Articles by Rob Kelly

08:05:2010

Providing Multiple Paths for Learning

Students come to an online course with different interests, prior knowledge, and preferred learning styles. This is something that Stephen Holland, chair of the English department at Muscatine Community College and online learning and training associate at the Eastern Iowa Community College District, takes into account whenever he creates or seeks to improve an online course.

As a former journalist, Holland knows how to engage both serious readers and casual scanners and to meet their diverse needs and expectations. In newspapers, this is accomplished by providing multiple entry points, something he learned many years ago when USA Today came on the scene with its innovative design.

“Whether you hate it or love it, USA Today offers readers multiple entry points into the copy—sidebars, subheads, photos, captions, et cetera. The idea is to get readers into the story however you can,” Holland says.

A sidebar or graph might encourage readers to read the main article, or these might give them just enough information to suit their purposes. This same concept is at the core of Holland’s approach to course design: Provide multiple entry points and offer additional information to those who need it.

Diagnostic quizzes
Holland incorporates quizzes into nearly every lesson in his online courses, which helps him and his students know which concepts students understand and which they need more help with.

Text poppers
Holland uses Softchalk to incorporate some of these design principles into his courses. One feature that he finds useful is “text poppers”—highlighted words on the screen that display additional information when the learner rolls his or her cursor over them. These are small bits of information that are optional—they appear only if the learner wants to know more, and they do not take the learner to another page, which could be distracting.

Bookmarks
Softchalk also enables Holland to link back to previous course material, for students who need to review. This provides them with the information they need, when they need it, and they don’t have to search for it.

Audio and video
Holland also incorporates audio and video into his courses to create a personal connection with his students and to supplement information conveyed via text. He decided to limit each clip to approximately five minutes after he realized that his students typically did not take the time to listen to longer clips. Holland also encourages students to add their voices to the course. He might ask them to read exemplary work and provide a link to the text of that work for students who would like to follow along.

Linear to a point
Holland does not intend for each student to access every single course element. Rather, he tries to anticipate concepts that give students trouble and to provide additional resources to help them. “I’ve got lots of links to websites with lots of audio to support them. I think it’s important that that’s available to them, but I think it would be crazy to be assigned to do every one of those things,” Holland says.

As a result of the supplemental materials Holland provides, students might take different paths through the course, but this does not mean that the students are free to explore the courses however they want to. “There is still a linear aspect to it, but I believe there are lots of ways to get there,” Holland says.

Excerpted from Designing a Course with Multiple Entry Points, Diverse Paths, Online Classroom, September 2009.

07:22:2010

Teaching Students with Learning Disabilities in the Online Classroom

Students with learning disabilities tend to learn better in the online environment, but institutions are not doing enough to prepare instructors to meet their needs, says Mary Beth Crum, an online instructor at the University of Wisconsin—Stout.

Some of the more common learning disabilities include dyslexia, expressive language disorder, reading processing disability, and attention deficit disorder. Ideally, the students will self-identify and contact the institution’s disability services office so the instructor will know what accommodations are required, but not all students are forthcoming about letting others know about their learning disabilities, Crum says. For some, online learning provides the opportunity to hide their learning disabilities from classmates, which can be a welcome relief from the unwanted attention their learning disabilities received in their face-to-face courses.

This lack of disclosure makes supporting students with learning disabilities difficult for online instructors. Further complicating the issue is that under FERPA instructors cannot make the determination or question the student as to whether they have a learning disability. Instructors can raise concerns about a student’s performance (chronic late assignments, excessive errors in discussion board posts, irrelevant or inappropriate answer to questions that seem to indicate a lack of understanding, etc.) and recommend that the student talk with his or her advisor, at which point the student may make his or her learning disabilities known.

Supporting students with learning disabilities
In her research on the issue of addressing learning disabilities in online courses, Crum asked departments of disabilities how online instructors could help students with learning disabilities. Their response: open and constant communication, compassion, a willingness to bend the rules to accommodate students, and one-on-one instruction.

“You can pretty much see it as an online teacher within the first week of a course. You’ll see postings that just aren’t in synch. If you notice that everybody else is answering the question and one student is talking around the question, the next step is to contact the student immediately by phone or email and say, ‘What’s going on? Did you not understand the question? What can I do to help?’ Get to the bottom of it right away because if it is left unaddressed by week three, frustration sets in and the student basically adapts an attitude of , ‘Why even bother?’”

One aspect of communication that some instructors overlook is feedback on assignments. Crum comments on every paragraph of submitted assignments because it’s a great opportunity to maintain that communication with students. This is a technique she applies across the board, and it benefits students with and without learning disabilities.

Special accommodations for students with learning disabilities can include extending deadlines, working with the disabilities services office to help students get access to assistive software, or working individually with the student, and matching the struggling student with a professor that has a lot of compassion.

Crum has found that when students who need extra time initially receive it, they tend to get subsequent assignments in on time. Planning becomes a way for them to reach their potential once the obstacle of a due date is removed.

Students with learning disabilities may have difficulties with online courses that are predominantly text based. There are ways to get around it. There are several software products that read text aloud (such as ReadPlease, available at www.readplease.com/). In addition, textbooks could be loaded into Kindle, or other wireless reading devices, that can make reading easier by allowing students to increase font size and use with black letters on a white background.

Course design
Instructors do not always have the ability to alter course design to accommodate students with learning disabilities, but instructional designers should pay attention to course elements that might be problematic for some students. For example, students with certain visual discrimination disorders may have trouble distinguishing text from background colors.

“Some instructional designers have gotten fancy with colors, graphics, animations, and so forth, and it creates havoc for people with any type of visual disability. Designers need to take disabilities into account. The bells and whistles do not need to be in the electronic classroom. There are Web tools that are great at adding bells and whistles, but use them as an add-on instead of as one size fits all,” Crum says.

Crum also recommends that instructional designers test courses on students with learning disabilities. Doing so would enable designers to prevent problems before they happen.

Excerpted from How to Handle Learning Disabilities in the Online Classroom, August 2009, Online Classroom.

06:29:2010

Lessons Learned: Advice to Online Instructors

If you have taken online courses, you have likely gained some valuable insights into what to do and what not to do as an online instructor. If you have never been an online learner, here are some lessons learned from Anna Brown, a learning technology specialist enrolled in a hybrid doctoral program in learning technologies.

Encourage side conversations (in the appropriate venue). Many instructors will set up social discussion boards to provide an online space for students to discuss topics that are not directly related to the course. This enables students to have low-stakes discussions that build relationships that foster subsequent discussions on course-related topics.

Ask social questions. Orientation is not just about learning the technology. “We often tend to think that as long as we make sure that they know how the tool works then we’ve done that orientation part; let’s move on to the beginning of the course,” Brown says. “Just as important are the social aspects, what it feels like. For example, we’ve had some synchronous [voice] class sessions and sessions using text chat, which was a very strange thing to get used to. Stating how weird it is to have class using chat is a fair comment. But if you never actually get to say that to the group, nobody acknowledges it.”

Survey your students. Brown has used surveys to collect information about students as a group. “I found that the students were really interested to see what the group thinking was about certain topics. It was a way to get to know them in relation to the class—‘What tools are you familiar with?’ ‘Which websites do you like to go to?’ ‘Do you work full-time or part-time?’ That works well at the beginning of the semester. The students seem to find it interesting. They may have a very strong opinion about something and tend to feel that it’s one shared by everybody. I think that helped get them thinking about themselves as a group. At the midterm I asked about the pace of the course, types of learning methods, and whether there was anything missing.”

Provide opportunities for anonymous feedback. Brown has found that anonymous student feedback can provide instructors with useful information to help guide instruction. “The program had a new associate dean who put up a Web form that could be anonymous. We were able to send feedback that didn’t necessarily have to be connected to us and have the professors know that we weren’t happy about something. That was useful,” Brown says.

Offer synchronous sessions. As a student, Brown has participated in synchronous text chats and synchronous voice chats and has found voice to be more effective. She says that text chat is difficult to follow because there might be multiple conversations going on simultaneously. Brown finds synchronous voice sessions to be very useful. “I really like the fact that we have synchronous classes. I think that there’s a community piece to it just knowing that we’re all getting together at the same time. I like having those points where I come in and converse with people. It gives a sense of continuity to the group that we don’t really have if it’s asynchronous.”

Reprinted from Insights from an Online Learner/Instructor, August 2009, Online Classroom.

06:23:2010

Helping Faculty to be Engaged and Productive

Academic leaders can have a tremendous effect on faculty satisfaction and productivity. Part of the responsibility of being an academic leader is to provide appropriate guidelines and support to foster faculty productivity throughout their careers, says Susan Robison, a psychology professor at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland.

In an interview with Academic Leader, she offered the following advice on how to support faculty:

• Clearly articulate what it means to be a productive faculty member. Administrators have to solve the “productivity paradox,” embracing the need for clear guidelines without being too rigid. “Rigid criteria can get an institution into trouble because it’s hard to apply the same criteria across the curriculum. What operates in the field of English may not work very well in bioengineering, for example,” Robison says.
• Remind faculty that they are the institution’s most valuable resource. “Emphasize in whatever kind of PR materials they put out regarding faculty that the faculty are the greatest resource for the educational goals of the institution. … Faculty need to be honored and respected for being that resource. Sometimes administrators might presume that and not say it. It needs to be said, and the behaviors need to be matched to the words,” she says.
• Match faculty to the institution. “Job candidates are evaluated based on publications and letters of recommendation. Of course, these are worthy devices to evaluate them, but no one ever asks the candidate, ‘Do you match our culture?’ I think this is an important question in getting new faculty on board who are satisfied and engaged, and to prevent pre-tenured faculty from being denied tenure, prevent midcareer faculty from burning out, and prevent late-career faculty from becoming stale,” Robison says.
• Talk to faculty members about their shifting interests/career priorities. “As we grow in our positions, sometimes our interests change. I would put the responsibility on the chair to create an atmosphere where those kinds of conversations might be comfortable. Usually there’s some sort of annual performance evaluation at most places, either leading up to tenure or to a contract renewal at institutions that don’t have the tenure system. Oftentimes it’s the chair’s responsibility to have those conversations, and I think a good question would be, ‘To what degree are your strengths being utilized by our department, and is there any way we can make better use of your strengths?’ That might be an open-ended way to begin that conversation. It’s going to depend on the communication skills of the chair to be able to field that sort of conversation,” she says.
• Support professional and faculty development. “Depending on the mission and goals of the institution, [professional development] is going to be interpreted differently. A four-year college that emphasizes teaching may fund and support, emotionally as well as fiscally, faculty development to improve teaching, whereas a research institution might support grant-writing workshops and things like that, that fit those institutional priorities,” Robison says.

Excerpted from Helping Faculty to Be Engaged and Productive, Academic Leader, May 2009.

05:24:2010

Structuring Blended Courses for Maximum Student Engagement

Blended learning is gaining momentum in higher education…and for a very good reason. According to the U.S. Department of Education, blended learning can improve learning outcomes. To achieve better learning outcomes, however, blended courses need to be carefully structured to engage learners.

In an email interview, Dr. Ike Shibley, an associate professor of chemistry at Penn State Berks, talked about blended course design and activities.

Q: One of the findings of a recent Department of Education report is that students who took all or part of their class online performed better than those taking the same course face-to-face. What accounts for this?

Shibley: We don’t know for sure why students in blended courses outperformed students in both traditional and online courses. I suspect the explanation lies with clarity and motivation: teachers who can talk to students face-to-face on a regular basis can address any confusion about the course layout or the content, plus the teacher can constantly remind students about assignments due that week. The online components are quite helpful and can help students succeed, but it seems that when you add even an hour of face-to-face time each week students will have a clearer conception of the course and will feel the pedagogical pressure to get their work done. Having that meeting time seems to me a powerful motivator.

Q: A recommended practice for online instructors is to have every aspect of the course ready to go on day one. Is this also the case for blended courses? Where can you build in flexibility?

Shibley: Anyone hoping to teach a blended course should have the course ready to go on day one. Organization is of utmost importance because students need to understand the course design so they can achieve maximal success.

Flexibility is built in when students make suggestions such as due dates for online quizzes: during face-to-face time an instructor can poll students about any possible changes. Another way to be flexible is to build in that flexibility. If you have a course where an instructor can exercise discretion about what extra topics to cover, he or she can create a poll as one of the first assignments in which students choose the most interesting topics from a drop-down list. Then the syllabus can reflect those topics.

Q: How do you communicate to the students what to expect? Do you recommend structuring each unit in the same way? Why or why not?

Shibley: Students quickly acclimate to any organizational structure that an instructor chooses. They have learned how to adjust. What they will not accept is changes throughout the course. Once they plan to have an online quiz every weekend the instructor cannot say, “Well, it’s not done yet so you can take it on Monday or Tuesday.” Students structure their time during a semester around their course requirements, but if a teacher keeps changing times or assignments then students feel like they are shooting at a moving target and will quickly get frustrated.

I am a bit compulsive, but I do believe that students benefit from having the same structure throughout a course. The instructor wants to teach content and the best way to achieve that is through a course design that is easy for students to follow. Then students are worried about learning the material instead of trying to figure out when assignments are due or what kind of assignment they have in any given week. Consistency in design will lead to improved student outcomes.

05:07:2010

What’s Driving Collaboration in Higher Ed?

Most higher education institutions are not organized to encourage, support, and reward collaboration. Yet, collaboration—across disciplines, functional units, institutions, and organizations—is a highly effective way of dealing with complex issues.

In their book Organizing Higher Education for Collaboration: A Guide for Campus Leaders (Jossey-Bass, 2009), Adrianna J. Kezar and Jaime Lester share the lessons learned from their analysis of four campuses with extremely high levels of collaboration. In an interview with Academic Leader, Kezar talked about the driving forces behind the collaboration movement.

Collaboration is being driven by the following factors:

1. Funding—“Almost all the stakeholders that provide funding for education are interested in collaboration. That’s a pretty powerful message to be sending, and it has an influence on the disciplines,” Kezar says.

External funders are not basing this on some abstract ideal. “They’re seeing in all their research that the better answers to significant issues—whether in energy, health care, or nanotechnology—are all multidisciplinary,” she says.

In addition, collaboration is a way for institutions to remain relevant at a time when the public is becoming less likely to support programs if they don’t see their relevance. “Disciplines ignore this at their own risk,” she says.

“Interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work have been around for hundreds of years, but it is now considered by many to be exemplary work, particularly in the sciences, and sciences drive the other disciplines. We see fewer science articles that have single authors. That’s spread to social sciences and is even getting into the humanities, where it is becoming the norm. The disciplines are shifting in terms of what they see as valuable,” Kezar says.

2. Internationalization—Ten or 15 years ago people said that higher education institutions in the United States needed to become more international, which was largely ignored, Kezar says. However, in the last five years internationalization has taken off, “and it is impossible to do this work unless campuses get better at collaboration. That’s been a significant lever and one that has become more entrenched and established than at the time I was writing the book,” she says.

3. Cultural changes—Kezar says that incoming faculty will also be a factor that drives institutions toward greater collaboration. Citing the work of Ann Austin, who interviewed hundreds of faculty entering the professorate, she says, “They’re different from faculty from previous generations. They want to collaborate. They are interested in being part of a social community. They want to try out innovative pedagogies. … They don’t want to be isolated scholars who sit in libraries with stacks of books, alone.”

In addition, incoming faculty are bringing their interest in social networking technologies to campus, which will likely help facilitate collaboration, Kezar says. “I hinted at this in the book, but it’s becoming even more prevalent on campuses [today].”

4. Intrinsic rewards—A big motivation for collaboration is the intrinsic rewards that collaboration offers. “It makes work more enjoyable in many facets. I think that when I talk to people on these campuses the reason they kept doing it was, ‘I’m having more fun with my research’ or ‘I was bored to death with my teaching. Now I’m teaching with these other people, and I care about my teaching again.’ And when service is taken in a more authentically collaborative way, they’re showing up at meetings. They have more of a shared sense of purpose. People enjoy it more. The intrinsic rewards are huge,” Kezar says.

Excerpted from Leading the Way Toward Collaboration, May 2009, Academic Leader.

04:09:2010

Three Strategies for Engaging Students through Multimodal Course Design

Like many new online instructors, Laurie Lorence, an English instructor at San Diego Community College, initially created online courses that were fairly linear and mostly text. She quickly realized that such an approach would not work for her students, particularly those in her pre-college learning courses.

She began by writing lectures in a rather formal style, almost “as if I were writing a textbook. I realized that that just wasn’t going to fly. For one thing, I am teaching the art of reading to a group of people who aren’t very good at reading, and their engagement level is going to be fairly low,” Lorence says.

Realizing that she needed to do things differently, Lorence now teaches online courses that involve as many sensory modes as possible to break the monotony and reinforce the learning.

1. Change the activity every 15 or 20 minutes. Instructors in a traditional classroom can immediately see their students lose interest—they yawn; their eyes glaze over; they tune out. These cues are not available in the online environment, so Lorence is careful to estimate how much time each activity in her courses will likely take students and changes learning modes when necessary.

One way she breaks up the content is by using screencasts created with Camtasia as a way of demonstrating the concepts presented in the lectures. In addition to engaging students in a different way, there are certain concepts that are easier to understand in this format. “I realized there are times when I really want to show them how things go, show them how you take main ideas from one reading and put them into your notes,” Lorence says.

2. Repeat the lesson in multiple modes to reinforce the learning. In addition to breaking up the monotony, presenting the same concepts in more than one mode can reinforce ideas and help students learn in ways that suit them best. Students may not notice the repetition, but in a typical lesson, Lorence repeats the same information in three different modes.

A typical lesson might include a Web page, an animated PowerPoint presentation, and perhaps a video—“so that I’m giving them the same material in three different ways because I know that they’re going to be reluctant to go back and reread the Web page. But what they don’t realize is that in the three lessons they’ve had they’ve gotten the same exact information three different times. That really helps, especially in the reading world,” Lorence says.

In addition to incorporating these various modes within each lesson, Lorence intersperses quiz questions throughout. “I’ve been telling [the students], if you want to know what’s going to be on the quiz, you can actually see the answers as you read or as you listen,” Lorence says.

This acts as a motivator and shows that the quizzes are directly connected to the course content.

3. Create supplementary activities if necessary. Sometimes students don’t grasp the content immediately. In a face-to-face course, this lack of understanding can be remedied fairly easily with a quick review. Lorence does the same thing in her online courses when she sees low quiz grades or other indications that students don’t understand something. In these instances, Lorence creates a quick Camtasia screencast and incorporates it into the next lesson as a review.

Excerpted from Tips From the Pros - Three Strategies for Engaging Students through Multimodal Course Design, Online Classroom, September 2008.

02:01:2010

Enhance Learning Opportunities with Just-in-Time Instructional Support

Sometimes a teachable moment occurs when a student is stuck, other times it’s when a topic has sparked her interest. In an email interview, Eric Frierson, an instructional technology librarian at the University of Texas–Arlington, shares strategies for online instructors to capitalize on both types of teachable moments.

Q: How do you determine the points in a course in which a student will need or want more information on a topic?
Frierson: Perspective and anticipation. So many times we get caught up in our own expertise in our subject, we forget to think about our course content from the students’ perspective and then anticipate where they will struggle. By thinking like a novice, identifying these moments becomes easier.

Q: What formats do you prefer for this additional material and why?
Frierson: Learning styles vary, certainly, so a variety of formats can be used to engage students when they need or want more information. With content-rich sites like YouTube nearly universally accessible, finding additional content–even good video content–is becoming very easy to do.

Q: How do you keep this material from being a distraction for students who choose to access it?
Frierson: This calls for a serious look at the learning goals you have for your class, and how relevant the additional material is to those learning goals. Will the added information enrich their learning? If so, I’d hardly call students choosing to access this material a distraction. Stating up front that these materials are optional will help.

Q: Do you leave it up to the students to determine whether they need more information, or do you embed quizzes for students to take before moving on to the next part of the course?
Frierson: It depends on what kind of teachable moment you’re dealing with. Additional material posted for your eager learners are there to supplement and enhance the learning of intrinsically motivated students. Those who aren’t interested in a topic don’t have to engage with that material; it’s up to the students. However, quizzes can be the best way to connect students who lack certain skills with the additional materials they need to make adequate progress in your course—these are often not optional for student success.

Q What do students say about this supplemental material?
Frierson: The results are more in how students interact with the material. For example, when I posted a slam poem about teachers to my course Science in the Middle Levels, the students began a self-directed discussion on teacher salaries, professionalism, and the quality of education in the United States. I was able to take their comments as reasoning for the more theoretical discussion we had on lesson design.

Q: What do you tell them about using the materials? Do you recommend that they spend a certain amount of time on it, or are they on their own?
Frierson: They are on their own. I don’t say they are required, and the syllabus explicitly states what is graded, but many participate anyway because it’s something that’s innately interesting to them or it’s something they feel they need in order to succeed.

01:13:2010

Making the Most of the First Day of Class

The first day of class is an important time. In addition to the usual housekeeping tasks that need to be accomplished, there are other critical functions – not the least of which involves setting the tone for the course.

Mary C. Clement, an associate professor of education at Berry College, shares her thoughts on the importance of establishing expectations for a semester of learning.

Q: What should an instructor try to accomplish during the first day of class?
Clement: You only get one chance to start the semester. During that first day, the instructor needs to arrive early, have a “today we will” on the board/screen, and work to ensure that students get in the right room. Students need to feel welcome and to get an overview of the course. The instructor needs to have introductions, provide a syllabus and instructions for the course, and yes, to teach something. The most important thing to do the first day is to establish the procedures for the rest of the semester.

Q: What effect can a good first day have on the rest of the semester?
Clement: The first day sets the tone for the semester. The instructor needs to be organized, welcoming, and business-like. In essence, the first day, and the first week, win the students. Students need to feel that the course is worth their time and tuition, and they need to know what they have to do to learn the material and pass the course.

Q: Some instructors do not use all of the time available for the first day of class. Do you recommend taking the full class period for the first meeting? Why or why not?
Clement: I think that using every minute of the first class is essential. The class should begin and end on time, signaling that this class is important, the material is important, and that the instructor is prepared. The instructor should definitely teach something of importance on the first day. Professors can make this introductory material important and engaging. Students should also DO something the first day, such as complete an interest inventory and/or participate in at least one or two short discussion questions. Every moment is a teachable moment, and the first day sets the tone for teaching the entire semester.

01:07:2010

Two Ways to Make Student Feedback More Valuable

Unless they have a real problem with how the course was run, most students fill out end-of-course evaluations so quickly there’s often very little valuable information in them. Here are two ways that Wayne Hall, psychology professor at San Jacinto College in Texas, elicits helpful feedback on his courses:

1. Ask students to write a letter to a future student about the course. This technique helps students to reflect on the course with students’ needs in mind rather than the instructor’s.

Here are some prompts that Hall uses to get students to produce this letter:

• What did you find interesting about this course?
• What did you not like in this course?
• Provide some insight about problems you had in the course.
• What does it take to succeed in this course?

2. Seek feedback from a few select students. Hall used to ask the entire class for critical feedback, but he has since recruited just one or two people two or three times per course to reflect on the negatives.

“I ask them to skip the praise and ask, ‘What’s one negative thing you can find about the course?’ They hate that, but sometimes they’re able to spot something,” Hall says.

Excerpted from Tips From the Pros: Two Creative Means of Eliciting Student Feedback. Online Classroom, January 2007.