Author: modelelearning

The MOOC: Window into our Pedagogical Soul

Remember the “Year of the MOOC” of 2012? What would possess us to even consider such a thing as a Massive Open Online Course? Maybe the MOOC captured our life-long-learner imaginations with the potential to enable free university-level education on an enormous scale.

This royalty free image is from pexels.com
This royalty free image comes from pexels.com.

Even the least of us could take a MIT or Stanford course from the leading expert of the world. Or, maybe the MOOC captured our mind’s eye because at our core we are teachers with an absorbing yearning to share our insightful understandings with as many as possible. But alas, the MOOC luster faded quickly.

There were irreconcilable differences; a feeling of betrayal of our basic values coming from staggering low completion rates. We left “divorce court” feeling the MOOC was nothing more than “mere marketing” hype or, at its worst as abject failures.

There were many explanations for the low completion rates but the principal cause centered on a basic pedagogical necessity for learners to be active and receive personal attention and interactions from their teacher. Being a student in a MOOC was much like being a dazed-video–watching-couch-potato in an infinite virtual lecture hall. It didn’t take long for our eyes to glaze over as we faded into the sunset.

But wait – maybe it’s premature to shut the MOOC door and send it to the “it was a nice idea … but” file. Coursera, the biggest MOOC provider, is investing in R&D, trying to find solutions. Their research led them to embrace an innovative active learning style trying to lift students off those binge-watching couches and have them face their screens and interact.

An experimental section of a Coursera coding skill MOOC requires students viewing a video and immediately demonstrate mastery by building a piece of software. The R&D Team teased out some 20 to 40 coding errors learners commonly make. If the student’s submission reveals common conceptual coding mistakes, a pop-up window appears with a clue, suggesting why they may have made the error.

“(Its) like a … (teacher) looking over your shoulder, giving immediate feedback associated with your mistake,” said Coursera R&D scientist Zhenghao Chen. “Students should have a clear idea why they failed,” Chen said. “Feedback prompts them to correct their misconceptions, to think along different paths.” (Ubel, 2017).

Coursera is not alone. Sense, a New York-based tech start-up with R&D labs in Tel Aviv is testing pattern recognition and semantic analysis methods that automatically bundle student answers to gather common results. The instructor might feed in 50 or more quiz solutions at any time.

The system analyzes student responses and reveals common patterns – successful responses, common mistakes, and even novel solutions – shared among submissions. With the Sense automatic batching in a MOOC, with even thousands of students, faculty can quickly pinpoint useful responses to learners who give similar answers – personalizing faculty-student interaction at scale.

What is the MOOC take away? The MOOC is a recent phenomenon but it is confirming the foundations of our understandings of learning we have understood for decades – authentic learning is active. Think: John Dewey and Jean Piaget.

It is easy to point our self-righteous finger at the MOOC– the truth is we are all sinners.  We know the power of active learning but get caught up in our own MOOC (Massive Onslaught Of Content). We resort to lectures and multiple choice assessments rather than encouraging active learning.

Maybe the research coming from MOOCs will cause us to stop, reflect, and discover new tools helping us reconnect to our pedagogical souls.

Ubel, R. (2017, July). There’s no success like failure.  Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/views/2017/07/19/moocs-test-personalized-online-learning

author-gary

 

 

Motivation in Education: Relevance

Woman Student Typing
This royalty free image comes from pexels.com.

Throughout this series, we’ve explored Keller’s ARCS Model for Motivation, which includes attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction—four components used in successful face-to-face, online, and blended learning environments.

In my last post, I shared different strategies to motivate students through gaining and maintaining their attention.

Today we’ll look at practical ways you can motivate your students through course content that’s relevant to them in and outside of the classroom.

How is this Relevant?

Keller (1987) believed that “relevance can come from the way something is taught; it does not have to come from the content itself” (1987, p. 7, author emphasis). He defines relevance as “a perception of personal needs being met by instructional activities or as a highly desired goal being perceived as related to instructional activities” (as cited in Chesebro & McCroskey, 2002, p. 83).

Chesebro and McCroskey expressed Keller’s definition in simpler terms: “we perceive something as being relevant if we perceive it is related to our personal needs (e.g., needs for affiliation, control, achievement) or our personal goals (e.g., career goals)” (2002, p. 83).

If students perceive your course content and activities as relevant to their personal needs, personal goals, or both, they will become motivated to learn and remember the course content long after your class ends.

Strategies to enhance content relevance include:

  • Value: Help students value course activities and make sure that they expect to succeed at the task.
  • Experience: Explain how the course content builds on students’ existing skills and knowledge; discover students’ interests and relate their interests to the course content.
  • Present worth: Explain why the course content is relevant and important.
  • Future usefulness: Explain how the course content relates to future activities and experiences that students will encounter, in and outside of class.
  • Need matching: Link the course content to students’ needs for affiliation, power, and achievement.
  • Modeling: Refer to alumni or professionals who demonstrate or model the value and relevance of the course content.
  • Choice: Provide meaningful alternative methods for accomplishing a learning outcome.
  • Engage: Ask students to determine why and how the content is relevant to them.

All of these strategies require “teachers to have some knowledge and understanding of their students” (Chesebro & McCroskey, 2002, pp. 88, 90).

One of my favorite Communication professors at Spring Arbor University helped her students recognize the value in class assignments. She showed us the future usefulness of the content we were learning, in and outside of class. In COM100: Introduction to Communication, our Relational Transformation assignments throughout the semester challenged us to improve our communication with others by intentionally communicating with people in new ways, or in ways that would challenge us to be better and more effective Christ-like communicators.

Once I saw how the course content was relevant to my personal needs and goals, I became more motivated to learn and remember the course content and as a result, excelled in my classes. I still apply the lessons I learned from those assignments in my communication with others to this day.

In my next post, I will discuss how to gain and maintain students’ motivation by improving their confidence.

Reference:
Chesebro, J. L., & McCroskey, J. C. (Eds.). (2002). Communication for teachers. Pearson.
Keller, J. M. (1987). Development and Use of the ARCS Model of Instructional Design. Journal of Instructional Development, 10(3), 2–10. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/30221294

Ann2

Instructional Design Team to the Rescue!

Have you noticed the dark cloud in the corner of your office? That agent of doom that keeps saying: “blended instruction is just a phase,” “you don’t have time and resources to get started with blended,” or “what’s the big deal about blended anyway?”

 

Comic-Kapow

You are a professor—not an agent of doom.

You care about your students and want the very best learning experiences for them. Why then do you listen to that dark cloud’s pessimism and remain immovable?

Shannon Tipton, in her article, “Go Make Something Happen,” explains that we don’t get started on something new (like blended instruction) because “…we are scaredy cats.” She insists we hold back for these reasons:

  • We are scared of failure. Scared of looking bad. Scared of losing credibility.
  • We don’t know where to start.
  • We are overwhelmed.
  • We don’t like the topic.

Do you see yourself in that picture? If so, you can move out of the dark cloud and get started with an instructional design team—a rescue squad equipped to take the scary out of the project.

Reach out to your instructional design team.

Join with other minds to brainstorm, identify problems that need solutions, and share perspectives from a variety of angles. Working with a team does not mean that you are placing the learning of your students into someone else’s hands. It truly takes a team to create a successful blended course.

Say goodbye to the dark cloud in the corner and start increasing learning value for your students. Stop letting fear keep you back from providing blended instruction, and start a conversation with us!

  • Don’t be scared. We will help you look good.
  • Together, we’ll determine the best place to start.
  • Let us do some of the heavy lifting.
  • We focus on learning. We don’t want you to lose those game-winning home runs.

Together, we will find a way through the blended maze. 

Bang Public Domain File

References

Tipton, S. (January, 2016). Go make something happen. https://learningrebels.com/2016/01/31/go-make-something-happen/

Image credits: adapted from images used with permission (creative commons; public domain.

author-gary

 

Get students fired up with scenario-based eLearning

Robert H Schuller Quote-800

Want to get students fired up about learning? Then present a problem and ask them for a solution. Scenario-based instruction will grab your student’s attention and keep them engaged in the learning experience. In this post, I will give some definitions of scenario-based learning, identify some of the benefits it offers, and explain when to use it in your online course.

What is it?

According to Clark and Mayer (2012), scenario-based eLearning is

“an instructional environment in which the learner assumes a role to make decisions or take actions to resolve a work-related situation.”

Rooted in situated learning theory (Lave & Wenger, 1991), participants use critical thinking to solve a real-world problem. This leads to “knowledge activation.”

Seker (2016) validates scenario-based instruction design as a tool to promote self-regulated language learning strategies:

“…they provide situated learning driven from the relevant problems to the context of learners (Brock, 2003; Naidu, 2010; Parrish, 2004).”

What are the benefits?

  • Learners must engage!
  • Learning becomes concrete as students face real-life problems.
  • Learners must apply existing knowledge to a problem.
  • Learners must assess the problem, develop a solution, and know why they came to the decision.

As students explore new information and topics in a real-world situation, they must demonstrate critical thinking skills and the application of knowledge to complete the scenario-based eLearning activity (Kelly, 2015).

When should I use it?

Well, what do you want your students to learn? Your answer to this question should help you identify when scenario-based learning is right for your course.

In the discussion forum of the online course that I teach, I use scenario prompts. Students are asked to put themselves into the shoes of historical actors in order to understand the challenges that those people faced in their time. This helps them understand why decisions were made. In these discussion forums, students must consider what they know as well as the varying perspectives of their peers in order to arrive at a conclusion.

Try it out!

The scenario example below was built in PowerPoint—a tool that everyone is familiar with! The Branched Scenario Template was a free download from eLearning Heroes. I used the 3 C Model of Scenario Building (Kuhlmann, 2017) to identify the problem and solution as well as the consequences of the scenario.

In the scenario, Scott Fillmore, an employee of Seeking a Change, LLC, is faced with a customer service complaint. To select the best response to the problem, the learner must apply conflict management skills that were acquired in a recent company training module. Complete the scenario yourself by opening this link to the PowerPoint file.

Scenario 1 Dissatisfied With Customer Service

How did you do? In the future, I would like to explore using this type of activity to create what Cathy Moore calls memorable mini-scenarios to add further value for learners. I hope this quick-and-easy scenario-based eLearning activity inspires you to create your own!

References

Clark, R. C., and Mayer R. E. Scenario-Based e-Learning, Center for Creative Leadership, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central. Created from springarboruniv-ebooks on 2017-06-19 14:23:46.

Culatta, R. (2015). Conditions of Learning (Robert Gagne). Instructional Design.org

Culatta, R. (2015). Situated  Learning (J. Lave). Instructional Design.org

Kelly, R. (2015, September 24). Scenario-based learning in the online classroom. Retrieved June 23, 2017, from https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/scenario-based-learning-in-the-online-classroom/

Cathy Moore. (2011, October 12). How to create a memorable mini-scenario [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://blog.cathy-moore.com/2011/10/how-to-create-a-memorable-mini-scenario/

Seker, M (2016). Scenario-based instruction design as a tool to promote self-regulated language learning strategies. Sage Open.

author-tara

Improve Your Course Content: Active Voice

Content is difficult to read on a screen. If you want students to engage with your online course, you need to improve the cognitive load. The best practices used for writing for the web include active voice, positive tone, the inverted pyramid, chunking text, bullet and number lists, and descriptive headings. In this post, we’ll examine how to improve the readability of your course using active voice.

Woman Writing
This royalty free image is from pexels.com
Academic writing often slides into passive voice. Let’s be honest, we’ve all rearranged sentences to reach a word count requirement. Passive voice allows us to remove first person bias, but it makes the sentence more complex (the object happens to the subject). The reader must rearrange the sentence in his or her mind to understand it. If your content is too complex, the reader might give up.

In internet terms: tl;dr (too long, didn’t read).

Active voice is clear, concise, and easy to understand; it’s one of the best ways to improve writing. According to Strunk and White (2000):

“The habitual use of the active voice […] makes for forcible writing.”

I once inherited a document written in 45 percent passive voice. I challenged myself to only use active voice (and succeeded). The good news is you don’t have to do that. As a general rule, your content should use under 10 percent passive voice.

In some situations, you might use passive voice to remove responsibility. The famous example is an organization using “A mistake was made” rather than “I made a mistake.” In this case, the abstract verbiage removes the blame from a person; however, this usage is the exception not the rule.

Active Voice Graphic
Examples of active and passive voice. Includes Subject + Verb + Object formula.
How to convert passive voice to active voice:

  1. Find the verb: If you see “to be” (am, is, are, was, were, been, etc.), the verb is in past tense—this causes passive voice.
  2. Simplify the verb or use a descriptive verb: Replace the active verb with the “Simple Present” version (see Purdue OWL, Verb Tenses). Another option is to use a more descriptive verb.
  3. Rearrange the sentence: The best way is to write Subject + Verb + Object. You might find this difficult at first. You’re already familiar with the current sentence, and you will need to think of another way to say the same thing.

It’s okay to write a draft in passive voice—just remember to revise!

Are you a subject matter expert, instructional designer, or course editor? Or do you write for the web? Leave your favorite tips for online content in the comments below.

References

Berry, C., Brizee, A., Angeli, E., & Ghafoor, M. (2017, June 2). Verb Tenses. Retrieved from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/601/01/

Strunk, W., & White, E. B. (2000). The elements of style. New York: Longman.

Three Ways to Become Student-Centered

Our eLearning Team is moving toward student-centered learning in our courses. This approach is often miles away from how the course existed in the past, or how the subject matter expert envisions the online course to be.

I have found three ways to help our team and SMEs move toward becoming student-centered in all of our course development projects.

First, provide onboard training for online/blended instructors. Next, build interaction into every course. And finally, establish and sustain teacher presence while facilitating the course.

1. Step into their shoes.

shoes_public-domain-pictures-1494403416XaB
Image used with a creative commons license.

At the conclusion of the faculty training course that I facilitate for my university, participants consistently express value gained from “being a student” in the course. This constructive approach to training creates a safe space for future instructors to experience the nitty-gritty challenges that their students will also face. This is what they tell me:

  • Initially they are faced with their own misconceptions about online education and are forced to make time management decisions during the first week of training.
  • They experience gratification that comes from timely instructor feedback and encouragement.
  • They discover asynchronous momentum that develops in the discussion forum, and begin to research, practice, and develop strategies to create and sustain this kind of phenomenon in their own courses.
  • They experience tools within the LMS for the first time, and recognize the value of a Wiki activity, a Reflection journal, and publishing a video reflection in the Blog.

Being a student helps them understand the reasons for decisions made in the course design, and highlights strategies they must employ for students to have a successful online experience.

2. Design interaction.

ARE YOU THERE
Created using Adobe Photoshop.

 

Researchers find that designing the course to include social presence is a sure way to become student-centered. Creating opportunities for interaction and communication among members leads the way for social presence, which Richardson and Swan (2003) describe as: “The degree to which a person is perceived as ‘real’ in mediated communication. (p 70).

Julie and Kenneth Kendall, from the School of Business-Camden at Rutgers University, believe that storytelling works well to enhance social presence in an online course. When designing an online or blended course, consider presenting a scenario, a story, or case study through video, audio, or text. Then, ask students to share their perceptions, and interact with one another over them.

The Kendall’s found that four highly valuable functions result from this type of interaction in an online course:

  • members get a feeling for what has happened (experiential),
  • the decisions made and consequences that follow are explained (explanatory),
  • concepts, policies and strategies are validated (validation), and members are guided to a preferred outcome leading to success (prescriptive). (Kendall & Kendall, p. 68).

When designing an online/blended course, be upfront about why you are student-centered and make every decision accordingly.

3. Work hard at communicating.

Adobe Spark(3)
Meme created using Adobe Spark; quote attributed to Roy Williams.

Lala Hajibayova, writes in “Student’s Viewpoint: What Constitutes Presence in an Online Classroom?” that the Community of Inquiry framework informs presence in a practical way by recognizing that both instructor and student contribute to learning. Three types of presence work together in the COI framework: cognitive presence, social presence, and teacher presence.

Hajibayova believes that teacher presence buoys both cognitive and social presence, holding all three together for a strong student-centered online environment. She discovered that students perceive teacher presence when they receive regular communication through varying channels. Think engagement in discussion forums, email messages, course announcements, timely feedback on assignments, and thoughtful responses to questions they have asked. (Hajibayova, p. 22).

It takes considerable time in the first week of a course to establish instructor presence. You will stay busy answering questions via email, posting announcements to clarify expectations, involving yourself in the first discussion forum to model the type of activity students will need to embrace. Once students can trust that you are there, you can ease off a bit and rely on key instructor functions built into the course, like grading, feedback, facilitating discussion, and interacting with students in the private journal. As one training participant in my course put it:

“Teaching online is not a weekend job.”

These are just three strategies for becoming student-centered when designing online and blended courses—of course there are many more!

Our team would like to hear from you – what strategies have you found to be successful, and why do you think they worked so well? Do you have a story to share about teacher presence? Interaction? Putting yourself in your student’s shoes? Leave a comment to start the conversation!

References

Hajibayova, L. (2016). Students’ viewpoint: What constitutes presence in an online classroom? Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 55:(1), 12-25.

Kendall, J. E. & Kendall, K. E. (2017). Enhancing online executive education using storytelling: An approach to strengthening online presence. Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, 15(1), 62-81.

Richardson, J., & Swan, K. (2003). Examining social presence in online courses
in relation to students’ perceived learning and satisfaction. Journal of Asynchronous
Learning Networks, 7(1), 68–88.

author-gwen

Motivation in Education: Attention

Engaged students at computers
This image has been shared under a creative commons license (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) via Jisc (https://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/building-social-engagement-at-your-college-or-university-21-aug-2015).

In my last post, I introduced John Keller’s ARCS Model for Motivation. The ARCs model has practical application in face-to-face, online, and blended learning environments. To recap, Keller’s ARCS Model has four parts:

  • Attention
  • Relevance
  • Confidence
  • Satisfaction

This post focuses on how you can gain a student’s attention to increase and improve his or her motivation to learn.

Liao and Wang (2008) discovered that incorporating Keller’s ARCS model in instructional design and classroom instruction allows instructors to “early spot students’ learning problems and make an early instruction intervention to further appropriately modify teaching strategies to meet various learners’ needs” (p. 56).

Did you catch that? If used in course creation and instruction, Keller’s ARCS Model for Motivation helps teachers to be more aware of their students’ learning problems. This awareness helps you adjust the curriculum and your teaching style to meet their learning needs.

Gaining Your Student’s Attention

Chesebro and McCroskey (2002, p. 90) found that “making eye contact and smiling at students, calling them by name, and using vocal variety and appropriate humor” are effective strategies to increase and maintain students’ attention in face-to-face learning environments. The character, John Keating, exemplifies these teaching strategies in the film Dead Poets Society (Weir, 1989).

Morrison (2012) offers some key strategies to increase and maintain students’ attention in online and blended learning environments: “provide timely feedback on assignments, respond to students within 24 hours, include constructive and personalized feedback on assignments, craft a weekly message, acknowledge academic challenges, and comment strategically within the discussion boards.”

When my professors used these strategies, they increased and maintained my attention. In turn, my motivation to learn and do well in my classes increased as well.

For example, in my online MA in Strategic Communication program at Liberty University, one of my professors consistently responded to my questions within 24 hours or less. He provided timely and personalized feedback on assignments. His weekly announcements and videos prepared us for the topic(s) that week and reminded us of what was due. He asked questions and responded to students in the discussion board. By engaging students in the discussion board, my professor made the discussion lively and active—encouraging students to participate.

In my next post, we will discover practical ways to motivate your students by making your course content relevant to them in and outside of the classroom.

References:

Chesebro, J. L., & McCroskey, J. C. (Eds.). (2002). Communication for teachers. Pearson.

Jisc. (2015, August 21). [Gaining students’ attention]. Retrieved from https://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/building-social-engagement-at-your-college-or-university-21-aug-2015

Liao, H.-C., & Wang, Y.-H. (2008). Applying the ARCS motivation model in technological and vocational education. Contemporary Issues in Education Research, 1(2), 53-58. http://arbor.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1056387&site=eds-live&scope=site

love2b1. (2007, April 14). Dead poets society-3 [Video file]. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EdWgsTUhmI

Morrison, D. (2012, August 31). How to motivate students in the online learning environment. Retrieved April 26, 2017, from Online Learning Insights website: https://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/
how-to-motivate-students-in-the-online-learning-environment/

authors-ann