The perception of bias has lead to legislation in 28 states since 2004, all aimed at promoting intellectual pluralism in higher education. The beliefs that have lead to such legislation are based in large part on the fact the professoriate in the United States is, without question, left leaning. Current peer-reviewed research places the proportion of liberal to conservative faculty at approximately three to one. Critics of academia are concerned this left leaning professoriate is working to indoctrinate students into holding liberal beliefs and that students who profess conservative values in the classroom are discriminated against by instructors.

Current research calls both of these concerns into question. Mariani and Hewitt (2008) utilized Higher Education Research Institute data to perform a longitudinal study exploring changes in students’ political ideology during their college years. An analysis of survey responses from 6,807 students at 38 colleges at the start of their freshman year in 1999 and then again at the end of their senior year in 2003 suggested participants tended to become more liberal during their college years, but at rates similar to the U.S. population of the same age range not attending college. Additionally, there was no evidence indicating that institutions with more liberal faculty fostered any additionally liberalism in their students. Furthermore, Kemmelmeier, Danielson and Basten (2005) explored student success as a function of ideology.

Two significant and related findings emerged from analysis of their data collected from a cohort of 5,534 students over four years at a major public university. First, in disciplines that tend to attract liberal students (e.g. sociology, American studies, and cultural anthropology) there was no relationship between students’ political views and the grades they received. Second, in disciplines that attract conservative students (e.g. economics and business), conservative students actually made higher grades than their more liberal peers, by a factor of 0.25 on a four-point grading scale. Such findings suggest that conservative students are not having their grades regularly penalized due to their beliefs.

Despite these research findings, the perception of political bias in the university classroom persists. It is not uncommon to turn on cable news and hear discussions condemning liberalism in the classroom and in textbooks. In 2004, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that more than half of those surveyed feel that U.S. colleges and universities introduce an improper liberal bias into the classroom. Websites such as http://www.noindoctrination.org/ contain hundreds of solicited, anecdotal reports from students of political bias in the classroom.

Though research does not support that political bias is having a measurable effect on students, the perception of such a bias is likely affecting higher education. Continued rhetorical attacks and accusations of bias cannot help but affect the credibility of the system, at least in the eyes of some. In a time of economic instability and decreased public funding for education, maintaining public support for higher education is essential and addressing the perception of political bias in higher education may aid in maintaining such support.

Editor’s Note: We will continue this topic on Wednesday with an article on steps faculty can take to eliminate the perception of political bias in the classroom.

References
Kemmelmeier, M., Danielson, C., & Basten, J. (2005). What’s in a grade? Academic success and political orientation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 31, 1386-1399.

A special report: The Chronicle survey of public opinion on higher education (2004, May 7). The Chronicle of Higher Education, 50(35), A12-13.

Mariani, M. D. & Hewitt, G. J. (2008). Indoctrination U.? Faculty ideology and changes in student political orientation. PS: Political Science and Politics, 41(4).

Darren L. Linvill, Ph.D., is the Basic Courses Director in the Department of Communication Studies at Clemson University.

There are two common assumptions about teaching online that can sink even the most well-meaning neophyte. One is that “teaching is teaching” regardless of whether it’s face-to-face or online and there’s no reason to deviate from the proven principles that work so well in the traditional classroom. The second assumption is that teaching online is all about the technology, and if you design your course properly, it pretty much runs itself.

Of course both assumptions are false, but where does that leave online instructors looking for guidance on the right way to teach an online course? A new research-based tool developed at Humboldt State University can help. Assessing Online Facilitation (AOF) can serve as a valuable guide to best practices in online teaching. It lists the four main roles of an online facilitator – pedagogical, managerial, social, and technical – and the associated tasks of each role. These tasks also are broken down according to when they should be done – before the course begins, during the first week of class, throughout the course, and during the last week of class.

In the recent online seminar Beyond Course Design: Planning for Successful Facilitation, two of the AOF’s developers, Joan Van Duzer, an instructional technologist at Humboldt State University, and Carole Robinson, instructional media producer for Pasadena City College, discussed many of the tasks outlined in the AOF. Some of the items in the checklist include:

Before the Course Begins:

• Pedagogical – Review past course evaluations to determine if enhancements for instructional strategies are required.
• Managerial – Send informational message including how to login, what materials are needed and how to get them, and who to contact for technical assistance.
• Technical – Update hyperlinks to remove dead or broken links.

During the First Week of Class:

• Pedagogical – Create an ice breaker activity related to a course key objective or concept.
• Managerial – Contact missing students to encourage their participation.
• Technical – Assist students with login/access difficulties.
• Social – Provide a personal and welcoming introduction to develop a personal presence.

Throughout the Course:

• Pedagogical – Summarize discussions.
• Managerial – Update the online grade book promptly after assignment due dates.
• Technical – Model competency with course management system delivery tools.
• Social – Organize collaborative projects to achieve strong social interaction.

During the Final Week of Class:

• Pedagogical – Provide feedback on final project.
• Managerial – Provide general information concerning the nature and format of the final assessment(s).
• Social – Send an email with a closing personal message to students.

The AOF is available for download here. The Facilitation Activity Record, an optional companion document to the AOF, which provides spaces for facilitators to make notes of what worked and what didn’t work when facilitating a course, and to flag issues that should be addressed before the course is offered again, can be downloaded here.

The efficiency and effectiveness of this communication will evolve with experience. Chances are it will not be perfect the first, second or maybe even third offering. Refining the course management is a continual “work in progress” that requires a commitment on part of the instructor to carefully monitor, adjust and improve the communications of expectations to the learners.

With proper design, management, tracking and adjustments, the management of he learning activities of the online classroom can lead to a rewarding learning experience for all course participants. The goal is to empower the online learner to take responsibility for managing their own learning experience and free the instructor to concentrate their time and energy on crafting a truly engaged learning experience.

Watching and learning from others, using student feedback, analyzing evaluation data and frequently asked questions can provide insights into where and how to improve the learning experience. Some are of the belief that the tools and capabilities of the online classroom can lead to a richer and more equitable learning experience than the face-to-face classroom because we can provide communications to all participants.

Certainly the opportunity exists to structure a learning experience rich in interaction, student-managed and focused on addressing the needs of the students in attaining the course learning outcomes.

Dr. Lawrence C. Ragan is the Director of Instructional Design and Development for Penn State’s World Campus.

Excerpted from Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #2 Practice Proactive Course Management Strategies. To read the article in its entirety, download the free report 10 Principles of Effective Online Teaching:
Best Practices in Distance Education here.

Previous findings, like those of Kenneth Kiewra, recommend against this practice. Kiewra’s research demonstrated both a process and a product benefit of note taking. The process benefit accrues when students make selections about what to note and when they use at least some of their own words to record that material. The product benefit of note taking obviously comes as a result of having a product, in this case a set of notes, that can be reviewed and studied.

A recent study confirms Kiewra’s earlier findings—but with an interesting elaboration. In this study, psychology students received either a complete or a partial set of instructor notes. The partial notes included major headings and titles made up of definitions and concepts, but students needed to write in the additional information. In both cases, students were instructed to download the notes and bring them to class. About three-fourths of the students complied with this directive.

The researchers looked at the impact of the complete versus the partial notes on exam scores, final grades, and attendance. They found that those students who received partial notes performed better on the third and fourth exams and earned significantly higher course grades. They did not find “differential effects of note type on class attendance.” (p. 10)

There was one other “noteworthy” effect. On the final exam, the students who received partial notes performed better on conceptual questions, those questions that involved “application of a theoretical concept to an example that required additional mastery of the material beyond the definition.” (p.8) Researchers speculate that the students with partial notes had encoded material throughout the semester, and when confronted with the large amount of material they needed to know for the final, they understood more and so had to rely less on memorization.

Based on their findings, these researchers recommend providing students with partial notes. Giving students some notes conveys the instructor’s sensitivity to their concerns about getting the material they need from a lecture. If those notes provide the outline or structure of the material, students can concentrate on understanding the information rather than on trying to figure out how to prioritize and organize the material. Partial notes also clarify what students need to be writing and still retain the process benefit of note taking by forcing students to encode some of the content.

The researchers summarize their results this way: “Partial notes … may provide a nice balance in terms of providing students with some notes, which they report as helpful, and still requiring encoding and higher-level processing of information, which will ultimately improve learning and performance.” (p. 11)

Reference: Cornelius, T.L., and Owen-DeSchryver, J. (2008). Differential effects of full and partial notes on learning outcomes and attendance. Teaching of Psychology, 35 (1), 6-12.

Excerpted from Should Instructors Provide Students with Complete Notes? The Teaching Professor, June-July 2008.

The end of the spring semester correlates with increased absences and assignment apathy. The weather is beautiful, my classes are in the afternoon, and student attendance drops. In addition, students in my classes are preservice teachers who must do a minimum number of field observations in area schools before the end of the semester. Those who have procrastinated start feeling the crunch and begin to miss class in order to complete the required number of hours. Those attending class often arrive unprepared. Clearly, this is not the easiest time of the year for teaching.

In a mathematics class for prospective elementary teachers, we had been working on a particular section for several class sessions, so students had more time than usual to complete the homework assignment. On the day this homework was to be discussed, I decided to offer a bonus activity. I created a sheet with 11 problems that applied many of the concepts we had covered in previous class sessions.

Students could earn one point for each problem solved correctly. The problems had to be worked out during the allotted class time, and students could not begin working until a trade had occurred—the bonus sheet in exchange for completed homework. This trade made the students accountable for previously assigned work and removed my fear of giving them something for nothing. Students who had not completed the assignment had less time for the bonus opportunity because they had homework to finish up first.

An interesting classroom dynamic occurred after I explained how this bonus opportunity worked. Many of the students with their homework done began helping students who had not been able to work through all the homework problems. Students who had not even started the homework began to work diligently in order to have even a little bonus time. As I walked around the room, I heard not only the buzz of mathematics but also comments like “I told Julie she shouldn’t miss class” and “I knew I should’ve done my homework!”

I want students to be successful in and out of the classroom. This means learning the mathematics we’re covering in the course. But I also want students to realize they are ultimately responsible for their own learning and accountable for their actions. The bonus problems reviewed concepts that the students needed to know and understand. By design, the activity reinforced the responsibility of students to complete assigned homework. Since the only students who received few or no points were the students who missed class or had not completed the homework assignment, the lack of bonus points earned was not the fault of the teacher (e.g., test too hard, too long) but rather the consequence of a personal decision.

The bonus activity was a success and is a practice I’ll repeat. My students were delighted with the opportunity, and I was guilt-free. The activity let students know that I am sensitive to their needs and ideas, but it also showed how a missed class is a missed opportunity—and that doing your homework pays off!

Tena Long Golding, is an associate professor of mathematics at Southeastern Louisiana University.

Excerpted from Bonuses of a Bonus Assignment! The Teaching Professor, June-July 2008.

The seventh edition in this annual series is a collaboration between the NMC and ELI. Each year, the Horizon Report describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact on campuses during the next one to five years.

The six technologies described in detail the 2010 Horizon Report and their time-to-adoption are:

Time-to-Adoption: One Year or Less

• Mobile computing
• Open content

Time-to-Adoption: Two to Three Years

• Electronic books
• Simple augmented reality

Time-to-Adoption: Four to Five Years

• Gesture-based computing
• Visual data analysis

The report introduces each of the six technologies by defining what it is and its relevance to higher education, creativity, or research, and examples of current or future applications. Each section then concludes with an annotated list of readings and other resources.

“Campus leaders and practitioners across the world use the report as a springboard for discussion around emerging technology,” noted Larry Johnson, chief executive officer of the NMC. “As this is the seventh year of the report, it also offers an opportunity to look back at the overarching trends over time. What we see is that there continue to be long-term channels along which technology appears to be unfolding. These have affected, are affecting now, and will continue to affect the practice of teaching and learning in profound ways for some time.”

To create the 2010 Horizon Report, the 47 members of the 2010 Advisory Board engaged in a comprehensive review and analysis of research, articles, papers, and interviews; discussed existing applications and brainstormed new ones; and ultimately ranked the items on the list of more than 110 technologies that emerged for their potential relevance to teaching, learning, and creative expression.

According to ELI Director Malcolm Brown, “Identifying the key emerging technologies for learning is vital in a time in which all planners are forced to make very careful choices about investments in technology. The Horizon Report goes beyond simply naming technologies; it offers examples of how they are being used which serves to demonstrate their potential. Finally, the report also identifies the trends and challenges that will be key for learning across all three adoption horizons. This makes the Horizon Report essential for anyone planning the future of learning at their institution.”

Incidentally, if the rise of Twitter, Facebook and other forms of social media caught you off-guard as much as it did me, I think it’s important to note that the 2005 Horizon Report included “social networks and knowledge webs” as a technology with a time-to-adoption horizon of four-five years. I guess I should have been ready.

The 2010 Horizon Report can be accessed here.

Reference:

2010 Horizon Report. Johnson, Laurence F., Levine, Alan, Smith, Rachel S. and Stone, Sonja. 2010 Horizon Report. Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium, 2010. http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2010-Horizon-Report.pdf (accessed January 15, 2010).

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.

Faculty researchers (reference below) wondered whether characteristics of courses and instructors might be associated with conflict. They also wondered whether instructors’ preparation and caring attitude toward students related to the presence or absence of students’ disruptive behaviors. And they were curious as to how instructors went about resolving conflict and whether they perceived the techniques they used as being successful.

To find answers to these questions and to document whether the differences between hostile and inattentive conflict were real, they surveyed a national sample of psychology professors. Faculty who completed a 71-item questionnaire were asked to answer while thinking about a single course they had taught recently in which they experienced a high level of student conflict.

Analysis of the survey results documented a number of important findings. First, the hypothesis about there being two different kinds of conflict was confirmed. Second, “we found that the amount of conflict that faculty reported was actually unrelated to many characteristics of courses or instructors.” (p. 183) In other words, things like the instructor’s gender, race, age, years of teaching experience, full-time versus part-time status, and class size did not relate to the amount of reported conflict. These findings are at odds with some previous research that has documented that students tend to challenge the authority of female professors and faculty of color more often than they challenge white male faculty. Other research results do not find correlations between instructor characteristics and such things as student ratings of instructor effectiveness.

However, these researchers did find some interesting correlations between instructional methods and conflict. For example, “the use of lecture correlated directly with inattentive classroom conflict. On the other hand, using discussion or active learning related inversely with inattentive classroom conflict.” (p. 182)

Hostile conflict—as in challenging, open resistance—was found to be related to “whether faculty expressed care toward students, communicated respect, behaved sensitively, and remained warm and engaged.” (p. 184) Faculty who did not approach students in these ways reported higher levels of conflict. And these faculty behaviors were also found to be most effective at reducing conflict. The researchers describe these methods as “working alliances” and report results that suggest faculty build them when they attend “to the emotional bonds that exist in the classroom,” when they promote “a common sense of purpose when teaching,” and when students are treated respectfully despite agreements. (p. 185) Even though more than 61 percent of this sample reported that they ignored conflict and the behaviors associated with it, this strategy was related to poorer outcomes.

In sum, based on these findings, faculty are well advised, yet again, to take seriously their relationships with students. In this case it seems that an ounce of prevention may well be worth the pound of cure.

Reference: Meyers, S.A., Bender, J., Hill, E.K., and Thomas, S.Y. (2006). How do faculty experience and respond to classroom conflict? International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 18 (3), 180–187.

Titles are nothing but dry words in an online course. There will be those students who believe that one called a “professor” has more knowledge, more panache than, say, “instructor,” but as the course comes to life—and so does your teaching—what title you own quickly fades in importance.

Your school administration determines the title you will use. Each school decides on what its faculty’s titles will be. There could be one title for all—for example, “adjunct professor”—or titles based on degrees earned, such as “professor” for those with PhDs/EdDs and “instructor” for those with no higher than a master’s degree.

Never make a big deal out of what students prefer to call you. No matter what your title, students will often settle into their comfort zone regarding titles. For example, some schools and/or online instructors prefer using a first name, while many students have never experienced this, being used to a more formal “Mr.,” “Ms.,” “Professor,” or “Doctor.” That’s fine—don’t push your de rigueur title on them. It’s your attitude and your teaching ability they will ultimately react to, not your title.

Offer your accomplishments only when necessary. What goes into your bio should, for the most part, stay there. You should not push your accomplishments on your students simply to brag; this quickly will turn students off. Use your background only in class and only as part of a legitimate example to illustrate a point—and then sparingly.

Keep your title and accomplishments in perspective. Because there is no physical interaction online, students react more swiftly and acutely to what an instructor posts—especially because everything the instructor “says” is in print form and thus can be reread. An instructor who is prone to boast about his or her title and/or accomplishments does little to establish a strong student/instructor rapport.

Never fear: students can quickly learn about you. B.I.—Before the Internet—students could learn about their instructors only from what their instructors chose to share with them and anything about the instructor that appeared in print. But with the Internet, students have quick access to nearly everything they need to know about an instructor—often including how other students rate the instructor. And make no mistake: students will Google their instructors to learn more about them. So rather than showcasing what and who you are, be content with teaching—the students will quickly discover much about you on their own.

Know your student demographic. Depending on the school, your student demographic can range from newly minted high school grads to graduate students to military folks to students returning to college after a long absence … and many more. And each of these groups will react differently to your title and accomplishments. For example, military students are used to addressing others as “Sir” or “Ma’am” while students fresh from high school tend to be more open to casual, less formal titles. It’s important to understand this so you can interact effectively with your students.

Ask what your students prefer to be called. Students are nearly always listed in your class by their formal, full names—those that they enrolled with. Yet in establishing a rapport online—where you can interact with students at any hour on any day of the week—it is important that you refer to students by their preference. They see your use of their names again and again; ignoring their name preference can hurt your ability to establish rapport with your students.

There is only one way to earn your students’ respect: by doing. In the end, all the titles and all the accomplishments amount to mere words—words that initially are sure to impress and buy a few days of respect … but that’s all. It is your action as an instructor—what you do and how you do it, both with the materials being taught and your interaction with students—that earns you respect.

Errol Craig Sull has been teaching online courses for more than 12 years and has a national reputation in the subject, both writing and conducting workshops on it. He is currently putting the finishing touches on his next book—The Student’s Complete Guide to Online Learning.

Excerpted from Teaching Online With Errol: Titles & Accomplishments Do Not Respect Make, Online Classroom, December 2008.

Those were just some of the questions Dave Yearwood, associate professor and chair of the Technology Department at the University of North Dakota, posed during the recent online seminar, Supplement Classroom Learning with Screen Capture Software.

The goal of such reflections, he says, is not necessarily to teach to everyone’s preferred style but to take advantage of a variety of technologies and methodologies that would support student learning regardless of their cognitive style, he says.

One of the ways Yearwood supports diverse student learning styles is to supplement his face-to-face instruction with brief podcasts and vodcasts that students can listen to and watch on their iPods or laptops before class. An added benefit to doing this, and it’s an important one, is that it leads to more productive classes because students already have some familiarity with the content. Their questions are more insightful as they become engaged, active participants in their education, he says.

Some of the ways Yearwood suggests using screen capture software to help reclaim class time for more productive learning activities include:

• Create tutorials and step-by-step video demonstrations on how to use laboratory equipment or specific software programs; provide training on a range of topics; or offer explanations and clarifications of complex concepts, etc.
• Develop primer questions on course content for students to consider prior to coming to class.
• Provide student feedback on assignments by augmenting textual corrections with speech and drawings.
• Record chunked lectures, or break up longer lectures into smaller segments.

During the online seminar Yearwood provided demonstrations of Camtasia Studio screen recording software and SnagIt screen capture software, both are TechSmith products. He also outlined the hardware considerations for using screen casting tools in general.

While he readily admits that he’s a big proponent of technology, Yearwood cautions against the pitfalls of using technology for technology’s sake.

“Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the technology,” he says, “but you have to stop and ask yourself, ‘What’s the added value?’ ‘Will it make class time more productive?’ ‘Will it enhance student learning?’ If the answer is ‘yes’ then by all means, go for it.”