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With a distance learning there is the potential for students to experience increased anxiety. There are many ways the student can respond to the anxiety including greater dependence on and increased expectations of the instructor. A student may respond to the increased anxiety by sending emails with increasing frequency as a way of looking for reassurance and unless the faculty member responds to them their anxiety accelerates! The student begins to demand and expect more frequent contact from the instructor. The student then takes their heightened anxiety to the discussion room where it quickly evolves from being a problem of one student to exciting the class at large! Needless to say, dealing with this type of situation at any level requires a great deal of extra work on the part of the instructor in the form of increased emails, discussion posts, revised communication strategies, and having to regain the trust of the class. The following are specific techniques that an instructor may apply when building their online class in order to avoid scenarios like the one described above. Attendance: As with on campus classes in the case of instructor absence you must notify your students, your division Dean and the NeLSC office as we are a point of direct support to students. Personal Emergencies: If unable to email your students, contact your division or NeLSC offices and we will assist with contacting your students. The course needs to be built in its entirety before the class begins. Your time during the class will be consumed with maintenance, teaching tasks and processing/implementing your ideas for making your website more efficient. Organization is key. It will definitely improve over time and with experience. Strive from the beginning to be as organized as possible with your ideas and their presentation. Consider too that technology allows for the building of a rich learning environment by adding features on to an already existing piece. E.g. Take a PowerPoint that was created for a face to face class and add it as content to your online class as well. Next and maybe in another quarter, you can add an audio track to the ppt and you have used added technology to further enhance the learning experience with the added benefit of now appealing to different learning styles. At a later date, that audio track can be saved as an mp3 file and downloaded to a portable player and listened to while jogging through the park! The learner is now unchained form the classroom and from the computer! Learning of your materials is now happening at large. You can go one step further with your organization and planning by recording a narration of a ppt presentation given to an on campus class. When finished you will have grabbed a feature of one class and after posting it electronically are now able to avail the same lecture to more than one class and modality. So, if you think about it and organize ahead of time, you can do it once and apply it to multiple modes of instruction. -It’s ok to put the same information in more than one place; however not recommended, as it will be additional work to update as you will have to update info in multiple locations and it can be difficult to keep track of the multiple locations.
Filing structure / organization -Limit the number of pages that contain dates. (These pages will require quarterly maintenance.) -Assign a character to the beginning of the filename of pages that require in multiple scenarios. This makes the page readily identifiable in your file tree. E.g. _syllabus, _schedule -When naming files, avoid capitol letters and spaces. Keep file names short, understandable and meaningful. -Create a separate folder for each class ( mat098 and mat107) -Create a folder for images and store all your images there. (Helps to keep your file list uncluttered) -Keep a copy of your homepage, name it as a template, save it in the main structure of your website, use it for creating new pages, use it for creating new pages in different classes. Having the same look for each class builds continuity for the student as well as saving you time. -Keep files that are specific to a class (schedule, syllabus, assignments, etc) within that class folder (mat098). -Reuse as many pages as possible in the form of templates to avoid having to redesign pages. Create a template where you can and be sure to file it where it’s readily visible in the open section of your file structure (website) rather than buried within a class folder. Discussion netiquette and pointers for using the tool works well as a template that is simply reused with every new class that you create. This applies to the email user info as well. Copyright It is essential to follow correct procedures. North has in the past received legal notification from outside sources informing us to remove materials from a virtual classroom that were posted without having been given permission by the author. Before posting materials to your website that were generated by someone other than yourself, please be clear on your permission to do so and the proper procedure for acknowledging the author. Sharon Simes, Dean of Library and Media Services is our North campus representative to assist with your questions. You can also contact the NeLSC office. Helping faculty and students to organize their information in consideration of North’s Sustainability goal: Help to increase awareness amongst our students that there are consequences to their behaviors and what they do matters to either sustaining our resources or depleting those resources. Include North's Sustainability Goals on your website. Faculty, Staff and Students can change the way we work with online documents. We encourage students to print less. Students can download any document to their hard drive (so they have a personal electronic copy) and work with it (underline, highlight, add notes for study purposes) right on their computer instead of printing it off to do the same work. We can use WORD as our word processor example. Instructors can adjust the printer settings on their PowerPoint presentation pdfs to print economically. E.g. multiple slides per page, printing to both sides of a page. Example of the process:
Conserve Ink and paper:
Point to your website/www folder instead of printing.
Syllabus Be literal, specific and thorough when communicating. Give details! Define relative terms. Apply this same attention to the details under every heading of your syllabus. It’s not uncommon for a distance learning syllabus to be 5+ pages in length. Follow the link below for an example of a complete Syllabus that applies tips for delivering a class online. It’s ok to use the first person. Less formality is required than what you might use in your face to face classes due to the distance inherent in an online environment. You want to develop relationships with your class. It will help to reassure students that they are working with a person (even though they can’t see the person) and helps them to feel connected and more comfortable.
Define clearly your expectations of the student. “Students will participate” is not enough. Define what you mean by participate. I.e. Students are expected to log onto website and post to the discussion rooms, read the syllabus, etc. Consider: Is a ‘broken computer’ or ‘lost internet connection’ an acceptable excuse for missed assignment? If not, you may want to make specific note of this in your syllabus. Define how the tool is to be used and the circumstances in which you intend for the student to use each e-tool in your course (e.g. Discussion tool, email, wiki, blog, etc.) Define clearly what the student can expect of you. State clearly the window of time in which a student can expect to receive a response from you to an email. 48 hours is the maximum amount of time a student waits to hear from their instructor. Help the students to learn how to use your style of navigation. One instructor created a Treasure Hunt to help the students learn to navigate their site and offered extra credit for the completion of the Treasure Hunt. Here is an example that was made available for you to use. http://nscc-elearningfaculty.wetpaint.com/page/Tool+Box Another suggestion is to create a short camtasia video of navigation and course overview. Follow this link for an example of a complete Syllabus that applies tips for delivering a class online. Remember to scroll down to access the links to “Overview, Details, Grading and Schedule” https://frontpage.northseattle.edu/gel100tb3/syllabus/syllabus.htm This syllabus was built by Tom Braziunas, PhD., Director of North’s e-Learning Support Center and made available as a template for faculty to use. Note that this syllabus consists of 5 sections: Basic Contact Info, Overview, Details, Grading, and Schedule
Schedule Students who don’t have experience with distance learning may erroneously believe that the modality is easier. This may be true at some levels of education, but we have not found that to be the case at our community college. To the contrary, it is more work for both the student and the instructor. So, to help students manage their workload, it’s suggested that you help to make students aware if the need to budget their time. You can do this by setting up the course schedule in a way that helps them to organize and better manage their time. State clearly the overall time commitment on the student’s part that is required by your course. 3 hours of study per credit hour, per week. Likewise for the instructor, determine and organize your teaching schedule. Decide when (what day of the week) you want to be attending to the weekly maintenance and other tasks such as archiving and setting the next week’s topics in the discussion board, assessing points, grading assignments, quizzes, etc. You might not want to be doing that on a Saturday or Sunday night. In which case, when defining their workweek it’s ok if the week ends on Monday and begins on Tuesday. This is info that is necessarily posted to the schedule. Consider also that choosing a day in the middle of the week means students who have taken a week vacation have not missed a full week of a chapter. Please share with your students when extraordinary personal circumstances demand that you be away from the website, causing a disruption the class schedule. It's an error in judgment to assume that your students won't notice. It's respectful to treat them with the same courtesy that you want them to extend to you. Schedule example https://frontpage.northseattle.edu/gel100tb3/syllabus/schedule.htm
Discussion It’s not mandatory for a class to use a discussion tool. But a well organized discussion can enhance the learning experience and be quite useful for students and faculty. Students can look to their peers for camaraderie and contact giving them another point of access for support. You can create a bulletin board for posting your class announcements: such as a frequently asked question or some other email question that’s being frequently asked. It’s likely that other students want to ask the same question and you don’t want to have to answer it individually each time and over the course of multiple quarters, so the creation of a FAQ list saves you time and increases the resources available on demand to students. You can also collect your FAQ’s and answers and apply them in future classes. To facilitate tracking students’ participation in the discussion room and control the amount of material that you are expected to keep track of weekly it’s suggested that you Archive your weekly discussions at the end of the week. Closing or locking the room to new posts while allowing them to be accessed for reading only as a reference. This means that you then, during week 8 aren’t having to still be scanning weeks 1 & 2 for new posts. Tell the students how you want them to use this tool. Define clearly your expectations of the student. “Students will participate” is not enough. Define what you mean by participate. I.e. "log into website and post to the discussion room." What do you mean by “post”? How many posts, how often? Is it ok if the student makes their first posting and hour or two before the room closes? Waiting until the end of the week means that other students are denied the opportunity to comment on the posting. Is this ok? And what is your expectation for the content of the posts? Are short acknowledgements such as “Yes” and “No” acceptable? Or would you prefer complete thoughts? …replies to an existing thread vs. generating and initiating ideas? See the Discussion Page that’s linked below for succinct examples of how to address these questions. It’s suggested that there be some sort of perk or points acquired with using the discussion forum or students are less likely to participate. Tell them specifically what they need to do to earn those points, extra credit or otherwise. It's important to be very specific about your expectations of the student but realize that the process of grading discussion participation is a subjective one. Be specific when stating your role in the discussion room. This helps students to determine what expectations are reasonable. Will you be responding to every post? If the instructor responds to every discussion post she is then cultivating her students’ dependence on the instructor.
A richer discussion environment with less dependence on the instructor can be achieved by encouraging and facilitating peer to peer communication and support.
And while you may not be responding to each and every post, you will be attending the discussions as facilitator and moderator and it’s suggested that you directly inform students that you are monitoring the discussion and indeed reading their posts. This will encourage their continued participation. You will need to facilitate, insuring that the learning is staying on topic and moderating to insure a respectful environment. Again, it is in the instructor’s best interest to remain connected with the discussion forum as it can become a place for students to air grievances that can quickly escalate if gone unattended. The greater your presence and participation in the discussion forum, the greater the likelihood for participation from the students. View this video of Pat Bouker for peer tips on ways to facilitate active participation in a discussion forum:
Highlights: Netiquette Policy-
NeLSC offers a
that’s been developed and made available for your use.
Grade Book: Access to a grade book is popular with students. It helps them to remain connected to their progress. It also offers the opportunity of immediate gratification. It serves as a landline for the student. As mentioned, students in an online learning environment may experience increased anxiety and uncertainty. Checking their grade may supplant the need for frequent reassurances and is an alternative to emailing or otherwise making demands of the instructor each time a student feels a need for reassurance.
Online Caring: Building
relationships is a critical component of a successful online class.
Demonstrating that you care can help to build relationships. This
module was prepared by Kathleen Sitzman, PhD, RN at Weber
University and represents the results of a study that she
prepared for her PhD dissertation . Slides 21 and 22 in particular contain
Best Practices that have great potential when included in the guidelines for
developing online classes.
Technical Tips
Links: Learning Styles, e-tools tutorials, and more Faculty Development Workshop Archives Led by Jean Kent Faculty Librarian: Contact your Faculty Librarian to request research links for your subject. NSCC librarians produce attractive, interesting sites filled with wonderful and useful resources that encourage online literacy development for students. |
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