Module 4 Posting

In order to create an interactive online course, Durrington, Berryhill & Swafford (2006) discussed key factors that are present in effective courses. They stated instructors need to provide timely feedback and students need to have high levels of interactivity. Both of these communication areas can be addressed with technology in many ways. For teachers to provide timely feedback, courses can use drop boxes where students submit work to be graded. This prevents work being lost in emails or files being too large to send. As soon as work is submitted, the professor is notified and can begin evaluating the student’s submission. This feedback could also come in the way of a chat via Skype or text based programs where the student and professor talk about the assignment. This creates interactivity between the teacher and student while also creating quicker feedback. There is nothing worse for a student than waiting two weeks for an assignment to be graded, wondering if the work they submitted was acceptable. If chat options are not available, instructors can also employ the editing/track changes feature found in most productivity software. Here, the comments which would have been saved for chat can be expressed to the student. The student could resubmit work, and the professor could go back and grade again if necessary.

Another set of communication concerns comes with student-student communication. Since students are essentially isolated from each other, they need some way to connect with their colleagues. This can be done with synchronous and asynchronous chat rooms and discussion boards. If students want to connect at a certain time (or are required to do so), having these options available helps facilitate communication. To move the teacher into Siemens’ curatorial role, it is possible to have students moderate and evaluate the weekly discussions. Not only are they learning the skill of communication from an instructor’s viewpoint, but they are becoming more engaged as they have to go deeper into the content of a message, instead of blindly agreeing with what the original poster said. They could also provide more information which would require further individual research which usually was a task the instructors completed. Finally, When groups are chosen for projects or assignments, Durrington, Berryhill & Swafford (2006) suggest creating separate spaces for each group to communicate. This way they can focus only on their topic and not have the background noise of the other groups’ work.

When developing and presenting the content of a course, Siemens (2007) discussed the idea of the instructor as curator. Essentially, the instructor provides all of the course artifacts and guides the student with the expectation that the student would generate knowledge from the resources. The instructor is no longer the lecturer in the class, but provides resources that he/she thinks would be best suited for their students. In an online environment, this could include podcasts or vodcasts that feature pioneers in the field of study or simply lectures from previous years. The professor could also reserve library articles of interest and post those to the class homepage. In order to meet the different learning styles of students, the instructor could consider posting transcripts and slides from shows instead of just the videos or audio files. It is easier for students to search text files for interesting points instead of jumping around in audio files. To generate knowledge and not recite what is already known, the instructors could create scenarios or real life problems for the groups of students to solve. For example, in our 8842 course, we were presented with a case-study. Based on our readings of other course text, we were expected to generate solutions for a school’s concerns about starting an online section of classes. As we are working with a diverse population of students, it is important to keep traditional textbooks while allowing e-books as well. Not all students want to give up textbooks, especially as reading online causes eyestrain. Finally, to provide content, instructors should ensure the course can be viewed on mobile devices. As students might use those more often than laptops and computers, having access to the files and videos can help students stay connected to the course.

Collaboration and communication within a course can be done with tools such as online meeting software which allows users to connect with each other on a central computer. If I had files we needed to work on for a group, I could host a meeting and the group could participate in editing the document live. This prevents editing issues or individual concerns being left out after chat conversations take place. Combine this software with Skype or other videoconferencing and students thousands of miles apart can work together, see each other, and communicate beyond text messages or other typed words. As mentioned above, instructors can use traditional chat rooms or discussion boards for students to type messages if users are not comfortable using teleconferencing (or don’t have the necessary equipment). When our new technology fails, or users choose not to use it, there is always the telephone that can be used. A simple phone call is easy to make and is much cheaper than in previous decades, even internationally. A final way classes can collaborate is through the use of Wikis within a class. Say the class decides to create their own online class for future use. A wiki could be used where each person contributes and edits information. Each person is contributing to the final project and can see the contributions of others. The professors moves from lecturer to guide and encourages learners to participate if they are not pulling their weight.


References

Durrington, V. A., Berryhill, A., & Swafford, J. (2006, Winter). Strategies for enhancing student interactivity in an online environment. College Teaching, 54(1), 190-193. Retrieved from ProQuest Central.

Siemens, G. (Producer). (2007, September 10). 10 Minute Lecture – George Siemens – Curatorial Teaching [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from http://learnonline.wordpress.com/2007/09/20/10-minute-lecture-george-siemens-curatorial-teaching/

Issues in On-Line Collaboration

As Siemens (2008) mentioned, a collaborative learning community should be assessed by the contributions of its members. This could include the amount of input and feedback a user provides, participation in listservs or similar message boards, or simply counting the amount of times a user accesses the content. Using some of these methods could allow professors to assess fairly keeping in mind the different skill levels of participants. Discussion boards and listservs require limited skill requirements to participate. Some just require the use of email and responding to messages via the same method. With the assumption the learners are required to use technology to access the course, this type of collaboration does not require much more skill.

Measuring participation has fallen into a couple of categories that can be subverted by savvy students. One area is the amount of time spent in a module or looking over discussions of others. Unless schools implement timing out systems, students can sit for hours with the course in the background. This causes problems though as some users can read many posts over a time frame and would be frustrated having to log in repeatedly. Another area of concern is measuring the quantity of work submitted to the collaborative group. Simple “I agree” or “Good point” responses often flood discussions and offer no benefit for the group. Instead of learning, the group turns into the mutual admiration society where everyone agrees with the author, no matter the topic. There will always be some form of subjectivity when grading participation because using targets like “2 responses of at least 100 words” becomes a game of just counting the words and not focusing on the quality of the response.

One area that is hard for an instructor to gauge in collaborative assignments is the amount of knowledge a student brings. Unless the student self identifies that he/she is skilled or not in a certain area, the instructor usually does not know. However, in collaborative assignments, the skilled student could teach the unskilled their knowledge which would allow two types of assessment. The skilled student could be measured on how well they really knew the material by how well the unskilled student mastered the content. The unskilled student could also be assessed on their knowledge after being exposed to the new material. Both participants could evaluate each other. The unskilled student could evaluate how effective the skilled student was in presenting the material. The opportunities for evaluation in collaborative environments are there, but require a change of focus from both instructors and students.

Pallof and Pratt (2005) mentioned one area where instructors and institutions could improve upon. When dealing with reluctant or non-cooperative students, they suggest providing information for students in conflict resolution. Usually, when students want to work alone, either they are allowed to do so, or the group just does the work without them and grumbles about it. As students see themselves as equals, it is hard to move into the role of trying to convince someone else to do their part of the work. Peer pressure is not effective and students worry about offending the other party, especially if technical issues or family emergencies caused the lack of participation. The two prior situations could also be solved by the authors’ suggestions of having the instructor set guidelines and procedures of what the group should do in similar settings. Finally, the instructor has to take an active role in equalizing the participation within the community. Some users are excited to contribute and could scare off others while some users just prefer to say little. The instructor should help encourage dialogue, but be careful when asking users to pull back as not to totally shut down a very active participant.

References

Laureate Education, Inc . (Producer). (2008). Assessment of Collaborative Learning [Video Program]. Available from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=4930715&Survey=1&47=7102460&ClientNodeID=984645&coursenav=1&bhcp=1.

Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2005). Collaborating online. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.