In their framework outlining educational experiences for students, Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) identify and explain the critical elements of a Community of Inquiry that supports instruction and learning. The elements include: cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence. For online classes, many new online instructors tend to focus on the cognitive presence and teaching presence, and overlook the necessity of the social presence. They’ll build great online modules that help students enhance their understanding of course content but forget to attend to the critical social aspects that engage students and foster community building. While these aspects can happen naturally in face-to-face courses, they must be intentionally built into online classes.

Here are five ways you can build social presence in your online class:

1. Have your online students introduce themselves. This may sound simple but the first module of my online courses asks students to introduce themselves to their peers. I create a discussion board where students share short introductions with the group either through text or through a short multimedia production using Fotobabble, MyBrainShark or some other Web 2.0 tool. I usually try to connect the introductions to course content in some informal way to assess the students’ prior knowledge and experience with the material. More than anything, the introductions are designed to foster open communication amongst students outside of course content.
2. Introduce yourself to your students. When I ask my students to create short introductions of themselves, I offer my own introduction as an example. I also create a short orientation video where I provide an overview of the course and share a little about myself. Presented in a short video where students hear my voice, students can connect with me outside of the written text that I provide for most of the class material.
3. Create a “commons area” for off-topic discussions. In a face-to-face class, it’s easy to engage in off-topic discussions. Students walking into the classroom will argue about last night’s football game, discuss the latest movies, or talk about their favorite music. This type of engagement is extracurricular but it can help students build relationships that are advantageous inside the classroom. Without purposeful inclusion of risk-free environments for sharing, online students’ affective needs will not be met and they may not fully engage with course content or with their classmates. In my online classes, I create a discussion board labeled “Commons Area” or “Water Cooler” and offer some guidance to the purpose of the area. While I’ll often peek in to add a question or respond to a post, I generally give the students some free rein over this forum.
4. Use synchronous tools for office hours. Most course management systems offer chat rooms or synchronous online classrooms as tools for teaching and communication. I schedule online office hours where students can meet with me to discuss course content and ask questions. While not every student takes advantage of the office hours, publishing their availability communicates to students that I am committed to their success in the course.
5. Don’t be the center of every discussion. Many new online instructors try to respond to every post in a discussion board. This habit can actually limit student-to-student interaction and discussion. In a face-to-face class, few instructors would break up lively classroom discussions by evaluating every remark from students. In online classes, however, instructors will do exactly that. Instead of excessively participating in discussion boards, provide some thought-provoking questions and allow the students to discuss course content openly on their own. Offer guidance when necessary and communicate that you’re present in the discussion through carefully chosen posts. Give the students some space to interact with one another and build their understanding through collaborating with their classmates.

References:
Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), 87-105.

Dr. Oliver Dreon is the director of the Center for Academic Excellence at Millersville University. Follow him on Twitter @ollied.

It may surprise us to think of it like this, but today’s students grew up in a culture of routine assessment and feedback. Yet when they click (or walk) into our courses, the experience is often quite different: there are few high-stakes grades, big exams, or one-shot term papers. Despite critiques of high-stakes testing – Wideen et al. (1997) said such “examinations discouraged teachers from using strategies which promoted enquiry and active student learning […] this impoverishment affected the language of classroom discourse”—teachers often still see “assessment as an index of school success rather than as the cause of that success” (Chappuis and Stiggins, 2002).

Certainly, grades, when misused as what Filene (2005) calls a “pedagogical whip,” can lead to problems: Grading curves pit students against each other, fostering strategic rather than deep learning (Bain, 2004). High-stakes grading may contribute to grade inflation (Rojstaczer and Healy, 2010). Grading pressures may even encourage cheating.

I offer the strategy/philosophy of frequent, low-stakes (FLS) grading: simple course evaluation methods that allow you to provide students with many grades so that an individual grade doesn’t mean much. FLS grading can work in any course but is especially useful online, as it provides grade transparency for students and creates a steady information flow in an environment in which student-teacher communication is crucial to success. FLS grading can have several advantages:

• It creates dialogue. Frequent grades can establish a productive student-teacher conversation, and students have an ongoing answer to the question, “How am I doing?”
• It builds confidence. Students have many opportunities to succeed, and there is a consistent, predictable, open evaluation structure.
• It increases motivation. FLS grading fits into students’ conceptions—and, perhaps, expectations—of assessment and evaluation: This is the culture they grew up in!

Some teachers may have an “allergic” response to the idea of giving lots of grades, but much “classic” pedagogical thinking (and writing) about grading predates both this culture of assessment and feedback and the teaching technologies now available, especially to online instructors. While some may resist grade-centric approaches, remember, in ideal teaching, perhaps everything is formative and you have small ratio, even one-on-one, interactions with students. Maybe there are even no grades at all. But such ideal environments are rare. We must give grades, so the issue is how we grade to the benefit of students.

The growth of online courses provides additional exigency for FLS grading. I’m always skeptical about those who privilege teacher-student interactions in onsite courses – how often do students talk to the instructor of their 200-student onsite lecture course? – but no doubt a key to effective online pedagogy is making sure you are present for students as their teacher. All students benefit from having a clear idea of their overall course standing, but we need strategies to provide online students with meaningful communications about the course, and what is more meaningful to students than clear grade data?

Frequent grade information also provides motivation, another especially important factor in online student success (i.e., see Schrum & Hong [2002]). Frequent, immediate grade data should help students overcome the inertia of procrastination far better than that delayed reward of the grade far off in week 12.

FLS grading does mean that you will re-conceptualize the grading function in your course, and while FLS grading has a summative micro structure—sure, you give grades—the overall structure is formative. You can remove unproductive grading pressure, encourage intellectual risk-taking, and discourage plagiarism/cheating. And especially online, your overall response strategy will include this grade-based dialogue with your students.

You can still have your major papers and exams, but with FLS grading, a series of low-stakes assignments helps uncover points of intervention long before any high-stakes evaluation. Teachers are busy, but FLS grading can actually result in less work overall if done right, as dialogue occurs through the grades. For FLS grading, you will shift your course requirements, like this:

FLS is about feedback. Really, a high-stakes evaluation structure often precludes a feedback plan: You basically just provide summative evaluation. The meaning of “frequent” will vary based on your teaching style. At one time, I provided as many as five grades per week. I have shifted my approach, clumping various small assignments into one weekly grade so, each week students get one status grade, although I can break that down to individual assignments for them if asked.

I’ll focus on two particular assignment methods: informal writing and quizzes.

Frequent short, informal writing assignments can take many forms:

• Responses to readings or focused content questions
• End-of-unit notes on important or confusing points, questions
• Journals
• Brief annotations or notes about calculations, charts, tables
• Metacognition: Have students think through/reflect on reasoning, thinking, writing processes

The technological environment of online learning is a major asset in using short, informal writing. Technology reduces the paper shuffle, easing logistics, and digital writing forums and tools allow students to write to one another, making open dialogue a fundamental course component. Message boards are an easy-to-use and readily available dialogic technology for online courses, and blogs or even wikis can be used to replace notebook-based response journals.

Rubrics provide structure for responding to writing and demystify evaluation – for you as well as the students. A simple rubric for brief informal writing could involve two simple criteria, on a scale of 1 to 5:

• Demonstration of understanding of a key idea.
• Writing quality (judged loosely, maybe even as your readerly response to the piece).

When developing a rubric, remember what you want the assignment to accomplish. This is your decision based on your course goals. Don’t outsmart yourself. In line with writing across the curriculum approaches, remember what you’re trying to accomplish when you assign informal writing, and remember what you don’t want to worry about. You do not need to evaluate everything. For instance, if you want to evaluate their understanding of a main idea about a chapter but end up pegging them for dangling modifiers, you will likely become frustrated and may give up on using informal writing at all. Think about simple, specific, often content-oriented goals you want to assess. Rubric performance language/levels can be simple, excellent to poor, and reflect a range of responses. You can use rubric creation tools like Waypoint Outcomes or Rubistar.

Quizzes (as I’ve written about previously in The Teaching Professor [2004]) need not be a pedagogical stick. Quizzes should be easy to create, take, and grade. They should have a specific objective. For instance, I always give straightforward, weekly online reading quizzes, almost at this level: “What large sea mammal is featured in Moby Dick?” I just want them to read.

Technology again simplifies logistics, easing both assignment submission and grading. Course management system (CMS) assessment tools allow for simple quiz features like question sets so not all students receive the same questions, and I use the basic simplicity, frequency, and low-stakes aspects of my quizzes to discourage cheating.

The primary question most teachers have is this: How do I give lots of grades without breaking my back? Again, use a simple grading scale for individual assignments: 1 to 3, 1 to 5, 1 to 10, or even a check/check plus system. You can share/display grades in a CMS grade book. Remember, the object is creating grade-centric feedback, and the time payback comes when students do not constantly have to reach out to you about class performance; they already know, and when they do raise questions, the conversation is more focused than, “So, how am I doing in this class?”

Filene (2005) said, “For better or worse, grades matter; the challenge is how to make them work for your purposes.” FLS grading can demystify course assessment, letting your online students know how they are doing. Done right, it can result in less work/stress for teachers, helping identify struggling students early. Communicating meaningfully with every student is a teaching challenge, but a stream of FLS grades allows student to know where they stand so they can better reach their goals in our courses.

References
Chappuis, S. and R. Stiggins. (2002). Classroom assessment for learning. Educational Leadership. September: 40-43.

Bain, K. (2004). What the Best College Teachers Do. Cambridge: Harvard UP.

Filene, P. (2005). The Joy of Teaching. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

Rojstaczer, S. & C. Healy. (2010). Grading in American colleges and universities. Teachers College Record. March 04, 2010. http://www.tcrecord.org.

Schrum L. & S. Hong. (2002). Dimensions and strategies for online success: Voices from experienced educators. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks 6.1: 57-67.

Warnock, S. (2004). Quizzes boost comprehension, confidence. The Teaching Professor. 5.

Wideen, M.F., T. O’Shea, I. Pye & G. Ivany. (1997). High-stakes testing and the teaching of science. Canadian Journal of Education 22.4: 428-44.

Dr. Scott Warnock is an associate professor of English and Director of the Writing Center and Writing Across the Curriculum at Drexel University.

Reprinted from Online Classroom, 12.3 (2012): 5,7.

Giving feedback about the learning experience might be new to some students. In order to get students on board with this process, Schiefelbein includes two videos in her courses: one that introduces the instructor and one that explains course expectations. “I make these two separate videos because they are for two very different purposes. I don’t want to put them together. I want them to be short and to the point,” Schiefelbein says.

These videos are more personal than text announcements and help establish rapport and clearly explain the purpose and benefits of students providing feedback. “Video is a much more personal channel, and people will gravitate to it more than if you [communicate] via email, for example. Once you’ve established that rapport and that relationship with your students, you can definitely ask for feedback via email because they already feel that they know you,” Schiefelbein says.

Follow-through on this feedback is essential. “Actions speak louder than words, and when you say that you’re open to a culture of feedback, you need to actually be open to that feedback. You need to be aware that what you’re doing may not always be the best way to do things. If you’re of the mind-set that what you do is best and nothing is going to change that, then creating a culture of feedback won’t be genuine and students will see through that,” Schiefelbein says.

Formal feedback
Creating an environment that encourages student feedback is the foundation for actually getting feedback; unless you ask them for specific feedback, it’s unlikely that students will be very forthcoming. This is why Schiefelbein asks specific questions when providing feedback to her students.

In each of her courses, Schiefelbein provides quarterly feedback to students, what she refers to as “email check-ins,” letting students know where they stand in the course. In these emails, she also asks students the following questions:

• How has your experience been with the organization of the course and the course materials?
• How have you found the discussion questions in helping you understand the course content? Have they been helpful? Why or why not?
• Is there anything else that you’d like to add about your experience in the class? If you’re having any difficulties or if you’re enjoying a particular part of the course, I’d really love to hear about that.

“I always make sure to ask a yes-or-no question followed by why or why not? It balances quantitative and qualitative feedback. At the very least, students will answer that quantitative question. You’ll get some feedback, and the vast majority will also follow up with responses,” Schiefelbein says.

Schiefelbein replies to each of these feedback responses from students. In low-enrollment courses, she sends personalized emails. In high-enrollment courses, she uses a form email that says, “Thank you so much for contributing your feedback. This feedback helps me fine-tune this class not only for you but for other students in the future. Thank you for being part of that effort. As always, if you have any questions, please continue to ask.”

Informal feedback
Beyond the quarterly check-ins, Schiefelbein recommends checking in less formally at regular intervals, which “lets the students know that I care about them as individuals, not just [as] numbers who are enrolled in the course.”

One way she accomplishes this is through engaging with students in “hallway conversations.” Each of Schiefelbein’s online courses has an area where these informal conversations take place. “It’s supposed to mimic what students might talk about in the hallway before class starts or after class ends,” she says.

When topics come up in these hallway conversations, Schiefelbein will mention them in a text or voice announcement. “I’ll post an announcement that says, ‘Check out the hallway conversation area and chime in on the discussion about …’ and I’ll give the subject line of whatever discussion is relevant. A more organic type of feedback emerges.”

In some instances, students will use these hallways conversations to ask one other about assignments or topics that they are struggling with. Schiefelbein responds to these questions and asks other students to share their experiences or offer help. And because of the culture that she fosters in the course, students respond. “Once you foster this community of feedback, you have other students chiming in, feeling a part of this community, feeling this reciprocal relationship with the instructor and with other students in the class and wanting one other to succeed. If you have students in this culture of feedback you’ve created actively participating, it really works to foster that sense of community, and I’ve had many students comment that they feel that they had more input, more agency, and more control over their learning. And I think when students feel that they are in control of their learning, they feel that they have more responsibility to do that learning.”

Excerpted from Reciprocal Feedback in the Online Classroom Online Classroom, 12.5 (2012): 4,5.

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.

• The asynchronous format. An instructor in a face-to-face course can defuse a conflict as soon as it arises. “In an asynchronous online course, if a student says something and you don’t notice it right away but other students do, they may pounce on the student, and you can get emotions flaring and words going back and forth,” says Cristy Casado Tondeur, whose online courses in African-American history and women’s studies often generate their fair share of controversy.
• Potential misinterpretation of predominantly text-based communication. In addition to the asynchronous format, the reliance on text-based communication in most online courses opens the door to misinterpretation due to not seeing or hearing the students. When a message is only text, students may interpret its meaning based on assumptions and stereotypes, Tondeur says.
• Relative anonymity. One of the strengths of the online classroom is that it can empower students who might be uncomfortable speaking up in class to express themselves in the discussion forums. There is a downside to this relative anonymity—what LaTasha Gatling, who teaches African-American history and African history, calls “Internet thugs,” students who feel free to post whatever damaging, hurtful, or incendiary messages they care to with impunity because “they don’t know who I am.”

Controversy is inevitable and sometimes productive. The key is to know how to manage it effectively. Tondeur and Gatling offer the following techniques.

Anticipate controversy and set expectations. “In my first post, I tell students that in this course we’re going to talk about issues that they’re going to be uncomfortable with; however, it’s part of the learning process. I ask them to throw away any stereotypes they may have because stereotypes often get in the way of us opening our minds to something new. I ask them to be mindful when they are typing certain words or phrases because they can be hurtful,” Gatling says.

Icebreakers can also be an effective way to prepare students to interact productively and respectfully in the online learning environment. As an icebreaker, Tondeur asks students to post answers to the following questions: What was the best concert you’ve attended? Who would you want to interview? What is your favorite movie? Besides fulfilling a requirement, why are you taking this course?

It’s an activity that lets fellow students know something about one another. This information is also useful to Tondeur as she looks for ways to illustrate concepts that her students will find interesting and relevant. Tondeur also posts a video introduction of herself to let students know more about her and to invite students to share more about themselves.

Look for signs of conflict and unease. Some conflict is immediately recognizable in the online environment through heated discussion board posts. But not all controversial issues bring out interpersonal conflict. Sometimes thinking about controversies can elicit internal conflict and strong emotions. Instructors need to be able to recognize signs of this. These signs can include changes in the quality and quantity of posts. Long posts may indicate a student’s attempts to come to terms with a controversy. Short ones may indicate a reluctance to discuss a particularly difficult issue. Some students will contact you directly and let you know they are upset.

Be supportive. When students get upset, they may need extra support, which can be given in a variety of ways. “When I have students who reach out to me one-on-one and say they have become so upset that they cried, I let them know that this is a part of growing. As we grow, we learn things about ourselves. I engage them to find out what exactly caused them to react so strongly,” Gatling says.

These conversations can be conducted via email, but sometimes it helps to connect in more immediate ways via telephone or Skype. “One of the things I do with a student having a hard time is Skype. We can have this conversation live so it’s more personal, so they don’t feel like I’m out there somewhere in cyberspace,” Tondeur says. “Sometimes students need that extra emotional support. They need to debrief. That’s very important if you’re going to be teaching topics that are controversial. If you’re going to invite that controversy, you will have to deal with it when it comes knocking on your door. Not all instructors would be comfortable with that.”

Directly address interpersonal conflict. Interpersonal conflict can occur at any time in an online course. It can unfold within minutes or over a period of days. Left unchecked, it can hinder learning. Tondeur recommends acknowledging conflict as soon as possible. She uses an informal approach and says something like, “Wow! I see you’ve had a very good conversation over the weekend. It seems like it was pretty intense.” “If you insert that at the beginning, then they don’t think you’re blowing them off or not paying attention,” she says.

In some cases, it helps to ask students to take a break to cool off before the conflict escalates. Throughout a conflict, it’s important not to take sides, because this could alienate students. “It’s a tricky road to navigate. How can I make students understand that I understand where they’re coming from or why a person feels the ways he feels but also why that is problematic? How can I make the student feel like her voice isn’t being silenced?”

Encourage critical thinking. Controversial issues stir up strong emotions, and students often base their opinions on these feelings rather than on facts. Gatling encourages and reminds her students to come up with their own opinions based on facts versus feelings. “It can be really hard but really rewarding,” she says.

Provide a space for difficult questions. Tondeur encourages students to post difficult questions for discussion. “That’s where you see how a student is processing [the content]. They’ll ask something like, ‘How could people behave this way [referring to slavery] if they were Christians?’ And I’ll respond with something like, ‘This is a great question, but let’s remember we need to put it in its historical context. If you look at history and the way race was viewed during those times, does it help you understand how this happened?’”

Use podcasts. Tondeur uses video podcasts to respond when students express problematic views or when she wants them to pay close attention to a particular issue. The video format adds emphasis and reduces the possibility that students will misinterpret her message.

Reprinted from Online Classroom, 12.3 (2012): 2.3.

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.

1. Articles—Post an article in the discussion board and have students do an activity related to its content. This gives students more content on which to comment than a typical prompt that consists solely of a question.
2. Audio—Post an audio prompt. Listening is an integral part of learning a language. It also is a medium that students are comfortable with and find interesting. Ammar has students post their notes on radio broadcasts in a threaded discussion. “Even though everybody is listening to the same [content], they may catch different things,” Ammar says.
3. Video—Even more engaging is video. Simply post a link to a YouTube video (or one from another source), and ask students to comment or answer an open-ended questions about it.

In courses that are intended to develop students’ writing skills, the discussion board can be an excellent way to get students to write on a regular basis. However, one of the obstacles to students’ full participation in this type of learning is some students’ reluctance to share things that they consider too personal.

One way to address this is to have students write in personal online journals that only the individual student and instructor can access. Ammar does not give students the option of posting in the journal instead of posting to the discussion board. They are both required activities, but some students tend to participate more actively in one or the other.

In some cases the prompt can be the same for the threaded discussion and the journal entry. For example, she once asked students to view an ABC News video of an art project in New York City in which pianos were placed throughout the city for members of the public to play. The video showed interviews with people who played. In the threaded discussion, students summarized the comments of several interviewees, and she asked students write about their personal reflections about the project.

Ammar does not grade online discussion posts or journal entries for grammar or spelling “because I just want to see that they’re able to communicate. I check those things in their [formal] papers.”

Reprinted from Tips From the Pros: Creative Uses of Discussion Boards Online Classroom, (February 2012): 1.3.

Teachers in physical classrooms understand this well and use the basic human wish for connection to instill learning through team assignments, peer review, classroom dialogue, and other methods. The online teacher faces a considerable challenge, especially when a certain percentage of students have chosen an online class, in part, because they believe they will learn more quickly without classmates who might “waste time” with too many questions and comments. These students begin the class having no desire to recognize or collaborate with other students.

Establishing the presence of co-learners is essential from the beginning. Online students may already perceive that they are in this alone and for those without online experience, the academically unsure, and those who are readily confused, this marks the first moment of learning anxiety.

Many online instructors try to create a sense of community by asking students to write a one-page bio, and then requiring them to read each others’ work. The problem with this is many students won’t bother, and those that do will likely be faced with a sea of dry facts that won’t forge any kind of human connection.

This semester, I’ve tweaked the biography assignment and the student response has been off the charts. Many students have emailed me, excited to have discovered a classmate with similar life experiences or with experiences that are exotic and inspiring. Several have let me know they are meeting to go over class work, either virtually or on campus. A number have thanked me for tricking them into discovering each other as individuals.

Before I introduce the assignment to the class, I dangle that currency that’s valued by students everywhere—bonus points. I explain that each student will write a biography, including those things that make them most interesting, but also include one simple, very believable lie. Whether truth or lie, the more specific, the better. For example, rather than telling classmates you like to garden, explain how you learned by helping your grandma with her peonies and tulips, describe the white picket fence and the smell of rich earth. A lie that’s unbelievable (“I’m a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader”) will be easy to spot—unless it’s true! This encourages students to dig deep into their own lives and pull up unusual or passionately felt experiences.

The rest is simple. After reading an entry, each student emails the author and tries to guess the lie. Guessing a lie is worth a bonus point, but if no one in the class guesses yours, it’s worth several bonus points. In my classes, 100 bonus points equals a single grade point but students will put in great effort to earn even a few bonus points. By the end of the first week, each student has communicated directly with most of the other students in the class.

This assignment has a practical side, as well. Each page-long bio offers the teacher a base-line writing sample. Since the students know their bios will be read by everyone in class, they take a little extra time to correct spelling, fix grammar, and try to make it shine. Comparing later assignments to this initial piece can provide valuable assessment opportunities, and can also help a teacher identify intentional or accidental problems with plagiarism.

Dr. Cynde Gregory teaches composition and literature at Gwinnett Technical College in Georgia in addition to tutoring second language learners of all ages.

Yet there are other equally important facets of student engagement that are often overlooked or forgotten, such as the following:

Don’t be pedantic and ostentatious in your writings to students. Academic writing can be boring, over the heads of many students, and better suited to a scholarly journal than to most online courses. But what students don’t want or need is an online instructor who appears to write down to them and does not take into account their level of vocabulary and sentence structure understanding. Sure, it’s OK to push them a bit so they can become better—in fact, this is crucial—but overall, always adjust your writing so students can easily understand all you are offering. A bonus: the more they understand, the less they need ask you for clarification.

Keep your course tied to the world beyond your school. We want students to use the knowledge we give them to better themselves beyond the course. By taking a reality-based education approach, that is, continually transitioning the course material to the students’ professional and personal worlds, the students have more of a tendency to stay involved in the course and get enthused about the material taught. Showing our subject matter at work in “the real world” is just downright exciting—it’s why we became interested in our subjects—and this will rub off on our students.

Black-and-white text can be boring. One or two pages of black-and-white text is OK, but in any online course there are pages and pages of lectures, readings, materials, syllabi, rubrics, discussion postings, and/or emails—and more—that greet students at every step of a course. When this onslaught is always black-and-white text, with no change in font, font size, and/or appearance (e.g., bold and italic) a student can quickly lose interest. But like spices add zest and interest to a soup, the addition of a bit of color and changes in the font add zest to material—it helps keep students interested and can draw their attention to especially salient portions. There’s a bonus here: it can give the impression your course is not humdrum and stale!

Always inject enthusiasm into all student communication. This is an important item that too often is taken for granted. We cannot expect students to stay engaged in a course if the instructor does not appear to be. When they come across an online instructor who exudes enthusiasm about the course, the students’ learning, the subject, online education, and the course’s importance to the outside world, students will pick up on this and will find more enjoyment in doing assignments and learning.

Keep a positive spin on assignment feedback and student correspondence. It can be so easy to merely point out errors and not give any positive feedback. One of the easiest ways we can turn off students’ engagement with our courses is to make them feel they just can’t do anything right, their questions are stupid, and future efforts would be meaningless. Two items to keep in mind: (1) We can never react to students as if they are our equal in knowledge. They are in our course to learn from us, thus patience and the impression of wanting to help them are de rigueur for us; (2) We must always include positive feedback in any assignment (no matter how poorly done) and emails to students—this gives hope, it helps with self-worth, it shows that you recognize value in the student. Any human wants this, needs this—and in the online classroom it is critical.

Use students’ introductory information to help keep them involved in the course. Pay close attention to the information students offer when they introduce themselves in week one of your course. It can give you valuable insight as to why a student may not perform well later on in the course. It also offers an opportunity for you to create a better bond with students when communicating with them. Having this information can make the difference between a student’s falling off the grid and realizing the instructor does care and is there to help out.

Pay attention to and incorporate student evaluation comments. While some student comments can be skewed against what really did occur (and may be from students who are lashing out because of poor grades received), overall these comments can remind us of what we perhaps have put on a shelf or give us suggestions for changes we had not considered. Either of these can lead to a better course, and a better course translates into more engaged students.

Give students information and resources when they don’t expect it. Our courses begin with a gaggle of material designed to inform, teach, and challenge students on their road to mastering our subject. Yet throughout the course we can augment this with articles, cartoons, videos, audio, news items, and interesting facts that all relate to our subject, an assignment, a discussion thread, etc. Doing this offers new items to keep students involved; they demonstrate your continued commitment in the course; and each can help elevate the fun, excitement, and/or interest of the students.

Use your professional and personal experiences to keep students interested. Students look up to us because we have the knowledge and facilitation abilities to help them embrace the subject matter. But we are also the students’ equals as humans, and thus sharing our stories as they relate to the course material—or perhaps an item a student shared with us—can keep students more engaged, for they are getting a look at us “behind the screen.” And when we can take the course material and transfer into its professional and/or personal importance through our own lives, that is a powerful teaching and engagement tool.

Have students become “teaching aides.” As we get students more involved in contributing to a course, they will feel more ownership of the course, which improves engagement. Asking students to contribute websites and related material they consider helpful to the course, offer ideas for discussion threads, take the lead in any group projects, expand on interesting posts they raise in a discussion, or share with the class their use of the course material in their jobs gives the class a richer texture and helps student excitement in the course stay high.

Errol Craig Sull has been teaching online courses for 19 years and has a national reputation in the subject, writing and conducting workshops on distance learning, with national recognition in the field of distance education. He is currently putting the finishing touches on his second online teaching text.

Excerpted from Teaching Online with Errol: The Most Overlooked Items That Can Help Keep Online Students Engaged, Online Classroom, (February 2012): 6,7.

1. Encourage contact between students and faculty. Students need to know how to contact their online instructors and should be encouraged to communicate with us when needed. In my online courses, I identify multiple means of contacting me (email, Skype, Twitter, etc) and clearly post times when I’ll be available to chat during online office hours. While few students utilize the online office hours I provide, offering this time communicates to students that I am available if they need assistance and that I value this interaction.

2. Develop reciprocity and cooperation among students. For those of us who believe that people learn through socially constructing their understanding based on their experiences, this principle is critical. Online courses should not be independent study classes. Online instructors need to build collaborative structures into their courses to promote student-to-student interaction. In my experience, I find that students who feel isolated in an online course have difficulty being successful. In my online courses, I incorporate collaborative and interactive ventures early on. I also try to foster discussions where students communicate with one another, share ideas, and debate concepts. While interacting with the instructor is important in an online class, it is also important that students have a space where they can discuss concepts with one another as well.

3. Encourage active learning. Learning is not a passive activity. For students to learn, they must actively engage with the content in thoughtful, purposeful ways. As you develop your online course, consider ways to build active learning into the course content. This can include utilizing tools with a course management system (discussions, for instance) or other tools (GoAnimate, Animoto). But active learning isn’t limited to technological avenues in online courses. Someone teaching science online could utilize hands-on lab activities developed with common everyday items. Someone teaching psychology or sociology online could have students conduct observational work at a park or at the mall.

4. Give prompt feedback. This can be tricky, especially with instructors teaching larger online classes. While grading hundreds of papers can be overwhelming, students need to receive prompt feedback to know whether they are being successful or what they need to do to improve. If you have a few larger assignments in your class that you know will take more time to provide quality, constructive feedback, communicate this to your students. You should also include some smaller assignments that will not take as long to assess. While some experienced online instructors use the course management system to build automated responses into their courses, I believe that some students still need personalized feedback on their work that comes directly from their instructor.

5. Emphasize time on task. Learning takes time. Students and faculty working in online spaces need to realize this. Just because an online course may be more flexible schedule-wise does not mean that it won’t require a significant time commitment. It’s important for instructors to communicate expected time commitments but also be realistic with their expectations. Assigning students to read a 500 page book in a day may not be completely realistic. Have high expectations but respect students’ need to have time to interact with the content and learn.

6. Communicate high expectations. While it’s important to have high expectations for students, it is also critical that these expectations are clearly communicated to students. Likewise, it is helpful to communicate clear expectations for participation and for interaction. Do you want your students to log on daily? Do they need to submit assignments in a certain format? Is it okay for them to use emoticons in their discussion posts? These are just a few of the areas that online instructors need to consider as they develop an online course for the first time.

7. Respect diverse talents and ways of learning. Students learn in a variety of ways. While there will undoubtedly be some text-based content in an online course, it cannot be the only mode of delivery or assessment. Draw on the host of multimedia options available online to deliver content to students and to assess them. Instead of typing out some long lesson on the Middle Ages, check out YouTube or Vimeo for some available videos. Or better yet, use a screencasting tool like Jing to record a customized lesson. Instead of assigning a ten-page paper, have students create a video where they demonstrate what they’ve learned.

Dr. Oliver Dreon is the director of the Center for Academic Excellence at Millersville University. Follow him on Twitter @ollied.

Online lectures
Rothschild-Boros offers her online lectures in several formats. She creates them as PowerPoint presentations and includes narration, converts them to pdf, and uploads them into iTunes, “so [students] can take them to the beach and have no excuse for having trouble accessing the lecture.”

In addition to offering the lectures in students’ preferred formats, she includes embedded questions within each, sometimes up to 10 per lecture, that ensures that students read the material and that they think about it more deeply than they might otherwise.

Some of the questions are straightforward and are intended to demonstrate that the students have viewed the lecture and read the textbook and supplemental readings. Others are open ended and encourage students to explore how the concepts relate to them personally.

For example, in a unit on gender, student asked to read a series of articles and answer the question, Which of these articles made you look at the issue of gender differently and why? In a lecture on sex and marriage, she asks students, “Have you ever been subjected to the Romeo and Juliette question—who you can and can’t marry? Have your parents ever made and endogamous or exogamous restrictions on you? All of a sudden it applies to them. For some it’s a revelation, and because the course is online, some students are much more forthcoming than they would be in the on-campus class.”

Students submit their answers to Rothschild-Boros, and she reads them and offers feedback, including an “answer key that gives my ideal answer to the question plus a variety of answers that other students have given that I thought were excellent answers.”

Although this approach is labor intensive for the instructor, it seems to get good results. Students often say that they never thought they could do so much work and that they view the world differently as a result of thinking about these questions.

As the instructor and the one reviewing and offering feedback on students responses to these questions, Rothschild-Boros makes it a point to ask questions that will likely result in interesting answers from students to help keep her engaged in the course as well.

Discussion forums
Rothschild-Boros uses threaded discussions to get students to interact on hot-button issues. As with the embedded lecture questions, the goal with these discussion forums is to make the course more relevant and engaging.

One rule of these forums is that each student needs to make a unique contribution rather than repeating one another. For example, in a unit on modernization, she asks, What gadget or innovation would they like to eliminate if they could? Each student has to come up with a different one and explain why he or she chose it and what the invention has done to the culture. “They’re looking at the concept of modernization, and it becomes real to them on a personal level.”

Assignments
Just because a course is online does not mean that students cannot engage in real-world situations. In her cultural anthropology course, Rothschild-Boros has each student visit an ethnic market outside his or her own culture and write about the experience. “They have to stick out like a sore thumb. I tell them it’s like traveling without the jet lag and currency conversion. On the one hand it’s fun because they’re going someplace they have never been, but at the same time they have a list of things they have to explore within the market. They become field anthropologists. Every student’s paper will be different even if some of them visit the same market because they enter with different a priori knowledge, and they process what they see differently.”

Rothschild-Boros enjoys the different perspectives her students bring to her courses, and she deliberately creates assignments that bring out these differences because sharing different perspectives enhances critical thinking and also because they make the course more enjoyable for her. “My goal is to create assignments that are fun for my students and fun for me to read. It’s a win-win. The students have assignments that they find interesting and can customize and personalize to their own interests, and I get a wide variety of papers that are not all the same.”

This last point is not trivial, Rothschild-Boros says. “From the faculty perspective, you don’t want to be reading 50 answers that are all the same. The more engaged you are, the more likely you are to give feedback to your students.”

Reprinted from A Three-Pronged Approach to Improving Student Engagement, Critical Thinking, Online Classroom, (February 2012): 1, 3.

For every class, I have multiple folders on my computer:

• Current Term
• Past Terms
• Announcements
• Syllabi
• Assignments
• DQs (Discussions)
• Feedback

Within each of those folders, other folders and documents are nested. For example, each term I drag the current term folder into the past terms’ folder; it’s important to maintain records, particularly of grading and feedback. I refer to my announcements folder each time I teach a course; and, past terms’ syllabi are the foundations for each new term’s syllabi.

Within the current term folder, I have multiple folders, one for each week’s assignment. I download all of the submitted assignments each week to that folder and re-label each student’s graded paper with the grade earned in the file name. That way I have a quick and easy reference to old assignments, if needed, and a more efficient way to post grades; e.g. JohnSmith.125.

Within the DQ (discussion) folder, I have a folder for each week, and within those, a document for each DQ. I update those documents regularly, as I often write “keeper” posts during the term – i.e. replies to students in which I explain concepts that tend to give students some trouble. Each term, I actively look for opportunities to insert those “standard” replies as part of my response to students. For example, I’ll comment on a specific student’s points, and build on those (including asking questions) by including one of my standard replies in my post. If I make 15-20 posts in a DQ during the week, probably half of them include some standard text. These pre-written posts enable me to clarify concepts and stimulate critical thinking without reinventing the wheel, help me ensure that the specific learning objectives for a discussion are met, and ensure that the discussions don’t devolve into non-productive (or unrelated) tangents.

Within the feedback folder, I also have at least two folders, one for each DQ and one for assignments. Within the DQ feedback folder, I have multiple documents, including one for each DQ each week. I then have a variety of standard DQ feedback responses that are unique to the topic of that DQ and that differentiate performance based on quality and quantity criteria. Including those pre-written feedback comments as part of each student’s personalized DQ feedback saves me time and ensures that I provide the substantive feedback that is critical for learning.

The assignment feedback folder includes documents for every assignment in a course. The top of each document includes the rubric for the assignment, which I then have handy to copy/paste directly onto a student’s paper. Also included are some standard comments, some of which I insert in the body of a student’s paper when grading (to highlight a specific error/opportunity), and some of which I insert into the feedback sections of the rubric, as appropriate. These comments, like my DQ responses and feedback, continue to evolve from term to term, as I see repeated errors. I try to develop “tips” announcements for each assignment that provide guidance about these common errors so that some are reduced from term to term. I may also make modifications to assignment directions when I notice repeated errors – because if students lost points for the same reason from term to term, there’s an obvious indication that there are some opportunities for clarification on my part!

In my experience, this approach allows me to provide comprehensive, personalized feedback to each student. I can identify and note specific opportunities for improvement throughout their submission, to facilitate their learning, and to support my grading. The fact that it reduces the time it takes me to complete my grading makes it easier and more likely for me to provide the type of quality feedback and guidance that the students need.

In other words, rather than typing the same comment 20 times in a week (because 10 students made the same error multiple times in their paper) or NOT noting the error over and over again because I don’t have time to spend three hours on each paper repeating the same comment, I can highlight and make notes throughout each paper, providing detailed feedback, and I can do it efficiently. Typing something 20 times adds no additional value over pasting it in 20 times. But, not providing the comments at all, because devoting hours to grading each paper is onerous…and/or not returning papers in a timely manner because providing detailed feedback within a quick turnaround time seems impossible … both of those practices definitely decrease the learning opportunities for our students.

My goal is always maximum effectiveness with maximum efficiency. One key to being a great online instructor is increasing your efficiency in managing your workload so that you can devote more time to teaching, guiding, and interacting with your students.

Dr. Eileen F. Schiffer is a curriculum specialist in the Accelerated Online Programs/Sustainable MBA program at Marylhurst University in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Educators need to take into account the characteristics of the online classroom when trying to incorporate active learning into online courses, Beezley says. For example, the nonlinear nature of the online classroom and the lack of face-to-face interaction with its visual cues make it difficult to ensure that all learners are experiencing the course in the same manner.

“Face-to-face discussions are linear. Everyone has a shared experience. The conversation slowly builds, and hopefully by the end you’ve moved everyone from one level of understanding to a new level of understanding. In an online environment when you have students participate in a discussion through a discussion board, it’s not linear at all. There’s not necessarily a shared experience,” Beezley says.

Threaded discussion summaries
To help create shared learning experiences, Beezley has students take turns summarizing the threaded discussions. This helps create a common understanding, serves as a means of assessing students’ understanding of the content, and gives them the chance to actively engage with the course content.

Rather than posting these summaries to the discussion board, Beezley has students post them to a course wiki or to Google Docs. This increases the accessibility of the summaries, which can be important for future reference and to enable all the students to edit them in case the student who did the original summary overlooked or misinterpreted key concepts.

Beezley recommends discussing the summary (synchronously or asynchronously) with the students to assess its accuracy and prevent incorrect information from becoming ingrained in students’ minds.

Synchronous collaboration
Beezley is an advocate of synchronous sessions as a way to create active learning opportunities. She uses Wimba, a live classroom program, to facilitate synchronous collaboration, including discussions (chat and/or voice), polling, and breakout rooms in which students can work on shared documents and report back to the entire class.

Beezley prefers to have students actually talk to each other as they collaborate in the breakout rooms. As in a face-to-face classroom, the instructor can visit with each group to ensure that they are going in the right direction.

“If things are going well, I usually leave them to do what they’re doing and know that they’re going to be reporting back when we meet in the main room. I find that I can usually just be the observer because the conversations are going well. I think the trick is to try to pull them back to the main room before they get to the point where the discussion has died down. Sometimes groups may not be done discussing before you pull them all back and ask them to report on whatever they did. [You need to] establish a culture of accountability, making sure that they need to use the time wisely, or they will run out of time and won’t be able to complete the task,” Beezley says.

As in the face-to-face classroom, spontaneous off-topic conversations are likely to occur in the synchronous online environment. While too much of this can detract from the learning experience, a certain amount of it is productive. “Some of my best learning in college occurred while walking out of a classroom when the class was over and asking, ‘Did you understand this part of the lecture? It was confusing to me.’ Conversations like that are hard to have in the online environment. When you put people together in small groups, sometimes they have those kinds of conversations. I think those conversations are a good thing.”

To help facilitate these collaborations, Beezley assigns each student to a base group of students who work together throughout the course. “Instead of having one large group, I like the idea of everyone taking part in the same discussion in small groups of five students who are always working together and talking things through and reporting back to the class.”

Ready, set, go
As a graduate student, Beezley participated in synchronous sessions facilitated by her instructor Peyri Herrera, who used a technique Beezley calls “Ready, set, go” to actively engage students.

It’s a simple understanding check in which the instructor asks students to answer a question in chat and to submit their answers simultaneously on cue. The questions can be simple or complex. They can test recall or higher-order thinking. The key is to have students hit submit simultaneously so everyone’s answer is revealed at the same time.

“As a student I really feared that I would be wrong, because when it’s live there isn’t as much time to think about a response as there would be asynchronously. I think that fear is a healthy thing for students to feel. It raises your level of engagement. It makes you pay attention. It really helped me learn because whenever I was right I felt validated. But when I was wrong, I would pay attention even more.

“When you have that opportunity for the synchronous exchange of ideas, I think the stakes are higher than when it is asynchronous. When it is asynchronous, you have time to think through your responses, and I think that’s a good thing to have those times as well, but I think in that asynchronous event you have to think on your feet and apply what you know quickly. As an instructor it’s a great opportunity to really see where your students are and understand how much they’ve learned,” Beezley says.

Excerpted from Ideas for Active Online Learning, Online Classroom, (December 2011): 1, 3.

• 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.

Replace written activities with objective knowledge checks. “One question that instructors can ask is, ‘Is there a chance that I can replace one or more written activities like a discussion forum or paper with some style of objective questions such as quizzes?’” Fein says. “Quizzes or any objective-style assessment is very good for a couple of things, but the easiest slam dunks are facts, figures, terminology, historical events, who discovered what, definition of acronyms, basic foundation concepts—stuff that has a right and a wrong answer.”

Use peer review. “Instead of the instructor being the only person who does all the grading, consider doing some peer review activities. Perhaps students could review a first draft of a final paper and provide feedback. Peer review will not work if you don’t provide a rubric. The rubric needs to clearly outline to all the students the criteria they need to look at and how to judge the quality of those various criteria,” Fein says.

Use TAs effectively. When teaching high-enrollment online courses, instructors often have teaching assistants who can help grade assignments. One of the challenges of working with TAs is that they often interpret the quality of work differently than the instructor. As with peer review, a rubric is an excellent way to ensure accurate and effective assessment. “Implementing a rubric, even if it’s just for TAs, can be an excellent way to delegate the workload and to make sure the interpretation of the quality of the work is consistent. This minimizes disputes with students over grading concerns where one student got a better grade than another for comparable work because their work was graded by different TAs,” Fein says.

Use threaded discussions judiciously. “One of the things that kind of happened in the evolution of online learning was that we got very focused—and rightly so—on creating community and collaboration and having a lot of interaction. All those are absolutely valid, and I would never suggest that they should go away. But at the same time, I’m not so sure that threaded discussion didn’t get overused to a certain degree. Sometimes educators feel compelled to include discussion forums for every single lesson when in fact that may not be the best way to get the outcomes that you’re looking for. Use them selectively,” Fein says.

For more on Online Education, download a FREE copy of 11 Strategies for Managing Your Online Courses!

Sign In Create an Account

Resist the temptation to read and respond to every discussion post. Fein offers several ways to achieve this. One approach is to assign students to facilitate the discussions on a rotating basis. Another is to state in your syllabus that the students are obligated to post a minimum number of original and response posts throughout the semester and that you are going to select and review a random selection of these posts. “Because they don’t know which of those posts you are going to look at, they’ll need to give it their best throughout the course so that they are not graded on that one discussion in which they slacked off,” Fein says.

Another approach is to scan a sample of posts to get an idea of where the discussion is headed and post a high-level directive rather than responding to individual students or conversations.

Streamline feedback. One of the objections some instructors have to automatically graded objective quizzes is that they do not provide students with useful feedback. However, most learning management systems have a feedback feature that allows instructors to program responses to wrong answers. This feedback can point students to resources in the course where the concept was addressed. “That takes a little bit more prep time, but now you’re using that prep time to reach a lot more students,” Fein says.

Instructors often use a set of common phrases when giving students feedback on their assignments. One way to reduce the amount of time it takes to provide feedback is to have a document of stock phrases from which the instructor can copy and paste them as needed rather than having to type them each time they’re used.

Excerpted from Managing High-Enrollment Online Courses Online Classroom, (January 2012): 1, 2.

However, chances are you’ll need to make extensive changes — both to your existing PowerPoint slides, and to how you deliver them. Typically, this means scripting the lecture before narrating and recording it so that all information presented online is:

• As concise as possible
• Organized logically (no skipping around)
• Relevant to the important concepts you’re trying to convey (as opposed to spending equal time on minor points or details)
• Rich with stories, personal examples, and/or examples that clarify and amplify the important concepts
• Primarily visual (very little text presented on any screen)
• Broken down into separate 2-7 minute recordings, each based around a single concept

Unfortunately, there’s no quick and easy way to adapt face-to-face lectures for effective online presentation. Simply recording yourself narrating your PowerPoints as you would in a face-to-face classroom is ineffective because the online environment differs from the classroom in several ways:

• The time and attention students are willing to spend watching a screen is much less than the time and attention they’re willing to spend watching a live human being lecturing.
• The online environment is poor at conveying information in text form (but excels at conveying information visually).
• Online students can’t ask questions in real-time—and you won’t be able to see when they’re “getting it” so that you can diverge from your standard lecture and supplement their understanding. Therefore, your presentation has to be extremely clear and explicit.
• Online students are typically much less tolerant of extraneous or confusing information presented in a recorded lecture than they are of an in-person lecture.
• Students will be accessing lecture recordings differently—and for different reasons—than they “access” face-to-face lectures. Face-to-face students come to class, listen to lecture, and leave. Online students may use lecture recordings for previewing material, as their main source of course content, or for review. They may access recordings never, once, or multiple times for any of all of these reasons.

All of this means that you’ll need to rethink the way your existing lectures are organized, what information they contain, and how that information is conveyed.

Below are best practices for converting a PowerPoint presentation for online delivery:

• Break long lectures into five minute (or so) chunks. Studies show that online students won’t sit through hour-long lectures—so don’t create them. Instead, create a handful of smaller lecture “chunks,” each of which defines and elaborates a main concept. Chunking lectures in this way also makes it possible for online students to customize their learning by reviewing—and re-reviewing—only those concepts they’re having trouble grasping.
• Write a script for each concept. Speaking off-the-cuff may work in a classroom, but it doesn’t online. Scripting forces you to organize the presentation of your material—to make sure you don’t leave anything out or throw in anything extra. It also gives you time to think about the most effective approach to convey material in the highly visual online environment. If you decide not to write a script beforehand, be prepared to spend the same amount of time you would have spent on the script in the recording studio instead, recording and re-recording your lecture chunks (in effect, scripting your recordings during the recording process instead of beforehand.) There really is no way around the scripting step in the production of effective content optimized for online delivery; it’s “pay me now or pay me later.”
• Rework your PowerPoint slides to act as a storyboard for your script. Your PowerPoint slides should contain mostly visuals; you’ll need to reduce text to a few words per screen at most. Animations (recorded PowerPoints) are good at conveying visual information; they aren’t good at conveying text information. Any text that appears on the screen should be the “take aways” or critical notes you would expect students to take, not simply explanations or nice-to-have details.
• Time any text or images that appear on your PowerPoint slides to display at the same time that you, the narrator, speak the text or discuss the image. Studies show that presenting text causes students to try to read it—which means they’re missing whatever the narrator happens to be saying at the same time. Learning theory also suggests that displaying images and talking about them later isn’t as effective as introducing the images at the very time you begin speaking about them.

For some PowerPoint design examples, both good and bad, go here »

Emily A. Moore, M.Ed., is an instructional designer in the online learning office at Texas State Technical College – Harlingen Campus.

With startling percentages of students leaving online educational programs, the question becomes “What should an institution do to encourage, inspire, and retain students in its online educational programs?” The responses will vary; however, there is no denying the importance of the foundation course. The foundation course is a student’s first taste of online learning and therefore must provide students with a positive learning experience. To help ensure a successful first experience, I offer this baker’s dozen of recommendations.

1. Online foundation classrooms need to remain as centers of encouragement where the professor’s enthusiasm is contagious. It is critical that students experience encouragement, support, and affirmation. The foundation course professor needs to extend a deep respect for each learner and hold each learner accountable for respecting his or her peers.

2. Professors need to maintain a learner focus of support as the needs of students in the foundation course will greatly vary. An effective learner focus includes, but is not limited to, constructive recommendations for improvement, meaningful academic challenges, and consistent grading practices.

3. The responsiveness of the professor to his or her students’ needs is critical. Emails, telephone calls, and all other responses to students’ questions, needs and interests should be responded to within 24 hours. All students’ inquiries need to be welcomed and encouraged by a professor’s open door, open mind, and open heart.

4. Empathy needs to be extended to learners at all times. The empathy and understanding that professors extend to their learners needs to be based upon research with regards to topics such as adult learners, brain research, and multiple intelligences. In addition, students in foundation courses need to be provided a meaningful and relevant education based on current knowledge and skills where theory is integrated into practical applications.

5. Oftentimes our online students are not traditional, full time students. They have careers, families, and additional responsibilities that compete for their time. It is during that initial course that students are learning how to balance all of their responsibilities. Support of each student is critical.

6. Foundation course professors need to understand that adult learners have their own unique learning needs, interests, and preferences. The pedagogy for an adult learner is unique and professors in the foundation course need to individualize, differentiate, and personalize their teaching to the needs of their adult learners.

7. The foundation course professor needs to be aware of the learning curve that many students are enduring. Some students are learning how to navigate the online classroom for the first time and their experiences are often challenging, frustrating, and, at times, overwhelming. Processes, procedures and personnel to support these students need to be provided by the professor and institution.

8. The instructor’s daily presence and participation in the online classroom is critical to helping students learn, gain confidence, and feel secure in their new and sometimes foreign environment.

9. Faculty need to be mindful to always communicate in a supportive, professional, and set a positive tone. Communication pathways should include email, telephone, teleconferences, webinars, Skype, and audiovisual communications implemented within the online classroom.

10. The foundational course professor needs to demonstrate a positive, proactive, and caring disposition at all times. Humor may be implemented in a supportive manner; however, professors need to ensure that their humor is appropriate and welcomed by students. When in doubt, leave humor out.

11. The development of an online learning community is particularly beneficial to learners in foundational courses. The professor needs to clearly establish the online learning community as a place of respect. The support that students receive from their peers and professor in a learning community often results in empowerment, efficacy, and enthusiasm for learning.

12. The professor, along with each student, needs to honor and celebrate diversity of thought. The foundational course needs to be established as a “safe place” where learners feel confident and comfortable in sharing opposing views and challenging thoughts.

13. The foundational course instructor needs to work closely with advisors in support of his or her students. Confidentiality and privacy need to be maintained and students need to feel assured that their rights are protected.

The foundational course provides opportunity for students to gain confidence and competence in their online learning. It is also where they learn about the expectations and standards not only of this first course, but of their programs as a whole. It is essential that these students feel supported and encouraged.

References
Dagger, D., Wade, V. & Conlan, O., (2004), “A Framework for developing adaptive personalized eLearning”, E-Learn 2004, World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare and Higher Education, Washington, D.C.

Diaz, D. P. (2002). Online drop rates revisited. The Technology Source. Retrieved May 3, 2012, from http://technologysource.org/article/online_drop_rates_revisited/

Michael Jazzar is the founder of Educational Service & Consulting and has extensive experience teaching online.

As seen through advertisements for positions such as academic or learning coaches, and student mentors, the list of duties of these online assistants is expanding to involve tracking student progress and providing encouragement toward course completion. The efforts of TAs can extend your reach as the instructor, particularly in large classes with multiple sections, to more efficiently serve the needs of your students.

My recent experience coaching one section of a large online course offered a new perspective on the possibilities and challenges of teaching at a distance, as well as the unique issues that arise when supporting online faculty and students. Effective communication and collaboration are essential. Here are a few recommendations for getting everyone on the same virtual page:

• Consider a contract or memorandum of agreement. This can be informal, but captures in writing the expectations you have of your assistants — the specific tasks they will complete, synchronous or in person requirements —and communicates them before the term begins.
• Coordinate in advance. Share your approach to teaching in general and the course specifically. Walk through the syllabus, class schedule, and assignment instructions, and review learning objectives and grading rubrics. Meetings, in person or virtual, are great, but this kind of coordination can also take place via email to make sure resources are available and questions are answered.
• Be available for questions and clarification. Set aside time during the week to connect with or hold your virtual office hours for your TAs. And respond to email as quickly as possible. TAs are often trying to answer questions students have emailed to them, so shortening this cycle of response is helpful to all involved.
• Provide access to information and resources. Your assistants don’t need to have full editing permissions, but it can be helpful for them to view any information related to student progress, especially if they are responsible for monitoring student activity and intervening when problems occur. TAs also benefit from having copies of textbooks and any other course materials students will be using to complete their assignments.
• Ask for feedback after the course. Through informal conversation or structured survey, solicit your TAs’ ideas for the course and suggestions for instructor-assistant interaction and communication. Their experiences working with your students can inform the revision of materials and use of technology in future academic terms.

Be sure to review your institutions policies for any stipulations related to how you work with TAs and other types of assistants in your courses. Your school, program, or contracted service provider may have guidelines in place that dictate communication avenues, time frames, and access to materials and information.

Help teaching assistants help you, and your students, by providing clear guidance and expectations as early on as possible. Teaching assistants benefit from the experience as well, as they learn more about your academic discipline, working directly with students in a professional capacity, and teaching online courses. As the instructor, you are in a position to model positive communication and collaboration techniques they can take with them when they move on to become instructors themselves.

Melissa A. Venable, PhD is a contributor to the Inside Online Learning blog at OnlineCollege.org where she writes from her experience as a course designer, online instructor, and career advisor in higher education. You can also find her on Twitter and Google+.

During a recent online seminar titled Improve Participation to Enhance Learning in Online Courses, Joan Thormann, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Technology in Education at Lesley University and author of The Complete Step-by-Step Guide to Designing and Teaching Online Courses, shared six techniques for encouraging interactions that boost learning in an online class.

1. Optimized use of introductions: Encourage students (and the professor) to share personal information like hobbies, interests, and demographic data. This will build community, raise interest in the students in the class, and make for a friendly online environment. This is an easy first assignment.
2. Use of the instructor as a model: As an instructor, consider giving students feedback about their assignments using a template that details the expectations for the assignment. Model good communications by adding personal comments tailored to the student, thereby giving an example of substantive writing.
3. Use of a clear grading system: Encourage the students to give helpful contributions by grading their discussions every week. Give them guidance on what sort of contributions are expected, such as in-depth analysis rather than simply “I agree.”
4. Use of student moderators: The instructor does not have to be the only one to encourage valuable contributions from students in the course. Use student moderators on a rotating basis to manage discussions. This practice will increase the sense of ownership of the course and help students learn to support each other and deepen their content knowledge.
5. Use of voice conferences: In some cases, a live voice conference can be a valuable addition to the online course. These opportunities let students get to know each other and strengthen their overall communication.
6. Development of supportive forums: Develop some online forums where students can go for support, assistance, and an exchange of information with other students. Don’t respond right away to inquiries; give students time to help one another and build community.

Online courses can have the kind of vibrant interaction you find in the best of courses, both online and traditional. All it takes is the use of some simple tools that encourage students to engage with one another in substantive ways.

We decided to pursue this question at our institution, Anne Arundel Community College. We asked students in 27 sections of online psychology courses to answer the following multiple-choice question: How quickly should faculty respond to any student posting (i.e., email, quiz, written assignment, etc.)?

1. 24 hours
2. 48 hours
3. 72 hours
4. One week

We also asked study participants to name three characteristics of an outstanding online teacher and explain why those characteristics are important. We received 624 responses that yielded the following results:

• Communication/availability: 66 percent
• Compassion: 58 percent
• Organization: 58 percent
• Feedback: 45 percent
• Instructor personal information: 18 percent
• Other (e.g., knowledge, technical competence, creativity): <10 percent

From these findings and the comments from participants, we identified communication/availability and feedback as the two primary characteristics that the students found important in their online courses. Students wanted frequent, timely communication and substantive feedback on their assignments. We received comments such as the following:

• “We must hear from the instructor within 24 hours!”
• “I would not think twice about withdrawing if the instructor is not available five days a week.”
• “The worst thing is waiting for a graded paper.”

It’s helpful to learn what students want from their online instructors, but we also wanted to know how these instructor characteristics affect student success, defined as course completion with the grade of an A, B, or C.

To determine the effect that outstanding online instruction can have on student success, we identified five instructors who

• responded at least three times daily to all online course emails,
• graded all papers within 48 hours of submission,
• offered specific feedback on all written work, and
• were compassionate to students’ needs.

We compared success rates in 137 online course sections within psychology, history, and sociology for a total of 2,432 students. Success rates at the college in 2008 were 66 percent for traditional courses and 59 percent for online courses. The success rate of students in online courses with outstanding instructors was 82 percent, 16 percent better than in the traditional lecture classroom and 23 percent better than online students overall.

Although not definitive, this study suggests that meeting online students’ needs significantly impacts student success and that students expect a quick response from instructors.

Despite these findings, some online instructors have rebelled rather vigorously against what we have found. They have contended that providing this level of communication and feedback coddles students, asks too much of them as instructors, and violates academic freedom (“Who are you to tell me how to teach my course?”).

We had a subsidiary study that asked faculty how quickly they thought they should be responding to students. It was kind of scary. They thought that a turnaround time of 24 to 48 hours is adequate. And despite our study that showed how a long response time affects student success, faculty resisted our recommendations. It was really disappointing, quite frankly.

Ideas for further study
These studies had some methodological flaws. Future research needs to look across disciplines, geographic regions, and demographics and should distinguish among the different types of feedback that instructors provide. For example, I know that several of our outstanding instructors simply copy and paste feedback that they anticipate they will likely provide based on their experience teaching the course. However, they also make sure that they offer personal comments about the assignments, so it’s a blend of formatted and personalized feedback.

Donald Orso and Joan Doolittle are psychology professors at Anne Arundel Community College.

Reprinted from “Instructor Characteristics That Affect Online Student Success.” Online Classroom, (October 2011): 2,7.