36, a map site). The site also gives a short blurb about each tool and lists whether the resulting piece can be linked or embedded in a website (or, hopefully for my ideal purposes, a course management system). The site also lists tools that ended up on the “cutting room floor” in that they didn’t work well for his purposes, or were sites that disappeared, which can definitely happen with Web 2.0 tools. Unfortunately, some of the links don’t work (so it’s possibly time to retire some more to the cutting room floor), but nonetheless it should give you some creative inspiration to get started with some new tools.

– Gail E. Krovitz, Ph.D. –
Director of Academic Training & Consulting

Levine, Alan.  http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/Dominoe+50+Ways

The eCollege Academic Trainers & Consultants teach courses for our Educational Partners in order to stay involved with the instructional environment at online institutions. At the college I teach for it’s the start of a new term and I am again dealing with multiple situations of student angst in my course Introductions discussion area.

I’m again reminded of a great article from our Educator’s Voice newsletter on “Emotions in the Cyber Classroom” by Dr. Charlotte Redden. As Dr. Redden notes, “emotions mediate all learning . . . and drive . . . attention, meaning and memory.”

I like the idea of identifying and proactively dealing with student emotions before they overwhelm students, especially those new to the online environment. Dr. Redden’s article describes student apprehension around being a student, dealing with course content, and dealing with online technology. More importantly, the article notes best practices for addressing these states of apprehension. For example, establish a clear instructor presence in the course and begin to develop a robust learning community.

There are important opportunities to improve our understanding of the play of emotions in our cyber classroom and to ensure student success in the online environment. Which of Dr. Redden’s observations ring true for you and your classes and which best practices can you profitably apply in your online classroom?

- Ken Switzer, Ph.D. –
Senior Academic Trainer & Consultant

Redden, C.A. October 12, 2005. Emotions in the Cyber Classroom. Educator’s Voice Volume 6, Issue 10. Accessed online at:
http://www.ecollege.com/Newsletter/EducatorsVoice/EducatorsVoice-Vol6Iss10.learn

Do you remember the haunting words sung by Frank Sinatra – “When I was 35…it was a very good year…”? As eCollege turned 13, which incidently is 118 in Internet years, a LOT happened. But more happened to set up 2010 than many people may know. Let’s look back for a moment as we look ahead.

Do you know the saying, “Measure twice, cut once?” That is exactly what Pearson is getting ready to do with LearningStudio OE (formerly eCollege). For the past year, we’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars, hired dozens of new employees, and worked overtime to move the current systems into tighter integration so as to be able to measure more than was ever possible before. Measurement of (and subsequently) performance on outcomes has already proven to make online education stronger in some situations than face to face (http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf). But moving forward, and as technology becomes increasingly seamless with life, the measurement that online education brings to the table will change teaching and learning.

For example, we’ve always had the ability to correlate time on task or clicks in the system to grades, completion rates, retention, etc. In 2009 we helped a number of schools identify hierarchies of outcomes that could be tagged and reported on at any level. Every day we give statistical measures of outcomes, activity, grades, portfolios, etc., to schools so they can better understand their students. Does time in threaded discussions lead to higher completion rates? We know the answer. Does the amount of time a student has to wait for an assignment to be graded lead to program retention? We know that too.

But in the next decade…heck, in the next couple of years, all of the measuring will become much more significant. A much more holistic view of students will be available based on more than formative & summative feedback. It will be based on more than activity or grade data. The LMS is almost to a place where we can both report on and predict behaviors as they lead to learning. This individual learning path that students will be able to take will come with complete measurement by the faculty and the institution.

I’m talking about measuring students on a lot more than tests and project feedback. We’re talking about measuring the intensity by which a student acts – the number of clicks, the types of interactions with peers, the amount of time spent with a teacher, the number of hints needed to succeed, etc. We’re talking about the measurement of far more than raw scores on tests. We’re talking about understanding the p value for a question, the median scores for the class, the confidence by which students answered a question – all much more than the answer itself.

All of this measuring will give teachers and/or schools the ability to set students along a path that pushes them into higher levels of learning, regardless of how much time or how much interaction takes place between the student and the system. We’ll measure when learning happens, how learning happens, and we’ll give individuals the tools to reshape their learning priorities so as to make it more meaningful.

That is the future of the LMS. That is the decade before us.

Will Apple release a tablet in 2010 that will revolutionize that market? Maybe. Will the iPhone 4G come out in conjunction with Verizon, thereby making it even more prolific in all circles, including education? Probably. And a dozen other cool technologies will change the landscape of how we interact and communicate. But what matters to me as I advise Pearson about education and technology isn’t each cool new toy. It’s not the fun new widget that Sony or Microsoft or Google brings to the party. (Have you seen Google Wave yet?…)

No, what matters is the big picture. We are heading to a place where technology is simply an extension of ourselves. A place where homework isn’t done at home and school work isn’t done at school (at least as we know it). Christensen predicted 50% of all K-12 happening online by the end of our new decade. I agree. And if that’s the case for K-12, imagine higher ed. We’re coming to a place where technology, school, work, life, and everything else just merge together. It’s the ultimate mash-up. It’s teaching, learning, and living. It’s…well…it will be what we just call “life”. Not virtual life – just life.

So, if you are looking for what’s coming in 2010, it’s the set up for all the rest of the next decade. It’s going to be amazing I think. I hope you think so too.

So here is to 2009. May all of the preparation and activity help us get to that educational dream as fast as possible. And here is to 2010 – where that dream is going to start to be realized. Here is to changing education and, ultimately, to changing lives for the better.

Over the past year I’ve attended academic conferences in the U.S., Mexico, Spain, and Bahrain. Here are a few key takeaways I can offer from my perspective as a higher education assessment consultant.
Academics worldwide are debating the scholarship of teaching and learning quite intensely due largely to the disrupting change of the online for-profits, the ubiquitous acceptance of social networking, and the reality of user created content. An article in last week’s The Chronicle of Higher Education nicely summarized the online for profit sector’s impact on challenging all colleges and universities to do a better job not only of creating and tracking student learning outcomes but also for using the data collected to refine curriculum and instruction with an eye toward improving the student learning experience. Most online programs are able to track all activity in a course including page visits, class discussions, assignment uploads, exams, and grades. They are also able to standardize learning outcomes for all sections of a course to ensure comparability of data. This is the point where traditional academics will raise the academic freedom argument, however, I’ve seen traditional faculty agree on a common set of outcomes and even common assessment rubrics even though the assignments they develop to assess student progress may differ by instructor.

I also just returned from the SACS-Commission on Colleges Annual Meeting in Atlanta. I noticed that many universities were talking about course level assessment of student learning outcomes this year which was new. This is an area where I’ve been focusing for the past 18 months so it was nice to see the academy starting to recognize the importance of getting more granular in the assessment of student learning. Previously nearly everyone was satisfied with program level assessment. Program assessment is still important but it should be triangulated with course level assessment data along with indirect measures such as NSSE, CSSE, or Noel Levitz. Many institutions also participate in either the Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA) or the University and College Accountability Network.

The rise of social networking and user created content is another salient takeaway this year. If Web 2.0 or education gaming was in the session title you could count on a packed room. This was the case worldwide. These technologies are moving beyond the early adaptor stage and more into the mainstream. It is important for digital immigrants (those born before 1995) to recognize that digital natives are used to processing multiple channels at once and having just in time access to information. There are theories circulating that indeed even the structure of a digital native’s brain is different. This means we must adapt our method of teaching to be more of a facilitator as opposed to a lecturer who disseminates knowledge. During a Web 2.0 presentation in Guadalajara, Mexico last week I challenged participants to start using at least one new Web 2.0 application first in their personal lives and then to try to integrate the application into their teaching in the Spring semester. I’d be happy to share my presentation with anyone who’s interested. You can email me at briane@ecollege.com if you’re interested.

It’s truly an exciting time in higher education. The next decade is going to bring about dramatic changes at colleges and universities. I look forward to participating in dialogue with many of you as we do our best to make education more accessible and effective for both learners and employers.

Brian McKay Epp
Academic Trainer and Consultant