How Should I Manage My Online Course?

Program includes a CD with the video presentation, plus supplemental materials, PowerPoint slides, and complete transcript • $99

Managing the workload of an online course can be more challenging than managing a face-to-face course. In the absence of weekly face-to-face class meetings, online instructors have to work hard to make sure a course is running smoothly and to ensure students are progressing toward course goals while staying engaged in the material.

How can you keep everything organized?
This 20 Minute Mentor program will walk you through an online instructor checklist created by Ann Taylor, the Director of the Dutton e-Education Institute, and her colleagues at Penn State University. When you have completed the checklist, you will have created an instructor’s course manual that will help you stay organized, manage your workload, and keep your students working toward the learning goals.

During this 20-minute professional development program, you will:

• Be introduced to the web-based checklist for organizing and managing an online course
• Understand how to customize the online checklist for your institution
• Identify how to effectively prep at the start of a semester
• Learn how, what, and when you need to communicate with students
• Discover effective ways to wrap up a class at the end of a semester
• Know where to find faculty development resources designed to support online teaching
• Create an instructor’s course manual you can use for many semesters to come

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Watch a preview of the Mentor:

At the conclusion of this program, you will:

• Have a completed, sequential checklist for your online class that is designed to keep you organized and on task
• Understand how to keep students engaged in course material
• Know where to find additional resources for online courses

How Should I Manage My Online Course? • CD • $99

This Magna 20 Minute Mentor includes a CD with the video presentation, supplemental materials, a critical reflection worksheet, a copy of the PowerPoint slides and the program’s transcript.

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Want to make this program available for your entire campus?

Contact us about a Campus Access License to load the CD onto your institution’s internal web site for unlimited, convenient on-demand access to members of the campus community. The Campus Access License is ideal for ongoing group or individual training or to build a library of professional development material.

Engage Online Students with Targeted Feedback

Wouldn’t you want to know if you’ve veered off track? And wouldn’t you want to know as soon as you took a wrong turn and not another twenty miles down the road? The sooner you know, the sooner you can correct your course and get headed in the right direction.

video Online Seminar • Tuesday, June 19, 2012 • 1:00 pm Eastern • $349

That’s the idea behind student-instructor feedback. Imagine communicating directly with students about what is working and what isn’t. Picture an open and ongoing dialog that allows you to make necessary adjustments right away instead of waiting until the next time you teach a course to implement improvements.

With good feedback tools and practices, you don’t have to wait for failed exams to find out that a majority of students misunderstood a key concept. You don’t have to wait for end-of-term assessments to discover that students never felt engaged or found a new technology cumbersome. You can find out exactly what students are thinking and why when you have effective and constructive two-way communication channels in place.

Find out how to create beneficial student-instructor discourse in Engage Online Students with Targeted Feedback, coming Tuesday, June 19.

In just one hour, online communication guru Jill Schiefelbein shares the tools and strategies that will help you establish and maintain a respectful and fruitful feedback loop with your students. You will learn how to engage students and generate insights that lead to immediate improvements in instructor performance, student achievement, and course quality.

Having taken, taught, and developed online courses for the past ten years, Jill Schiefelbein knows that the dynamics of virtual classrooms are different than those of traditional classrooms. As the owner of Impromptu Guru, a company that helps individuals and groups improve online and face-to-face communication, Schiefelbein stays on the cutting-edge of online communication advancements. She is always ready with fresh ideas and new tactics as technologies evolve and expectations rise.

Schiefelbein also teaches as an adjunct faculty member for Arizona State University, where she previously served as the Director of Online Programs for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. While there she developed the office of online programs and grew it into an organization with hundreds of online course offerings across dozens of academic units.

In Engage Online Students with Targeted Feedback, Schiefelbein explains why open lines of communication can lead to better educational outcomes. She also shares her best practices and favorite technological tools—many of which are free and easy to access and use.

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In just 60 minutes Schiefelbein prepares participants to:

• Understand and express the role communication plays in an online student’s course experiences and learning processes;
• Identify appropriate strategies and methods for giving and receiving feedback;
• Utilize multimedia technologies to deliver useful and purposeful feedback back and forth with students; and
• Maintain an effective communication loop that increases student interactivity, performance, and satisfaction.

An instructor’s willingness to listen and respond to student comments—and even criticism—conveys a sincere commitment to their academic improvement and success. That is not lost on students. Allowing them to share feedback fosters a sense of community. Thus, students become more engaged and grow more willing to help their peers who may struggle to grasp concepts or utilize multimedia tools. Sometimes other tech-savvy students share timesaving tips or recommend new multimedia features that enhance or clarify course material. Everyone benefits in this environment, and course evaluations and recommendations will reflect that.

Cost to Attend:
With our new Online Seminar Package, you no longer have to decide whether you want to attend the live event or get a copy of the recording on CD. Now you get both — plus on-demand access for seven days, a copy of the seminar transcript, and all the handouts and supplemental materials. All for $349.

Plus, you are welcome to invite as many people to the seminar as you wish. Many schools fill a meeting room, and then continue the conversation after the seminar concludes. For those who can’t make the live event, the on-demand and CD formats are great options.

An optional Campus Access License is available for an additional $200. It allows the purchasing institution to upload the CD of the seminar onto the institution’s password-protected internal website for unlimited access by the entire campus community.

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All seminars include a discussion guide for facilitators
Participating in a Magna Online Seminar as a team can help leverage unique insights, foster collaboration, and build momentum for change. Each seminar includes a Discussion Guide for Facilitators which provides step-by-step instructions for generating productive discussions and thoughtful reflection. You’ll also get guidelines for continuing the conversation after the event, implementing the strategies discussed, and creating a feedback loop for sharing best practices and challenges.

Strategies to Manage High Enrollment Online Courses

The online enrollment boom is great for your school’s bottom line, but it creates new challenges in terms of course quality and instructor workload. As class size increases, it may not be practical to keep all assignments, discussions, exams, and other activities exactly as before, but it is not always easy to know which adjustments will provide the best results.

Discover the tools and techniques that can help you meet the demands of increased online student enrollment without compromising quality when you order a copy of Strategies to Manage High Enrollment Online Courses.

This 75-minute online seminar will help you understand:

• The different tools and technologies that will help you produce the desired learning outcome.
• Resources that will add variety and fun to assignments.
• How peer-to-peer activities can increase interaction and reduce instructor workload.
• Why it makes sense to replace some manually-graded assignments with auto-graded activities.
• What types of tools can streamline your grading process and ensure consistent application of assessment criteria.

By the end of the seminar, you’ll see how the right technology and Learning Management System tools can reduce your workload. You’ll discover free resources that can complement your current course offerings.

Most importantly, you’ll be able to maintain your current level of instruction while adapting to the constantly changing world of online learning.

When you order the recording of this seminar on CD, you’ll also receive the complete transcript.

An optional Campus Access License is available for an additional $200. It allows the purchasing institution to upload the CD of the seminar onto the institution’s password-protected internal website for unlimited access by the entire campus community.

Order the CD + Transcript

Who Will Benefit:
This seminar is designed for any college or university that is experiencing growth in its online course enrollment, but the strategies shared are applicable to all private and public higher education institutions. Key staff members include:

• Professors
• Instructors
• Instructional designers
• Courseware developers

All seminars include a discussion guide for facilitators
Participating in a Magna Online Seminar as a team can help leverage unique insights, foster collaboration, and build momentum for change. Each seminar includes a Discussion Guide for Facilitators which provides step-by-step instructions for generating productive discussions and thoughtful reflection. You’ll also get guidelines for continuing the conversation after the event, implementing the strategies discussed, and creating a feedback loop for sharing best practices and challenges.

Some students will really tick you off. You need to be motivating and positive and nurturing in all correspondence with your students. That is what each school emphasizes—and it is, of course, the right thing to do. But make no mistake: you will have students in every class who really upset you. You will have students who ask the most basic of questions (and leave you wondering how they made it to college). You will have students who just “don’t get it” no matter how many times you explain something. And, yes, you will have students who blame you for their poor performance in class—even though you know it fully rests on them.

You will never have enough time. In a face-to-face class there are set days to teach, but online teaching offers—boasts!—24/7 access, and thus you will constantly be getting student assignments (many on time, but some always late), emails and webmails, and discussion postings. All need be addressed in a fairly short amount of time (and some schools require response within 24 hours). And added to this are weekly and/or daily postings that you need and/or are required to do. Yeah, plan out your day and use all the time management tricks you’d like, but the fact remains that you can’t control the number or timing of emails/webmails, discussion postings, and assignment submissions students make, so know you’ll always be in a time crunch when teaching online.

Not all support staff or supervisors will have your back. In all websites and initial conversations with the “powers that be” at your school, a love fest seems to be taking place when it comes to the promised support and appreciation for your efforts from any professional at the school who comes in contact with you, directly or indirectly. This is not always true. Schools may have folks in positions that impact you directly (e.g., evaluators, supervisors, course schedulers) or indirectly (e.g., IT support, payroll, upper management) who either have no teaching experience or look at you merely as a number filling a teaching slot. These kinds of folks can really reduce your excitement for teaching at the school—but don’t let that happen. Usually—and the operative word here is usually—these individuals are a small portion of the overall school staff, most of whom are competent and supportive of you.

You will get blamed for problems that are not your fault. You can be the best online instructor this world has ever produced and you’ll still have students who insist that you are a lousy teacher or that you have insulted them by what you wrote or that you never returned their work (even though it was never sent in) or that you are biased or that you never explained an assignment or procedures (even though they were clearly explained, and in plenty of time). And don’t be so surprised if a supervisor or two and/or support staff also read you the wrong way or misinterpret what you wrote or did. All of this is the way things work in any teaching environment, but because of the overwhelming use of the written word in online teaching it can seem out of proportion. Just be gentle and patient in your responses—and be sure you always have a paper trail to back up your defense.

Evaluations can be unfair. It’s de rigueur for schools to have you evaluated—by your students, by your supervisor, and/or by an evaluation team. Of course, to do well on one of these you need to be sure you follow all your school’s policies, procedures, and “best practices,” as well as be an active, enthusiastic, and timely instructor in your class(es). But even if you believe your score in all these areas is 100 percent, don’t be surprised if you have some evaluations that are negative in one or more categories: sometimes evaluators don’t get it right, students can lash out at you in revenge (for poor grades, for example), or you just may have misinterpreted a school policy. Read over the negative evaluation, with its explanation, and if you feel it’s wrong, do respond to the appropriate party—but be prepared to back up your defense.

You will feel burned out and drained at times. Online teaching can be taxing. Staring at a computer screen for hours on end, sitting in a chair for all that time, editing and grading assignment after assignment, responding to so many webmails/emails and discussion postings, and placating whomever you need to placate at your school can eventually pull you down, defeat your spirits, rob your enthusiasm—no matter how chipper, upbeat, happy, and positive you start out. Know how to recharge yourself, because these down times will occasionally tap you on the shoulder.

Errol Craig Sull has been teaching online courses for more than 15 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—How to Become the Perfect Online Instructor.

Excerpted from Sull, Errol C. “Teaching Online With Errol: The Underbelly of Online Teaching: Be Sure You Are Aware of It.” Online Classroom (June 2010): 6,8. Print.

The faculty member’s point was well taken, and over the years Ragan and others on various committees at Penn State have worked to define:

Core competencies for online teaching success – Currently there are 28 competencies across the three main topic areas of technology, course administration, and pedagogy.

Online instructors’ performance expectations – Currently there are eight key performance expectations and a description of the associated behaviors.

Performance metrics – Although not all of the behaviors lend themselves to metrics, items such as feedback, availability and communication can be quantified.

“The online performance expectations are shared with online instructors as both a way to set the context for their online teaching experience and as a tool to help balance their own teaching expectations,” Ragan said. “They have been developed from almost 15 years of experience, best practices research, observations of what good instructors do, and student feedback.”

During the recent online video seminar Setting Expectations for Online Instructor Performance, Ragan explained the importance of defining expectations for the online classroom, as well as how to keep new instructors from getting overwhelmed.

Ragan also provided an overview of the eight performance expectations developed by the Penn State World Campus Performance Expectations Committee, and encouraged participants to adapt the categories and associated behaviors to the culture of their specific college or unit.

The online instructor performance expectations he discussed are:

1. Technology Access
The instructor is responsible for meeting the same technology requirements as required for students.

The instructor is expected to:

• Secure access to a high-speed bandwidth connection for class activities.
• Test all course-related technology prior to the start of the course.

2. Course Management and Instruction
The instructor is responsible for managing and teaching the class from start to finish.

The instructor is expected to:

• Follow the established and published course schedule.
• Conduct (that is, “teach”) the course within the scheduled time frame.
• Make and communicate schedule adjustments as necessary.
• Provide each student equal opportunity to succeed.

3. Preparation
The instructor is responsible for assuring that they possess the required skills and competencies for teaching online.

The instructor is expected to:

• Be operationally proficient in the course technology.
• Be prepared with the skills to teach online.
• Be able to complete the required administrative tasks necessary to complete the course.

4. Course Familiarity
The instructor is responsible for being adequately familiar with the online course.

The instructor is expected to:

• Be familiar with the syllabus including course milestones, due dates and critical course activities.
• Make changes to the syllabus as necessary and communicate the changes to the students.
• Review and be familiar with the course content.
• Identify and report inaccurate course content, confusing information and/or instructions, broken links, and other course design issues.
• Review the course teaching guide to gain an understanding of the intent/context of the course such as the author’s teaching philosophy, content, learning activities, and assessments.

5. Availability
The instructor is required to be available to the online learner for the duration of the course.

The instructor is expected to:

• Regularly access the online course.
• Notify students and appropriate administrative units if unable to log in to the course.

6. Communication
The online instructor is responsible for managing course–related communications.

The instructor is expected to:

• Clearly communicate student expectations.
• Communicate instructor class schedule and access.
• Actively participate in course-related discussions and activities where appropriate.

7. Feedback
The online instructor is responsible communicating with and providing feedback to students.

The instructor is expected to:

• Provide prompt feedback.
• Inform the learner of when they can expect a response if the instructor cannot provide a detailed response within 12 hours.
• Provide clear and concise feedback to explain the degree to which the student is achieving the course/lesson outcomes.
• Communicate to students when they can expect to receive graded feedback on assignments and exams.

8. Documentation & Record Keeping
The online instructor is responsible for maintaining records of course transactions and communications.

The instructor is expected to:

• Keep a record of communications with students including when other modes of communications are used.
• Record and communicate student progress information such as assignment and quiz grades.
• Post the final course grade promptly.

While we all agree that the five-year-old unnarrated PowerPoint is a dangerous and ineffective piece of content in an online course, we would also all agree that we can’t redo each narrated piece of content each semester. How do we strike a balance between creating content that is fresh (more on that in a moment) and being able to reuse content that is valuable?

How to Create “Time” in an Online Course
One option is to create an updated introduction to the older material. For example, you could create a video or screen capture that introduces the older content to develop a closer sense of “presence” or immediacy in the class as the students are hearing or seeing you today, not a year ago. It gives you the chance to create that sense of time by commenting on recent events, weather, or school related activities. This is important for everyone. For teachers it makes them participate in the content, revisit the content they created in the past, and make it delivered in a “present” time for the students. For students it tells them that the teacher “was just here,” and that this stuff is happening now. It makes the content seem more relevant, and helps build a sense of community in the course.

A sense of time is created in discussion boards because they have only that week to complete the work and there is an understanding that the conversations happen in time. But often asynchronous discussions have wide gaps of time between student interactions. One way to bring time closer to the students is to allow them to subscribe to forum threads they are involved in. You can do this in most LMS solutions. Students get an email alerting them to activity in the thread they are active in and it brings them closer “in real time” to the events happening in the class. While this can be overwhelming in larger courses, in a class of 20 or 30 students it usually does not amount to an unreasonable amount of email notifications.

One of the most effective ways to bring timeliness to an online course is do a quick recap of previous week, as well as provide a preview of what is expected for the current week. Using screen capture software to go through the course and set expectations is a great way to not only share a bit of yourself with students, but it is a pre-emptive way to answer questions students commonly ask.

Keeping the Flowers Fresh
Lastly, keep the flowers fresh. Online courses that have been copied repeatedly often have errors in dates— references to things that happened in the past but are spoken of in the present tense. Even the most attentive teacher can overlook some of those “old dates” that create a sense of distance from the content.

When the course was created, the instructor may have had great content related to events of the day, but over several semesters those items lose “time” in the online environment. By creating content that has elements of real time associated with it, instructors can generate a sense of presence and freshness that are often missing in online courses.

Todd Conaway is an instructional designer at Yavapai College, Arizona.

Resources
There are many tools available to create screencasts and share video, but the following are a good place to start.
Jing: http://www.techsmith.com/jing/
Screencast: https://www.screencast.com/
Screenr: http://screenr.com/
Screencast-O-matic: http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/

“The rules are different online. The online professor has to make a sincere effort to deliver or present an online teaching persona. It may come in different ways. From the way the online professor responds—in writing—to the entire class or the single student. It may be in the way the online professor expresses humor using emoticons or simply words. It might be in videos that introduce each week or chapter in the course,” Phillips says.

In Phillips’ view, one’s online teaching persona is so closely linked to course design that it is “difficult if at all possible” to establish one’s persona in a course designed by somebody else. “Teaching style and online teaching persona go hand in hand. No one teaches exactly like another. Adding your persona to a course you did not develop is a challenge.”

As for the tools he recommends for projecting one’s online teaching persona, “The introductory e-mail prior to the start of the course is a great way to begin to project your persona. It also begins the process of ‘swift trust’ (defined by Myerson, Weick, and Kramer (1996) as “a concept relating to temporary teams, teams whose existence is formed around a clear purpose, common tasks within a finite life span.”)

Using Web 2.0 tools and technologies also helps facilitate the persona. “I like to believe that synchronous and asynchronous video is the superior technology to deliver the online teaching” persona, Phillips says. “We are experimenting with different approaches to the introductory video … [and] of course, there are also tools like discussions, e-mail, synchronous and asynchronous meeting applications, and even audio in your PowerPoint presentations. Still photographs also carry a strong message. Adding a personal photograph to your course syllabus adds to the entire package.”

Like other aspects of online instruction, it’s important to determine what works and what doesn’t work in one’s courses in terms of instructional persona. “We don’t recommend radical changes to online courses once you begin. That’s going to create more turmoil. But it’s important to be able to communicate with the students—whether it is synchronous via chat or perhaps by using a survey instrument—to get at the heart of what’s going on.”

Reference
Meyerson, D., Weick, K., & Kramer, R. (1996). Swift trust and temporary groups. In R. M. Kramer & T. R. Tyler (Eds.), Trust in organizations: Frontiers of theory and research (pp. 166-195), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Excerpted from Online Classroom, January 2010, 8.

1. Roll call – Take attendance on the first day. A simple discussion board with a response of “I’m here” alerts you to who has not found the classroom site as well as provides documentation of the students’ presence in the course which may be required for the registrar or financial aid records.
2. Syllabus quiz – Give a syllabus quiz during the first week. This quiz provides an opportunity for students to experience the online testing environment and provides an incentive for students to read the syllabus and other important information.
3. Ask the class – Create an “ask the class” discussion area in each module/unit. This is a place for students to ask general questions (similar to raising your hand in class and asking a question) and encourages students to respond to each other.
4. To-do list – Create a to-do list as the first item in each module. This item provides an introduction to and guidelines on how to approach the material in the module. Clear directions significantly reduce confusion and provide time management suggestions to the student.
5. Establish rules and expectations – Disseminate clear and consistent rules and expectations such as when to turn in assignments, the beginning and ending date of units, turn-around time for responses to questions or feedback on assignments. If everyone knows the rules and expectations from the beginning of the course, it reduces the time needed for continuing clarifying these important topics. A message sent to students the week before the beginning of the course is a great opportunity to introduce these rules and establish the rigorous standards of the course.
6. Private office – Create a dropbox or private journal function for students to communicate with you on confidential matters. Using a private office within your online course removes course specific communications from your general e-mail and provides on-going documentation of your conversation with the student.
7. Roadmap to success – Write a clear and concise document of student expectations, responsibilities and accountability for learning. This document addresses items such as the policy on late work, how to get technical help, netiquette, the flexibility and mobility of online learning, technical requirements, and finally how to access university resources such as the library and the writing center.
8. Take advantage of tools and technology – Use online tools within the course management system such as student tracking, testing automation, self-grading or rubrics added to assignment dropboxes, to increase your efficiency. In addition, external tools such as a wiki, Google tools, a spreadsheet, or a database tracking system all can increase your efficiency. In general, handle each item only once—if you open an item, do something with it, don’t just peek and plan to come back later.
9. Establish a routine – Set your schedule. Get in the habit of going to your online courses at consistent times and know what you are going to do while at the course site. For example early Monday morning I check for unanswered questions or items in my private office, but I don’t enter the discussion at that time or grade assignments. Alternating time throughout the week (i.e. Monday in the morning, Tuesday in the afternoon and Thursday in the evening) increases the likelihood of being present when different groups of students are online and supports the asynchronous nature of most online learning courses.
10. Don’t re-invent – Use existing resources. There are a number of quality learning activities available on the web. Sources such as MERLOT (http://www.merlot.org) and YouTube (http://youtube.com) are potential resources. Using these resources can reduce the time needed to develop similar materials.

Hopefully with these strategies, instructors can enjoy the convenience and creativity of online teaching without feeling overwhelmed.

Deborah A. Raines, PhD , RN, ANEF, is the director of Scholarship of Teaching at The Center for Teaching and Learning, Florida Atlantic University.

The keystone of online discussions, which result in meaningful learning for the student, is vibrant discussion. Vibrant discussions which are highly collaborative in nature inspire the construction of meaningful knowledge by building and expanding learning (Schellens & Valcke, 2005). Vibrant discussions need to optimize the energy and innovation of human thought and potential.

In essence, energetic and innovative discussions are developed through the scaffolding of novel thinking, original writing, and pertinent theory to construct and support new and higher level critical thinking by the learner. In addition, using one’s own experience as a filter, these vibrant discussions inspire, support, and honor a diversity of thought through the use of probing and clarifying questions and by validating the thoughts of other students. To illustrate vibrant discussions, please consider the following school leadership post by Jonathan, one of our learners, as well as the instructor’s response which illustrates how a reply to a student posting can be constructed to further a vibrant discussion:

Jonathan: “School leaders today need to be more than managers; they must be instructional leaders. Instructional leaders focus upon student achievement and assist and support teachers in promoting the success of each student.”

Instructor: “Powerful point! You stated “Instructional leaders focus upon student achievement and assist and support teachers in promoting the success of each student.” Based upon this week’s readings of Marzano, in what ways should instructional leaders support teachers and why, Jonathan and our EDLD 8708 colleagues?

The first two affirmative words “powerful point” demonstrate the instructor’s affirmation and appreciation for Jonathan’s thoughtful posting. The quotation of Jonathan’s own words dignifies and personalizes Jonathan’s thoughts. Theory is interwoven into practice by including the research. The concluding comment personalizes Jonathan by name and extends inclusiveness to his classmates with an invitation to further expand, enhance and propel thought.

Our aforementioned example is presented to illustrate the foundation of vibrant discussions. It includes a student demonstrating understanding, comprehension, personalization, and individualization, while the instructor displays inclusiveness, even as he or she inspires higher order thinking.

Intentional implementation of this powerful technological learning strategy will enhance vibrant discussion board posts and responses that fortify and escalate the true meaning of sharing, learning and growing. Discussion boards need to be built from “the ground up” with vibrant thoughts contributed by each e-learner – thread by thread – until the very structure itself is stable and free-standing. (Edelstein & Edwards, 2002). Please give our strategy a try in your next course and watch learner engagement and achievement soar!

References
Edelstein, S & Edwards, J. (2002). If you build it, they will come: building learning communities through threaded discussions. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, volume V (1). Retrieved from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring51/edelstein51.html

Schellens, T. & Valcke, M. (2005). Collaborative learning in asynchronous discussion groups: What about the impact on cognitive processing? Computers in Human Behavior, 21, 957-975.

Drs. Dale Kimball and Michael Jazzar have collectively served 26 years in higher education as professors, dissertation mentors, and administrators at Western Michigan University, the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, and Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, and for several online universities. They have authored books, book chapters, journal publications, and designed and developed online courses. They may be contacted by e-mail at kimballd@live.com or mjazzar@verizon.net.

1. Require students to give feedback to a peer each time they post to a forum.
2. Assign critical friends for feedback on blog posts or reflection activities.
3. Have a minimum post rule of three sentences. Sentence #1 is “I agree with so and so”; sentence #2 is “I think [or I believe] this or that”; and in sentence #3 students finally must say something substantive.
4. Combine asynchronous discussion with a synchronous visit from the expert before and after the discussion starts.
5. Use Flash animations of content with reflection.

During the seminar, Bonk elaborated on the use of Flash animations: “One short two-minute video does more for learning than reading the book for four hours. Reading about the Enron crisis for two years, I learned nothing. Watching a video of it, I learned everything I needed to know.

“I’m overstating a little bit here, but you get the point. And these have become cheaper. They’ve become more functional. They’ve become easier to embed with broadband. If we don’t consider Flash animations in certain subject areas, we’re not proceeding in an interactive, engaging way with our students, especially visual learners. …”

For information about ordering recordings or transcripts of this online seminar, go here »

Reprinted from “Tips from the Pros – How to Increase Interactivity in an Online Course.” Online Classroom, Dec. 2009.

Here’s how …

The best activities are “reality-based” activities. The more a student can relate to a learning activity, the easier it is for that student to get involved in it—and employ the purpose of the activity beyond the course. In creating activities for your online course—whether from scratch or by tweaking other activities to fit your class—be sure they reach into the real world. And that real world can include pieces of history or other events, people’s stories, or really just about any other item that is interesting, unusual, or humorous enough to hold students’ attention, no matter what the subject.

Be certain the activities are up to date. Using outdated activities will likely lead to low student interest (and leave an impression that the instructor is out of touch and/or just doing the “same old, same old”). If a dated activity is still fresh because it is interesting or its “datedness” is precisely why it is being used, fine; but if neither of these is the case, change the wording so it reflects a more current time frame (and certainly one that is relevant to your students).

Be on the lookout for existing or potential activities that can be morphed to fit your class. From textbooks that include activities to cartoons to daily events to newspaper and magazine articles to conferences and conversations to Listservs and blogs to TV shows and movies to everyday life experiences—each of these (and others) presents you with a gold mine from which to unearth new and exciting activities for your course.

Develop any new activities with students in mind, never you. Whether you are form-fitting an existing activity to your class or creating one from scratch, it must be designed to fit all aspects of your students (and your class)—not just you and your creative bent. Too many activities have failed in their efforts to keep students engaged; to successfully highlight or spotlight an idea, formula, theory, fact, or philosophy; or to lead students to new discoveries and insights simply because the instructor failed to keep students in mind.

Keep all activities short and easy to understand. Activities are, by their very nature, not meant to be treatises, dissertations, essays, or theses; they must be short to hold students’ attention and to fit as a component of a larger lesson, and they must use vocabulary and concepts students can readily understand on first reading.

Don’t hesitate to use humor in the activities. Activities that evoke a smile, chortle, chuckle, or guffaw are effective as they have a friendly flavor, thus making them easier and more enjoyable to tackle. But observe three notes of caution. (1) Use these sparingly, not as the norm, for you want a balance in the style of your activities (too much humor can take away from the serious nature of the course). (2) Be sure it is humorous. Too many people try their hand at humor and are miserable at it; it’s much better to try out humor on colleagues first than to have it fall flat on your students. (3) Always keep the humor in good taste!

Make certain all activities fall under your school’s umbrella of acceptability. Schools may have certain policies regarding the use of activities, the number of activities, your activities vs. school-sanctioned activities, etc. Be aware of any of these before you begin creating activities for your course; you don’t want to invest time and effort in activities only to learn you can’t use them.

Make use of the newest online technology. Beyond good ol’ text, there are blogs, podcasts, videos, animation, .mps (audio) files, interactive links, and other options—explore these and see which ones might be a nice bonus to an activity in engaging your students, in presenting your activity’s purpose, and in spicing up your class. We online instructors must embrace new technology and use it to enhance our teaching efforts—and this includes the activities we present to our students.

Be sure to give credit when applicable. If you decide to use something verbatim or nearly so from another source, it is important to give credit to the author. In some cases you must get permission from the publisher.

Errol Craig Sull has been teaching online courses for more than 14 years and has a national reputation in the subject. He is currently putting the finishing touches on his next book—How to Become the Perfect Online Instructor.

Excerpted from Teaching Online with Errol: How to Create Effective Activities for Online Teaching, Online Classroom, July 2009.

How to Balance Online Learner Needs and Instructor Workload

The world of distance education is changing teaching and learning. But for instructors, it may not feel like it’s changing for the better. Instructors are becoming more and more frustrated with the increased workload and the expectation from students to be accessible 24×7.

Distance education has a tremendous upside, but increasingly, students and instructors are experiencing its downside too:

• Instructors’ workloads are increasing. The need to respond individually to students can be all-consuming and exhausting, and instructors are finding their workloads are becoming difficult to maintain.
• Students miss a sense of community. A classroom fosters a community, and some students feel isolated without this connection, which may negatively impact student learning.

The solution is to create a learner-centered online classroom experience, one that compels students to assume more responsibility for their education while lessening the workload on instructors.

You’ll learn how to make this happen in your distance education course with a copy of the audio online seminar How to Balance Online Learner Needs and Instructor Workload. Presented by two experienced online educators, the online audio seminar will help you:

• Identify and implement strategies for establishing an instructor presence while decreasing your workload.
• Discover why combining a learner-centered, interactive instructional activity with targeted instructor feedback enhances student achievement and retention.
• Develop assignments and grading strategies to increase student interaction.
• Create an inclusive, online community where students connect with other members of their class, thereby reducing their reliance on you.

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Who Should Attend
Any online educator from a two- or four-year college or university will benefit from the seminar. The seminar is especially suited for the following positions:

• Faculty (full and part-time)
• Department Chairs
• Instructional Designers

If you’re interested in getting your students to take more responsibility for their learning while ensuring a more manageable workload for you, this seminar will provide tangible, working solutions that you can implement right away.

New for 2011! A Discussion Guide for Facilitators.

Participating in a Magna Online Seminar as a team can help leverage unique insights, foster collaboration, and build momentum for change. Each seminar now includes a Discussion Guide for Facilitators which provides step-by-step instructions for generating productive discussions and thoughtful reflection. You’ll also get guidelines for continuing the conversation after the event, implementing the strategies discussed, and creating a feedback loop for sharing best practices and challenges.

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Whether or not you make a conscious effort to project your personality into your online courses, students draw inferences about you through whatever information about you is available to them.

“Some [instructors' digital personalities] are just very, very flat and lacking in information,” Conaway says. This can be due to the instructor’s underestimation of the importance of this aspect of his or her courses or lack of confidence and/or experience in the online environment. The persona you present online can affect the online classroom in the following ways, Conaway says:

• Student satisfaction: “Student satisfaction, persistence, and achievement are all influenced by the relationships they develop in courses. Any event is influenced by how we feel about the experience. Humanistic theory would agree that we would choose to stay in environments that feel safe, comfortable, and rewarding,” Conaway says.
• Learning: “Transactional distance research suggests that we get more from those we interact with. In online education, that distance can be closed by interacting with students. That interaction does not have to be an email or discussion thread. It could be the interaction they have with your website or an image of you, or a video clip. I think that instructor presence leads to the potential for deeper learning.”
• Interaction: “Role modeling interaction with students in the class is more likely to create student-to-student interaction. It’s the same with the online class. Of course, in the online environment there are students who choose that delivery because they do not have to interact as much. Very independent learners shy away from those student interactions. Learning styles and a student’s comfort with social situations vary, but I think role modeling frequent and quality interaction is very important.”

Here are some steps that Conaway recommends for expressing your digital personality in order to enhance the learning experience:

• Include some biographical information in your course. Course management systems have spaces for instructor information. The default setting typically includes space for a small photograph of the instructor, office hours, and an email address. As a first step toward improving on this, Conaway recommends including more information on that page—a few photographs, descriptions of hobbies and interests.
• Consider students’ expectations. Today’s students are typically quite familiar with interactive technologies and expect their instructors—especially online instructors—to understand and use technologies that promote interaction as well.
• Explore new technologies. “Just looking at what has happened to the capabilities of the Internet and computers in the past ten years should be enough to guide us in what we should be doing. YouTube tells us we can create videos and share them with our students. That content that once could only be played in the classroom or living room on VHS tape can now be placed in your online class. Social networking sites tell us that our students do want to communicate with each other. The recent developments in open courseware tell us that there are instructors all over who have great information to share, and we can incorporate it into our courses. The Internet is not just scrolling text anymore. We need to use its capabilities to address learning styles and promote interaction,” Conaway says.
• Create a Web page. Some students will want to know more about you. If they do a Web search and don’t find much about you, they make take this as an indication that you are not very tech savvy, which as an online instructor is not a good impression to make, Conaway says. In addition to serving as a space to convey your personality, a personal Web page is also a great place to put reusable resources for your courses—handouts, links, etc.

Excerpted from Instructor’s Personality: An Essential Online Course Component, Online Classroom, Jan. 2009, p. 1,5.

When students are asked to help out, either directly or indirectly, a course can become more efficient and will run more smoothly, and the students can become more engaged with fewer concerns. Following are some suggestions on how to make the best use of your students as “assistants.”

Check out any suggestions and information found in discussion or chat forums. In the discussion and chat features of online courses, students offer information, insights, criticism, and suggestions on specific instructor questions related to the course—as well as on other student postings, the course overall, and even the instructor himself/herself. Read these thoroughly; there is much to be learned about problems in the present course, concerns students have with the subject matter, and confusion about instructor directions or comments.

Get a better sense of student learning needs from their lives. One of the biggest complaints students have about online courses is that they are too generic and theoretical, with little or no thought given to a course’s application in students’ real lives, in terms of “This is what I’m doing now” or “This is what I will be doing.” Yet when course information does touch the students in a meaningful, truly useful manner, it keeps students more engaged in the assignments and creates a better rapport throughout the course.

Two ways to ensure this are by reading the student biographical information that typically is posted at the beginning of a course and by posting a relevant question to the class, such as “How will the information in this course prove helpful in your everyday lives?” Use the information you learn about the students to insert activities, post resources, and offer discussion or chat questions that make the course more pertinent to them.

Post questions that will benefit the students and you—and your future courses. Ask class and individual questions of students relating to their experience in the course, their professional interests, and their course concerns. Don’t hesitate to ask students about other areas of the subject matter they would like to explore, what they think could make the course a more positive experience, and their overall reaction to your teaching of the course. By seeking this information, you can learn much to refine the course while it is being taught, to direct the course more toward student needs, and to improve upon future courses you teach.

When necessary, employ a buddy system to help weaker students. You will come across a student or two whose computer skills or basics in the subject you’re teaching may be very weak; the attention you must give all your students makes giving intense individual assistance to these students difficult if not impossible. To help, set up a buddy system: ask for student volunteers who will be available to answer another student’s questions during the course. You will find there are always students willing to volunteer; the end result is a class that is stronger and thus more engaged and vibrant. (Note that you should never promise extra credit or the like—it is not fair to the members of the class who may not have those strengths to offer.)

Be aware of problem areas that students encounter in navigating the course site. No course management system or course structure is perfect. Keep a master checklist of all items to look over before a course begins, and add those legitimate ones that students point out. This will only ensure that your next courses go smoother yet.

Let students remind you of your responsibility and role as an online instructor. Each student comes to you for guidance, information, insights, and suggestions on a subject so that he or she can become more adept with that subject. It makes no difference whether this is a core subject for a student’s major, a refresher course for a profession or certification, or an elective: the students themselves serve as a constant reminder that you are in the role of instructor because of your subject knowledge, your ability to teach, your adeptness at instructing online, your high ethical and moral standards, and your commitment to your school’s rules and policies. Never forget any of these elements; when you do, the students lose, the school falters, and you disappoint—all results that you never want in your teaching portfolio.

Errol Craig Sull has been teaching online courses for more than 14 years and has a national reputation in the subject. He has written and conducted workshops on it and is currently putting the finishing touches on his next book: How to Become the Perfect Online Instructor.

Excerpted from Teaching Online with Errol: The Online Instructor’s Hidden Assistant: The Online Student, Online Classroom, June 2009, 6-7.

Online Courses: Step-by-Step

Eager to teach online, but dreading the “tech” part? Relax … this new program picks up where on-campus training leaves off and will help any faculty member make the transition, comfortably and confidently!

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There’s been a steady migration, if not an outright stampede, into the online classroom in recent years. Many of your colleagues are teaching there now.

What about you? Are you interested in bringing your passion for teaching into the online classroom, but are uncertain how to get there? Are you concerned about a long and painful learning curve? Or are you teaching online now but are finding the experience is less than what you expected?

If so, you’ll be pleased to discover there’s an online program developed especially for you. It’s called Online Courses: Step-by-Step, and it will help make your transition to online teaching easier and more fulfilling than you ever thought possible.

It’s focused, it’s fast, it’s practical, and it’s virtually painless.

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To be successful in the online classroom, you don’t need to be a technology whiz … you don’t need to be a programmer … you don’t need a sophisticated understanding of the online world. You simply need to be a committed educator interested in engaging students in exciting new ways.

Organized into three convenient modules, Online Courses: Step-by-Step covers:

Module One: Online Pedagogy
Discover how teaching methods differ between the traditional and online classrooms. You’ll get an in-depth look at:

• The history of the virtual classroom
• Best practices for online teaching
• Content delivery methods
• Class interaction and discussion
• ADA issues in online education
• And more

Module Two: Design & Assessing
See how to work with your instructional design team to put your course online. You’ll learn about:

• Reconceptualizing your course
• Guidelines for development
• Use of blogs, wikis and other social tools
• Integrating video and other media
• And more

Module Three: The Tools
Here you’ll learn about the tools you have at your disposal as an online educator, and how these tools can be applied to:

• Class discussion
• Assignments
• Quizzes
• Grading
• Peer communication
• Teacher-student communication

By program’s end, you’ll have the knowledge you need to get online, and the confidence that you’re doing it right.

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The cost for this comprehensive program for one person is just $299, and the more people from your campus who sign up to take the course, the lower cost per person:

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• Are you familiar with your college’s intellectual property policy?
• Do you know if you own the class material you have created?
• Do you have permission to use all copyrighted materials you use regularly?
• Do you know how to prevent defamation and harassment issues online?
• Do you have a disability expert on campus that regularly assists in the development of online materials so that you do not violate disability guidelines?

If you answer “no” to any of the questions, you might be at risk for a lawsuit, says Rob Jenkins, associate professor of English at Georgia Perimeter College.

In a recent online seminar A Legal Primer for Online Instructors, Jenkins and Debi Moon, JD, assistant vice president of educational affairs at Georgia Perimeter College, discussed the top legal issues for online faculty and how they can limit their exposure.

Consider the following scenario: You are an online professor who has produced an award-winning online course and now want to sell your online materials to a large publishing house. Does your college have any rights to the material?

The answer? It depends.

What the courts would look at is whether your college has a formal policy that spells out intellectual property rights and whether you signed a contract regarding ownership rights at the start of your employment.

“Let me tell you what the general rule is,” says Moon. “If you created your materials in your office, using nothing but what’s called the ‘incidental use of college property,’ and that means using your [office] computer, more than likely, unless you had a contract or unless it said something in your intellectual property policy, you actually own all the rights to those materials.”

While that sounds cut and dried, there are also exceptions. For example, if you were paid a stipend beyond your salary to create the materials, or given a reduced workload, then the school likely will be given at least some ownership to the materials, Moon says. Moreover, if the creation is a “work for hire” as agreed in writing before work begins, then the college has complete ownership of the work, she says.

The best thing is to know your rights.

“The first thing you need to do, if you’re not familiar with exactly what your college’s intellectual property policy says, is go download a copy.” says Moon. “You might be surprised to find out, as I often am, that colleges sometimes don’t have a policy on intellectual property. I’m hoping yours does, so go download it and if you have questions about it, you need to talk to your chair, dean or your VPAA and find out exactly what your rights are. And I would insist, if you have any doubts, get it in writing that you own the rights to your material.”

Other scenarios covered during the seminar involved computer use policies, harassment and defamation issues, social media and privacy concerns, ADA guidelines, and finally copyright issues, which Jenkins says is probably the least understood area in online education.

In those cases in which a student is openly abusive to the instructor or other students, it is essential for the instructor to immediately refer the issue to administrative authority. But there are many students whose disruptiveness, if skillfully handled by instructors at the start of such behavior, can be forestalled from reaching the extremes.

Posting a code of conduct in the class can certainly help set the tone for the class, but there are a few other general techniques that seem to be effective:

• Assume a tone of formality when handling a problem—formality in online classrooms signifies seriousness and firmness, especially when contrasting with an otherwise more casual instructor tone.
• If the student has made his or her issue publicly known by posting something inappropriate in the class forum, handle the issue by using both private email communications and a public clarification.
  The latter should not address the disruptive student but the class as a whole by calmly reminding the students about the course requirements, restating objectives or purpose, or referring students to resources for solving problems, as the case may require. Meanwhile, a private email to the student can allow whatever personal communication seems appropriate.

• Do not allow yourself to argue on the level of the student or get too caught up in one student’s drama. Remember that the other students are equally deserving of your attention.

For more information about managing expectations and working with difficult students, see Ko and Rossen, Teaching Online: A Practical Guide, 2nd edition (Routledge, 2008).

Susan Ko is the executive director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Maryland University College.

Reprinted from Tips from the Pros: Three Tips for Handling Disruptive Online Students, Online Classroom, February 2009.

Even though the content may be emotionally engaging, the discussion it generates may not be.

“One of the biggest barriers to online learning is our inability to respond in the moment, unless we happen to be on live chat or video, which is really rare in most of the online learning world,” says Rick Van Sant, associate professor of education at Ferris State University.

That moment after viewing some emotionally engaging content passes quickly. In a typical online learning environment, students react and post to a discussion board or blog and wait for a response. “I think it’s one of the downsides of asynchronous learning. You lose that opportunity for the teachable moment,” Van Sant says. “There are many positive aspects to online learning, such as thoughtful reflection. One of the things I see, the students who do not often volunteer or engage in on-the-fly discussion in a face-to-face classroom will turn around in an online environment and become significant discussants. Not that they’re lazy in the classroom; they just don’t process information on the fly quite like somebody else.”

Despite the limitations of asynchronous communication, it still can create an emotional connection that supports learning. For example, collaborating on a wiki can be just the thing to motivate and engage students.

“If we’re working on a wiki together and you edit something of mine, chances are there’s a mild emotional expression associated with that—I don’t like the edit, I’m sensitive about the edit, or I’m thrilled with the edit. But it’s personal because I wrote it and you changed it. Can I trust you? That’s an emotional experience. It might be a positive emotional experience. It might be a negative one. Whatever it is, it contains that seed, that very small element of an emotional connection to it: ownership.”

Another obstacle to creating emotionally engaging learning environments is that many online instructors are not technologists. “They’re teachers, they know their subjects, but they don’t necessarily do a good job from a pedagogy standpoint,” Van Sant says.

Many online instructors take a teacher-centered approach to pedagogy, posting PowerPoint presentations, notes, readings, assignments, and tests and quizzes and “tell students to go forth and learn,” Van Sant says. “Really good online teachers have taken up the challenge to learn about the various tools.”

“The classroom must be a learning community. In an online environment, you must be sure you are using the tools to make that happen. And these are the blogs, wikis, Web 2.0 tools and social bookmarks, and the discussion boards. The interactivity creates communities. When that happens, you’ve got far greater potential of engaging that otherwise somewhat unengaged student,” Van Sant says.

Instructors who seek to create learner-centered online courses often read the work of Howard Gardner on multiple intelligences and think that for every lesson they’ve got to create eight different kinds of assignments to reach the learning style preferences of all their students. But Van Sant assures them they need not go overboard in accommodating all learning styles.

“The goal isn’t to cater to all eight individual multiple intelligences. It’s about providing, over the range of a course, the opportunity for people to learn and express their learning within their strengths and not always have to operate within their deficits. To do that, you need variety. You need redundancy. You need multiplicity. You need different ways of sharing and knowing. … What happens here is working in a much richer environment. It is a challenge for us to understand that in this rich environment we’ve got to become masters of that domain.”

Excerpted from A Learner-Centered, Emotionally Engaging Approach to Online Learning, Online Classroom, June 2009.

“One of the things we know about learning is that learning with emotion is a far deeper experience than learning without emotion,” Van Sant says. Citing recent research (see reference below), Van Sant notes that a little bit of stress and the corresponding release of cortisol makes “neural connections grow thicker, stronger, faster.” However, too much cortisol degrades memory performance.

Creating an emotionally stimulating environment is something good face-to-face instructors do intuitively. “We live and thrive on the positive feedback from students. Students shape our behavior all the time. When technology is mediating between the learners and me, I lose the capacity to read my audience, engage my audience, and alter my style and cadence. I have no capacity on that kind of intuitive level [in the online classroom]. It all has to be intentional and cognitive,” Van Sant says.

Technology provides access to a vast array of content that has the potential to resonate emotionally with students. One site that Van Sant uses in his courses is Technology, Entertainment, Design (www.ted.org/), which features top presenters talking on a wide range of topics.

“I can watch the world’s best presenters, speakers, and thinkers and bring them into my classroom. I can challenge my students with that information. I can ask questions. I can engage them in discussion with their own small community of learners about just what [the presentation] meant for them. The goal is to produce some emotional response, and probably 70 percent come back and say, ‘Wow, I’ve never known stuff like this existed,’ ‘That was the most amazing presentation,’ or ‘This person made the topic come so alive for me.’ It’s not foolproof. There are always students in the online environment who you just can’t get to. It doesn’t matter if they’re watching the best videos in the world or if I’m writing them directly or if the assignment is about reflection. Whatever it is, they’re guarding themselves and they’re guarding their emotional connection to learning.”

Reference
Zull, J. (2006). Key aspects of how the brain learns. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Learning, 110 (Summer), p. 3-9.

Excerpted from A Learner-Centered, Emotionally Engaging Approach to Online Learning, Online Classroom, June 2009.

Learning Styles: Theory and research confirm that students have preferred learning styles that can enhance their learning effectiveness. There are many instruments available to measure students’ learning styles from related literature. The Learning Style Survey developed by Diablo Valley College is a popular online instrument used for determining students’ learning styles, and won an award for “Best Use of Technology in Education for 1999.”

This survey provides immediate results on students’ learning style preferences, which I then use to gauge the amount and types of multimedia to include in PPT lectures. U.S. research suggest that typically, 30 percent of students prefer learning visually (e.g., images, charts, maps, videos, and notes), 34 percent auditorily (e.g., lecture tapes, sound bites, background music, and discussion) and 36 percent kinesthetically/tactilely (e.g., keyboarding quiz answers or comments, and manipulating learning material).

Using these findings as a multimedia gauge for a 30-slide PPT lecture, roughly 30 percent of the slides (9) will contain graphics, 34 percent (10 slides) audio or sound, and 36 percent (11 slides) interactive content (keyboarding, quiz in PPT, animations, and links to possible simulated exercises). I also include any detailed notes within the PPT “Click to Add Notes” feature for the particular slide, so students have all the information on the topic at hand. I would hasten to add that the latter is not absolute and other modalities can be used to present online course content.

Cultural/International Backgrounds: In addition to knowing students’ learning style preferences, I also ask my online students to share a little about themselves including their cultural/international backgrounds. In this way, the online learning community (students and instructor) can have a shared understanding and appreciation of its diversity. Using this information, I can choose graphics, audio, and interactive content that will accommodate for their cultural/international backgrounds in making learning more interesting and stimulating for students. For example, I would not place a black border or rim around pictures of persons as this symbolizes death for Chinese students. The color red can have both negative and positive meanings culturally so I use it sparingly.

Further, while Americans hold their dogs and cats in high esteem, other cultures do not. As such, I am culturally sensitive when using animal graphics. If I have Caribbean students, their infamous reggae, calypso, or steelpan music is included in the PPT audio. In addition, combat scenes are quite acceptable to U.S. students, who are reminded daily of the different wars being fought by U.S. troops around the globe. However, such scenes may appear abrasive to other international students, so I choose course content that will be generally acceptable to all students.

In being sensitive to online students’ learning style preferences and cultural/international backgrounds, I think we can enhance our online PPT lectures in making them easier for students to relate to and learn from effectively.

Debra Ferdinand, PhD, is a recent consulting distance education facilitator with Cipriani College of Labour and Co-operative Studies, Trinidad.

References:
Diablo Valley College (1999). A learning style survey for college. Retrieved August 19, 2010 from http://www.metamath.com/multiple/multiple_choice_questions.html.

Miller, S. C. (2007). Learning styles. Retrieved August 19, 2010, from http://www.4faculty.org/includes/digdeeper/lesson4/learningstyles.htm.

Carlson-Pickering, J. (1999, November). MI & technology: A winning combination. Retrieved August 19, 2010, from http://www.ri.net/RITTI_Fellows/Carlson-Pickering/MI_Tech.htm#Learning%20and%20Our%20Emotions.