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Category: CAT & Mouse: E-Learning

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Published on 1 Comment on Metacognition for Effective Online Learning

by Janice Florent

The thinker statue in Stuttgart

Students who succeed academically often rely on being able to think effectively and independently in order to take charge of their learning. They are thinking about their own thinking; mastered the knowledge about their own learning. This is referred to as metacognition. Metacognition is about understanding how to learn effectively, in a limited amount of time, using strategies that are corrected over time.

According to Flavell (1979), metacognitive knowledge involves three key variables:

  1. Self-awareness: The capability to analyze one’s own strong and weak areas of knowledge and how to fulfill the deficiencies.
  2. Task analysis: What do learners know about the task and what they need to do to complete it successfully?
  3. Selection of strategy: Problem solving strategies that enable the learners to understand and comprehend new knowledge.

Incorporating metacognitive strategies into your course design can help to create autonomous and self-starting learners, who are responsible for their own learning and are willing to share the synthesized version of their knowledge with peers.

In a recent eLearning Industry blog post, Christopher Pappas listed five tips for enhancing metacognition in eLearning. Those tips are:

Integrate a wide range of skills and subjects.

The real world setting offers unpredictable problems that require a range of skills to solve. Students will need to employ their metacognitive capabilities in the real world to solve such multi-faceted problems. Replicate this requirement in the online classroom. Provide problem scenarios that require a broad spectrum of skills to solve.

Model the metacognitive process.

Leading by example is one of the most effective ways to encourage metacognition in your students. Create a tutorial or video presentation that showcases the metacognitive process. State the problem or question in the beginning of the presentation; then guide them through the steps you would use to solve it. Be as detailed as possible and include every mistake they could make along the way, as mistakes can serve as invaluable teaching tools as well.

Give them control.

The freedom of choosing a learning activity is a powerful learning experience. Give your students more control over which modules they can learn first, which projects they can complete first and what activities they can follow first. By doing this, you generate authentic interest, rather than forcing them to master a particular subject. They are also more likely to use their critical thinking, analysis, and creative thinking skills to solve the problem if they were the ones who chose to tackle the problem themselves.

Review, identify and evaluate.

At the end of every eLearning activity, encourage your students to review, identify, and evaluate the process. Ask them to review the eLearning activity, itself, including their personal opinions about it. Then ask them to identify the strategies they utilized and why they chose these strategies, before evaluating their overall performance and assessing their strengths and weaknesses throughout the task.

Encourage learners to differentiate what they know from what they need to know.

The objective of any eLearning activity is to fill the learning gap. Before each eLearning activity encourage the students to determine what they currently know and what they need to learn by the end of the task. This might be developing specific skills or acquiring new information. Once they have completed the task, have them evaluate their original statements in order to determine if they have achieved their individual goals. You can also ask them to modify or add to their statements throughout the eLearning activity if necessary.

You should utilize these tips to enhance metacognition in your course design to benefit your students by facilitating their learning process and helping them to achieve better results.

If you are interested in getting more information about designing your course to enhance metacognition, read Christopher Pappas’ blog post "5 Instructional Design Tips to Enhance Metacognition in eLearning."

Photo credit: The thinker by Iulian Ursu | CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Published on 1 Comment on 7 Deadly Sins of Online Course Design

by Janice Florent

Seven Deadly Sins"Seven Deadly Sins" by ILOVEDUST is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

In an Edvocate article, Daniel Stanford listed his seven deadly sins of online course design from a faculty developer’s perspective. These resonated with me; and I thought I would share Daniel's seven deadly online course design sins with you.

#1. Overwhelming Discussions

“Post to the discussion board, and then respond to three classmates’ posts.” Sound familiar? These are often the instructions for online discussions even though it would be impossible to replicate this level of participation in a face-to-face class. The result is a massive number of posts that instructors and students dread sorting through.

#2. Lack of Scannable Text

Staring at a computer screen trying to read the information is tiring enough as it is. Don’t make it worse by writing long paragraphs that lack visual interruptions and organizational cues. “Chunk” the content to make it easier to scan through.

#3. No Progress Indicators

Within seconds of entering a course or a specific unit of content, students should know what they’ve completed, what is incomplete, and when the incomplete items are due. The worst nightmare of any online student is to think he or she has met all the course requirements for a given day or week, only to stumble upon additional ones after a critical deadline has passed.

#4. Bad Narration

There are two reasons most instructors create narrated PowerPoints.

  1. They believe it will be faster to deliver a lecture verbally than write it out.
  2. They believe it will be more engaging for students than reading.

Both of these motivations have their pitfalls. First, faculty are often surprised how long it takes to produce an effective narrated presentation. Second, delivering information via audio with no text alternative makes it difficult for students to control the pace of their learning. Also, audio-only approaches to instruction can be challenging for ESL learners (English as a second language) and a deal breaker for students with disabilities.

#5. Buried Leads

Don’t make students read through or listen to several minutes of non-essential fluff before you get to the good stuff. Burying the lead wastes students’ time and hurts your credibility as a curator. As a result, students will struggle to find the part where you finally say something important. Worse yet, they might begin to ignore your emails, readings, or videos altogether.

#6. Digital Hoarding

Face-to-face courses come with limitations that encourage instructors to prioritize what they share with students. Examples include the number of hours in each class meeting and the number of photocopies the instructor has time to print. In online courses, these limitations are removed or relaxed, which makes it tempting to share every interesting reading, video, and website you’ve ever encountered. All too often, the result is a course site that feels like one of the homes on Hoarding: Buried Alive, but with more scholarly journals and fewer cats.

#7. Faceless Professor Syndrome

Online courses provide limited natural opportunities to reinforce that you’re a real human being and help students put a face with your name. Don’t squander these opportunities by obscuring your identity and increasing your anonymity on the discussion board and in your self-introduction. Humanizing your online courses improves the learning experience as well as student success and retention rates.

If you are interested in knowing how Daniel Stanford suggests you atone for these deadly online course design sins, read his Edvocate article “Seven Deadly Sins of Online Course Design.”

Published on Leave a comment on Can you Flip an Online Class?

by Janice Florent

The flipped classroom is an active learning strategy that is being used by a number of educators. At its core, the flip means shifting the focus from the instructor to the students. This is done by inverting the design of the course so students engage in activities, apply concepts, and focus on higher-level learning outcomes.

The flip has moved away from being defined as only something that happens in class versus out of class. Instead, it focuses on what students are doing to construct knowledge, connect with others, and engage in higher levels of critical thinking and analysis. This applies to both the online and face-to-face environment. The real flip is not about where activities take place—it’s about flipping the focus from the instructor to the students.

So, can you flip an online class? The answer is YES! In a Faculty Focus article, Dr. Barbi Honeycutt and Sara Glova suggest three "flipped" strategies that can be integrated into an online class. Those strategies are:

Create a scavenger hunt.

Ask students to locate important course information, announcements, and deadlines. Offer an incentive for the first one to submit the completed scavenger hunt activity. Incentives may include the first choice on presentation topics, the chance to drop a low quiz grade, or the opportunity to gain an extra credit point on the final project.

Why it works: Students are actively locating information and constructing their own mental models of the course rather than just reading the course web site or listening to a video as you describe the structure and organization of the course.

Create a hashtag just for your course.

Encourage students to use the hashtag if they find course-related items in different social media spaces or elsewhere on the web. The hashtag should be unique to your course. Consider reviewing the posts and then sharing an item a week with the entire class.

Why it works: Students are actively contributing to the conversation by sharing resources and information they find rather than just reviewing the content you have collected.

Develop a low stakes assignment to encourage self-reflection and analysis.

Ask students to reflect on their own learning styles or personality in the online environment before beginning the semester. Encouraging students to think about this actively might help them to prepare for the online environment as they analyze their strengths, weaknesses, challenges, etc. Supplement this activity by making it a private forum requirement, then post a global response to students afterward with suggestions on how to succeed in the online environment.

Why it works: Students are asked to analyze and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses in regards to a course, activity, or assignment. This can help build students’ capacity to advance towards higher levels of critical thinking.

These are flipped strategies because they shift the focus from the instructor to the students; they encourage active participation from students rather than passive observation; and, they engage students on a higher level by encouraging creativity and evaluation rather than basic knowledge recall. Most importantly, these strategies can work in an online environment.

If this has piqued your interest, you can read more in the Faculty Focus article, “Can You Flip an Online Class?” and my blog post "Look for 'Flippable' Moments."

Published on Leave a comment on Thursday is Global Collaboration Day!

by Karen Nichols

I've been asked to share the following information about Global Collaboration Day:

Over the next couple of days, students, classrooms, teachers, administrators, parents and organizations will be either attending and/or hosting events online that are designed to showcase and promote global collaboration. We (Lucy Gray + Steve Hargadon, co-chairs of the Global Education Conference) are the calendar coordinators but not the direct conveners: that is, over 100 groups have designed and planned their own events which we have then organized into a directory and in special calendars to allow these events to be seen in any time zone in the world.

This is a huge worldwide experiment to demonstrate the power of globally-connected learning.

Examples of projects and events include: a teacher in Australia who will lead others in learning to dance Greek-style via Skype and Edmodo; African students and teachers answering questions through Whatsapp; and classrooms participating in a global virtual amazing race. There are professional development sessions for individual pre-service teachers, in-service educators, and other adults; as well as projects for entire classrooms to join in. We encourage you to browse the event directory or the calendar and choose a compelling event to attend!

Here are some tips to keep in mind as the next couple of days unfold:

Read directions and our website carefully to prepare.
If you have a question about a particular event or project, contact the host of that event directly. Their contact information is posted in each event listing.
Join our Remind texting and email group for event reminders.
If you need live help, we’ll do our best to be available. We will be in and out of this Blackboard Collaborate room as our own schedules allow.
Be patient! Things may not always go as well as intended! Learning to be flexible and adapting to situations online is a big part of becoming a global collaborator.

We appreciate the time and energy that our hosts have invested in this special day, and hope that our participants learn something new and become more

See you online,

Lucy and Steve

Published on Leave a comment on Engage Students Through Online Collaboration

by Janice Florent

photomontage with globe in foreground

In a recent eLearning Industry article, Dr. Amy Thornton, Director of the Center of Online Learning at Columbus State University, listed multiple strategies to engage students online. Dr. Thornton wrote that it is important to allow students to engage with content in different ways to ensure learning transfer. The engagement strategies suggested by Dr. Thornton are:

Keep it interactive

Interaction keeps students at their computer and engaged in the content. Not being able to see your students means that you have to keep them on their toes throughout the session. A few ways you can do this are:

  • Feedback - invite students to share their comments about the content.
  • Polling - asking polling questions can initiate discussion.
  • Brainstorming - invite students to assist with brainstorming on how a particular topic can be applied or used in the “real world.”
  • Scavenger Hunt - send students on a virtual scavenger hunt to find something and come back with their findings to share with the class.
  • Graphics - use graphics to create visuals. Students could be allowed to use electronic whiteboard tools to mark up the graphics or identify parts of an image.

Use triggers

Variety is the spice of life. Providing different types of learning experiences can help engage different types of learners. This can also keep your students on their toes because they don’t know what is going to happen next. A few ways to accomplish this are:

  • Multimedia - use video and/or music clips to add something for your visual and auditory learners.
  • Polling - give students a chance to think about the content that was covered and apply it.
  • Electronic Whiteboard - get students involved by asking them to write on the electronic whiteboard.

Group work

Allowing your students to work in smaller groups can give them more opportunity to interact with each other and be part of the discussion. Managing this in an online environment can be challenging, but with some planning can add a lot of value to your session. Here are a few ways to approach group work:

  • Discussion - assign a topic and have the groups discuss and report back to the class.
  • Brainstorming - allow the class to break into groups to brainstorm ideas.
  • Project - allow time for groups to work on a group project together.
  • Case Studies - allow your students to practice their problem-solving skills.
  • Role-play - similar to case study; give students a scenario they must work through where each group member must take on a role.
  • Use authentic materials - use real materials that give students an inside look, for example, online museum exhibits, scientific simulations, and scanned manuscripts.

Give students a task

Giving students some of the responsibility in facilitating synchronous class sessions will keep them engaged and help them create their own learning experience. A few ways to do this are:

  • Give students the opportunity to facilitate an activity.
  • Appoint a note taker for each session.
  • Have students do presentations.
  • Appoint a student to lead the discussion.

For more information read Dr. Thornton’s article “Online Collaboration Strategies to Engage Your Learners.”

Image credit: image by geralt from Pixabay

Published on Leave a comment on DB Assignments: Alternatives to Q & A Format

by Janice Florent

A discussion forum is an excellent tool for student engagement. However you don’t always have to use the question and answer format to engage students in a discussion forum. Chris Laney, professor of history and geography at Berkshire Community College, was having trouble engaging students in discussion forums in his online class and decided to rethink his use of this tool. Professor Laney thinks of the discussion forum as a place to foster interaction between the students through a variety of means rather than just asking them questions. He uses role-playing, debates, and WebQuest to foster interaction between his students.

Role-play

One example of how Professor Laney used role-play is a discussion forum activity that asks students to do some research on a person living in an urban Roman city in the first century CE. Each student creates a character and writes a diary entry or letter recording what he or she did in the course of a day or a series of days. To do this well, students need to research a few things about the professions and classes that would have existed. The students end up talking back and forth in character and at no point does Professor Laney actually ask a question.

Debate

One example of how Professor Laney uses debates is he had students debate whether democracy in the Middle East would result in better or worse relations with nations in the region. It’s a pretty straightforward assignment; however, when having students debate it’s important to set clear ground rules to keep things cordial and to avoid simplistic arguments.

WebQuest

In weeks when a major assignment is due, Professor Laney gives students a less intense discussion forum assignment. Rather than carrying on a discussion over the usual two-week period, he has students do a simple WebQuest and post their findings without having to respond to each other. For example, he may ask students to post an image, video, or music clip from the Romantic Period of art in the 19th century and write a brief description about why it’s considered an example of Romanticism.

Grading

To keep the discussion forum assignments manageable, Professor Laney asks students to post their messages in a single thread. In a class of 25 people there may be 75 messages in a week, but having all the messages in a single thread makes it relatively easy to grade. When a discussion forum activity is over, Professor Laney can click on an individual student’s name and at a glance assign a grade.

For more information, read the Faculty Focus article “Discussion Board Assignments: Alternatives to the Question-and-Answer Format.”

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Published on 2 Comments on Improve Student Retention in Online Courses
empty highway with a success ahead sign

Studies show that students withdraw from online courses at a higher rate than in face-to-face courses. There are many reasons for students withdrawing from an online course. Some reasons are beyond the instructor’s control. Educators do not like to see students withdraw from courses for the wrong reasons. There are some things instructors can do to improve retention and reduce attrition in online courses.

In a recent blog post, Dr. Peter van Leusen, Instructional Designer for EdPlus at Arizona State University, provided a list of proven strategies that can be implemented on a course level and are based on good principles for teaching (Chickering & Gamson, 1987), adult-learning strategies, and technology solutions. Those strategies are:

  1. Be present – Instructor presence is key. Make early contact at the start of the class and stay active throughout the course.
  2. Encourage active learning – Incorporate activities that require students to move from passive consumers to active users of information.
  3. Set clear expectations – Expectations help students gauge requirements for the course and individual assignments.
  4. Provide constructive, meaningful and timely feedback – Feedback gives students an indication about their performance. Effective feedback is frequent, prompt, specific, and written in a supportive tone.
  5. Make course content relevant – Invite guest speakers to provide career specific examples or include “real world” examples to illustrate course content. Design assignments to be flexible and allow students to pursue interests.
  6. Include collaboration and peer-to-peer communication – A common criticism of online courses is the lack of interaction with peers. Offer opportunities for students to share perspectives, experiences, and learning.
  7. Guide students to be autonomous – Self-directed learning describes students who take initiative and responsibility for their own learning. This is critical in an online class.
  8. Collect formative feedback on lesson effectiveness and student comprehension – The decision to review a certain concept or continue often depends on whether students “get it” or not.
  9. Identify and reach out to struggling students – Utilize an early alert system and reach out to students when necessary to offer support and share available resources to help students get back on track.

If this has piqued your interest, you can read more in Dr. Leusen’s "9 Proven Ways for Instructors to Address Online Student Retention" blog post.

Image credit: Image by geralt from Pixabay

Published on Leave a comment on Mix It Up: Strategies for Blended Learning

by Janice Florent

blended learning infographic

Blended courses (also known as hybrid courses) are courses where a portion of the traditional face-to-face instruction is replaced by web-based online learning. For blended learning to work well it entails more than simply replacing class time with online course elements.

In a Faculty Focus article, Rob Kelly writes,

When the online and face-to-face components complement each other as integrated activities in each setting, there is a clear purpose and students understand the relevance of both modes.

In the article, Rob goes on to give the following recommendations for how to successfully integrate the online and face-to-face modes of a blended course:

  • Start with the learning goals. Is there something that's going to support the learning outcome particularly well face-to-face or online or by using some combination of the two?
  • Make careful modality decisions. Select the right mix of modalities (online vs face-to-face). Consider the affordances of each modality and the workload/logistics.
  • Be deliberate in providing opportunities for interaction. Just because a communication tool or technique is available does not mean that you have to use it.
  • Reinforce one modality in the other. Be explicit in making the connections between the two modalities by acknowledging and extending the interaction in each.

Creating a blended learning course may not be appropriate for all courses or all instructors. The biggest benefit to a well-designed blended course could be a much improved teaching and learning experience.

You can read more about blended learning strategies in "Blended Learning: Integrating Online and Face-to-Face Courses" and "Strategies for Teaching Blended Learning Courses, Maybe You (and Your Students) Can Have It All" articles.

Image credit: "blended learning graphic overview" by jodieinblack licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

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Published on 1 Comment on Vertical Videos

by Karen Nichols

We have been touting the importance of the presence of the instructor in an online class by using videos, audio files, photos, discussions, etc.  The students should feel the teacher's presence throughout the course.  Many instructors are including videos and while at the Institute for New Faculty Developers last week, one of the presenters shared that they encourage their instructors to post a weekly video of themselves explaining the upcoming week's activities and assignments.  They use their smartphones with the YouTube app to record the video and upload it, then they link to it inside Blackboard.  What a good idea!  But can you hold your phone vertically to record this video?  Well, there are two sides to this argument as I have discovered in my research.  Vertical video syndrome is defined by the Urban Dictionary as "an affliction of those that record video using an upright mobile phone - as if taking a portrait photograph. My left eye is not in the centre of my forehead, my right eye is not on the tip of my nose. " When these vertical videos are posted on such sites as YouTube, they are skewed and appear unattractive.  There are even mock PSAs posted against the dreaded vertical video.

But here's an article from the Washington Post which details apps to help users either avoid vertical videos or make the most use of them with Snapchat or Mindie:

Vertical videos, long scorned, find a niche on smartphones

A recent article published on Litmos, Effective Use of Vertical Video for Training, offers an even more positive view of the vertical video.  Brent Schlenker believes we'll be seeing more and more of vertical videos in the field of mlearning (mobile learning) and sooner rather than later since mobile devices are becoming so prevalently used in distance education.  Here's a discussion from April 2015's International Journalism Festival on vertical vs. horizontal video:

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Published on 1 Comment on Improve Online Discussions Using ABCs

by Janice Florent

In a recent eLearning Industry blog post, Dr. James W. Brown suggests using ABCs of high quality online discussions as a starting point for feedback that impacts student performance.

Acknowledge the student's input. A quick response by the instructor helps to begin the interaction with the students and keeps them motivated.

Build on students' ideas by adding content, perspectives, experience, reference to the readings, etc.

Conclude with a focused follow-up question as a way to tie off the conversation with all students. Try using a provocative question that facilitates critical thinking that goes beyond the facts.

It is critically important to encourage conditions and behaviors for successful learning in discussion forums.

Dr. Brown offers these additional suggestions for improving asynchronous discussions in your online course:

  1. Build community in your online course from the start.
  2. Actively contact students who don’t show up online.
  3. Go after the lurkers and engage them.
  4. Pick a hot topic.
  5. Use a light hand and encourage other students to take the lead.
  6. Plan for the unplanned.
  7. Timing is critical.
  8. Quality counts.
  9. Employ a "final thoughts" posting to conclude the discussion.

For more information you can read Dr. Brown’s "The ABCs of High Quality Online Discussions" article.

Image Credit: Laptop by fancycrave1 from Pixabay