I will be attending the Conference on Information Technology from Oct. 10 - 14.
My hope is to concentrate on the Teaching and Learning Track sessions. I will be posting thoughts and ideas within this blog during the conference. This link to the conference might give you some ideas of topics for this year’s conference.
http://www.league.org/2/conferences/cit/2009/profile.cfm
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Sunday, October 11, 2009
Today has been a good day at the CIT Conference. I am focusing on the teaching and learning track while here, but I have seen some faculty development possibilities and online tutoring as well.
Today’s sessions covered engaging students online, educational gaming, virtual teams, social networking and a green college, how to create a friendlier and more ADA compliant class site. Below are tips I gleaned today:
Engaging students online, the presenters:
* Send weekly emails to the class with an introduction for the week’s assignment; a general outline of the week’s assignments and due dates for each part. This instructor usually adds a picture of himself in some location; sometimes tries to match the location with the week’s topic;
* Set due dates are on the same days of the week, but the assignments are due one part at the time over the week;
* Uses movie assignments: history v. Hollywood kind of setup;
* Uses book assignments: fiction and history;
* Uses narrated Powerpoints for lecture points;
* Uses frequent and painless quizzes to help students study for exams. The quizzes are multi-attempt (not unlimited) until a due date. Students can use text, notes. Quiz pulls from a test bank so student gets new quiz each time. Research showed positive jump in overall class grades using frequent quizzes.
* This session closed with a discussion of how often and when to join the online discussions
Social networking and greening a college, the presenters:
* Gave ideas beyond recycling;
* Stressed that the college needed to be committed to going green in as many areas as possible. This would mean staffing to oversee and organize the efforts.
* Use online for every class, even those completely “face to face” to post files that might other wise have to be printed and handed to students (syllabus, assignments, etc); Use those things normally thought as being for online classes (discussion boards, social networking, etc) for traditional classes as well;
* Use the student orientation as a means to engage the students in the college efforts to go green;
* Encourage students to become part of the green;
* Difficulties with going green and using the web in traditional classes:
Initial costs for the college;
Resistance to using Bb in traditional classes;
Green /Social networking can become political;
Does require a lifestyle and/or culture change.
Importance of virtual teams, the presenter suggested:
* Connected the importance of team work to the workforce and as students will be working with others in the work place, it is vital to give them experience now;
* Always set lofty goals (reasonable, but lofty) for the teams;
* Be positive toward the project and the team work.
Creating friendlier and more ADA compliant courses, the presenters suggested:
* A few simple steps to make the classes more compliant and help all students;
* Be sure that textbook information is available months early (when possible) so that visually impaired students have time to contact the publisher to get audio or Braille texts;
* Make sure any videos are closed captioned;
* Make sure any audio for the class has accompanying text of the audio;
* Make sure any audio states what a student should be seeing (for the visually impaired) rather than “in the picture” or anything similar;
* Do not use green or red text….this is the most common colorblindness type;
* Screen and document readers do not recognize tables within a file or webpage;
* Assistive technology:
Screen/document readers;
Voice recognition software;
Magnifiers for text online;
Style “buttons” on Word or other programs.
Gaming session, the presenter suggested:
* Games useful in learning information, reviewing information;
* There are many out there for fee; some for free;
* You can develop your own, but the learning curve can be steep.
More tomorrow
Denise
Monday, October 12, 2009
Today was another good day.
I began the day with a session on Second Life. This is a most interesting application and I can see many educational applications. The questions that arose feel into uses, obviously, but also how much time would it take to create the “islands”; how much space can we, as instructors, have now?; what free stuff is already out there we might use?
The big tips I found might be:
* Field trips
* Guest speakers
* Note cards of info on the island.
This will be interesting to continue to investigate.
The session on student collaboration and what works was a brainstorming session that came up with some good tips as well if your team projects are not working as well as you would like. While not foolproof, they do have merit:
* Begin with a brainstorming (Elluminate?) session on what collaboration is. Many students have no idea;
* Think of giving students a real step by step structure for a first project;
* Think of having the students “journal” on a group discussion board of their own steps in the thinking process;
Probably the best session today was how to engage learners new to online classes:
The presenters first gave a look into the problems faced by new learners: fear, limited time management skills; limited computer/internet skills, etc.
* Think of giving them very specific guidelines;
* Email early;
* Consider a snail mail letter (they may not be able to get into their email right away);
* Consider an orientation session for those new to online;
* Make sure they know what computer they need, where to go for any face to face meetings with instructor/testing; how to get hold of the help desk.
More tomorrow!!
Denise
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Another good day although I am sure that information overload is setting in.
The first session this morning was about using WriteCycle (from TurnitIn) as method of teaching writing. Renee Bangerter from Salt Lake Community College uses this in her Composition I and II classes with great success. The process is perfect for any class and supports Writing Across the Curriculum. While her process uses WriteCycle this is a process that could be used without it (might not be as easy, but can be done.)
The process involves stepping students through the writing process of any paper with regular peer review of the process (with criteria to follow in their reviews) that ends with a final paper.
* Peers give criticism on the topic, thesis statement, first draft, second draft, final paper with reflections throughout;
* This can be done online.
The third session today explored the technique of giving 60 second (although sometimes these are a couple of minutes long) lecture. This is really giving a brief overview, key terms to study in the current assignment, a brief conclusion and then the assignment for the week.
* This is normally done as a video file or at least an audio file embedded in a powerpoint or something similar;
* This gives the student an introduction to the week’s topic and assignment;
* This could be done with any video software or with Elluminate;
The second session had actually been on using Captivate to make simple videos (I am going to have to get my courage up to get with Joe about video…or I use Elluminate, hummmmm) and the idea of the video with the 60 second lecture…..ideas began to emerge.
The day finished with two sessions on more ways to communicate with students: blogging (how to set up one for class with WordPress) and Twitter. These two applications could provide many more ways to reach students. Their usefulness might depend on each individual instructors time, feelings, etc.
* With a blog you have a place to put information for all classes in one place that would be easy to update, could be used for every class at once, put links, etc. Some really good possibilities with this.
* With Twitter students used to these kinds of web applications would have access to class updates, current events, and thoughts. There were some considerations here about words taken out of context, the need to be able to have records of communications with online students, etc. These two things are interesting but would be up to an individual instructor to make use of them.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
The last day of the conference and then headed home. Because of the flight schedule and getting to the airport, I only had time for one session today. It was on a research study comparing online and traditional students’ expectations that affect student retention. The research showed that in general students in traditional classes were more satisfied with the overall class and student to instructor interaction. This changed if the students were in an online class these were fairly equal if the online instructor was continually, consistently present in both discussions and email, and gave regular (and positive along with any necessary corrections, etc) feedback to the students. When the instructor interacted regularly with students in these ways, the students had a generally favorable reaction to the online class and were more likely to complete it successfully. This is a duh moment here.
While the study did not directly address age and situation of online students, there was a trend toward older students who work, have families, and otherwise in a very active life. These students were less likely to complete an online class because their expectations of the class did not always meet the reality. They assume that online means anytime, anywhere….meaning no due dates, work at your own pace, complete by the end of the semester is all that is needed, no discussions, no group work. This group of students often find they have taken on too much as good online classes require regular due dates, discussion and some form of group research. The study did not address the question of how to overcome this, but might be an good part of a general student orientation. This might be information that all incoming students are presented so that they know the general structure of online classes at CMC….just for their general information should they consider enrolling in an online class.
The study also did not address directly why students did or did not take an online class, but the researchers found that 80% of students have not taken an online class and saw a vast market that is still to be taped. There was also a trend for community colleges to be the source of online classes for K – 12 students as well. 32 states have virtual high schools from who students can take part or all of their high school classes - another growing and untapped market.
Tips that surfaced (and we all know these!)
* Students are more successful and are more likely to complete the class, when the instructor is readily available by both email and class discussion;
* Students valued student to student interaction more importantly than student to instructor interaction (they like the discussion);
* Students do not see the technology as a barrier to being successful, but instructor absence is seen as a barrier;
* Even small gestures of support from both instructor and fellow students is important. They like to hear “Good Job” “Hang in there”
Denise
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