Media Richness Theory describes how and why particular media are selected to deliver a message.¹ In MRT, richness is operationalized in terms of a medium’s ability to accomplish four goals: sending multiple cues, supporting language variety, providing immediate feedback, and allowing personal nature to be communicated.

A rich medium, then, would allow for a variety of cues, both verbal and nonverbal, to be sent and received. It would also allow for the transmission of multiple language types, including the spoken and written word, and visual symbols and images. Rich communication media also permit feedback to be sent and received instantaneously and a high degree of personalization. Using these descriptions, a purely text-only, asynchronous element in an online course would be the least rich medium, whereas a synchronous videoconference or webinar would be the richest.

Studies show that a richer distance education environment, in terms of media-rich communication technologies available for instructor and student use, yields higher rates of student satisfaction and instructor-to-student, student-to-instructor, and student-to-student communication.² However, we do not always need a rich medium to accomplish a communication goal. A common predictor of media performance is one’s ability to select the proper medium for the task at hand. Typically a message or task that is high in ambiguity or uncertainty needs a richer medium in order to be successfully communicated. The opposite, then, is also true: a simple task or message, with little chance for confusion or misinterpretation, can be delivered via a less-rich medium.

Before selecting a medium to convey a message in your online class, it is helpful to do an evaluation of the tools that you have at your disposal. Depending on your personal technological efficacy, these tools may be limited to those that your institution licenses and supports or you may be able to venture out and use some freeware applications that are available online but often do not include user support. Use this sample chart (prefilled with a sampling of tools) to help you develop a media richness continuum of tools at your institution.

Once you’re aware of the media you may utilize in your online classes, you can start to select the proper medium based on the message you want to send. Note that you are not limited to one channel—you may select multiple media to communicate your message.

For example, in my introductory communication course, one of the competencies is public speaking. Of course, in an online environment this can pose a challenge. One way I address this learning objective is through having the students produce micro lectures via mediated speeches. Although I believe I write clear instructions, I realize that producing a mediated speech is probably a relatively new assignment for the students in my class, so the complicated nature of the task warrants more than just text-based instructions. For this task I chose two media to communicate my message: an assignment sheet and a mediated speech video.

In your online course, you may find it helpful to expand the media richness tools chart with an additional column, stating the purposes you intend to use specific media for. For example, if you have an assignment involving a complicated task or tasks, you might want to have a traditional text-based assignment sheet and supplement that sheet with an audio, audiovisual, or video message. Documenting these media decisions is a great way to begin a style guide for your class so you can readily identify which media are best to communicate any given piece of information, making interaction and delivering instruction in an online course environment a little less challenging and a richer and more rewarding experience.

References:
1 See Daft, R.L. and Lengel, R.H. (1984). Information richness: A new approach to managerial behavior and organization design. Research in Organizational Behavior, 6, pp 191-223.

2 See Shepherd, M.M. and Martz, W.B. (2006). Media richness theory and the distance education environment. The Journal of Computer Information Systems, 47, pp 114-122.

Jill Schiefelbein has taught and developed online courses at Arizona State University for the past six years. For more information on this topic, see Five Ways to Improve Interaction in Your Online Courses, an online seminar presented by Schiefelbein.

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

Strategies to Manage High Enrollment Online Courses

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

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

This 75-minute online seminar will help you understand:

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

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

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

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

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

Order the CD + Transcript

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

• Professors
• Instructors
• Instructional designers
• Courseware developers

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

But what if this assumption were wrong, or at least questionable? This is the finding of recent research by Christian J. Grandzol, PhD, and John R. Grandzol, PhD, both of Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. In a recently published paper entitled “Interaction in Online Courses: More is NOT Always Better,” the authors report that “our key findings indicate that increased levels of interaction, as measured by time spent, actually decrease course completion rates. This result is counter to prevailing curriculum design theory and suggests increased interaction may actually diminish desired program reputation and growth.”

The research: Questioning the value of interaction
The value placed on interaction in a course is second nature to anyone familiar with student development and pedagogical theory. The authors note that five of the seven principles identified by Chickering and Gamson relate to interaction in learning. (These include “between students and faculty, reciprocity and cooperation among students, prompt feedback, emphasis on time on task, and communication of high expectations.”)

However, as time has passed, some research has begun to question the value of interaction, suggesting that there could be too much interaction required in a course. Summarizing 2007 findings by Arbaugh and Rau, the authors report, “learner-instructor interaction had the strongest correlation with perceived learning; learner-learner interaction actually had a negative correlation with delivery medium satisfaction. The more participants a learner had to pay attention to, the less satisfaction they had with the learning environment.”

It is possible, in other words, that requiring students to read and respond to posts and conversations from many different classmates may actually cause a good deal of frustration and dissatisfaction with the course experience. This study, which looked at online MBA courses, suggests that there may be an optimum level of interaction for graduate-level courses, and that more is not always better.

Excerpted from “Is There Too Much Interaction in Your Courses?” Distance Education Report, 14.7 (2010): 1,2. You can read the complete article by downloaded our free report Designing Online Courses: Models for Improvement. Download report »

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

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

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

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

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

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

Errol Craig Sull has been teaching online courses for more than 15 years and has a national reputation in the subject, both writing and conducting workshops on it. He is currently putting the finishing touches on his next book—How to Become the Perfect Online Instructor.

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

I’m Teaching Online Next Term: What Do I Have to Know?

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

New online instructors tend to face the virtual classroom with conflicting feelings of excitement and fear. While embracing the benefits of online learning, they also have a lot of questions … about the technology, about creating a teaching presence, about structuring their course, and much more.

Led by one of the most respected names in distance education – Lawrence C. Ragan, Ph.D., Director of Faculty Development for Penn State’s World Campus – this fast, focused presentation will provide you with a 12-step framework for online teaching success.

View a brief clip from the program:

Loaded with practical advice, you’ll learn the key steps involving:

• Learning management systems
• Course flow and structure
• Planning and calendars
• Creation of a teaching plan
• Establishing expectations
• Student evaluation and assessment
• Tech support
• And more

Along with the video program on CD, you’ll also receive a checklist of core competencies every online teacher should possess.

Order this 20 Minute Mentor

Convenient and affordable
At just 20 minutes, the program fits conveniently into any schedule … and it fits your budget, as well. We think it’s one of the best professional-development values available … and if you don’t agree, we’ll refund your money.

Entering the online classroom is a big step. Let us help you make it a success: order this 20-Minute Mentor today!

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

Want to make this program available for your entire campus?

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

Unfortunately, this approach leaves instructors exhausted, frustrated and burned out; vowing to never teach an online class again. Meanwhile, the students wait passively for the instructor to spoon feed them every step of the way; never learning how to take an active role in their learning, solve problems or forge a bond with others in the class.

The good news is it doesn’t have to be that way. With proper planning and course design, online instructors can be more efficient and effective with their time, while implementing learner-centered activities that keep students involved and engaged.

In How to Balance Instructor Workload and Learner Needs Tammy Stuart Peery, assistant professor and English department chair at Montgomery College in Germantown, Md., and Samantha Streamer-Veneruso, an associate professor and English department chair at Montgomery College in Rockville, Md., provided strategies for establishing what they call “an invisible presence” in your online courses.

“I’m still present in the class – students know I’m there, they know I’m answering questions – but at the same time I’m not the whole course,” said Peery. “The students know that they are responsible for their learning; that they are responsible for themselves as well as for each other. That takes the maintenance load off me and allows me to focus on providing substantive feedback about the content of the course … and I don’t have to be in my class 24×7.”

Striking the right balance between instructor workload and student needs is a three-phase process that requires adapting course materials and assignments, fostering student-to-student interaction, and managing instructor presence. During the seminar, Peery and Streamer-Veneruso provided detailed guidelines for accomplishing each phase.

For example, in terms of fostering student-to-student interaction, they offered the following checklist to support the course design and implementation:

• Provide guidelines for group participation and group roles
• Provide low-stakes opportunities for groups to work together
• Create a system to monitor group interaction to ensure that groups are not sabotaged by those who don’t participate fully
• Include opportunities for students to assess their own participation as well as other members
• Ensure that groups are neither too big nor too small
• Plan for adjusting group membership if necessary
• Provide enough time for groups to work together
• Provide suggested steps and guidelines for completing work as a group
• Create activities that require authentic opportunities to communicate
• Provide clear goals for the group assignment
• Use activities that encourage shared goals and cooperative learning
• Give students feedback on their participation in the group

1. Teaching and Learning

• State objectives, expectations, and policies
• Establish communication rules and group decision-making norms
• Give prompt, effective feedback

“I believe that you absolutely have to have an understanding of the pedagogy in order to be successful. If you try to map over what worked for you in the classroom and you don’t make the accommodations – not that that was a bad thing, but if you don’t make the accommodations and understand the dynamics of how it is now going to occur in the online classroom – you’re going to struggle and I think your students are going to struggle. So I think that is really a critical dimension of being able to understand, and conceptualize, and manage that teaching and learning sphere. It’s very, very important.”

2. Technology Aptitude

• Know the LMS
• Seek technology assistance
• Be creative and flexible

“If I don’t make you successful with the foundation tools that you’re working with – that is, the learning management system, or if you’re using Web 2.0 technologies, or whatever the environment might be – it might be Illuminate Live or it might be Connect Pro – but if you’re not facile in those technologies, you are going to struggle and your students are going to struggle. So regardless of what tools are selected, I think the second largest category of competencies has to be around the technology.”

3. Classroom Administration/ Management

• Check and manage roster
• Submit grades according to University policy
• Manage drop/adds

“There are some non-negotiables in this teaching and learning process. For the institution, for example, a non-negotiable is the fact that you are able to submit grades on time and that students are able to see their progress as they move through the course, or that you’re able to manage the drop-add process. All of the mechanics, I think, have become so innate in us in the face-to-face environment that when we move to the online environment we sometimes forget that.”

4. Faculty Workload Management

• Define time frames
• Develop schedule and responsibilities
• Communicate expectations

“In listening to faculty, a critical element of their success is how they manage their time. I would argue that I can’t help you manage your time until you’ve had some experience. A little bit like attitude, I can probably give you some suggestions of things. I can suggest to you, for example, that you set defined timeframes during the day when you’re going to be teaching online, and that you try to prevent the course from bleeding into your home life, and your recreation life, and your vacation. I know none of you has ever done this, but sometimes faculty take their computers on family vacations and they’re still teaching their course. And I’m not sure what I would say to that one, except you’ve got to be careful; you have to be able to define those boundaries about when you’re teaching online and when you’re not.”

5. Building Community

• Foster dialog and interaction
• Provide for “space” for instructional & social interactions

“The need for the instructor to be able to craft this learning space where people feel valued and they’re contributing to it. Again, I would agree that that’s really, really important, and it’s certainly a potential outcome of a well-designed learning space. We have these tools, right, that allow us to do this, so why wouldn’t we take advantage of it?”

Excerpted from “Asking the Question: Rate the core competencies for online teaching.” Distance Education Report, 13.22 (2009): 5.

Here’s how …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

While this was a welcome validation for proponents of online learning, the report cautioned “that interpretations of this result, however, should take into consideration the fact that online and face-to-face conditions generally differed on multiple dimensions, including the amount of time that learners spent on task.”

In some ways, because online learning often carries greater expectations and opportunities for interacting with course material and fellow students, an increase in time on task is a natural benefit.

“It’s a tough sell sometimes for teachers to convince students that they need to do more on their own, and I think one of the advantages of online education is that students feel that they have more of an investment [when learning] online and they don’t have you as that learning crutch,” says Ike Shibley PhD, associate professor of chemistry at Penn State Berks.

In the recent online video seminar, Teaching Online vs. F2F: 15 Differences That Affect Learning, Shibley talked about how the online classroom differs from the traditional face-to-face classroom, and suggested strategies for capitalizing on those differences to improve student learning.

Some of the 15 differences he discussed involve:

1. The nature of student collaboration
2. The use of writing
3. Student interaction with content
4. The value of structure
5. The need for immediate feedback
6. The dependence on other professionals
7. The ease of assessment
8. The necessity of learning objects

And yet, despite the differences between online teaching and face-to-face teaching, Shibley says the two have a lot more in common than originally believed because, in the end, effective teaching transcends course format.

“Some of the differences are advantages. Some of the differences are disadvantages. But I think they’re differences in degree not in kind,” he says.

The required course work consisted of a combination of six discussion topics, three short true/false and multiple-choice quizzes, three exams involving true/false and multiple-choice questions and essay topics, and one medium-length paper with options for revision.

Together, the various writing assignments for the course accounted for 70 percent of the final grade. At the end of the semester, the class median was 82.75 points and the mean was 81 out of 100 points. Three students scored A’s and two students failed the course. The grade distribution for the course was similar to the distribution when I taught the course in a traditional classroom setting. I felt that the extent of the learning that occurred in the online course was similar to what I had seen in the classroom.

To assess the impact of the streamed presentations on student learning, I reviewed the course record for each student of the number of visits and the total time spent visiting each of the content pages and correlated this with the student’s final course score. Ten students viewed nine or more of the 12 streamed presentations and a similar number of the accompanying narration transcripts. Fourteen students relied primarily on the transcripts of the narration while viewing only a few of the presentations. Four students relied primarily on the streamed presentations while viewing only a few of the accompanying transcripts. The students who studied both the streamed presentations and the transcripts of the narration had the highest overall scores, with a median of 86.25 and a mean of 86 out of 100 points. Those who relied primarily on the transcripts had a median score of 83.5 and a mean of 80 points. The students who relied primarily on the streamed presentations scored substantially lower, with a median of 73 and a mean of 71 points.

Although other factors could account for the higher scores of those students who studied both the streamed presentations and the transcripts, I think the results suggest that the presentations did enhance student learning when combined with the transcripts of the narration. The streamed presentations were not a replacement for text-based delivery of course content, as evidenced by the lower scores of those students who relied primarily on the presentations. The streamed presentations facilitated increased learning as compared to a text-only mode of delivering course content, but the presentations should be viewed as working in tandem with the text versions of that content.

Was it worth the time needed to add the bells and whistles? Yes.

Jerry Kapus is an associate professor in the Department of English and Philosophy at University of Wisconsin-Stout.

Reprinted from Bells, Whistles, and Learning Online, Online Classroom, May 2009.

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.

Dolan simultaneously taught sections of an introduction to American government class face to face and online. She did so for two consecutive semesters and decided this unique opportunity gave her the chance to collect data that would allow her to determine if the mode of instruction influenced student performance and satisfaction. She structured the courses as similarly as possible. Both courses covered the same content. Students in each took three exams and completed the same Web-based writing assignment. They used the same textbook as well.

Despite these similarities, there were some differences between the two courses. Students in the face-to-face course took their own lecture notes. Dolan made a lecture outline available to them, but in the online course, given the script nature of the lectures, students had access to a more complete set of notes. Furthermore, students in the online course were required to participate in an online discussion exchange. They responded to questions and comments made by other students. The number of students in the face-to-face class was significantly larger than the number in the online course, and discussion there was limited to the 10 to 12 students who regularly responded to the teacher’s questions. But beyond the instructor’s inability to control for note taking, discussion, and class size, a survey on which demographic details such as gender, GPA, reason for taking the course, and previous coursework in the area were collected revealed that the only difference between these groups of students was that those enrolled in the online course were a bit older and further along in school.

The average grade for students in the face-to-face course was 77/100 and for those in the online course it was 81/100, or the difference between a C and a B-. Obviously the variables Dolan couldn’t control and the age difference between the groups may account for the different levels in performance. However, Dolan did a regression analysis and the differences in performance levels were maintained. As for satisfaction with the course, as measured by a 14-item evaluation instrument, “there are very few real differences between their evaluations.” (p. 390) On some items the online scores are higher and on other items they are higher in the face-to-face course.

This article is noteworthy as an example of how faculty can do research using their own classes and instructional situations. It does an excellent job of delineating what variables can and cannot be controlled when faculty go about comparing different “treatments” and their influence on learning outcomes. Often teachers cannot control important variables, like class size in this case. That does result in findings that are less definitive, but the value here is not so much adding to what is known about the effects of online versus face-to-face instruction, but what an individual faculty member can learn about his or her own practice. Dolan discovered answers to one set of questions, but her research, like most, raised equally intriguing questions. Now Dolan wonders whether online courses are better in some content areas than in others. Should beginning students be discouraged from taking online courses? Do the convenience and cost savings of online courses substitute for the “real” learning that can take place face to face?

Reference: Dolan, K. (2008). Comparing modes of instruction: The relative efficacy of on-line and in-person teaching for student learning. PS: Political Science and Politics, 41 (2), 387–391.

Reprinted from The Teaching Professor, April 2009.

These team-developed courses are often meant to be taught in multiple sections for successive course terms, facilitated by different instructors, including those who weren’t even part of the initial course design process. Institutions rationalize this standardized approach because it’s an efficient way to ensure consistent learning outcomes, it allows them to serve more students without expensive and time-consuming individualized course development, and it helps meet student expectations for consistent, high-quality online courses.

Yet there are those who feel “standardized” means “canned” — with no input from the teacher, and no opportunities for instructors to fully leverage their expertise, much less infuse their teaching style into the course.

In the recent online seminar Teaching an Online Course Developed by Others, Dr. Susan Ko, executive director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Maryland University College, offered strategies on “how to make a course your own” even if you weren’t involved in the initial creation.

“A lot of people don’t even like to use the term ‘standardized content’ because it has some negative connotations, but when you think about what it means to have standardized content, it’s not a negative thing at all,” Ko says.

In fact, she says, teaching an online course with some standardized content can carry with it certain instructor benefits, including:

• Allows you to spend less time preparing your online course
• Lets you focus your energies on teaching the course
• Enables you to teach a wider range of courses
• Gives your course a professional look and feel, with multimedia components that appeal to today’s students

Despite the many benefits of standardized courses, however there are some pitfalls that need to be addressed, including the potential for:

• A poor fit between course design and the instructor’s teaching style, in some cases there may be irreconcilable differences
• Lack of ownership and engagement
• Loss of interest after repeating the same content semester after semester
• Disagreement with aspects of course content

“You’ll want to thoroughly familiarize yourself with the course you are going to teach, because if you don’t understand the content, approach, and principles of that course, you will find it hard to be an effective instructor,” Ko says. “Also find out what you can add or change in the course, whether that is your own commentary, additional resources, assignments, or discussion questions. Or it may be that your unique contribution will be in providing feedback and facilitating interaction in the class.”

Sometimes content delivered in a traditional classroom setting can fall flat in an online course where your students don’t get to benefit of your voice inflections, gestures, etc. If you have material that you like to deliver face-to-face, but are concerned about presenting it in the online arena you can be creative when you include the material in your course and be assured that the content is delivered in a manner that you are comfortable with.

1. You can have your professional video team at your institution create videos for each segment of your lecture that is needed. This can be very time consuming and must be well planned. Each segment should be scripted in advance and must be kept to a minimum of five minutes. Each video must be interesting and must captivate the students’ attention. After a student views your first few videos he will decide if the content is worth his time or not. If not, he will stop viewing the video segments and all the time you put into this endeavor was for nothing.
2. Create a series of podcasts for each of your lectures. Podcasts are downloadable and students can listen to them on their mobile devices. Podcasts also need some planning, but are a little more flexible because you can record them in your office from your computer.
3. Desktop video can also be used to capture your lectures. Keep in mind that the quality will not be as good as if your video team recorded your segments. But if you create them from your desktop you again have the freedom from scheduling the time to record. You have to decide which is more important – time constraints, or quality of the video.

You can see that there is a pattern here and it is pretty easy to follow. So if you have guest lectures, demonstrations, places or things you want students to see or experience, you can include them in a number of different ways. Keep in mind that your students will only be interested in your course if they are interested in the delivery mode for the content. Keep it simple, but interesting!

Eileen Narozny is an instructional designer at the University of Central Florida.

The first step in allowing your students to get to know you is to include an instructor introduction in your course. This can be done in a couple of different ways:

1. Have your video team create a video introduction to include in the course. You need to be prepared and write and practice your script beforehand. When writing your introduction be careful to write it with a feeling that you want to convey in the course. If you are formal, write and deliver your script in a formal manner. On the other hand, if you are informal, write and deliver your script in an informal manner.
2. If you are not comfortable in front of a camera or if you do not have a video team available to you, you can simply include a written introduction in the beginning module of your course. Same rules apply – write like you would say it in person!

It is not only your persona that needs to shine through in an online course, but also the personas of your students. It is beneficial to have them write a brief introduction about themselves. You can also do this in a few different ways:

1. Create an introduction assignment the first week of class. Ask students specific questions that will guide them through the assignment and you will get the information you feel is important to the course. The information you gather may be important later on in the course if you want to divide the class up into groups for special projects.
2. Start an online discussion with those same questions that can be shared with all the students in the class. Through a threaded discussion the students get to know each other and they can ask their own questions to help build their online relationships.
3. Have each student create their own blog and let them post their thoughts based on the questions you ask. This blog site, whether it is built in or outside of the course, can be utilized for other writing assignments throughout the course.

Including these types of activities early on helps set the tone in the course and fosters better discussions and collaboration throughout the term.

Part 2 of this article will be available online tomorrow.

Eileen Narozny is an instructional designer at the University of Central Florida.

Easy? No. Rewarding? Yes.

Fortunately, making the leap online programs today is a lot less painful than it used to be, in part because you have the benefit of learning from schools that have successfully transitioned some of their courses to an online delivery.

One such school is Abilene Christian University (ACU). In 2002 ACU began thinking of ways to increase its outreach through online courses. Carol Williams, PhD, then graduate dean and assistant provost for research, had distance education added to her responsibilities. ACU had more than 4,000 undergraduate students and about 400 residential graduate students. It had no “continuing education” unit or infrastructure. Now, some eight years later, ACU has nearly 500 online students in five master’s degrees and four certificates. Online programs are the fastest growing area for the university.

Williams shared the ACU story during the recent online seminar Growing Successful Online Programs at a Small School in which she told about her frustration over the lack of resources that address the unique needs of small schools looking to compete with the big dogs online. The ACU experience may hold some lessons for other small, private schools who are contemplating the leap to online.

1: Define your purpose for having an online program – High-quality online programs require a significant upfront investment, and should align with the mission of the university. As a result, it’s important that you’re able to articulate why you want to put a program online. As you develop your business plan and budget, be sure to include a timeline, a realistic assessment of available resources, and metrics for success.

2: Assign an administrative leader – The institution needs to designate an administrative leader who can manage all aspects of program development and delivery. This person needs to understand “the big picture” while coordinating with deans, faculty, instructional designers, support services, library personnel, and others who play a role in the online students’ learning experience, Williams says.

3: Create faculty buy-in – Many faculty feel teaching online is inferior to teaching face-to-face. Williams works hard to dispel those and other myths. She also recommends starting with faculty who are known as innovators on campus, and providing a workload and compensation plan that recognizes the additional time and effort required to design an online course. Providing support from instructional designers is critical as well, she says.

4: Build online student support services – Because many online students may never set foot on campus, all the normal functions related to financial aid, registration, billing, library, and technology support must be available online.

5: Consider outsourcing – Many smaller universities are stretched thin when it comes to marketing and admissions. Adding online programs to their job responsibilities may be a tough sell, and likely won’t get you the results you want. Williams suggests outsourcing these tasks to vendors who specialize in adult learners and online education.

Teach More Effectively with Customizing Learning Experiences

Expectations are rising in higher ed. There’s a growing emphasis on outcomes and accountability, and a steady trend toward personalizing the educational experience to boost individual student achievement and competency. But if online courses were customized to meet the needs and interests of individual students, would instructors’ workloads become unmanageable?

Many fear, and understandably so, that introducing customized, student-specific learning to online courses will add a crushing amount of work for the online instructor. And indeed, that’s a fear that could easily be realized if the process was approached incorrectly.

But there’s a way to do it right–a way that can actually reduce faculty workloads while increasing personalization of online learning. You can learn about it in Teach More Effectively with Customizing Learning Experiences, a 75-minute audio presentation that will introduce you to a model for offering personalized content without creating overwhelming responsibilities for the instructor.

Order this seminar

You’ll learn:

• How to better understand the goals and mental models of individual learners.
• How to integrate the concepts of social, teaching and cognitive presence into course creation.
• How to “design in” choices and options for readings, assignments and projects.
• Where customization makes the most sense within a course.
• How to use rubrics to incorporate self- and peer-review processes.
• And much more.

The program presenter is Judith Boettcher, Ph.D., an author, consultant and leading voice on educational technology and online teaching. Dr. Boettcher has more than 20 years of experience at institutions such as Penn State and the University of Florida, and is co-author of the just-published Online Teaching Survival Guide: Simple and Practical Pedagogical Tips.

Who will benefit:

• Distance learning deans
• Distance learning directors and coordinators
• Instructional design professionals
• Faculty who teach online
• Program leaders
• Anyone interested in sound online pedagogy

It is possible to give students a rich, personalized educational experience online–without overloading the instructor. Find out how with a copy of this seminar!

Order this seminar

• How is teaching online different from teaching face-to-face?
• What are the characteristics of the online learner?
• When will learning occur?

When answering these questions and creating the content for online courses we have to consider that our student population does not always fit the footprint of the typical college student.

Online courses reach an increasingly broad range of students — from across town to across different time zones and into remote areas. While some may mirror the typical college student, we also have to consider that our online course also may include students who work part-time to pay for college, professionals who work full time and have children, stay at-home-moms, single parents, retirees, and of course those who are striving to find their niche in the business world and want to continue their education.

Shy students and those that suffer from test anxiety and need extended time when taking a test are also drawn to online learning. Building discussion board assignments into your online course allows shy students to share their thoughts and ideas from within their own comfort zone, and participate more fully than they would ever do in a traditional face-to-face class. Meanwhile, students with test anxiety like to have the ability to pace themselves and look over their test before submitting it. They are also more comfortable taking the tests from their “safe haven” which can vary from their dorm room, home office, or the local coffee shop.

Keeping in mind the similarities and differences within this exploding and potentially diverse student population, we must consider a multitude of things that can occur during the semester long course:

• Learning will take place at different times of the day.
• Learning will not always be for long periods of time and may be chunked throughout the day and “squeezed” into the daily routine.
• Mobile learning via smart phones, laptops, and netbooks are an important factor to consider.
• Computer skills will vary from novice to expert.
• Online search skills will vary from novice to expert.
• Internet connections will vary from dial-up to high speed.

Some students who register for an online course expect a fully synchronous learning environment. Be open when designing your online course and experiment with different avenues to deliver your content — synchronously and asynchronously. If your course needs to have a synchronous learning component think about the following:

• What needs to be learned at the same time?
• Do you need to be involved in the delivery of the information?
• Is it peer-to-peer learning, instructor – student, or something else?
• How can you meet the needs of both the instructor and learner?
• What delivery method can you use?

• Wikis, blogs and journals

• Chat rooms

• Webcasts and podcasts

• Threaded discussions

As you can see, we all have to think about a lot of different scenarios when designing and delivering our course content online. If you are new to online teaching, take the time to poll your students from time-to-time to better gauge how both you and your students are doing. Be open to their suggestions and ideas – their feedback can help you become an innovator in online teaching!

Eileen Narozny is an instructional designer at the University of Central Florida.

There also are some “not-so-major items” that are important but don’t seem quite as crucial. However, when one of these is overlooked, it can become the ugliest wart on your class, resulting in negative student attitudes and a diminishing of your stature as instructor.

The following list contains a few of these “small things” that often are overlooked in online courses.

Look over your course before it begins. Because a course is usually preset by the school, many online faculty assume that everything is ready to go. But often this is not the case. Be sure to check for broken links, duplication of or missing assignments, and typos. Confirm that all course material is visible to the students and that grading/points have been assigned to each project, homework, and test; and that final exam dates (if applicable) and all related information are posted.

Check your spelling and grammar. Students will not appreciate emails, announcements, and other postings with spelling errors, typos, or punctuation/grammar errors. Sure, it takes a bit more time to check for these—but it’s your reputation and the school’s reputation at stake. While no one is perfect, students expect their instructors to be—and all it takes is one typo from you for a student to feel that you are not prepared to teach.

Be sure that page numbers in assignments match the text(s). Sometimes the assigned pages do not match the pages in the text(s) students have. This happens most often when an instructor is teaching a course again and again and forgets to check for a new edition of the text(s) being used, page numbers are entered incorrectly, or the text(s) you assigned does/do not match the one(s) ordered by the bookstore. Be sure all assigned readings are in sync with the text(s) used—your course will proceed much more smoothly if they are.

Make a checklist of all school policies applicable to your course. It is so easy to overlook or forget one or two school policies or procedures, especially if you are new to the school. Make a checklist so you won’t overlook any. If you are unsure of a policy, ask a supervisor.

Always be positive in your feedback and postings. You will be teaching many students, so you will be typing many thousands of words during one course; this can make it easy to overlook your tone or word choice now and then. Don’t let it happen. A negative tone, use of all caps, and no positives in assignment feedback, emails, or other postings can be devastating to a student. So check all before you send, and always end each missive with an upbeat, optimistic tone.

Be substantive in your announcements, feedback, postings, etc. Students can’t see you (except in rare webinars) or shake hands with you; all they have are your words, so it is crucial that they are, for the most part, many. The “Great paragraph, Tom!” or “Good point, Cathy!” postings are fine, but they should never be representative of your writings to students. Be substantive (and do so often, not occasionally) in these so they know that you are invested in the class, care about the class, and are interested in the class.

Keep track of the errors and oversights you discover for future courses. We all make mistakes in each course we teach. But as long as we use these errors as lessons to improve ourselves, they are not for naught. Make a list of these errors and keep them handy so that when you next teach a course the same problems will not occur. Your class will run more smoothly, the students will have a more positive learning experience, and you’ll feel more relaxed.

Errol Craig Sull has been teaching online courses for more than 14 years and has a national reputation in the subject, both writing and conducting workshops on it.

Excerpted from Teaching Online With Errol: In Teaching Online Never Overlook the Small Things, March 2009, Online Classroom.

Lee Freeman, who administers the online MBA program at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, decided it was time to answer those questions and maybe challenge a few misapprehensions about time in online teaching. He surveyed instructors in all different schools and colleges of his institution. He came up with some useful facts and busted some myths.

The big findings
What Freeman calls his “big finding” is that, relative to face-to-face development, online course development really isn’t as terribly time-consuming as people say. The extra time spent developing an online course as opposed to a face-to-face course is proportionately similar to the extra time spent teaching the online course compared to classroom teaching.

And guess what? “Teaching [online courses] isn’t all that bad either,” as Freeman says. “Basically,” Freeman says, “after the second or third time the instructors are comfortable with it and that learning curve has been reached.”

This curve is reached relatively soon for online pedagogy and even faster for the technology itself. “After the first or second time people were comfortable with the technology and beyond that they figured out how to teach it,” Freeman says. In Freeman’s research, it appears that it takes an instructor a little longer to figure out what they want to do with the course pedagogically than to become comfortable with the technology.

“That’s one of the biggest things, that the technological learning curve is shorter than the pedagogical learning curve,” Freeman says. “The technology’s not the problem. It’s not what’s making people take longer when they teach.”

Second (and third) time’s the charm
Freeman was able to demonstrate that, once past the first online course, there is a significant reduction of instructor time. This leads him to believe that much of the complaint of excessive time consumption probably comes from the first-time experience. One implication of this is that, if instructors can be conscientiously coached through their first online experience, they are likely to find things much better on successive tries.

Freeman’s data doesn’t challenge the assumption that it takes longer to develop an online course than a face-to-face course. What he has established is that the teaching, as well as the development, become less time consuming, and that that change can come as early as the second or third time out.

Four lessons for distance ed administrators:
What are the lessons for distance education administrators in Freeman’s investigation? The research suggests four ideas:

1. Make sure faculty understand that they’re starting something new. You have to make sure faculty understand that, while they may be teaching the same content, there is going to be a bump that they have to climb over. It’s going to take some time and some effort but it will get better.
2. Teach your faculty to think about their course in a different way, to be ready to do things differently. Let them know that teaching online gives them an opportunity that they may overlook in the classroom because they are habituated to the way they have always done things. In teaching online, the nature of the technology allows and sometimes requires teachers to change things. Whatever kind of change that may be, the directors and instructional designers, while not pushing any particular technique, should always be showing what’s available and reinforcing new ways of doing things.
3. Use your instructional designers. As the faculty member is developing the course with the instructional designer, the designer should be on the lookout for time consuming approaches. If they see that the teacher setting up a time consuming situation for themselves, the instructional designer should alert them and where possible suggest ways to get the same results by doing things differently.
4. The more an administrator knows about the process of course development, the better he/she can manage. Program managers and administrators should be sure that they understand what online instruction takes and that they communicate it well. If they do, they will face fewer instructors coming back saying they’re never going to teach online again. As Freeman says, “Let them know that what happened the first time is not going to be the constant truth of what’s going to happen every time.”

Excerpted from Time Requirements for Teaching Online: Beyond the Myths, Feb. 1, 2008, Distance Education Report.