Jim’s viewable streams of thought

Learning something in my mind that you can use it or reproduce it.  What is “it”?  That is a more difficult question to answer; can anyone describe what they know?  For my highschools accreditation process these are questions we must answer for the visiting inspection team.  For that team we have been instructed to gather products from students as evidence and tie that evidence together with our goals and objectives.  This evidence takes the form of the concrete like tangible projects and portfolio’s into the digital realm with digital student presentation and films of classes. 

 I think I’ve learned a tremendous amount within this class.  I learned how to structure the shell of an online course from module structure to all the necessary documentation that goes with it.  The types of activities like discussions and the various different types of discussions that can be used to create presence and build community;  the importance of feedback in establishing teaching presence in an online course and how this can be done with audio, video, and jing, to give a very personal touch to a distance environment.  I’m 9000 miles away and I felt very connected to my classmates and Alex. I also learned how to use lectures, the different formats these can assume, and what tools, can be used to deliver them to the students.  I learned so many technical aspects of building our individual learning modules from: embedding html in moodle, formatting the pages themselves, inserting links, images, web documents, and the list goes on. 

 How do I prove this? Just take a look at the course I’ve built and there is evidence of learning.  When you do take a look at the course, if you’ve taken the online teaching class with Alex, most of the course structure should look familiar; I borrowed most of it.  I found her structure extremely easy to follow in each module.  And other than some initial confusion to start the course, I never had any trouble finding the assignments or the instructions on how to carry those assignments to completion.  I also noticed many of my other instructors in the CDIT program used a similar format in their class.  So I modeled my course structure, content format, and types of activities, on the elements of the courses I’ve taken in CDIT, and I think it works.

 What would have helped me to learn? What hindered my learning?  These questions have the same answer, more time.  I quite often felt rushed and unable to always show my best work.  I’ve examined the structure of the course and I don’t think it could realistically be shortened and achieve it’s objectives, so I think it should either be 6 credit course, or be divided into 2 parts.  With this extra time we could have gotten into detail on building our lectures with a breeze presentation, and maybe had more practice using other tools to establish teaching presence with feedback to other teachers in this way.  But maybe this is just me….

 I want to thank you all for a fantastic classes and helping me build the skills I need to teach in the student centered online environment.  If you ever make to Japan, you have my contact info, get in touch.  (Or, if you want to collaborate on a project).

Peace and Love,

Jim

Please watch and enjoy; my entry for this module is in the form of a video.  One note, I now remember at least one thing I still need to do!

“The 7 principles of good practice…  encourage: Contact Between Students and Faculty, Student Reciprocity and Cooperation, Prompt Feedback, Time on Task, Active Learning Techniques, Communication of High Expectations, Respect for Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning (Chickering & Gamson, as cited in Shea 2003)”

I think it would be difficult for teachers to disagree with the 7 principles of good practice above; we may feel that a few more should be added, but generally we understand that these practices are an important part of increasing learning in the classroom. It also takes a lot of extra time for the instructor in terms of instructional design, planning, and giving feedback.

Why would anyone dislike these practices? Well the title of this blog entry reflects the perspective of the student. 

This week several of us engaged in a little griping in the modules discussion about online discussion and other online assignments that seemed to be overwhelming… the usual student stuff.  Upon reflection on this weeks reading, discussion, and the process of building my course – I couldn’t help but see the paradox.  In a prior blog entry, I did the math concerning university course requirements and the number of hours I was putting in online (I found they were about the same).  Being the analytical person I am, I then started taking aim at the practices within the classes I’m taking… Well, in almost all the classes, the instructor’s employ the 7 principles of good practice. 

Self assessment and peer assessment (which I hate doing) makes the individual and the students of the class a part of the teaching process and adds to teaching presence by asking that students take more responsibility for their learning.   Our classroom discussions are generally problem based and focused on the tasks in which we are actively engaged.  Our activities are directly related to the primary goal, building an online course.  The feedback, especially in this class, has been extensive, prompt, personable, and aimed at helping improve my work.  My other courses follow a similar framework, and…. I really like the classes I’ve taken this summer; I’ve learned so much about so many things that I can directly apply in my classes and hopefully help other teachers do the same. 

Well then, what is it?  It’s difficult to be a student in classes where the instructors follow good teaching practices.  I have to admit, in the last year I’ve looked at it as a gift when a teacher didn’t load us up with work during a course, didn’t keep me on task, let me blather about any old thing in a discussion!  Sometimes, having such a class saved my sanity.  Good practice places demands on a student.  It doesn’t matter whether you are trying to learn a new language, how to play the piano, or how to teach online; for those of us who have our hands in lots of fires, it’s a burdensome stress. 

Funny,  in Alex’s feedback on my course activities, she mentioned that she wanted me to think about all the work I was giving the students and whether they would be able to complete it.  Am I a hypocrite?  Do I have high expectations of my students, try to keep them on task and engaged with the material using active learning strategies, make them responsible for the process?  I hope so, I try to follow “Best Practice”.  I am also gaining valuable insight into what it means to be a student in such a class…. It ain’t easy!  I will try to keep that in mind as I design my online class, and maybe we can make it another characteristic of good practice.

Jim

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Interestingly, I am coming full circle in just a short period of time.  Designing my learning activities, I am using simlar principles as I would in a f2f class; agreed, the method of delivery is different and I need to contemplate different issues in terms of instructional design, but the assignments are not that different at all.  As, I watched the presetation and read the weeks reading, I said to myself, I know this stuff already.  Now I feel it’s just about application and doing the work.  That, I’m not sure is as easy, it will be a challenge to design the learning activities in detail for a 14 week course in a week – perhaps impossible.  But I’m resigned to do what I can without killing myself.  I could have made this task easier on myself if I chose a short course rather than something that’s normally done over an entire year (I almost always bite off more than I can chew!).  On a positive note, I’m doing all the preplanning I need to do for the coming school year for AP psychology. 

Bill’s concern with losing the dynamics of teaching presence has set me thinking; how can I get the emotional boost from the online experience that I do for f2f teaching?  I mean I love the classroom, I don’t always love the planning and grading for sure, but I love being in the class with the kids.  Over  the past month and a half it’s all been about the students and the structure of the class and now it’s time to start thinking about what I get from the teaching experience and whether I’ll be able to get that online.  I have my doubts – maybe one class but I think I need the energy of f2f.  I’m already looking forward to the new year.  It’s not about being the “sage” but about being in a room full of people and interacting on issues I love.  That’s what makes teaching worth it – will I be able to get that energy from an online environment?  Can the discourse bring that type of excitement? 

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This Module came in like a lamb and went out like a lion.  I started the week fairly comfortable in what was happening in my future online course; I had drafted a rough outline used many of the guidelines from the “keys to success” and the online course tours, posted in the discussion area thinking I had plenty of time to write up the learning activities draft since I have taught this course for going on 8 years in a f2f environment.  As usual, I guessed wrong in terms of how much time I thought it would take me to think of appropriate online activities and then complete the draft.  When drafting an online course everything must be typed into text and then added to the course management system.  This takes much more time than one could realistically plan and realization doesn’t occur until you actually start going through the process.  I’m used to giving much of the information orally but didn’t know how much I relied on the f2f environment for communicating the course information. 

So what you may say…  What I’m really coming to grips with is how much the students might not be actually understanding when I communicate orally.  How much of this information is not remembered?  Should not most of this information already have been somewhere in text in my computer files?  Even though I have no plans to teach a totally online course next year in AP psychology, I know my future psychology students will most likely benefit from the most amount of time I’ve ever put into the design of their course.

Jim(3)

After viewing the presentation, discussing it with your classmates, and listening to and looking at the learning activities in the courses posted for observation, please reflect on what you have learned. What have you learned that you did not know before? How will you apply what you have learned to your own course? What decisions have you made so far about your own online course? How do you interact in this course? What if anything has been difficult for you? What if anything do you find yourself feeling resistance to? What is working for you in this course? What would you change/suggest to make it better for you?

This first week of module 3 has been one of reflection and reconsolidation in that I actually accomplished a good chunk of this weeks assignments last week while doing the research for and creating my course documents.  In course design, I feel I have a fairly good grasp o the concepts and skills needed to complete the work, Alex’s manual is a comprehensive step by step guide in completing the tasks.

I started using moodle more heavily last year and have made enough mistakes in the experiment that I have been on the path of rethinking my teaching and how to convey the material in a learning management system.  I found something’s that I believed and argued against, like completing the design and activities of a course in their entirety before you begin, now to be less of an issue with the right design.  The reason I argued against it revolves in the desire for mastery learning(if students don’t obtain mastery on an assessment with the first type of instruction, alternative instruction is offered and an entirely different assessment).  My units can change significantly from one year to the next and my best laid plans for a particular group of students often need to be adjusted depending on a particular groups English language ability and motivation.  Now, I’m thinking that the necessary flexibility in terms of differentiating instruction can be accomplished through greater emphasis on individual feedback and greater interaction.

I’m still unsure of the idea that the students due most of the work, especially in the high school environment where I am very much accountable for student performance.  Certain secondary administrators (and parents) have issues with the ratio of student and instructor responsibility within a course.  Judging from the timeframes given in the course tours, teaching in university and secondary school are different animals (1.5 – 2 hours a day in prep for all their courses mentioned by the university profs is a dream!).  That said, I do find it slightly easier to plan this year’s much enhanced AP psychology hybrid course than last year’s; I hope that carries over into planning time during the year as well.

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     First some self disclosure, I’m taking 4 courses this summer in an effort to get a majority of the course work done for my CDIT degree before the fall; taking 2 classes and working fulltime, leaves me no time for my family or any other life sustaining activity and so, the sooner I finish this degree, the easier it will be for everybody.  Though I get praise from colleagues, friends, and strangers, the real workhorse behind the scenes is my wife; she must raise 2 kids by herself and take care of a husband that sits in front of a glowing box, for the short time he is at home. 

      So I think to myself,  why is it so hard?  I’ve worked fulltime before and taken 2 classes in traditional programs, and though difficult, I still felt like I had the resemblance of a life.   4 classes over the summer sounds like alot, but the term is only 2 weeks shorter than the spring or fall semesters and a normal fulltime load is 4 classes.  I took 4 classes and worked halftime when pursuing a graduate degree in psychology; once again, it was difficult but I had a life.  I certainly did not put in a solid 7 hours per day 7 days a week. 

     Now, I figure there are 2 possible major explanations for this, either traditional classes do not actually take the time they say they require, while online classes do.  Or, online classes in general are over compensating for being online, maybe suffering from an inferiority complex.  If we do the math, 4 x (9-12hrs) = 36-48hrs per week, I’m alleging 49.  Ok, that is the maximum hours per class but it is what it says…   So, I guess tradtional classes are not living up to the standard, why is that?  What makes online classes more effective at keeping students on task?  Let’s face it, the current organizational structure of university can’t survive, if all classes were online and designed competently.  What college student is actually going to spend 10 Hard hours (not lounging taking to your friends hours) per day, 6 days a week, for 4 years to complete a bachelors degree (that’s 5 classes per semester x 12 hours)?  Honestly, I just couldn’t and wouldn’t do what I’m doing now as an undergrad; I didn’t have the self discipline.

     So, where do we go from here?  How does this actually affect the design of our online courses?  If we tool down towards the minimum 9 hrs per class, would that make a traditional semester possible for students to handle (just barely, if you do the math).  What about people like me, teaching highschool?  What can high school students handle?  About how much time is reasonable for a highschool class? (remember, in a traditional school with 8-45 minute periods, 6-7 class periods per day is the norm)  

Just some questions…

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One thing I learned while setting up the course documents and furthering my outline for my course is reflected in the title above.  In any class which involves f2f meetings, the teacher has the ability to micromanage content on a daily basis and cover smaller chunks of content area.  Bill Pelz in the example course tours, discussed the difficulty in covering individual chapters of a text in an online course. Personally, I had just done so in a project for another class and was fairly used to doing exactly that in a partially hybrid course.  When setting up my online course into modules, I learned, again the hard way, that I would have to combine material that I used to teach as separate units, into one longer module.  This is going to impact almost every component of the readings, assignments, discussion questions, and projects, that I currently use in my course.

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     One thing I’ve learned through the example of Alex, is the importance of reaching out and engaging students on a personal level.  In Scorza’s article, Do Students Dream of Electric Teachers, the point is made about the distance that naturally occurs through a computer screen and the internet in an online course.  It’s quite easy to be formal and take a formal tone.  The traditional classroom allows for personal contact and the chance for professors and students to interact more personably or at least gauge personalities.  In an online environment, this is much more difficult, all the natural body language, the subtle gestures, and facial expressions that we use to personally interact are gone; all that remains is often the cold hard text.  It’s easy to see into things that aren’t there and to misread comments and suggestions.  The online teacher needs to make a special effect to be personable and reach out to their individual students and find a way to insert connection and communication in personable terms.  Teachers of course must behavior professionally, but our role is different from the accountant.  It’s why I became a teacher;  for me, Teaching  is about interacting, supporting, and caring about other people, while helping them to grow.  The online environment makes it all too easy to turn teaching merely into the process of educating about content.  That would be a great loss because we are engaged in a people business, we don’t push a product, we guide & facilitate.  I didn’t quite understand what Scorza was talking about until few days ago… 

Thanks Alex!

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Up until now, I’ve developed hybrid units for my students in AP psychology.  Though the online assignments ended up being a substantial part of the students grade (about 30-40%), I approached the construction of the assignments from the point of view of the classroom as focal point of learning.  In some ways, hybrid classes offer the best of both worlds, the personalization of the f2f class, thus eliminating the fears expressed by Scorza in Do Online Students Dream of Electric Teachers (pg. 45), as well as the resource rich, convenient, flexibility of the online environment.  I was going to approach the creation of the example course for ETAP 687:Online teaching, in the same way.  Now, having gone through all but one of the example courses, I’m rethinking this idea.  Or rather, discarded it entirely. 

Several times (twice?) during Alex’s interviews in the course observations, she’s rhetorically asked  “if the instructor does all the work, who does all the learning?”  This is a solid constructivist point of view and it becomes a necessity in creating a successful online teaching environment.  Keeping this in mind, I was planning on using Jing to create at least one screencast for my course; now, I’m planning on having the students use Jing as a culminating activity to create a screencast summary of what they think are the most important elements of human psychological development.  This idea is an inspiration from Steven Zucker’s culminating activity in which he has the students create a final exam.  In fact, I had quite a few good ideas from Steven Zucker’s course…

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