Points for Successful Teaching Online

What makes an online instructor successful? Certainly, the same qualities that make the traditional classroom instructor successful apply to the online instructor. When online, however, those qualities (and any shortcomings) can be magnified.

Teaching online, however, requires the instructor to play a greater role in facilitation, guidance, and management. The instructor needs to make that extra effort to been seen as approachable and accessible to the student.

In eSchool News (January 2009), Managing Editor Dennis Pierce listed the "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" (Chickering & Gamson, 1987):

• Encouraging student-faculty contact,
• Encouraging cooperation among students,
• Encouraging active learning,
• Giving prompt feedback,
• Emphasizing time on task,
• Setting high expectations, and
• Respecting diverse talents and ways of learning.

Pierce interviewed Bill Phillips of the University of Central Florida. Phillips recommends that the instructor must demonstrate authority and gain students' trust right from the start. He suggests that the instructor can establish trust right away by sending a note to students individually before the course begins, introducing themselves and setting clear goals and expectations.

In a conversation with some Faculty at Drexel, I learned that this simple note of welcome provides big returns. The students feel that they are important as individuals, and that they are recognized not only as another enrolled student. At the end of the course that these students attended, their feedback indicated, again, the good impression that first note of welcome made on them. It impacted their view of the instructor, the course, and their individual responsibility for the success of the course.

Phillips also noted that some measure of redundancy of course information is important: posting directions and reminders in many places throughout the online course environment, so that students can easily find course requirements and other important material, is important to the student's success and comfort level.

When teaching online, the message is clear: good, open, frequent communication is the key. Clearly identifying objectives and expectations provides the focus the students are looking for, and a road map that points to the successful completion of the course.

eSchool News and eCampus News

Here's a link to two publications from eSchool Media: eSchool News and eCampus News:

http://subscriptions.eschoolmedia.com/

From this web site you can subscribe, read the current issues, or go to their web sites.

I enjoy the mix of news, policy, and technology.  Check it out!

Design in Learning

Online learning... Mobile learning... These are no longer the new, novel ways we are teaching and learning. They have become mainstream in the way we deliver instruction. How effectively that instruction is delivered is reliant in large part to good design, both graphic design and instructional design.

Here, two good articles on the importance of good design:

Design Matters to Digital Higher Ed

What's Behind the Rise of Design in Digital Higher Ed?

Conducting Virtual Training

I always enjoy conducting a virtual training session. The biggest challenge remains really connecting with your learner audience, and them, with you.

How can we achieve that "all in the same classroom" environment? Here are a few tips that I have found helpful toward that goal:

• Actively listen - When a student is posing a question or sharing information with the class, stay focused on what he/she is saying. It is too easy to use this space of time - when you are not talking - to organize your next thought, or bring up the next window on the computer. This can result in missing what the student has just said; you may have heard it, but you really didn't listen to it.

• Avoid multitasking - Okay, this is really close to the first point, but this can happen while you are talking. If you are trying to explain one thing, while thinking of something else, and/or doing something else at the same time, you'll never be quite sure of what you just said. Your students may not be in the physical classroom with you, but they will pick up on this. We can sum this one up in two words: Stay focused.

• Maintain professional etiquette when speaking - Remember, your students' primary way of "seeing" you is through your language. Speak clearly, thoughfully. Be mindful of your tone - inflection is important. No slang, either. And watch those "ummmms," "ahhhhs," and the "you knows." They are distracting to students when they are in the same room as you. They are even more pronounced and magnified when all they can do is hear you.

And finally...

• Phrase questions that are open-ended - Maintaining collaboration and interactivity are critical in the virtual classroom. Keeping participants engaged keeps them learning. Close-ended questions requiring nothing more than a "yes" or "no" will result in your students drifting off, and makes for a boring session. Remember to ask those questions than encourage dialog and interaction among class participants. People like to express themselves - and this gives them the opportunity to do so.

What else works for you when facilitating a virtual class? Have any tips to share? Post them here and we'll re-visit this topic again.

Considerations for Curriculum Design in Your Blended Course

When redesigning a traditional-classroom course into a blended format, instructors need to decide which components work best in the traditional classroom setting, and which components are better suited for the online environment. In addition, how you will present the structure of the course to your students (and setting expectations for them) is another key consideration.

You can begin by identifying what your vision is for the blended course and how you can integrate it into your department's guidelines for blended courses. The course syllabus and outline must be clearly written to show the blended format and how each component of the course is delivered. Here it is also important to clearly describe to your students how interaction between you and them will take place within the course. For example, will you use your Course Management System's (CMS) e-mail or announcements tools to deliver information to your students? How should students contact you? How will assignments be delivered to students, and how should they submit them for grading? Will assessments take place in the classroom or online? Provide these instructions clearly, and stick with them throughout the course/semester. Set the expectations for interaction and explain why you have chosen the methods you will use.

Another consideration is to determine how you will build community within the course. Will there be group projects and assignments? Will groups meet in the classroom, or virtually via groups you create in the CMS course shell? Offer recommendations to students on how best to interact with their peers within their respective groups. Remember, a blended course format will be new to many students. Help them navigate this new learning territory by offering some "roadmaps" and best practices.

Finally, develop your strategy for how to handle technology support issues. They will come! Should students ask you for assistance in using the CMS and accessing your course? Should they contact the college's help desk? Again, set some guidelines so students feel comfortable knowing there is help available should they need it.

There are many more considerations to ponder when designing a blended course; these are just some broad categories that should be considered and planned for. Thoughtful redesign now will provide a better learning experience for your students later.

Adding Students to Your Course in D2L

Instructors: For those students not seeing your course link on their D2L homepage, you just need to add them to your class list in D2L.

Here’s how:

1. From the course home page, click on the Classlist link found in the red navigation bar along the top of the course home page. 
2. The Classlist page will display. You can view the list of students in your class. Toward the top of the page, click on the Add Participants button. 
3. The Add Participants page will display.  Click the Add an existing user link. 
4. The Add Existing Participant page will display. In the Search For: textbox, type in the missing student’s name or H #.  Then click the Search button. 
5. When the student name is displayed, place a check mark in the box next to the student’s name. 
6. In the “Select a Role” drop-down box, select “student”. 
7. In the “Select a Section” drop-down box, select the course. 
8. Then, click the “Enroll Selected Users” button. 
9. A page will display indicating that the student has been enrolled successfully. Click the “Done” button to finish. 
10. Take a look at your classlist again: you will see the student added there.

 When the student logs in to D2L again, he/she will see your course listed.

That’s it! Not difficult to do at all.

Using Checklists in Desire2Learn

Using Checklists in your course is a great way to help students revisit and review what you have been introducing to them within the past week, chapter, or module.

Check out the video and related content at http://hacc.campuspack.net/Technical_FAQs/Checklists to learn more.

Learning Communities

Looking for some new ideas? A fresh perspective? Sometimes it helps to connect with other learning professionals, and see what they have been doing. Explore these online learning communities. They offer you the opportunity to engage with other learning professionals from around the world. This is a great opportunity to network, interact, and share knowledge and ideas.

Here are two learning communities you may want to check out:

Tapped In (The online workplace of an international community of education professionals.)
Learning Town (A Village for Learning Professionals)

What other online learning communities have you discovered? Comment on them here, so they can be shared with everyone.

PDF Writer: Primo PDF

I regularly use Adobe's Acrobat Professional to create my PDF files. If you do not have this software, however, I have found a useful, free PDF writer: Primo PDF.

You can download it at www.primopdf.com.

Using it is quite simple, similar to Acrobat. Once installed on your computer:

1. To change a document to a PDF file, Click Print. Instead of selecting a printer, choose Primo PDF.
2. Click OK.
3. Choose Print.
4. Click OK.
5. Wait for a few seconds for the PDF document to display.
6. Save it to your desktop or drive.

For most basic Word documents, it has worked well for me.

Apollo 11: One Giant Leap...

In 1969, the United States embarked on one of its greatest journeys... With Apollo 11, we landed on the Moon. On August 25, 2012, Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon, passed away.

Check out NASA's Website for photos, features, and information about this remarkable man and this remarkable mission.

Relive the Apollo 11 mission at We Choose The Moon, an excellent interactive site mixing Flash animation recreation of the mission with stock photos, audio, and video. Remarkable. Thanks to Mike Nichols for sharing this link with me. This site is a wonderful educational tool, bringing these events to life. You'll need Adobe Flash Player to view. You can get it at Adobe's website.

YouTube EDU and Academic Earth

You Tube EDU (http://www.youtube.com/edu) aggregates video from colleges and universities. With contributions from Dartmouth, Stanford, University of Minnesota, UNC Chapel Hill, Purdue, Harvard, VirginiaTech, and more than 100 others, the site stands a chance to get attention easily. There are already more than 20,000 videos on YouTube EDU.

Looking for other eduction-related videos? Check out Academic Earth.

Technology is making learning more accessible to more people. Now, the organization, Academic Earth, has the goal of "giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education."

From its website:

"As more and more high quality educational content becomes available online for free, we ask ourselves, what are the real barriers to achieving a world class education? At Academic Earth, we are working to identify these barriers and find innovative ways to use technology to increase the ease of learning.

We are building a user-friendly educational ecosystem that will give Internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars. Our goal is to bring the best content together in one place and create an environment that in which that content is remarkably easy to use and in which user contributions make existing content increasingly valuable.

We invite those who share our passion to explore our website, participate in our online community, and help us continue to find new ways to make learning easier for everyone."

Participating universities include Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale.

You can learn more at: Academic Earth.

Wordle For Creating Word Clouds

Take a look at the following:


You have an instant recognition of what it is: common terminology associated with the concepts of blended learning.
How did I do it? Easy. Visit Wordle and click on Create. Just begin to enter the words you want to display, repeating words you want to display in a larger type.
From the Wordle website:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like.

The FAQ section explains it all. It is very easy to use... Give it a try!
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a word picture must be worth a million.

Welcome: An Invitation to Communication and Collaboration

The genesis for this web log began from the realization that the best way to foster dialogue and promote collaboration is to share information within your learning community. While HACC's Teaching Technology Services (formerly Instructional Technology Center) has always promoted an environment of information sharing, it is always a good idea to find and use better, and additional, ways to share knowledge.

As technology specialists here at HACC, we routinely discuss and demonstrate communication and collaboration tools. So it makes sense to employ some of these tools within our own department. I have found producing a web log (a.k.a., "blogging") to be an effective tool in sharing ideas and generating thoughtful points of view.

This web log is provided not only for the HACC community, but is open to anyone participating in the learning profession. While its contents will focus more on Higher Education, it will also provide information useful in any learning environment.

I welcome your input and comments.