Some faculty take a hard line and insist that adults should be able to figure things out for themselves. But this really is short-sighted. Returning adults are making up a growing population of online students, and they definitely have unique needs that go beyond being a nuisance to support—they form a real need. Most research on adult students in higher education settings show that adult students in these settings are at a transition stage in their lives, so our ability to support them directly impacts their ability to make a successful transition.

Learning strategies
In a previous article, I contrasted ways that younger and adult students differ. The column on the left in the table below shows some adult student characteristics to which I have added teaching strategies that take advantage of these characteristics.
 

We need to take advantage of adult students’ life experience and goals. Not only does that help them feel accepted for who they are, it also helps them learn, keeps them engaged, and helps them relate what they are learning to what they already know. In addition, if we don’t consider adult students’ life experience, they often feel as if they’re being treated “like children,” a situation that isn’t conducive to learning, retention, or the transition they are going through.

I found two especially relevant articles, one of which directly discusses online learning, that do an excellent job of distilling the instructional support that adult students need. I’ve listed the two articles in the References section at the end of this article and recommend that you read them.

Individualize learning
Students often have a great deal of individualization needs, but instructors often don’t feel like it’s their problem to deal with them. But if you stop to consider their needs, you begin to see that if we don’t consider them, the students’ likelihood for success is greatly reduced. Some adults have reduced reading abilities or limited computer capabilities. Many may need to study in multiple, reduced chunks of time and at only certain times of the week because of their commitments and responsibilities. So consider how you can accommodate different needs without having to figure out what each and every person needs (that would be a nightmare!).

Here are some suggestions:

• Use advanced organizers so students know what’s expected and when (this helps students plan how to fit readings and assignments into their busy lives).
• Provide varied assignment options.
• Chunk content so it’s easy to study in smaller sessions.
• Provide practice exercises so students can be sure that they are on track.
• Make sure that the content is available in advance (so students can work ahead if they need to) and stays available for repeat study.

You may be thinking that individualizing learning takes more time, and you are right. But it doesn’t take a lot of extra effort, and most of the effort meets the individualization needs of all students.

Build in support
Adult students may need additional support. In an online environment, though, many adult students don’t know how to get it. Be aware of that and the fact that they don’t want to look stupid. Be sure to communicate with your students early and often about how they can get help … and have ways for them to get the help they need! For example, I always have a “Course Questions” folder at the top of my online course discussion area where students can ask questions, and I communicate to students that this is the best way to get questions answered.

One major caveat, though: if you want students to count on you answering their questions through this folder, you must answer them very, very quickly, especially at the beginning of the semester.

Use this Strategies for Supporting Adult Learners [opens as a PDF] chart to help you consider adult learners’ needs when designing your online courses.

References
Polson, Cheryl J. “Teaching Adult Students,” Idea Paper No. 29 (September 1993), Center for Faculty Evaluation & Development, Division of Continuing Education, Kansas State University: www.theideacenter.org/sites/default/files/Idea_Paper_29.pdf.

Cercone, Kathleen. “Characteristics of adult students with implications for online learning design,” AACE Journal 16(2) (2008): 137-159: http://editlib.org/p/24286/.

Patti Shank, PhD, CPT, is a widely recognized information and instructional designer, writer, and author who helps others build valuable information and instruction. She can be reached through her website www.learningpeaks.com and on Twitter @pattishank.

Excerpted from Designing and Teaching with Returning Adults in Mind, Part 2 Online Classroom, (April 2012): 4,7.

Some of the adults in your courses may be people who have lost jobs due to the recession and need to upgrade their skills. Others may be people who started degrees and never finished them but want or need to now. Others may want to change careers. There are as many reasons for adults seeking online degrees as there are adults seeking them. And understanding their needs puts you in a better position to tailor your strategies and help returning adults be as successful as possible.

Learner analysis
When designing training courses for organizations, one of the things instructional designers (like me) do to make sure the training fits the needs of the intended audience is an audience analysis. Some of the questions instructional designers might ask during a learner analysis for an online course include:

• Who are the intended learners for this course?
• What demographics should we be aware of?
• Why are learners taking this course?
• What do they already know about this topic?
• What topics will be most difficult, and what extra support will they need?
• What expectations will learners have?
• What resources do learners need and have?
• What experience do they have using course tools and technologies?
• What is their level of computer literacy?
• How fast an Internet connection do learners have?
• What computer support will they need?

I highly recommend that higher education organizations conduct a similar analysis of returning adults (through interviews, surveys, and focus groups) to better meet returning adults’ needs.

General characteristics of adult learners
Returning adult students come with a host of life experiences and expectations that tend to be different from those of younger college students. And yet, when I look at typical online higher education courses, I often see courses that don’t seem to be designed and taught with these kinds of students in mind. Faculty and institutions that don’t take into consideration adult learners’ unique wants and needs are more likely to experience lower involvement (which means reduced learning) and reduced retention.

One of the chief characteristics that make teaching adult learners different is that adult learners come into online courses with a wide variety of life and work experiences. They expect to be able to draw from their wealth of skills and knowledge and relate to their experiences while learning.

Adults want to know why they are learning something and how it applies to their lives, experiences, and goals. If you start discussing something theoretical, they’ll want to know what it has to do with the real world. Adults are willing to understand the theory after they understand the practical application.

The following table contrasts some of the most important ways that younger and adult college students differ.

Adults therefore approach learning far differently than younger students do. They bring more and expect more. They require learning to make more sense to them, and they expect far more direct application. They also vote faster with their dollars and their feet.

Patti Shank, PhD, CPT, is a widely recognized information and instructional designer, writer, and author who helps others build valuable information and instruction. She can be reached through her website www.learningpeaks.com and on Twitter @pattishank.

Excerpted from Designing and Teaching with Returning Adults in Mind, Part 1 Online Classroom, (March 2012): 4,6.

• Low-risk, nonthreatening learning environment
• Challenging, real-life, authentic assessments
• Rhythms, patterns, and cycles
• Appropriate chunking or grouping
• Learning as orchestration rather than lecture or facilitation
• Appropriate level of novelty
• Appropriately timed breaks and learning periods
• Purposeful assessments
• Learning that addresses visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners
• Active processing with mental models
• The use of universal examples, analogies, and parallel processing

Tompkins offers the following succinct definition of brain-based: “instructional strategies designed for compatibility with the brain’s propensities for seeking, processing, and organizing information.”

Tompkins’ model uses the acronym IGNITE.

Intervals: Tompkins recommends using an interval of intense focus for approximately 15 to 20 minutes followed by a two- to three-minute break. “Physiologically, your neurons are keen and alert for no more than 20 consecutive minutes. At the end of those 20 minutes, your neurons have gone from full-fledged alert to total collapse, and it takes two to three minutes for those neurons to be completely recovered and back to the total alert state. If you break longer than three minutes, you’ve redirected your attention,” Tompkins says.

Shifting from intense focus need not be a radical change. It can be as simple as posting to a discussion board.

Grouping: Present information in groups of three or five. “The brain can process no more than nine items in a sequence, and it actually does this much more efficiently with three or five. Odd numbers work better than even numbers. If you’re going to give students a list of six things to do, make it one, two, three, whitespace, four, five, six. The brain responds to whitespace because the brain processes things in groups. Students will be better able to focus as they look at this group of information. You’re providing the same amount of content. It just makes it more learner-friendly,” Tompkins says.

Novelty: When students are bored they tend to not pay attention to information that is present. Tompkins recommends injecting novelty to prevent boredom. “If there’s no announcement to make, post a good joke for the day. If you’ve got a header picture, change it once a week. Insert pictures with each unit. Do something to get their attention. You want students to go in and say, ‘What’s new today?’”

Interconnectedness: Learning needs to be connected to students’ reason for taking the course. Tompkins recommends making these connections by providing experiences and demonstrations and revisiting those experiences. Constant review is essential because people learn through two mechanisms: repetition and connecting to prior knowledge, Tompkins says.

Technology and time: Select the appropriate technology to suit the needs of your students. For example, podcasts may be effective for master’s-level students, but they are not a good choice for teaching developmental-level students.

It’s important to provide enough time for students to process what they’ve learned. “Don’t put so much work in there that there’s no time to process what you’re asking them to learn. I think sometimes instructors fill their courses with all kinds of things that there’s no way students will have time to do everything,” Tompkins says.

Environment: Keep the affective aspects of the online learning environment in mind. Welcome student emails. Understand your learners’ needs.

This model does not require sophisticated high-tech solutions. “It can all be done with a very simple course design,” Tompkins says. “I recommend using visuals all you can because over 90 percent of us are visual learners.”

Excerpted from Brain-Based Online Learning Design, Online Classroom, (November 2011): 1, 2.

Instructor Presence – The Mapmaker
Instructor presence is vital to create in an online course, because without it, the class becomes an impersonal experience guided only by text and the other electronic medium. Just as in a seated class, the presence of an instructor provides a sense of leadership and security for the students, a central point person that guides them in the learning experience. In an online class, one has to be conscious to create this presence, as it is not patently evident as it is in a seated class.

Instructor presence can be created in a variety of ways. The welcome announcement and faculty bio both provide an initial presence, but these are not in and of themselves enough. True instructor presence requires consistency throughout the course, and should be felt in the other areas. This can be achieved by the following: having consistent formatting, putting photos in the faculty bio and on the main introduction so that students could put a face to the instructor’s name, having the instructor provide his or her own icebreaker and having students relate theirs to it, providing clear objectives for the course (and relating those to each lesson so that the expectations are clear), and having the instructor take part in the discussions. These elements give the student a sense that there is a “mapmaker,” and not just a map.

Instructor Feedback – The Tour Guide
Instructor feedback is one of the most vital elements of an online course. It is interesting to note that instructor feedback is also a vital part of the aforementioned instructor presence. Feedback helps the students recognize that there is an instructor that is monitoring their progress. You can have instructor presence without feedback, but the presence would likely seem detached and impersonal. Feedback adds an interactive component that brings warmth to the experience. Put another way, if instructor presence is the sense of the “mapmaker,” then instructor feedback is the “tour-guide,” so to speak.

Feedback can be found in many areas. Clearly, grades are the most obvious avenue. However, there is great opportunity for feedback within the discussions. This type of feedback helps the students know that they are on track and moving in a direction that is consistent with the course objectives. Feedback also includes giving reinforcement as quickly as possible, as doing so will help elicit the behavior that is desired. This might include having a quiz with a function that produces immediate correction. It is also important to let students know the time frame for answering emails (which really should be within 36 hours) so that students don’t have to worry that their questions are just “hanging out in cyber-space.”

Navigation – The Map
Lastly, a map is only as useful as it is accessible. The legend, the key, etc, all must make sense and be relevant if the map is to be useful. There are several elements one may implement in order to make navigation as easy as possible. First, have a focus to each lesson and ensure this focus is brought to attention in each element. This includes making sure that extraneous and irrelevant material is omitted, making the lesson as succinct as possible. Provide instructions below each folder, have deadlines typed in bold and in a color so they are easy to spot, have both a preview and a checklist on the lessons page, and serialize items (and ensure that this serialization is the same on every page the item is found). It is also good to have options such that the student can find the same material from more than one link (making it so that they can find their destination with more than one route). Lastly, have instructions that are qualitatively the same in each place the item is found so that there is a consistent explanation of the assignment, thereby reducing possible confusion.

Last Thoughts
Ultimately, a good online course has elements that do not singularly exist, but rather has integrated elements that are part of a fluid, dynamic experience. A good online instructor works to ensure that each element of the course builds upon the course objectives and works in conjunction with one another, rather than as separate pieces. Online courses can be impersonal and flat, or they can be vibrant and robust. The feel of the course and the experience for the student will chiefly rest on the instructor’s ability to provide a succinct, clear, accessible, course with guided direction—in other words, an accessible map made by a mapmaker who serves as the tour guide.

Danielle Hathcock is a licensed professional counselor and an adjunct instructor in the psychology department at Ozarks Technical Community College in Springfield, Mo.

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Strategies that work in relatively small online courses do not necessarily translate when enrollments increase. Without a change in instructional strategies, doubling the number of students doubles the instructor’s workload on things such as grading and feedback.

To address this issue, Keith Restine, associate director of distance education, and Allison Peterson, senior instructional designer, both at Texas Woman’s University, recommend addressing instructor workload in two key areas: group work and discussion boards.

Group work
Creating effective group work experiences requires work up front on the part of the instructor, including selecting appropriate projects for collaboration, considering group dynamics, and setting expectations. Restine says that when group work fails, it is “because we’ve simply gone in and said, ‘Go work in a group.’ That’s just a perfect recipe for a disaster because everyone thinks they know how to work in a group, but the reality is that very few people actually do.”

When poorly planned, group work can actually increase the instructor’s workload due to confusion and having to help students work through group processes. This is why it’s essential that groups operate within a set of ground rules. Restine offers suggestions but does not impose any particular group work model on students. “I give a couple of models of group ground rules, but I require my groups to come up with their own unique set of ground rules. I also require all of them to sign off that they are going to abide by the group’s rules. I try to give them a lot of ownership in developing their own set of rules. Having them develop their own ground rules and actually have to work together at a distance to come to consensus about the rules takes care of a portion of the issues that I traditionally ran into in terms of group work,” Restine says.

The goal of group work is to develop a better project than students would create individually. Therefore, Restine tells students that rather than taking turns on the project, they should share the work.

“Group work isn’t just dividing up the work so everybody does less. I expect them to eyeball the others’ work,” Restine says. For example, when it is obvious that group members have not reviewed each other’s work, he will withhold the grade and remind them that they need to be more collaborative. “I’ll do that one time in a class, and I never have to norm them again. They get that very quickly,” Restine says.

He also stresses the importance of respect for each other, telling students “It’s fine to disagree. Just don’t devalue the other person. Let’s stick to the issues and disagree on the issues.”

Restine requires group members to document problems that arise within the group. A common issue is a lack of communication from one or more group member. “I ask them to document three times that they have tried to contact that person. Then I will intervene. I think it’s very important to have that piece in place,” Restine says.

Not all assignments are appropriate for group work. Some assignments are better as individual work, and some assignments are carried out better in groups of varying sizes. Peterson judges that assignments that ask students their opinion are well suited to individual work and case studies are better done as group projects. She also says that online courses should have a combination of individual, paired, and group assignments, not merely to reduce the instructor’s workload (although that is important) but also to provide valuable group learning experiences for students. “There is trial and error involved in this. Online courses should be about continuous improvement. One semester you might try a particular assignment with a group of four and realize it would be better if you had students work in pairs. Or the other way around: you might realize a paired assignment was too much work for the students and would work better if the work were distributed among a group of four or five.”

“You might use simple pairs, and that’s going to cut down my number of products by half. I might have three people in a group, and not only does it give variety to the assignments without us really having to change the assignment much, but it also reduces the instructor’s workload in terms of grading. And what we’ve seen in several instances is that by the time students go through the assignments and toward the end of the semesters, we’re getting a much more finished product that’s actually easier to grade because a lot of the mechanical and grammar-type issues have been taken care of by the group,” Restine says.

In addition, working within groups provides students with a safe place to explore important questions. One of Restine’s group assignments asks each student to read two articles and extract the articles’ key points and share them within their group of four. This allows students to see eight studies side by side so they can compare and contrast them. “When I have students do that individually, they get lost in the text of the individual articles, and pretty soon they’re totally off topic,” Restine says. “These students are novices in the field, and so it’s really helpful for them to have somewhere—and that’s within the group—to talk about things, such as in this case, ‘Why are the findings from these studies so different from the findings from these other five studies?’ Questions like that are important, and unfortunately, I don’t think a lot of our students ask them. And they seem more likely to ask those types of questions in the safety of the group.”

Discussion boards
Discussion boards also provide several opportunities to reduce instructor workload while maintaining high levels of interaction, even in larger online courses.

As class size increases, it’s simply not feasible to provide individual responses to each student post. Restine recommends identifying which forums require individual response and which could be run using less time-intensive strategies. The key is to consider these forums very carefully up front and communicate to students how feedback will work within these forums so they know exactly what to expect.

“Let them know that you are going to look at everything. There will be times when you will respond individually, say in the introduction discussion board. In other instances you might let them know that you’re going to read everything, but maybe in the middle of the conversation you’ll summarize what’s been said to that point, and in the end you might summarize and give feedback and highlight a couple of key points an individual student makes and make a point of calling that student out in your summaries. That way you can kind of give them an individual touch, but you’re not responding to 50 different messages,” Peterson says.

“We’ve tracked this quite a bit, and students indicate that they’re as satisfied with summaries that mention student names as they are with individual responses,” Restine says.

From a pedagogical perspective, large discussion forums are problematic. “If you have 50 people trying to have a conversation, it’s not a real conversation at that point. Nobody can follow a 50-person conversation,” Peterson says. “Somebody’s going to make a statement, somebody else will respond to that statement, and 30 others are probably going to have similar statements. You have to consider what it is you’re looking for. I can have an introductory discussion board where I ask everybody to introduce themselves, and yes, I want them to read through everybody’s introduction, but that’s really not a conversation. If I really want them to have a conversation, I’m going to want to move it into smaller groups of five to seven.”

Restine has students work in small discussion forums to reach consensus and then has each group post to the main discussion area. In a class of 50 that reduces the number of posts from 50 to 10, which is a manageable number to respond to individually.

Flexibility is essential to managing large-enrollment courses. Rather than trying to perfect a semester-length online course for 20 students, Restine recommends being prepared to teach more students in various time frames. “Design the course so it can be flexible, because in today’s market you might need to collapse two sections and double the number of students. If you’ve built a course that could only be rolled out one way, then you may have to redesign it under pressure.”

Reprinted from Online Classroom (July 2011): 1,2.

All too often, instructors with the best intentions try to implement these concepts by being hyper responsive, trying to maintain as close to a 24/7 presence in the online classroom as possible and responding to each student discussion posting, blog, or wiki. Such an approach, however, leaves instructors exhausted, burned out, or frustrated. Worse, too much instructor presence can actually impede students from taking more responsibility for their learning, prevent critical thinking, and downplay the value of student-to-student interaction.

Others try to meet this need through the use of automated feedback to provide instant canned responses to student work, but this approach can leave students wondering if a “roboteacher” is in charge of the class rather than a real person. Furthermore, “building a community of learners” is often interpreted as a directive to create group projects for the sake of student interaction, even though many teachers groan at the thought of another difficult to manage group project that is time consuming and unpopular with students.

Online instructors can avoid these pitfalls and truly reap the benefits of strong presence and building a community if they clearly communicate how and when they will provide feedback to students and design assignments and materials that focus on student interaction from the beginning.

The benefits of designing and facilitating a course with strong student-to-student interaction are too powerful to ignore. Students become more engaged in an interactive class, and retention rates improve. They also feel less isolated in the online environment when they have a solid connection to their peers. In addition, students must think more critically in a class with high levels of student-to-student interaction, really engaging more in thinking about and applying the material rather than simply skimming the surface of it. Harnessing the students’ perspectives and interests creates more and varied class discussions that are truly relevant to their needs and abilities.

Clearly, though, in order to bring the students into a more prominent position, the role of the instructor must shift. In a course that is primarily instructor-led, the teacher is the center of the action and attention. Students rely on the teacher for correct answers, often without taking the time to explore why those answers are correct or the process used to arrive at them. In this type of environment, the instructor can feel overwhelmed by student questions, and students can feel isolated from others in their classes. While material is delivered efficiently, it is not necessarily delivered effectively. In contrast, a course with student-to-student interaction places the learner at the center of the action and attention. The instructor becomes a facilitator rather than a director, responding to and encouraging student ideas rather than simply answering questions. In this environment, the teacher has more time to provide substantive comments because he/she is not responding to every question. Students feel less isolated and are more proactive in their learning because they are engaging with others.

Encouraging student-to-student interaction in online courses
There are a number of ways to encourage student-to-student interaction in online courses. Of utmost importance is setting the expectation for student participation from the first day they log in to the course. The course syllabus should set clear guidelines for participation expectations (number of posts, frequency of posts, types of posts, sample student posts) as well as netiquette expectations. The instructor does need to plan to be more frequently present in the first few weeks to encourage and reinforce this participation. It’s particularly important that instructors notice when students aren’t participating and give them a gentle nudge to reinforce how important their interaction is through an email or phone call. As the course progresses, each major assignment should have a student-to-student interactive component that is clearly explained and modeled in the assignment description.

In addition, students should be provided with rubrics or other measures that clearly indicate how their interaction with each other will be assessed and why it’s important to their understanding of the material. When instructors clearly communicate a relevant purpose for the interaction as well as a clear assessment method, students become more confident and interested in participating.

Another element that is especially key is including a self-reflective component, where students can think about how and when they are participating and make a plan for how they might participate even more fully. Once students are given the opportunity to take stock of how much they’ve done and learned by participating with each other, they really grow to value the opportunities the teacher provides to interact.

As a course moves forward, instructors can then be more targeted in their communication with students, sending personalized feedback each week to a different group of students, or summarizing a discussion rather than responding to each post within it. Doing so allows the student interaction to be the focus of the discussion rather than the instructor’s response to each individual being paramount.

While creating a facilitation plan encouraging student-to-student interaction is essential, creating a highly interactive course balanced with a strong instructor presence is more than an issue of facilitation strategy; it really begins at the course design level. Incorporating assignments such as student-led discussions, wikis or blogs, student-prepared study guides, student-generated test questions, peer assessments, group projects, problem-based assignments, and question/answer areas in which students can respond to each other is the foundation for generating student participation. Similarly, discussion questions or topics need to be carefully designed to generate multiple thoughtful responses rather than soliciting simple yes or no or single correct answer responses. When this type of interaction is built into a course from the ground up through scaffolded or interrelated assignments, student-to-student interaction becomes the main expectation of the course, rather than the exception.

Increasing student-to-student interaction in online courses asks learners to become stronger critical thinkers. They must not only read and understand the text, but must also develop good questions that elicit responses from their classmates and formulate responses that further the discussion and encourage ideas from others. True, sometimes, they’ll get some things wrong—but those can be used as teachable moments, with other students explaining their different answers and how they arrived at them, and certainly, the teacher will still be present to clarify and extend the discussions as needed. When students respond to each other, they are not only thinking more deeply, they are building community and learning to work as teams. Students become more engaged with each other and the class and are often more successful as a result. Implementing strategic course design and targeted interaction with students allows instructors to create a balance that is to the benefit of both teachers and students.

Tammy Stuart Peery is an assistant professor and English department chair at Montgomery College in Germantown, Md. In 2010 she was recognized at the Maryland Distance Education Association’s Distance Educator of the Year.

Samantha Streamer Veneruso is an associate professor and English department chair at Montgomery College in Rockville, Md. She is a certified Quality Matters online course reviewer and her course En 101, Techniques of Reading and Writing I, was awarded Quality Matters certification.

Excerpted from Online Classroom (January 2011): 3,8

Five Ways to Build e-Learner Confidence with Low-Stakes Grading

A course that features frequent, low-stakes grading provides students with many small, low-pressure assignments that keep them engaged with course materials and alerts instructors to problems before the term papers and exams roll around.

Frequent low-stakes grading is a beneficial approach in all of higher education, but it is particularly powerful in the online environment where instructors can’t see students who are texting away, drifting off, or otherwise disengaged. It also keeps students focused and on track, and it provides regular performance feedback so that students—as well as instructors—always know how they are doing in a course.

Find out how frequent low-stakes grading can help foster student-teacher communication, build student confidence, demystify assessment, and encourage a constructive learning environment in Five Ways to Build e-Learner Confidence with Low-Stakes Grading.

Led by Scott Warnock, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English and Director of the Writing Center and Writing Across the Curriculum at Drexel University, this 60-minute seminar explains why frequent low-stakes grading works, and provide participants with simple strategies to incorporate low-stakes grading into current courses without creating an untenable workload.

Watch a brief clip from the seminar:

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Specifically, seminar participants will learn to:

• Incorporate more quizzes and informal writing assignments into course design;
• Provide course grading and evaluation strategies that will resonate with today’s “digital native” learners;
• Use grades to create dialog, to communicate constructively, and to build confidence and understanding; and
• Design and assess specific low-stakes assignments, particularly online writing assignments.

Ultimately, frequent low-stakes grading shows that when the pressure is minimal or nonexistent, students feel free to explore ideas or admit confusion. The former creates a rich learning experience for all students, and the latter gives instructors opportunities to clarify materials or address other issues that are inhibiting learning.

Who will benefit:

• Course instructors and teachers
• Teacher trainers
• Curriculum designers

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

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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.

Service learning may be one of the more effective ways of engaging students in the learning process, particularly for the current generation of Millennials. It is worth the effort to add a real-world learning experience to a course, and this extends to online courses, where the challenges are even more complex than in a face-to-face course.

The course
Pratt has taught an online course, “Classroom Applications of Educational Technology,” for several years. This course teaches student teachers how to apply technology in their future classrooms, and Pratt saw the value of adding a service learning component. So, he found a local school that had just received new technologies; the teachers at this school were not receiving sufficient professional development training to adequately use these technologies.

Students in Pratt’s class consulted with the client teachers to learn about the technologies available to them, then did independent research on how each individual teacher could better use the resources at his or her disposal. Pratt’s students met one time face-to-face with their client teacher to present their findings, leaving the client teacher with a USB drive containing resources they could use in the classroom. Students discussed their experiences via online Blackboard discussion and completed a reflection paper as part of their grade; the client teachers also provided feedback on the presentation and value of the consultation.

Through adding this service learning component to his course, Pratt was able to learn the following lessons:

1. Pick a goal, and integrate it into the course
“The key is to meet the needs of the student in the course [as well as] the community organization,” Pratt says. “Pick a goal in your course that could be better met with an organization in your community.” In this case, he found a way to encourage his students to research uses of technology in the K-6 classroom while serving teachers who were already there.

“The next big part is to integrate it as a part of the class and not just an add-on,” he says. This may mean that the introduction of a service learning project will displace other projects. Faculty, Pratt says, need to “appreciate how much time it will take the students” to complete the service learning project and plan accordingly.

Faculty must also appreciate the value of students learning from professionals other than themselves. “It is hard for faculty to give up control, but it’s worth it,” he says. “Trust other people to help your students learn.”

2. Pursue funding
Pratt points out that pursuing funding for a service learning project is not always necessary to achieve the course goals. “You really don’t need any money, but it is nice,” he says. The organization typically is “paid” for its participation in free labor, and the students are typically “paid” in course credit, so no money needs to change hands.

However, Pratt was able to secure a university-provided grant in the amount of $1,000 for his project, and an outside organization called Indiana Campus Compact awarded him $3,000. This money allowed students to provide a USB drive to their client teachers as well as a book they selected, and it allows Pratt to present his findings at conferences.

3. Know when to keep and when to surrender control
One of the challenging aspects of a service learning project for many faculty is giving up some control. This is particularly necessary in a distance learning version of a service learning project, because the professor will need to rely on others to help the project move forward.

“You do have to have a point person at the site, especially for distance learning,” Pratt comments. Since there is no assurance that students will be working at a stipulated time or be coming from the same place, a point person at the client site can help troubleshoot issues. This need can be indicated in the contract between the university and the client organization.

This worked well for Pratt, whose course is offered through a regional campus; although it is online, most students come from a relatively small area, so he could choose a single client organization. The distance nature of the course does mean that Pratt has less control over student interaction with the client school. “With an online course, I can’t really tell students to be a certain place at a certain time, so I had them do a certain amount of research online and then [hold] one meeting,” he explains.

He adds that, had he allowed students to find their own client site, he likely would have asked the students to submit a few possible options for his selection and approval. Keeping control over the array of client sites is important.

4. Have back-up plans
“You have to have a back-up plan for student issues or site issues,” says Pratt. For example, have plans in place for what will happen if a student shows up in unacceptable dress, or in the case of inclement weather. Knowing how to handle these circumstances will make addressing them easier.

Additionally, Pratt recommends having back-up assignments ready for students who cannot attend a site meeting. Although he only required one on-site meeting and gave the students a month to arrange meetings, he did not feel he could require students to attend the meeting if they had work issues or the like. These conflicts are perhaps more likely to come up in the distance education environment, so it helps to have assignments ready the students can complete if they cannot go onsite.

Pratt also recommends faculty give students the opportunity to plan. After the first term he integrated service learning into his course, Pratt found some students were unhappy about the service learning requirement. “Some were upset they didn’t get notified up front,” he says. He recommends faculty make this information available at registration.

Pratt suggests that faculty teaching a relatively new course not try to integrate service learning into it; rather, he believes this is “for someone who has taught a course for several years and is ready to take it to the next level.” Even for experienced faculty, service learning will require skills that the faculty members have not necessarily developed. “It is OK if you’re not good at all things; it can still have a huge benefit for the students,” he says. However, he is sold on the value of service learning. “A more engaging, interactive, real-world approach is more messy but more emotionally [fulfilling]. If any experience can be done in a real-world environment, do it,” he urges.

Reprinted from Hill, C. (2010). The 4 Keys to Successful Service Learning in Online Courses. Distance Education Report, 14 (24), 4, 8.

The recognized precursors for transformative learning of triggering event (or disorienting dilemma), critical self-reflection, discourse with another, and an action using the transformed perspective (Brock, 2010) provide a helpful framework for viewing the online environment where each may be fostered.

1. Triggering events. Students who feel comfortable and supported in the classroom are more likely to share their thoughts, ask questions, and be open to probing or opposing views. A welcoming email, a structure to share personal information, goals, and a means to become acquainted with others help students to feel comfortable. Taped audio welcome messages allow students to hear the faculty member’s voice, which in turn helps to connect students with faculty. Through the introductory events, students find that they share similar goals, fears, and experiences. They also are exposed to classmates from different backgrounds and cultures and realize that many share the very same goals. This realization in itself expands their way of thinking.

Reading material, conducting role-plays, participating in team projects, conducting research, and watching videos followed by questions and discussion can introduce major opportunities for triggering events. Various and wide-ranging ideas, minority or contrarian opinions, trying on new roles, and the sharing of experiences and assumptions expose the reader to new ways of thinking. Any of these can cause the student to pause and consider what differs from their own way of thinking. Peer evaluations on projects or faculty’s feedback on projects/assignments can also create a triggering event.

2. Personal critical reflection. Online technology offers numerous means for reflection. This is triggered not only through thinking about and articulating viewpoints through weekly discussion, but also through writing papers, using electronic journals, and writing personal blogs. Each promotes reflection and synthesis of thoughts. Asking the student to expand on another student’s comments, share their own thoughts, and be exposed to a contrarian or alternative view also encourages reflection.

Team assignments, role-plays, or otherwise representing and explaining opposing assumptions behind views on a topic can force a student to try out a new way of thinking, and can trigger a reflection on their assumptions. Probing questions from faculty can further reflection about the assumptions held. Unlike a face-to-face classroom, in an online environment the student does not have to respond immediately. Most of the discussions are asynchronous, which allows time to think and reflect critically before answering. This can be a real advantage.

3. Discourse with others. Technology has opened up many avenues for having discourse with others. It is in this precursor that one student will exchange assumptions with another on a viewpoint, will share their disorienting dilemma (triggering event), or probe deeper about why they thought the way they did and how they may be changing their assumptions. Faculty can use their own institution’s technology platform such as Blackboard or other Web-based classrooms or can use some of the social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or the digital world of Second Life (just one of many game-type interactive sites). We are also seeing faculty building their own avatars, using synchronous chat rooms, and taking advantage of Skype, Wimba, Wikis, and audio or video messages, and I’m confident there is much more to come. Technology in the online classroom can give an advantage to students for discourse with others because of how it expands the availability of geographic locations, increases the number of possible discourse partners, and allows 24/7 discourse rather than confining it to a face-to-face classroom.

4. Action. According to the theory of transformative learning, action on the transformed assumption is needed to complete the process of transforming the learning. The needed action can be writing a paper, making a statement to another person, or any other means of asserting the new assumption. For some, the action is a behavior such as joining a professional organization, working toward new goals, changing the declared academic major, selecting a new career, or, in one situation I observed, forming an organization to address an identified need in the community. It is helpful to ask students frequently and at the close of the semester to share what they learned that expanded or changed their thinking on a topic and how they will apply the change in their thinking.

Reflections for educators and educational institutions
It’s a new world in academia, and it is one in which some educators may require critical reflection on assumptions about online learning and outcomes. In addition, educators may need to enhance their technological competencies, and some may need to be more selective and thoughtful with technological applications. Institutions may need to invest more in designing further capability in their computer platforms and ensure that technology choices are conducive to both teaching and learning in the online environment. Opportunities to develop faculty skills for online andragogy and staying current with the ever-changing tools are a must.

I pose a few items for us as educators to reflect upon and be mindful. The reader will perhaps expand the list. Would I know transformative learning if I saw it? Does my classroom foster an environment for transformative learning? Is there more I can do to foster a climate conducive to transformative learning? What assumptions do I hold about learning online? Are my assumptions limiting ones? Am I mindful of the transformative learning experiences of the students in my online classroom? How can I assist students on the edge of transformative learning?

References
Brock, D. E. (2010). Measuring the importance of precursor steps to transformative learning. American Association for Adult and Continuing Education. Adult Education Quarterly 60 (2).

Taylor, E. (2008). Transformative learning: A critical review. ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career and Vocational Education (Information Series, number 374).

Dr. Joyce Henderson is a professor of human resources at the University of Maryland University College.

Excerpted from Henderson, J. “Transformative Learning in the Online Classroom: Experiences of an Educator” Online Classroom (October 2010): 1-3. Print.

On Monday we counted down from number 11 to 6. Today’s post reveals the top five most popular articles, starting with number 5.

5. Five Common Pitfalls of Online Course Design
Much of what passes for an “online course” these days could more accurately be described as the electronic version of class hand-outs. These courses usually consist of a course description, a syllabus, lecture notes, reading lists, and assignment checklists. In other words, whatever materials a student might have viewed on paper in the past are now read onscreen, and whatever presentations a student might have watched in the classroom are now observed on their screen. Continue reading »

4. Questioning Skills to Engage Students
The right questions enable the teacher to more accurately evaluate if the students are truly attentive and if they understand the material. In addition, open-ended questions motivate students to share their ideas, thereby allowing active, collaborative learning to take place. This illustrates the need to be able to ask the right sort of questions to engage students. Continue reading »

3. Giving Students More Effective Feedback
Do you pass back exams, a set of papers or grades on some other student project and offer generic comments on what the class did and didn’t do well on the assignment? Most of us do, and for good reasons. The feedback gives students the chance to compare their work with that done by the rest of class, which can build more accurate self-assessment skills. But do students listen attentively as you provide this feedback? Continue reading »

2. What Students Want: Characteristics of Effective Teachers from the Students’ Perspective
Researchers asked their students what characteristics they think are essential for effective teaching. Analyzing and combining reasonably synonymous characteristics, researchers then isolated the top nine for online and for face-to-face students. Can you guess the number one trait? Continue reading »

1. What Does Your Syllabus Say About You and Your Course?
Syllabi can convey messages that build rapport between the teacher and students, and they can help create community among students. I know courses need policies, students need guidelines, and some students take advantage of teachers, but I wonder if we don’t err on the side of being too defensive in our syllabi. Continue reading »

Designing Online Courses: Models for Improvement

Designing an online course shares many of the same elements and processes that go into designing a traditional face-to-face course, however the online environment brings a unique set of challenges that require special attention and a different approach.

Faculty charged with developing their own online courses can find learning the new technology particularly frustrating, and those who are not early adopters to technology might resist the process entirely. Many institutions are realizing that the development and delivery of online courses is an increasingly complicated process, requiring both a specialized pedagogy and a technological expertise – and it’s rare to find both qualifications in the same person.

In the article “The Collaborative Approach to Developing Online Courses,” the author explains how one university adopted a centralized and standardized approach to the design, development, and management of online programs that respects the talents of both instructional designers and faculty by allowing each to work in their own specialty. As a result, courses have the same quality standards and a more consistent look and feel.

Designing Online Courses: Models for Improvement

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This 20-page special report features eight articles pulled from the pages of Distance Education Report, and covers a variety of different aspects of online course design. Take a look at the articles you will find in the report:

• The Collaborative Approach to Developing Online Courses
• Building Course Quality Systematically
• Who Ya Gonna Call When a Course Needs Help?
• Developing a Course Maintenance Process for Your Online Courses
• What Learning Object Repositories Mean for Your Program
• Practice Simple and Effective Course Design—Use the Learning Experiences Framework
• Is There Too Much Interaction in Your Courses?
• Rapid Online Course Design: Course Development in Days

Whether you’re developing a new online course from scratch, or updating one that’s starting to show its age, this report will give you new ideas to consider.

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Faculty Focus contains a wealth of valuable material on all of the key issues that matter to today’s top faculty and administrators. It’s packed with strategies, tips, and other information you can use on the topics that impact your students, your school, and your work, including:

• Student Engagement
• Instructional Design
• Online Education
• Classroom Management
• Educational Assessment
• Teaching with Technology
• Faculty Development
• Curriculum Development
• Trends in Higher Education
• And much, much more.

Designing Online Courses: Models for Improvement

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• Remind students that they registered for an online course and that they need to take active steps in order to be ready when the course begins. For starters, they will need a password in order to log in. Depending on your institution, log-in information may be sent via email or regular mail. Some institutions allow students to log in early to view the syllabus, access resources, see how the course is structured, and contact the instructor. I think it’s important to remind students that they have to take an active step—that they need to log in and make sure everything works.
• Direct students to your school’s orientation for online students. Many colleges provide self-assessments for online learning, an FAQ page, information about system requirements, sample courses, and practice quizzes for students to determine whether the online format is appropriate for them. If you have these resources available, you can direct students to them before the course begins, which will make the start of class proceed more smoothly.
• Establish expectations. In that first week, you’ve got to get in there quickly and send an email, establish a connection, and have the students use the communication tools, explain where to go for help, and establish expectations. If a student logs in late, make sure he or she understands that the course demands regular participation. I recommend to students that they should log in at least every other day. I tell them, “You may spend only an hour, but if you can carve out that time and get on a schedule, you’ll find that it’s a lot easier and you may be surprised at how much you get done in an hour instead of trying to cram all the work into one day a week.”
• Begin with low-stakes activities. It helps to have some ungraded practice activities during the first week of class to give students the chance to take a practice test, post to the discussion board, send an email, and establish that they are in the course. Some faculty have designed quizzes or scavenger hunts in which the student has to navigate the course to answer some of the questions.
• Provide access only to those parts of the course management system that will be used. Course management systems often have tools that you will not use in your courses or will use only at a specific time in the course. To avoid confusion, limit students’ access to only the CMS elements that are relevant to what they are currently working on.
• Have students introduce themselves. Have students use whatever discussion feature you will use throughout the course to introduce themselves. This gives students a chance to use that tool—discussion board, blog, wiki—with no points tied to it. It’s kind of a practice run. They can’t really make a mistake or get it wrong, and the introductions establish community in the course. The key thing is that the instructor post his or her introduction first to set the tone and model what they want from students. It also lets the instructor know who has logged in and who is having difficulty. When I post to an introductory discussion board, I use it as a chance to tell a little bit about myself. Then I invite students to respond and give them a list of three or four things I’d like them to share, such as whether they have taken an online course before, what they found most difficult, and what advice they have for first-time online learners. This advice is typically the same advice that an instructor would have, but coming from several students, it strengthens the message and encourages students to look to each other for help.
• Use the first week to establish prior knowledge. The first week of an online course can include graded assignments and may be used as a way of testing prior knowledge. I think it’s important not to consider that first week a throwaway week. I try to get at prior knowledge and introduce some of the content—whether it’s reading a journal article or viewing a video clip. Most of the students are in there on day one, and you don’t want to do a disservice to them by having them wait. They’re there and ready to go. If two, three, or four people come in late, I can work with them and get them up to speed.

Susan Biro is the director of distance learning at Carroll Community College in Maryland.

Reprinted from Online Classroom, May 2010, 8. Print.

Selecting and Using Technologies in Online & Blended Courses

Just as smart phones, Twitter, Facebook and all of Web 2.0 are transforming communication, they’re also changing how teachers teach and students learn. These new technologies could encourage learner-centered teaching and help students learn skills they’ll need to succeed.

Like any tool, digital technologies must be used appropriately to realize their potential.

Discover how to maximize the effectiveness of 21st century teaching tools with Selecting and Using Technologies in Online & Blended Courses, a 60-minute audio online seminar with noted presenter Tony Bates.

During the seminar Bates shares a comprehensive framework for educational technology decisions. Known as the SECTIONS Model, this letter-by-letter approach includes instructional and administrative criteria as follows:

S Is the technology appropriate for students?
E Is it easy to use and reliable?
C What are its direct and indirect costs?
T How will it support teaching and learning?
I What kinds of interaction will it make possible?
O What organizational issues will be involved?
N How much of a novelty is this technology?
S Will it let us start courses and make changes with the speed we need? Is it secure?

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Starting with this framework, you’ll learn:

• When to use face-to-face, blended learning, or online learning
• When to use a learning management system
• When and how to create personal learning environments
• When to blend a learning management system and personal learning environments
• When to use Web 2.0 tools, and for what purposes
• How to design learner-centered teaching.

Who will benefit:
This is an advanced level seminar, perfect for universities, colleges, training organizations and people in the following positions:

• Curriculum developers
• Educational technologists
• Instructional designers
• Faculty
• Instructors
• Program directors

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 web site for unlimited access by members of the 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 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.

Perhaps this suffices to replicate the classroom experience for students who are participating at a distance, but is this the best way to use the capabilities of a computer to support learning? It’s not unlike typing text into a slide presentation without realizing you could add sound, images, animations, colors, links, and videos. If you would like your online course to go beyond the offline paradigm, you will need to avoid the following five pitfalls of online course creation.

Online Course Design Pitfall #1: Upload your course materials, then call it a day.
Reading your course material on a computer screen does not make for a memorable learning experience. Step back and take a fresh look at your content in the larger context of the world and the Web. Think about how you can re-author your materials so that they leverage Web resources and computer applications. Rework that hand-out on tedious lab procedures into a colorful, animated slideshow. Bring a historic context to life through links to period paintings, historic sites, or even contemporary Google street views. Use your imagination to leverage the capabilities afforded by a computer connected to the Internet.

Online Course Design Pitfall #2: Let the course management system drive your thinking.
Course management systems (CMS) are usually preconfigured with a course template that instructors are expected to populate with their course description, syllabus, assignments, and announcements. Often these templates are focused on content that is more related to course administration rather than the educational experience. An empty template invites you to fill it with text-based information rather than opening your mind to wider possibilities. Start by thinking about the kinds of learning experiences you want to create rather than letting the CMS define a more limited view of putting your course online.

Online Course Design Pitfall #3: Insist on being the “sage on the stage.”
In the old model of education, the instructor stood on the podium and served as the students’ revered and primary access point to the desired knowledge. Today, your students may be Googling your lecture topic while you speak and finding three sources that update or improve upon your presentation. The Web provides instantaneous access to an enormous volume of opinions, commentary, and knowledge related to your topic. As a result, your role is now more of a content curator—the one who prunes and trains the branches that extend from your expertise out into the world. The Web enables interdisciplinary links, associations, relationships, and openness. Your course should be a place where students come to participate in the connections that can be made between your subject and the outside world. Build these bridges into your online course materials, and become a facilitator of these important connections.

Online Course Design Pitfall #4: Expect your students to consume knowledge rather than create it.
Most online courses aim at pouring content into student containers rather than supporting students in making that knowledge their own through practice, experience, and play. The interactivity and interconnectedness of computers provides increased opportunity for students to actively participate in their learning rather than passively consuming what you feed them. Developing content that asks students to recall and apply what they have learned is essential to the education process. In many cases, you can ask students to use the same digital tools you have used to explain your ideas in order to demonstrate their own understanding. In an online course, this could mean peppering your online content with quick test-your-comprehension questions or developing exercises that ask students to generate data, capture and upload photos of evidence, research connections to real-world conditions, or create explanatory slideshows.

Online Course Design Pitfall #5: Ignore the ways students learn from each other.
Many online courses assume a two-way dialogue between each student and the instructor, and they forget about the ways in which students learn from each other’s mistakes, ideas, and input. Consider creating wiki spaces in which groups of students can work together. Include assignments that require students to share ideas and resources, present topics to each other, and critique each other’s work. Use online communication tools and collaborative spaces to foster a class-wide web of supportive contact rather than settling into multiple parallel channels between you and each student.

The “online” in online course does not mean uploading Word documents into a course template rather than printing them out. Expand your view of how computer applications and Web resources can be used to increase the relevance, power, and memorability of the educational experiences you create.

Elizabeth St. Germain is the vice president of publishing and editorial services at nSight, a content development and communications services firm that specializes in learning and information products — and the people who create and produce them. To learn about nSight’s eLearning and course development services, visit http://www.nsightworks.com.

Bottom line: Just like initial course development, updating courses can be quite a lot of work. You can reduce the hassles and work (but not eliminate them) by designing your online courses with updating them in mind. That is, design so that updating is built into the process, not tacked on as an afterthought.

Identify change-likely elements
Most course designers start with a list of objectives or topics and then design the course elements, including content (such as narrated slides, reading materials, animations, audio clips, etc.), activities for students to do (such as answer discussion questions, review a site, perform tasks, etc.), and assessments (such as programs, reports, and tests).

High-level design tables, such as the one below, are often used to organize what will happen in the course. A high-level design table is then typically used to inform more-detailed design, including the design, development, integration, and testing of all the course elements.

One way to reduce the (unexpected) hassle in course updating is to identify up front the elements that are less likely to need updating and the elements that are more likely to need updating. Elements that are less likely to need updating may include content that doesn’t change and won’t need a what’s-happening-now focus. For a business writing course, for example, grammar rules are unlikely to change, so the content, activities, and assessments around those rules are likely to be stable. That doesn’t mean you won’t ever change it. In fact, you may indeed change it, for reasons discussed later.

Elements that are more likely to need updating may include content that normally changes over time (for example, certain science and Web design topics) and topics that are closely aligned with current events (for example, government and law topics).

To reduce update surprises, make note of elements likely to need changes and how often they likely will need updating when you are designing your courses. You could color-code the elements in your high-level design or use unique symbols that indicate when the element needs to be reevaluated for updating. Also note whether changes in those elements will cause update issues elsewhere in the course. For example, changes in content commonly necessitate changes in assessments.

Then, while the content and course are fresh, create an update plan so that when you get ready to update, you already know what needs to be done. This will save you time, energy, and hassles because you won’t need to start from scratch in determining how to go about updating.

Changes likely anyway
Certain aspects of your courses are going to change over time, even if the content itself is fairly stable. These include changes in textbooks, readings, and other “outside” content and changes to technologies (used for teaching and learning online).

When new versions of a textbook or a new textbook altogether is used, it is likely to impact all the other elements of your course. If you know that a new version of the textbook becomes available every X years, you should factor that time period into your course updating plans. The more closely your course content, activities, and assessments are tied to a text or readings, the more updating will be needed when that text or those readings change.

To reduce course update (and other) hassles, a bioethics professor I know “unhooks” the text and readings from the other content, activities, and assessments, and I think this approach could work for others as well. She supplies a list of readings (including the textbook) and time frames for reading them to students, but these readings are not in strict lockstep with other course content. Her goal is to provide foundational information in the time period before students will need it to understand the other content she supplies. She does pull test questions from these readings, so she has to update the test each time she updates the readings.

Another way to reduce updates caused by changes in readings is to develop general activity and assessment templates that can be used with minor tweaks as readings are changed. For example, an activity template that prompts students to select and justify the most significant influence/reason/outcome can be used with a variety of readings and isn’t tied to a very specific reading or readings. These kinds of templates can be developed to match the desired learning outcomes and tweaked to map to specific content as it changes.

Over time, the tools and technologies available to you inside and outside of your course management system will change as well, and this will influence how you “do” your course. For example, collaborative document creation tools (such as Google Docs) or easy-to-create media development tools (such as Google SketchUp) may change how your course works and the way you present content. This is to be expected and is, in my opinion, one of the fun parts about being involved in online course creation and delivery.

Patti Shank, PhD, CPT, is a widely recognized information and instructional designer and writer and author who helps others build valuable information and instruction. She can be reached through her website: www.learningpeaks.com.

Excerpted from Online Classroom, January 2010, 4-5.

Data Driven Decision Making for Online Instructional Design

If you’re feeling the heat to improve your online educational offerings, use the one tool readily at your disposal: Data. Applied in the correct points of the instructional design process, data can help to dramatically improve the overall effectiveness of your courses.

Despite its many benefits, online education faces serious obstacles. High drop-out rates and an increasingly skeptical Congress have caused many to question the effectiveness of online education, forcing online programs to continually evaluate their courses with an eye toward increased effectiveness.

Now, more than ever, you need to institute an established method for improving your online programs. You’ll discover it in the video online seminar Data Driven Decision Making for Online Instructional Design. The seminar will introduce you to methods for leveraging analytics in the instructional design process and ultimately enhance your courses, helping you to:

• Understand how data relates to instructional design elements, and develop strategies for measuring the relationship between implementations and learning outcomes.
• Utilize end-of-course and real-time intelligence to understand your instructional strengths and weaknesses, and to influence your future improvements.
• Develop ways to streamline your design team through the application of institution data points.
• Create strategies for using data to best allocate financial resources.

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You’ll develop both a theoretical understanding of how to improve your instructional design process, as well as practical methods for enhancing your own efforts. The seminar will help you discover:

• How to utilize institutional data sources to optimize instructional design strategies and components.
• What methods you can use to collaborate with faculty and staff to inform instructional design initiatives while complementing institutional research objectives.
• How to include data collection elements in the workflow so that analytics can help optimize your instructional design.

By the end of the seminar, you’ll understand strategies that will aid in the development of workflows, content refinement and enhance your program’s overall learning effectiveness.

Who will benefit
From the one-person shop to instructional design teams, anyone involved in an online program will benefit from the seminar. Recommended positions include:

• Instructional Designers
• Institutional Researchers
• Instructional Technologists
• Online Faculty
• Program Directors
• Department Chairs
• Deans
• Associate Provosts (responsible for institutional effectiveness or online programs)
• Learning Strategists

If you wish to share this seminar with others across your campus, consider ordering a Campus Access License. For an additional $200, a Campus Access License allows the purchasing institution to upload the CD of the seminar onto the institution’s password-protected internal web site for unlimited access by members of the campus community.

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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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Persistence is a key issue for community colleges because they tend to be driven by FTEs. These institutions are typically open admission, and maintaining a certain level of FTE determines the school’s funding for the next year.

To better understand online course persistence, Knipe contacted colleagues at area community colleges. “All [were] seeing about a 70 percent on-time completion rate, down from 80 percent,” he says. However, most research done at that point on online student persistence focused on programs at the baccalaureate level. So, Knipe constructed a “Top Ten” list based on his research that helps community colleges understand when students are most at risk for not completing an online course.

Knipe’s Top Ten Persistence Factors
#10: Learning Style: For a student to be most successful in an online course, he or she must have a learning style that is compatible with the demands of the course. This requires a certain ability to study independently; it also requires a match between the visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learning qualities of the course and the style of the student. There are several online assessments available which students can use to understand their own learning styles.

#9: Previous Success with College Work: As any academic advisor will attest, there is a degree of uncertainty with a new student (or a student new to the institution). Students who have demonstrated that they can handle college-level work are more likely to be successful studying online.

#8: First Time Distance Learning Student: Likewise, a student who has never studied online has no track record demonstrating their ability to handle these classes. The first time distance learning student is something of an unknown.

#7: Technical Factors: Technical factors can also be risk factors for some students, including those who have substandard skills, those who have problems with access, and those whose hardware and/or software are incompatible with the university.

#6: Gender: Being male can be a risk factor for failure to persist, but only up to a certain age. “Young males don’t do as well; older guys do,” Knipe says. Male grade performance trails that of females up until the age of about 25-30, after which men outperform women.

#5: Developmental Needs: These needs include reading, writing, math, and study skills. In a presentation on the subject, Knipe identified the following data point: “For a 50/50 chance of earning a C or better in any online course, basic academic skills should be at college English level.”

#4: Engagement: “Student engagement correlates highly with on-time completion,” Knipe comments. Lack of engagement can come in several forms, including lack of engagement with the course, instructor, other students, or material; lack of feedback; lack of community; or poor instructional design, to name a few areas of potential pitfall.

#3: Age: Academic performance correlates with age. As mentioned in #6 above, gender is a predictive factor in persistence; likewise, both men’s and women’s mean grades rise as they age, although the men make more dramatic strides while the women remain relatively consistent until the age of 25-30, after which they begin to academically improve as they age.

#2: Poor or Nonexistent Advising: Students who receive no advising or who self-advise are subject to a number of potential risks, such as approaching a class with an unrealistic expectation of the time or workload commitment, an assumption that online learning will be passive, or beginning the class with poor time management skills.

#1: Time of Registration: The most dramatic indicator of risk of non-persistence is time of registration. Those who registered 70 or more days from the beginning of the class posted the highest mean grade average, while those who registered after the class had started were very likely to fail.

Strategies for Addressing Online Persistence
So what does an institution do with this sort of information? Knipe explains that there are three ways to improve persistence: better instructional design, gatekeeping, and systemic improvement.

Better instructional design: By improving instructional design, the institution can impact many of the factors within its own control. The institution can do this by training faculty adequately, insuring that course design includes ample opportunities for interaction and feedback, and that faculty can learn from one another through best practices and mentoring.

Gatekeeping: This is the process of allowing the students best-suited for online study to register for the course, while consulting with those at risk before allowing them to proceed. For example, institutions can suggest or require that students take learning style assessments and technical assessment to insure both they and their technology (computers, internet access) are suited for the demands of the course. Knipe also suggest a block be automatically put on a student registration for an online course if the student exhibits one or multiple risk factors; for example, a student attempting to register for a course after the start date may be asked to see both an advisor and the course instructor for counseling about suitability for the course.

Systemic Improvements: Even the best-designed online courses will be problematic if the student support and business processes do not work to the students’ advantage. Knipe reminds campuses that all business process, including admissions, registration, financial aid, and bookstore, must be virtual and distance-learning-friendly, as should student support services like the library, bookstore, tutoring, and the like.

Ultimately, many of the findings of Knipe’s research are somewhat intuitive, while others may raise an eyebrow or two. However, understanding the factors that may put a student at risk for failure to persist in an online class can lead to better advising, better course design, better systems, and a better institution.

Reprinted from How Ten Critical Factors Determine Persistence in Community College Online Programs, November 15, 2009, Distance Education Report.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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