Category Archives: Online Learning

Foster M8 Where I have been and where I am going

Online Learning

This course has been a tremendous learning experience for me. Also, it has humbled me, because I have not mastered all the material. This is how it is for students, who like me, have all kinds of other commitments. But my biggest take home from this course is that I am much more appreciative of the educational rigor that online courses could be. I think the early emphases that we paid to the role of the social and community components necessary for good online courses was really eye opening. To tell you the truth, as a newcomer to online education, I thought it was just voice over powerpoints, incredibly ineffective. But there is a detailed attention to the learning outcomes, which I feel has helped my f2f classes. I did learn the value of getting to know each other, in terms of engaging with the course.

I have a very specific need – to help launch an online postmaster’s curriculum in midwifery by the end of December 2015. It is not exclusively up to me, but I am a key player. And I want it to work, and to be really good. I have entered the world of online learning and teaching. I still feel like a novice, though. But it has been great, thank you to Stephanie and to Leah, and all the classmates.

Mackenzie’s M8 Reflection

Online Learning, Week 8 Discussion
  • In your own words, describe your interpretation of accessibility and Universal Design for Learning (UDL), include the three networks in your brief response.

Universal Design for Learning reminds me of the multiple intelligence theory that was popular about 7 years ago. I am glad that the idea of addressing multiple ways of learning, understanding barriers, and needs is still out there.  I define it as a means to develop curriculum that addresses a variety of learners in the planning stage.  In other words aspects of diversity and needs should be put in the front of the planning process, not an afterthought.  In my course I am designing, I would like to put in a stronger narrative of why they need to improve their English. All the students engaged with ELSP have been accepted as PhD students, the question is, why do they still need to work on their English? I think if I can tap into this, it will help them stay motivated for longer. I think also bringing in their fields of study is really important to maintain engagement.  Regarding representation, I have started to include additional videos and handouts from other institutions to supplement my teaching.  I strongly believe that if you hear a concept from many people and in a few different ways, it can really help.  Also, including some video can break up the monotony of always looking at the written word.  Finally, the area the needs the most work, Action/Expression.  Since I am working on a writing class the product is writing. I am having some challenges in thinking of other ways students can demonstrate their writing knowledge without just writing, but I hope maybe you all have some ideas!

Describe a few things that you think you could do to increase accessibility in your classes. (It’s a work-in-progress, do not feel like it’s something that will happen all at once).
A challenge in a writing class is what other types of material would be good beyond just writing. I think I could introduce more graphic organizers to help students write and analyze.  I also think introducing some text to speech software could be useful.  Here is one my colleague uses: http://text-to-speech.imtranslator.net/ . These are a few things that I think could help.

  • What are some questions that you have about this topic?

I feel like we could have an entire class on this topic, in particular areas of disability. The article “Improve Accessibility in Tomorrow’s Online Courses by Leveraging Yesterday’s Techniques” was really exciting because it not only described the problem, but also provided some solutions. I feel often I do not have enough solutions for students with disabilities. I still feel really uncertain in this area.  How would I provide a language class online when a student is blind?  Or what if they are an ASL speaker, they have the right to learn English as a second language, how would I manage that?

Further, I feel this area is really developed by K-12. From the videos and readings I saw the altruistic view of inspiring learners and tapping into their various interests, but at the graduate level, I don’t know how much of this translates. Sometimes what we do has to be done rather than just relying on tapping into the learner’s interest. Although we take that into consideration, it is hard to teach prepositions in this way..some folks are just not that into language learning.

Finally, I do have a fear of losing all the work. Crafting lessons so that they address a number of students is wonderful. But what happens when that webpage goes down?  What if a student gets a new computer and cannot access an old site? I do have some questions about what we can do about that.

  • Take some time to think about where you’ve been, where you’ve come and where you’re going pertaining to teaching in an online/blended classroom. Use images, videos and type of multi-media to tell your story. Describe what resources you have access to and what you think you will need to be successful.

I think before I took this course my view of online teaching was this: A curious user.  I enjoyed playing around with online learning tools but did not have a lot of framework or purpose in using them.  Powered with the new tools from this course I want to make things that will resonate with my students. Ideally I would like to avoid this type of reaction by selecting a technology tool that will reveal my age

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7EpEnglgk

However, I know when I consider my audience, get regular feedback and listen I can create lessons and curriculum that will engage and achieve my objectives.  I hope to develop a pronunciation course this summer for learners who are unable to attend regular classes.  I know this will be one of the materials I use: http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset-ad3.html

Our department will benefit from the ample materials already online to support language learning, but I am certain we will need to develop materials to address the needs of graduate students.  I do believe there is a lack of materials the higher the level you go, so we will have our work cut out for us.

 

Buster M8 Reflection

Online Learning, Week 8 Discussion

My interpretation of accessibility and UDL is a pre-emptive effort to implement accessibility standards in the course at the design level, rather than making changes to it later based on individual student needs. As pointed out in Rose and Gravel, many of these measures designed to increase accessibility, such as providing captions for audio, not only benefit students who require captions, for one reason or another, but might actually increase the comprehension of students without these special needs (Technology and Learning, 4-5).

A few things that I could do to increase the accessibility of my online course:

    • In the course of a video lecture, I could be sure to describe any information that appears on a visual aid. This would help students who are visually impaired to receive this information that a sighted student would be able to see easily.
    • I could enable OCR on any pdf materials, making them easily read by screen readers.
    • I could easily provide closed captioning for these videos as well.

One question that I have about accessibility, that would be university-specific, is how to communicate the measures you have taken to make your course accessible. It would be beneficial if there was a short of shorthand in describing a course that indicated it had been designed with particular needs in mind. This way, if a student had reservations about signing up for a class due to a perceived difficulty, they might be more encouraged to take the class when they see that particular accommodations have already been made.

For me, this course was about familiarization. By being introduced to a wide variety of available technologies and encouraged to employ them to a limited extent, if I was asked to construct an online course or to transform a f2f course into an online one, it would not be an overwhelming project. I know where to begin. I have even thought of some important strategies to implement in the new course. I would feel competent to volunteer to teach an online section of a course in my department and would have a good estimate of the prep time that would entail. It is always that first “jump” into the water that feels the coldest. Once you are immersed in a world, in this case, the world of online teaching, it is no longer as much of a shock!

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Buster – Reflection on Learner-centered Assessment

Online Learning

2. Learning-Centered Assessment: After reading the provided resources on self-evaluated and self-directed heutagogical learning, describe your initial thoughts about designing an entire online/blended course or even just an assignment around these ideas/methods. Will you (or have you) consider these approaches? Why or why not? If so, briefly outline your idea(s). The resources that were provided to you were just a start. Feel free to research more to gain additional traction on these types of assessment.

I remember a great English teacher of mine who in the course of our English class gave one great editing tip: go through your paper and change all of the passive constructions to active constructions. After struggling to improve my writing in high school, this tip was just the first of many that empowered me to take constructive steps in editing my own work. The self-evaluation strategies remind me of this particular empowering experience as a student. Students often view evaluation in the humanities as “subjective” and creating rubrics in the classroom (teachers grade with rubrics after all!) would seem to both show the student that there are concrete things to evaluate and improve.

I could see myself incorporating this method into particularly teaching research papers, a core assessment in the religious studies classroom. Things that students might be able to evaluate themselves are the presence of unfounded claims. I have given students a variety of “phrases that indicate evidence” (this claim is based on” etc.) before, and students could definitely learn to critique the strength of their own arguments. I could envision an assignment where students mark where particular claims need more evidence in their drafts themselves, and the next assignment is to list where you would go to find evidence to support those particular claims.

Another important aspect of self-assessment is that many of my students are training to become professional clergy. In this setting, there is often very little immediate management of things like sermon quality. The student needs to be able to ask themselves if the claims they are making from the pulpit are supported theologically and exegetically! In this way, learning how to self-assess during seminary would be an invaluable skill.

 

Self-direction heutagogical learning is several steps above and beyond the very instructor-guided process of self-evaluation. I admit it is much more intimidating to think how to conceptualize myself as the instructor of a course that is so drastically student directed. My first caution about this model is the great variation in skill that I am confronted with in the classroom. How do I design a student-directed model when some students are gifted researchers and some don’t know what research is? This is, of course, also a problem in the f2f classroom! But I am much more familiar with the model of lecturing to create a common base of knowledge, than in navigating what it looks like to “set students loose” to be in charge of their own learning.

One way to integrate this into the seminary setting might be to focus on the “Student as Producer” model (http://studentasproducer.lincoln.ac.uk/). The students that are being trained in a seminary will go on to be producers of theological knowledge in their own contexts. Perhaps an assignment where the student must develop a Sunday school curriculum would encourage them to identify gaps in their knowledge and address those gaps themselves. This would also mimic what the students will be required to do in “real life,” and thus also fits the parameters of “authentic assessment” (http://jfmueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/whatisit.htm)

My return into the world of numbers and letters

Online Learning, Week 4 Discussion

It has taken me a while to adjust back to letter grades.  I attended an nontraditional college in Ohio were faculty provided us with narrative feedback at the end of course rather than a letter grade. I felt that this philosophy was really focused on assessment rather than evaluation. I appreciated it as a learner, and really soared in that environment. For me, I took off the achievement based test experience, and transferred learning into a process and experience.   When I moved into graduate school and encountered letter grades again, I recall being in survival mode. No longer was my opinion or the instructor’s opinion important, it was numbers that took center stage.  As a learner,   I took little time to reflect on what I should be learning and attempted to move from assignment to assignment. It did not help that most instructors did not refer to their syllabus beyond their first day.  Little did I know that I would become an instructor, and I would agonize over learning objectives and assessments just like those before me.

Upon further reflection I fear I have fallen into the same formula in my own practice where I articulate the goals of the course and introduce the objectives, but I rarely refer back to them as the course proceeds. I don’t think there has been a time where I linked the learning objective directly to an assignment didactically for the learner.  Normally I just focus on the rubric that has been created for that assignment to guide the learning and grading process. Of course the rubric is aligned to the goals, but I have to wonder, what would happen if I offered both the learning objective and the rubric intentionally linked for the learner when assignments are given and graded?

The course that I have proposed is the second in a series that addresses graduate writing.  In its current form, assignments receive a grade after multiple revisions.  Each revision stage has a rubric.  The end goal is to create a journal that consists of individual academic journal articles that the students have written as well as two collaboratively written articles.  This final product is also assessed through a rubric.  At all stages we are addressing concerns of audience, organization (micro and macro), selecting sources and avoiding plagiarism.

I already feel comfortable creating formative assessments for this course. Already in the in classroom experience we use pre-assessments, include discussions as assessment, and ask student to recall information on a regular basis. This course in particular is reviewing and expanding what was learn in the semester before, the formative assessments work very well.

Along with formative, this course already supports self-assessment well.  One of the typical activities in a language learning classroom is self-editing where the learner is able to use the rubric developed by the instructor to edit their product.  This allows them to critically think about their language selection and organization in the context of instructor expectations.  I think one area of growth would be to include broader self-assessments focused on the language learning experience itself or a post self-assessment where they reflect on their abilities after the course.

I think the course needs improvements in diagnostic feedback and authentic assessment. We do use class time to check in with our learners, but I really like the idea of adding anonymity into the process so that they are not concerned about “the teacher knowing”. I could imagine surveys at the end of each class to see if they understood the objectives of each class.  At the same time, our classes tend to be very small, at times 5 students, so it hard to maintain this safe space.  In the areas of authentic assessment, I recall some of my previous posts on content-based instruction.  For a long time researchers have understand the deep motivation residing in language learning mirroring the reality.  However, here in the ELSP, we serve a huge number of disciplines which limits how many real experience we can recreate without excluding some students.  As a compromise, we aim for general academic English tasks and attempt to provide the learners with skills they can apply in their own fields.  I imagine the online space is an area that I can create more genre specific exercises, or learning objects,that can address this need.

Welcome to ScholarBlogs!

Online Learning

Hello and welcome to ScholarBlogs! This site will serve as home to a few of the Communication Exemplar activities presented to you though out the course. We hope that you will take this opportunity to experience blog-style posting, and also engage in the in-depth discussions that will occur in this communication medium.

Before you get started, take some time to read through the Posting Info page. Although this information is brief, it is critical in the way we organize our blog posts. Most importantly, please remember to:

1. Title your posts with the following format:  Week 2 – Parisi. If you would like to include a “snappier” title following that, it is okay—but please be sure to include the week and your last name.

2. Categorize your posts. This will help your fellow learners sort through discussion, but also help your instructors find your posts when it comes time for grading.

Again, welcome and we hope you make the most of this experience. We look forward to reading your posts and interacting with you!

Best,

Stephanie Parisi & Leah Chuchran