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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.
A virtual classroom needs to be built in its entirety before the
quarter starts as the instructor's time is filled with teaching
and maintenance tasks. 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 your class material 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 it's 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. A site with out dated material can
leave a poor impression.
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)
-If so desired, you can apply a password to
any folder within your www folder.
-Create a folder for images and store all
your images there. (Helps to keep your file list uncluttered)
-Give your navigation careful consideration
before applying it. In the case where you find yourself
developing more than one online class, you will save yourself
much time and energy if you can apply the same navigation system
to all of your sites. So keep your navigation general in
order to make it applicable to multiple classes. Also have
the navigation system complete before moving on to creating
individual pages. Changing you mind later on will be the
source of much additional work.
-Keep a copy of your homepage
with the confirmed navigation system, 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. Or
you can simply change the background color of the page - a
different color for each class. Keeping the same
navigation provides continuity and consistency as well.
-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 notification from
outside sources informing us to remove materials from one of our virtual classrooms
that was posted without having been given permission by the author.
Before posting materials that were generated by someone other than yourself to your website, 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:
Open webpage or document.
Either "Save As..." and save it to the hard drive
or
"Select All" and copy/paste into Word.
Work on document in Word - add comments, use highlighter and/or add
notes in a special color. See example:
-PDF documents online
can be saved as WORD documents on a person’s hard drive. This allows the
person to highlight and add to the document via WORD.
Conserve
Ink and paper:
Make sure that the printer setting of your ppt
presentations is set to ignore or not print background images,
colors, etc.
Change the
settings so that multiple slides fit on one piece of paper.
When possible print
on both
front and back of a page.
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:
1. Complete, detailed
syllabus (4 or 5 pages long!)
2. Less than 24
hour turnaround time for responding to both emails and homework 7 days per
week.
3. Optional
in-person orientation. The orientation summary is collated and posted to the
discussion.
4. Students
help and encourage one another.
5. Instructor
checks email and discussion 3-4x/day as he finds that his immediate response
to students encourages their participation and success.
6. Instructor
posts information about campus activities for students such as scholarship
opportunities.
7. Instructor
feels that high activity in the communication dept of an online class
indicates that the class is working. Low communication indicates to him that
the class is not working and that he needs to take some additional action.
8. Assignments
are set up to be collaborative and he encourages that the students work
together.
9. Pat
experiments with different electronic tools on his goal to recreate the on
campus classroom environment in the virtual realm.
Netiquette Policy- NeLSC
offers a
that’s been developed and made available for your use.
Example Introduction to the use of a
Discussion format:
http://webshares.northseattle.edu/elearning/web_template/course_template1/discussion.htm
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.
Online Caring (posted with permission)
Please view
the slide presentation for tips on how convey caring within an online class.
Technical Tips
Key Strokes
for PC users:
Keyboard
Shortcut =
Action
Ctrl + A = Select All
Ctrl + C = copy
Ctrl + V = paste
Ctrl + X = cut
Ctrl + Z = Undo
Ctrl + = increase
font size of the screen
Ctrl - = decrease
font size
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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