The sage on the stage is likely here to stay: Instructor Presence edcmooc

How is it possible or even conceivable that after decades of the "sage on the stage" that the EDCMOOC team could conceive that participants wouldn't want instruction?  Watching the taped first hangout and hearing the discussion on the fact that participants want instruction left me wondering: The model of online teaching I was used to has three dimensions: teacher, content and social presence.  All three of these items are needed to create a learning environment in the online course otherwise it seems that the learners are basically in a correspondence course.

I think it was Jenn who talked about the instructor and people wanting instruction.  It seems to me that the learner takes a course in order to be guided in what are the gems we need to take on our journey.  If we are confident in what we are learning would we want to do it by ourselves? Or is education  social and while we want peers but we also want the expert to guide our journey.

What's the hype about Problem Based Learning? (Panel Discussion Remix)

While listening to the recording I decided that perhaps I should try Jim's method of remixing and recognizing that I too do better in a written context where I can pick and choose where I can focus my attention. Here is my attempt to capture the discussion.

Peter Leong and Lani Uyeno provided insight into how they have integrated problem-based learning into their online courses. Lani's course Eng. 211 Autobiographical Writing and Peter's course 668 Quantitative Research (graduate level).

Authentic Context
Lani's course:  The student's work on a published journal and thus are more interested as they see an effect of their work on others.

Peter's course:  Fictitious consulting company doing educational research

Response to Tony Bate's point-'bringing in the world to your teaching'
Lani: writing memos, letters in response to clients requests; the fact that they are online: they spend more time in revising and editing their work
Peter: the course material (quantitative research/statistical research) is dry for most students so the fact that they are using research methods to help their client oppose legislation & from their analysis of the data, bring forward conclusions helps bring the material alive for the student

Authentic activities in PBL How do they differ from traditional learning activities?
Lani: publication means that revision and editing of work is more important than it is in person
Peter: in f2f small problems were not contextualized so difficult for the student to learn how to apply; online the students are better able to apply the material

Online students are more responsible: the material is there but don't pay attention to it; the team leader more responsible and ensures re-reading and understanding what is there

PBL effect on student learning & motivation
Lani: have to become more motivated; grow in communication skills; seen students who are quiet given a voice online; students are more professional in their interactions; when Lani gives her thoughts on their deliverables - do revisions before handing in
Memoirs content: teams Lani posts which team is critiquing which team; uses rubrics
Drafts - Lani prepares a power point slide what works; what needs more work; whole team usually shows up

Peter: Working with graduate students you still see a shift from them expecting you to give them all the material to them learning that they need to look for the information
1) Formulate & operationalize research questions
2) Select research design & statistical analysis method
3) Perform the statistical analysis and draw conclusions
4) Presentation
Rubrics for each task.  Peer evaluation at the end of the project (done separately by each team member rate their peers).
synchronous meeting once a week
https://sites.google.com/site/akamaiconsultingscenario/home

Using technology to support active learning among & between students
Lani:  BB Collaborate - good interaction with students and they can ask any questions
Peter:  endorsed Lani's thoughts on BB Collaborate; added blogs to reflect on their experiences; 2nd Life; interesting to read blogs to see where they start and where they end - they are in charge of their own learning

other technology: brainstorming on white board; separate groups; polling function; chat function

Largest Barrier to PBL & Active Learning - TIME
Lani: commit the time to shift from lecture to PBL; once it is done the material is impressive to student because of the time and thought you have put into the course; students more involved in their learning
Peter: Time to convert to PBL - once it is done what was once dry engages students online - they can see how it works in real life

Recommendations (how to start)
Lani: start small; rethink one idea or concept from course; work with a colleague as the back and forth really helps
Peter: authentic - talk to industry expert; make sure you have a real world/work problem - Just Do It! - don't wait for the perfect idea

Example of a first baby step?
concept - context for presenting it
invite guest speaker on subject matter

Resistance from students:
*** so hard - used to be on the receiving end - no research themselves
- after first deliverable - less resistance as other students are there to support

PBL on-line
- gives students a sense of the whole - where you are going as all the material is online - they can go and revisit or go ahead
- students take it upon themselves to tell others to revisit the material

Overall the benefits of PBL are too great not to be using!

May I ask a question?

What I have my learners engaged with the material and thinking critically about what it means to them and their subject area? Now the kicker is if you can do it in a regular classroom you are one of the select few but to do this all online that is no small task.

As I think about my experiences in the online education world, as I have been teaching online for seven years and in the past four years I have taken a few online courses, I cannot say I have ever been as engaged as I have been as in this MOOC. So what is the difference?

I find the newsletter very impressive and it comes to me (I don't have to go looking for the website or the material - oh who knew it would keep me on track.).  There are synchronous sessions - which are linked to a world clock that actually works (well I did have one time wrong) its just been too bad that I couldn't make all the sessions since I find them rewarding - people actually talking about this online world and even more astonishing is that they are enthused and excited to be involved (most of the people I engage with see it as a necessary evil). The links to the reference material - yes I am a person who actually wants to read the original just to be sure I understood it all.

This week I went through the course material - which really I have done every week since I find the compilation of materials a definite resource.  I participated in Debbie Morrison's Blackboard discussion and I basically listened to Linda Elder lecture on critical thinking (I had hoped to listen to her presentation again this week thinking I must have missed something.) I watched the weekly wrap-up and wished I could ask a few questions.  I realize that there was a minimum of people present at Greg's session but I could really have used the examples.  I am always asking my students to provide examples as in my mind (and I think in theirs) it helps to clarify my thinking am I getting the message that they are sending.  Personally I wish Greg had put in a number of examples for each of the points since as I am watching the recording I have no way of knowing if I am really getting the point.

Synchronous online is more appealing and engaging to asynchronous online in my experience and this course also underscores it for me.  If I had participated in the roundup I would have been able to ask my questions.  If this course was in a LMS I would have posted my questions in the forum under the discussion and hoped that I would get a response sometime down the road.  My other thought is that with synchronous session you are more likely to be able to capture some of the interests of your students - I am not sure how that actually translates in the asynchronous world that I inhabit.

This brings me to another realization is that the synchronous part of this course is what pushes me forward to do the readings and search through my mind for the other material that I have sifted through.

Questions.  I was more than happy to see the material on questions as I spend part of last year trying to get myself asking solid questions or at least questions that were divergent.  The book Thinking through quality questioning, although written for a different audience provides ample material to give you some pause to think - what kind of questions am I asking. Lots more work to do in this area as people need to feel that they can respond.  Perhaps we are so socialized to answer convergent questions that anything else makes us leary?  Going back to the weekly round-up Greg put up a slide on "Questioning Behavior . . . " I didn't get the information down (another I have to go back) but I did get the nugget are you giving verbal rewards (Great question!).  I found John Hattie's Visible Learning for Teacher's last year and although not for this audience he does a good job on how to give feedback - The article that actually gave me the nuggets to go forward was Educational Leadership: Feedback for Learning: Seven Keys to Effective Feedback

All week I kept thinking I am missing something major here - but what is it?  I have been ruminating on how to figure out what is a realistic workload for instructors taking a blended course.  I would definitely appreciate a discussion on workload - we have talked about the discussion board however I might have missed what is the standard or is there a standard - one discussion posting per week or 1 per two weeks or is there any guidance. Lots more questions hopefully they are of a higher order ;-).

Did we miss the point.  After watching Walker's recorded weekly wrap-up session - it floated into my mind.  Why are we talking about discussion forums and social presence/content presence when really we would probably all learn a lot more if this course about online learning was within a LMS and someone was modeling these techniques rather than hearing gurus talk about the "art" of online learning.

The part from this wrap-up that probably moved me onto this vein was  the statement of "modeling social context, interactivity and a sense of privacy".   After hearing this, I wrote the phrase down and put ???  in the margin and I am still pondering this. What does this look like - could someone show me it in an actual discussion forum?

"Teaching and social presence is basic learning but cognitive presence takes learning beyond the basic towards application and appreciation." This is another one that needed me to go back over the definitions. So here we want to find out whether the learners have had critical discourse reflected on what they were discussing in the forum and have they constructed personal meaning and confirmed our mutual understanding. Another aught moment.

The one thing that this week has done for me is underlined that teaching on-line and especially the discussion board/forums are an enigma.  Even after going through the course materials this week and participating in Dr. Healther Farmakis' Blackboard presentation and listening to the weekly wrap-up t I was still thinking I was a fish out of water. I reviewed some on-line learning articles I had found a couple of years ago when I was keen on improving my on-line discussions.  CREST+ Model: Writing Effective Online Discussion Questions, (2007) Akin & Neal this article talks about types of discussion questions from problem based to literature-based to an experiential element.  The thing that I still think is missing it is that it is fine to talk in the abstract but if you are new to on-line learning it would help if there were samples of these types of discussions and responses. I appreciate Vanessa Paz Dennen's articles in Distance Education, "From Message Posting to Learning Dialogues: Factors affecting learner participation in asynchronous discussion" (2005)as the article has specific examples of what is being discussed and how it was being used in the discussion forums.  What I gathered from analysis is that the more personal or relevant to the participants lives they more likely they are to expand in the discussion forum. The other article by her that I found very informative was "Lookinf for evidence of learning: Assessment and analysis methods for online discourse (2008).  In this article she makes the point that if participants are engaging in an activity it should "somehow enhance the learning experience" p 206 (2008)  The question then becomes how does this look or as an online facilitator how do you ensure that this experience happens? What I appreciated here was that she provided a couple of discussion board samples and then proceeded to analyze them.

Moving forward I think that without marks attached it is not likely you will have the entire class participate.  Lurking is not valued in the online environment whereas we appreciate students coming to class even if they do not actively participate in class discussion.  If your course lends itself to current events then capturing these events in the discussion forum will enhance the discussion. Another way to enhance the discussion is to create roles ex.) white hat, black hat, critic etc. The art of being online is to create a discussion forum that really is a discussion.

Akin, Lynn & Diane Neal CREST+ Model: Writing Effective Online Discussion Question, MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, Vol 3, No, 2, June 2007
Paz Dennen, Vanessa, Looking for evidence of learning: Assesment and anlaysis methods for online discourse,  Computers in Human Behavior 24 (2008) 205-219.
Paz Dennen, Vanessa, From Message Posting to Learning Dialogues: Factors affecting learner partiipation in asynchronous discussion, Distance Education, Vol 26, No 1, May 2005 pp127-148

The Art to being on the Online Yellow Brick Road

The 'Art' aspect of being an online facilitator is starting to take shape.  It has been an interesting week of readings, webinars and reflecting on what has been occurring in my online course.

I was outlining my post when I realized I had started the week reading about Ken Bain's book, "What the Best College Teachers Do" which I read a number of years ago.   How was it that all this common sense information didn't seem to translate for me into the online world.  I was so deeply entranced by how the webinars I had either participated in or watched discussed presence and being present. Lost to me was anything to do with Bain's book and the article, "What the Best Online Teachers Should Do", (2011).

Presence - John Thompson showed a slide on teaching presence, cognitive presence and social presence but really never went into any depth on any of these.  I wasn't there to ask why mention if you aren't going to discuss?

His discussion revolved around common sense that is people want to know  to know that you care so, for example, use their name in discussion postings or move deadlines if there are issues occurring in their lives.  He also threw out there www.voki.com and http://Present.me.com as two ways of creating an online presence.

Whereas when Larry Ragan from Penn State discuss presence I wrote down standards, frequency and classwork however his lead-in to this discussion was "Don't worry about me . . . (I'll check in once a week.).  So I guess I am taking away from this discussion is that an online facilitator needs to consider what their interpretation is to online presence and let your participants know.

Is online presence - 24/7 as John Thompson talks about or what Larry Ragan says, "Check in a minimum of once a day but more like 2 or 3 times a day."  Personally, I have been teaching for over 20 years in a traditional setting and I can understand why some people balk at the hand holding in online courses.  I do give my participants my contact numbers for weekends since most of them will be working on their course material on the weekend and encourage them to phone if they run into difficulty since I absolutely ban myself from looking at work email during the weekend (too much other stuff that can get into your head if you look at it). If I was going to sum this up - tell people what your expectations are and then make sure that you are modeling them.

I appreciated Larry Ragan's flooring analogy and the fact that on-learning is not like moving from carpet to hardwood but really a transitional shift more like teaching blindfolded: Here is the course go for it.  Considering the research shows that most instructors teach like they were taught (the model factor or like they like to learn) it is amazing that institutions put people on-line without any type of training (except perhaps on the LMS).  Perhaps even more amazing is that we muddle our way through trying to get a sense of what excellence works for.

Perhaps John Thompson's quote, "Students don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." sums up this week in the sense that we are people and we want to know that we matter.

The one factor that never went far enough for me was the "excellence in 'online' teaching"  Bain talks about it in the classroom as "sustained and deep understanding, a fundament change in the student's world view and mental models, a desire to learn more, and effective communications."  If we were going to be pushed to be excellent "online instructors" is the human touch the only key?

Synchronous - Helps complete the picture for me

Too many things on the go to get to the two on-line sessions this week but I managed to get myself organized for the Thursday wrap-up or overview.  It seems to me that it helped put some pieces into the picture for me.  I had never heard of the term "substantive interaction" to do with on-line instructions so that was a heads up.  After hearing about interaction meaning : student to content; student to student and student to instructor it has given me something to consider as I am revamping a course I am currently instructing.  (I think I chucked out a lot of the student to student activities as they never seemed to work.)

The other take away was from Chickerings work  - "Emphasize time on task: doing vs. absorbing".  I need to get my head around this concept.  I am not clear on how this comes across in the on-line community but I am thinking I am now absorbing what I didn't get a handle on yesterday and didn't have the consciousness to figure that out until looking over my notes today.

I had figured out the idea that on-line discussion needs to be tied to rewards versus the face to face discussions that happen in class.  I was hoping that I had missed something in the on-line andragogy and that there was a way around the marks issue.

Learning as Individual Development

It must be that I am bent on individual development otherwise why would I spend my time trying to figure out the perfect on-line course - or at least quality on-line course.

My big quibble with on-line courses - mine included - is that it is read this and discuss that.  If only I had access to Blackboard Collaborate so that we could do some synchronous sessions that would move my course forward (at least in my eyes).

I work with instructors in a post-secondary institution and the subject material is evaluation/assessment: that is using evaluation tools properly.  That being said there are no real hard fast rules, in many cases, so it is important to get across the flexibility of the situation and that assessment needs to fit the situation.

I have been teaching this course in a blended format - two full-days face-to-face and the rest on-line.  While I have tweaked the course here and there this last two weeks I have been doing a reorganization job: things are not working out the way I expected.

I will have a course designer assigned to me for a couple of weeks of work next month but the course is running now hence I have been using a technical person to help me cut and paste and then working on it myself (as far as my skills go).

I read through some of the on-line materials recommended in this course and thought it was interesting that videos and quizzes do not improve learning since many of my colleagues think that is the way to go.  Personally I would like to get a handle on what is a "workable workload" it seems to be a term out there but no actual research to quantify. I went through Tony's Bates presentation (and set up a drop box account so that I could see it) and I was happy to note that I understood what he was explaining - perhaps I am getting the hang of on-line learning (although I love the interaction of the classroom).

Personally I appreciate the newsletter in my email to remind me to check what is going on - since life is hectic at the beginning of a semester.  I have also appreciated accessing the reference material and reading about the nine steps.  I hope to get in on the Collaborate Discussions but the time zone doesn't work well for me.

Getting started

I missed the first session tonight due to the time change but I did have a quick look at the resources pages and I am eager to get going with the actual course.  I appreciated the six categories of MOOC participants since I can appreciate each of the categories.  I am hoping to be an active participant in this course - heck I even have a blog started. 

Starting online MOOC

Another academic year is upon us and although I have been teaching on-line for seven years (wow), I still think there is much to learn about how to use the technology and engage learners.  I am hoping that this MOOC provides me with a few new tools and perhaps ideas on how to use on-line learning to its potential.