Category: Educational Technology

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Strategies For Engaging Students

For faculty, encouraging student engagement is important in the online environment as the drop-out rates are significantly higher than the traditional face-to-face courses. Engagement like many other things in online education may have a different meaning based on perspective. Here are a few strategies for engaging online students in your online courses, from the faculty perspective:

Feedback – timely feedback on assignments will allow your online students to incorporate the feedback and make improvements for future assignments. This may seem nearly impossible for larger courses. A good strategy that many online faculty use is that of providing examples, templates or models of well-written assignments, this will allow the student to focus on the goals of the assignment. Having a well-written rubric available for online students to review before they begin their work will help them focus on the desired expectations. Online faculty should consider reusing feedback from the previous semester. Based on experience from previous semesters, faculty can proactively address items where students typically run into obstacles and provide clarifying directions as needed.

Interaction – online faculty must be present in their courses in order to engage the students. Faculty can be present in their online courses by participating in discussion forums and asking students probing questions and encouraging the students to ask probing questions of each other.  Faculty can also be present by emailing individual students, groups of students and providing announcements, as needed to keep the discussions moving along.  Group collaboration tools are also becoming more popular and online faculty are finding success in messaging students directly, outside of the LMS. [Slack is a great example of this technology.]

Application – many online students are also working adults and ensuring the content of the course is relevant and can be applied to their real-life/real-world experience is a key item in the effort to keep them engaged. Those students that consider themselves to be working adults are more likely to voice their concerns about an assignment being “busy-work” if they feel that it doesn’t apply to their work life. Online faculty should invest the time at the beginning of the course to get to know the students and the type of work they might be involved in as well as their expectations for the course. Engaging assignments will involve some type of research, developing an original idea and using their critical thinking skills to solve some problem they might be faced with in the workplace.

Interesting – online courses that include some type of hands-on learning activity will generally be more interesting and more engaging.  By asking students to communicate what they have learned about a new technology and how they can apply its use to their current profession/future profession will make their coursework more interesting. As an online instructor, look for opportunities to replace traditional text-based assignments.  Try to incorporate more audio and video  by using online tools such as Flipgrid, VoiceThread or Jing. Using a few different options as a way to present their ideas will keep students motivated and interested in the course. Students all learn differently and providing a variety of options will only enhance the interest in the course and engage the student.

-RG

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Top 5 List: Ideas For Training Faculty

Top 5 List

Training faculty often falls within the scope of work of those that practice instructional design and/or educational technology. This training can be challenging when it comes to the use of new digital technologies and tools. While some of my colleagues over the years have expressed how challenging this can be, I find that to be just the opposite of my experience. The training should focus on several strategies and this will lead to an effective and efficient outcome for all of those that are involved. Here are couple things to consider:

Relationship building – this strategy will offer the opportunity to apply newly acquired knowledge directly into daily practice. Building a professional relationship allows the person doing the training to better understand the baseline knowledge and comfort level of the individual receiving the training. This allows open communication that can lead to possible opportunities for collaboration in the future.

Staying informed – research is a very important part of training. To research the latest trends in higher education, instructional design and learning in general can serve as a starting point for training development. Many times faculty are not able to articulate what they need because they don’t know what the options are.

Walk the walk – the person conducting the training should have an inside scoop on what is involved in teaching courses prior to conducting any training. A key ingredient will be that the trainers have first hand knowledge of the entire process of building a course: designing, developing, implementing, assessing and revising.

Build bridges – instructional designers have the opportunity to view a variety of courses across different disciplines. This offers a unique perspective and can often serve as a bridge between faculty members. Many times faculty would like to collaborate across disciplines but they’re just not aware of what others are doing. Sharing information across disciplines will benefit all involved in the process.

Leadership – successful instructional designers that do training proactively support faculty and allow faculty to share experiences with each other. One of the ways to do this is to establish an online faculty learning community within the institution. In this space ideas can be shared in an effective manner. Once established,  some of the things it can be shared include job aids, quick tips, best practices and other digital tools to increase efficiency and improve student outcomes.

-RG

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Online Discussion Forums

Many years ago distance education courses were labeled as correspondence courses. We now refer to courses being taken across a great distance simply as online courses. One of the biggest differences between the older correspondence courses and more recent online courses is the idea of online discussion forums for the students. The idea here being that students can communicate, debate and share ideas in general about the course content.

Over the years we’ve learned many things about online discussion forums and here are a few things to keep in mind that can help instructors maximize the benefits of online discussions. 

Domination – a number of studies show that a few students typically dominate an online discussion forum, this is very similar to a traditional face-to-face discussion. Overall students still have a tendency to talk more in online discussions than they would in a face-to-face environment. The benefit here is that this has a tendency to draw out the quiet students who might shy away from discussions in a face-to-face environment. This is exactly why discussion forums should be a key component to any online course. 

Unequal – it is important for faculty to establish requirements for participation but they must realize that equal participation is not going to be likely. No matter the requirement there is a small group of students who will still dominate the discussion. If too many discussion items are required for each student this may have a negative impact by leading students to post just enough to meet the requirements.

Participation increases – in general studies have shown that the initial discussion takes place between faculty and students but as time goes on students start talking to each other on a more regular basis. If the goal is to move the course from the traditional lecture format and include more discussion this is a positive. This is most likely the result of every student having an equal opportunity and online discussion so it makes sense that they will organically start speaking to each other. Overall faculty should be involved in, but not dominate any of the discussion forums. Providing a solid structure and a gentle nudge when necessary will be just enough to let it get taken over by students.

Interactions – researchers have found that responses generally contained supportive messages about each other’s postings. This is important to recognize as many people who do not participate in these types of discussion forums generally have a negative connection to anonymous online discussion feeds that contain a lot of inappropriate and flaming text. 

Challenges – one of the challenges in creating discussion items is the requirement that all students make an original posting. Oftentimes this creates multiple discussion threads that are hard to follow and students will run out of original ideas after a few postings have already been made…thus posting unoriginal comments.

Faculty should consider the purpose of the original posting requirement. What is the goal? Is it to simply be creative, then responding to someone else’s point of view might contain more creativity than trying to develop an original posting. Faculty might consider requiring one or two original thoughts on a particular topic, instead of requiring a *post once and reply twice strategy*.

Researchers have also found that in general most responses to your discussion items are supportive and positive in nature. Students in many cases appear to be too nice and not willing to challenge one another in a professional manner. If the goal is to participate in a constructive disagreement an instructor might deliberately pick an extreme point of view to stir things up and invite students into a disagreement and then facilitate the interaction and engagement amongst the students.

– RG

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Top 5 List: Simplify Course Revisions

Top 5 List

It is difficult to see beyond your first course offering when building a new online course or moving an existing face-to-face course online. And if you want there to be a second offering of your course, you’ll want to focus your energies on making the first offering a success. But don’t ignore the fact that you will want to make revisions to the course based on your experience and feedback. Designing online courses always takes much longer than expected and planning for future revisions seems like something that can be dealt with…well, in the future. Here is a Top 5 list of things to consider while building your course to simplify revisions.

One Source Information – if you have important information like assignment directions, discussion group expectations or details about online quizzes, place those items in ONE place and simply link back to it from all of the different locations where students may need to access it. As you move through the course you can remind students [and the other members of your instructional team] where the information is located. This will help minimize confusion in the course and allow for easy updating…as updates will only need to be made in ONE location. 

Another way to use this strategy is with the deliverable due dates in the course. Placing all of the due dates in ONE document/location will eliminate any conflicting information that could lead to a less than pleasant experience for the students…and the instructional team. Google Drive [documents] is a great solution.

Avoid Dates and Times – the goal here is to try to get as much mileage as possible out of your content. Avoid any mentions of dates, times, the weather, the season, the BIG championship game that just took place. Create a course schedule/calendar to refer students to. Consider a simple one-pager that allows for easy revisions. As you make revisions you need not worry about catching all of the places where dates were entered because that will all be contained in ONE location. Revisions can then be made lesson-by-lesson.

Compartmentalize Current Events – group discussions are usually a focal point of online courses and if current events are being discussed consider placing them in their own unique lesson rather than weaving them throughout the course. If your lectures are wrapped around a major current event like an election year you will want to create separate throw-away lectures that can be easily replaced after the event has taken place.

Place Content Into Modules – there are many reasons to place your content into smaller bite-size modules for the students. For example, taking that 30-minute lecture and creating six 5-minute lectures to help students maintain focus while watching and tracking their progress should they get interrupted. The benefit for faculty and the instructional team here is that this strategy makes locating areas to update much easier. Updating just one module might make more sense than trying to re-record an entire longer lecture.

Leverage Your Tools – many Learning Management Systems will have a feature that allows for a copy of your course to be moved from one session to the next. In those, cases you should consider creating a *master* copy of your course. A master copy of your course can be kept behind the scenes and never rolled out to students allowing you to constantly update as you move through your course. As the beginning of each session approaches you can copy out a fresh [pure] offering of your course and know that students will be getting the most up-to-date version. It takes discipline and organization to maintain a master shell with any success….and a talented instructional designer.

With every new semester or new session there will be some required work to get your online course ready to go again for the next wave of students. If you are working alone or with a team of other professionals using an external tool to help track the changes that should be considered will be the key to your success and the team you are working with. Consider a tool that allows for maximum collaboration.

-RG

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Top 5 List: Building Community In Your Online Courses

Top 5 List

Online education has allowed users to advance their education and develop new skills from any location. The trouble is that users can still feel isolated and this goes for the facilitator as well. With all of the benefits that come with online education the challenge of creating an online community is still a challenge. One strategy is to simply create more connections between the user and the facilitator. Here is a Top 5 list of things to try to help increase connections between the user and the facilitator.

Discussion Forums – get creative when using discussion forums. For too long online education has used the old *post-once AND reply-twice* approach to discussions. While this may be a quick way to meet a quantitative measure….it really does not do much for creating and encouraging a quality discussion. One suggestion is to create groups of 7-8 students and ask that they first create a Group Charter for their group before jumping right into the coursework. The group creates their own rules and work expectations while getting to know each other.

Encourage Real-Time Connections – connections can be limited student:student and student:faculty when only asynchronous options are considered. Providing an opportunity for synchronous communications will start the momentum of the back-and-forth discussions that will help proactively clear-up any miscommunications. Increasing the opportunities for synchronous communications can help build a greater sense of community in online courses.  There are many different opportunities for this type of communication including virtual office hours, small group meetings [6-8 students], large group meetings [24-28 students] and small study groups [2-4 students]. Google Hangouts is one good option to offer students to get the communication started.

Use a Variety of Tools – there are many tools available that can be used to increase student interaction and get them engaged in their courses. Many institutions are looking to private social networks that allow for student connections to take place from course-to-course as students move through a degree program.  However, if the need is for just ONE course, Skype and Google Hangouts have proven to be effective tools to go above and beyond the pre-programmed messages such as lesson tours, presentations/lectures and announcements.

Develop a Plan – developing a plan around the activities and the tools selected for the course will lead to a successful experience in your course. The tools will only be as effective as they way they are presented and implemented. Consideration must be given to answering the question…how will this tool increase connections and support the outcomes/objectives of the course.

Interact with Non-Task Activities – consider using interactions that are not related to a specific task as a way to make connections. Find a way to connect with students or facilitate students connecting with each other in ways that are not directly related to learning. Connections made this way can foster a supportive learning community. Many LMS offer some functionality that will allow for this type of social networking. If for some reason the LMS doesn’t offer this functionality you may have to create your own private Facebook page or use a tool like Slack. Simply asking your students to come up with a suggestion to enhance networking might be a good option. Chances are good they may already be using a tool that could be shared.

-RG

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Top 5 List: Be Present In Your Online Course

Top 5 List

Having worked as an adjunct instructor [part-time faculty member] since the late 90s I’ve noticed and have heard of many instructors that seem to disappear while teaching their online course. I’ve always found this to be a little upsetting since this is the number one thing that we must do when teaching an online course. 

Of course there are varying degrees of faculty engagement. On the one hand there is the instructor that provides no communication, no feedback, and no encouragement to students. On the other hand is the instructor who provides feedback that is not constructive or provides feedback…but it’s too late for students to use to improve the assignments that follow.

Here are a few things that can be done to help remain present in your online course and be available to students:

  1. Dedicate certain times to go to class – I’ve always suggested to my own students that they dedicate certain times of the day to attend an online course. As instructors we should do the same. This dedicated time can be used to grade, respond to emails and provide general announcements that will help keep students focused.
  1. Personalize the course by being present – when working with new faculty I always suggest that they include a welcome video at the beginning of the course as well as the beginning of each lesson, module or unit. And when needed I recommend that new faculty create an assignment-specific video for those assignments that may trip students up or include detailed directions. Taking this approach not only helps to engage the students and personalize the content but it also helps the faculty to feel more vested in their course. 
  1. Be creative when engaging students – learning to teach online is not something we can learn overnight. Some faculty that I have worked with will write personalized emails to a few students every week with some positive information about the tasks performed during the previous week. Another faculty person that I’ve met along the way uses screencasting to review and provide feedback for writing assignments. They can quickly share that message with students via link to the video. This is all done in an effort to make the students feel that you are present and interested in their success.
  1. Use discussion boards – using discussion boards often is a wise move for all faculty. This helps keep the course on point so this can quickly hear off on a tangent and steer away from the content. This also lets students know that you’re interested and care about what they’re saying, as they will be looking forward to your responses. Responses can be praise, critiques or just simply calling for more critical thinking. 
  1. Online does not mean off-line – because the content assignments and assessments are all done online this does not mean that faculty should not be available and off-line. Students will not be successful if the faculty are not involved with the learning experience and provide the depth, breadth and overall richness of a valuable learning experience. All faculty should be available for scheduled office hours at least once a week when students can reach out via phone or video chat session.

-RG