Tips for Building Social Presence in Your Online Class

You’ve been assigned your first online class to teach and you feel like you’re ready. You’ve done your homework and learned the ins and outs of the institution’s course management system. You’ve structured your content in purposeful ways and developed thoughtful guiding questions to situate student learning and motivate them. When the class starts, however, you realize that while everything is technically functioning correctly, many of the students are not engaged. While you were looking forward to teaching online and interacting with students, the students are approaching your course as if it’s an independent study. This wasn’t what you anticipated when you agreed to teach online!

In their framework outlining educational experiences for students, Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) identify and explain the critical elements of a Community of Inquiry that supports instruction and learning. The elements include: cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence. For online classes, many new online instructors tend to focus on the cognitive presence and teaching presence, and overlook the necessity of the social presence. They’ll build great online modules that help students enhance their understanding of course content but forget to attend to the critical social aspects that engage students and foster community building. While these aspects can happen naturally in face-to-face courses, they must be intentionally built into online classes.

Here are five ways you can build social presence in your online class:

1. Have your online students introduce themselves. This may sound simple but the first module of my online courses asks students to introduce themselves to their peers. I create a discussion board where students share short introductions with the group either through text or through a short multimedia production using Fotobabble, MyBrainShark or some other Web 2.0 tool. I usually try to connect the introductions to course content in some informal way to assess the students’ prior knowledge and experience with the material. More than anything, the introductions are designed to foster open communication amongst students outside of course content.
2. Introduce yourself to your students. When I ask my students to create short introductions of themselves, I offer my own introduction as an example. I also create a short orientation video where I provide an overview of the course and share a little about myself. Presented in a short video where students hear my voice, students can connect with me outside of the written text that I provide for most of the class material.
3. Create a “commons area” for off-topic discussions. In a face-to-face class, it’s easy to engage in off-topic discussions. Students walking into the classroom will argue about last night’s football game, discuss the latest movies, or talk about their favorite music. This type of engagement is extracurricular but it can help students build relationships that are advantageous inside the classroom. Without purposeful inclusion of risk-free environments for sharing, online students’ affective needs will not be met and they may not fully engage with course content or with their classmates. In my online classes, I create a discussion board labeled “Commons Area” or “Water Cooler” and offer some guidance to the purpose of the area. While I’ll often peek in to add a question or respond to a post, I generally give the students some free rein over this forum.
4. Use synchronous tools for office hours. Most course management systems offer chat rooms or synchronous online classrooms as tools for teaching and communication. I schedule online office hours where students can meet with me to discuss course content and ask questions. While not every student takes advantage of the office hours, publishing their availability communicates to students that I am committed to their success in the course.
5. Don’t be the center of every discussion. Many new online instructors try to respond to every post in a discussion board. This habit can actually limit student-to-student interaction and discussion. In a face-to-face class, few instructors would break up lively classroom discussions by evaluating every remark from students. In online classes, however, instructors will do exactly that. Instead of excessively participating in discussion boards, provide some thought-provoking questions and allow the students to discuss course content openly on their own. Offer guidance when necessary and communicate that you’re present in the discussion through carefully chosen posts. Give the students some space to interact with one another and build their understanding through collaborating with their classmates.

References:
Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), 87-105.

Note:  This post was originally published on Faculty Focus on May 13, 2013.

E is for evaluation

Yesterday, I wrapped up my class project in my Instructional Technology class.  Regular readers might remember that I started a Flipped Classroom Project with my students as part of a partnership with a local school district.  The assignment was a problem-based project where students needed to create instructional videos to teach different language arts concepts to 4th and 6th grade students.  I organized the semester following a typical ADDIE instructional design model.  We started the semester with my students heading out to the schools, observing students and completing a needs assessment.  The students then returned to campus where they worked tirelessly on designing mock-ups of their instructional materials.  After getting feedback from students and teachers in the schools, my class went into full development mode where they crafted a full version of their instructional materials that were implemented recently in the partner classrooms.

As we reached the end of the semester, I asked the students to use data to evaluate their creations and to make recommendations for future improvements.  Rather than give a formal final exam, I decided to invite our school district partners to campus and have my students give presentations.  Some students analyzed the cognitive levels incorporated in the videos and how students were engaged through different manners.  Other groups looked at assessment data from the 4th and 6th graders to see how effective the flipped modules were.  Across the boards, the students in the schools performed as well or better on the assessments from the “flipped unit” as they had on other units during the year.  While this was a pilot study, we’re hoping to expand the project and do more data analysis in the fall.

During the presentations, one of the student groups made a recommendation about the course schedule for the semester.  They felt that certain topics needed to be taught at the start of the semester so they were better prepared for designing and developing their instructional materials.  During the group’s presentation, another student leaned over to me and joked that the group was “throwing me under the bus” in front of our school partners.  I explained that evaluation meant that everyone and everything about the project needed to be evaluated, including my teaching and even the structure of the class.  I explained while it was their “final exam” in the course the evaluation phase of this project is not an ending but the beginning of the cyclical process of refinement and improvement.  While it may be uncomfortable, the groups that evaluated me and my teaching was a critical part of the process.

When I returned to my office later in the evening, I checked my email and found that one of the students from my class had emailed me.

“The final presentations today along with getting feedback from the teachers was really exciting! Today has really made everything feel worthwhile! I knew when we went to the schools to present our mock-ups that this project would be rewarding. This class is prime example of successfully implementing technology to reach higher levels of learning.  Thanks for the opportunity!  Rachel”

Although her email was a much different type of evaluation from the ones shared during the final exam, it is the one I’ll remember the most.

Cultivating innovation

Regular readers of my blog know that I’ve been doing an open-ended, problem-based assignment with my students this semester.  At the start of the semester, I laid out an instructional design plan utilizing the ADDIE model that would help guide my students’ work.  As the semester comes to end, we’re entering the final phase of the ADDIE process:  evaluation.  While I wait to hear from my students regarding their assessment of the effectiveness of the instructional materials they created for a local school district, I thought I’d take a few minutes to reflect on what I’ve learned through this process.  As I described in a blog post a few weeks ago, learning can be messy.  This is especially true when we open our students to authentic problems that don’t have clear solutions.  If you’re entering into a problem-based assignment with your students, here are a few lessons I’ve learned that might help you navigate the rough waters ahead and cultivate an environment of innovation in your classroom.

1.  Be patient.  Innovation and learning can take time.  If you give your students an open-ended assignment, there will be times when it seems like students are going down a wrong path or doing something unproductive.  Wait it out and let situations develop.  While I definitely tried to facilitate students’ development throughout the project, I also realized that students needed to learn some lessons on their own.  I patiently allowed some situations to play out so students could benefit from their experiences and learn from their pitfalls.  Their work was stronger and more creative after they had navigated some setbacks and some moments of failure.

2.  Help identify the problems and involve your students in solving them.  The last week of our class has been pretty hectic.  Even though we had reached the end of the project, we encountered a major problem that initially seemed like an insurmountable hurdle.  While I started out trying to solve the problem myself, I realized that my students needed to play a role in crafting the solution.  They needed to see that even the best laid plans often go astray.  They needed to experience the stress that I felt and help me figure out a workable solution.  I walked into class, outlined the situation and had the groups generate solutions.

3.  Trust your students.  The vast majority of my students this semester embraced the process and its messiness.  At the start of the project, I outlined my motivations and explained that I couldn’t predict what would happen.  Even if the assignment was a complete failure, I said, the process would be educational and we’d all learn a lot from the assignment. I realized that I shouldn’t have been so pessimistic.  The students bought into the project and really impressed me.  Trusting my students more would have definitely saved me some sleepless nights.

4.  Model risk-taking and celebrate it when you see it. This entire project was a huge risk for me.  I was working with a local school district and I secretly worried whether my students could live up to the challenge.  In class, I explained to my students the risks involved with the assignment and how important it was as a learner to take risks and learn from the process.  As their instructor, I wanted to demonstrate that I was still embracing risk-taking and learning from the process.  As students took risks in class, I celebrated their work even if they failed.  This helped to show that while I was interested in the outcomes of their labors, I was more concerned with students learning from the process.

Upload and Share with DropItToMe

I’m working on a pretty intensive project with one of my classes this semester.  In support of a Flipped Classroom partnership with a local school district, my students are creating instructional videos that will be used with several 4th and 6th Grade classrooms.  My students used a whole host of different applications to develop their instructional videos and the students eventually saved them online so that they could be viewed by district students.  The challenge, however, was we also wanted to provide offline versions of the videos.  With the socioeconomic make-up of schools, we wondered whether all of the students would be able to access videos placed online.  Some families may not have Internet capability.  Others may not have computers.  We worried that our Flip Project might marginalize some of these students and we brainstormed ways to avoid this.  Ultimately, the district decided that it would make laptops available for students to take home if they needed them and that it would store offline videos on DVDs and flash drives for students who didn’t have home Internet access.  My students just needed to provide the offline videos.

Creating offline versions was easy for my students.  Many were able to just save files using the video editors they were using.  Delivering them to our district partners, however, proved a little more challenging.  While the final offline versions weren’t gigantic in size, the University email service wouldn’t allow them to be attached to email.  Our learning management system would not support their sharing, either.  While I could dump all of the files onto a single flash drive and hand deliver them to the partner schools, I wondered whether there might be a technical solution. After some thought, I decided that DropBox would be the ideal tool for this but didn’t want to send DropBox requests to all of the students in my class.  That’s when I came upon DropItToMe.

DropItToMe is a site that allows you to create a password-protected space for students (or others) to upload files directly to your DropBox account.  Of course you’ll need a DropBox account before you set up your DropItToMe space, but the process after that is pretty easy.  First, create an account with DropItToMe and authorize it to access your DropBox account.  If you’re worried about security, DropItToMe doesn’t actually have access to your DropBox files.  The authorization process just gives DropItToMe the ability to upload files.  Which made the Flip Project uploading simple.  I shared the link to my DropItToMe page, gave my students a unique password and then shared their files with me.  I was then able to share the files from my DropBox account with the technology coordinator at our partner district.

DropItToMe is a free service and is really easy to use.  The only real hangup is that the upload process is limited to 75 Mb.  One of the projects in my class exceeded this limit but the rest were able to upload the files easily using DropItToMe.  Almost any file type can be uploaded through DropItToMe which makes it the perfect solution for sharing videos, pictures or documents across classes of students.

Debunking myths of adaptive learning

Adam Newman, writing for the Gates Foundation’s blog Impatient Optimists, recently named 2013 the Year of Adaptive Learning.  While adaptive learning systems have existed for a while, more institutions are exploring adaptive learning options as ways to supplement face-to-face instruction by offering students guided practice with targeted feedback based on assessment.  By adopting the systems, schools can help to personalize the learning for students.  But some myths exist with adaptive learning systems.  This week, I thought I’d tackle a few.

1.  Adaptive learning treats students like interchangeable widgets.   While the systems may appear to be static to individual students, adaptive learning leverages academic research in a variety of disciplines (intelligent tutoring systems, machine learning, knowledge space theory, memory retention, cognitive load theory, etc.) to create and deliver personalized learning experiences that are tailored to the varied needs of individual learners.  As students respond to assessment questions, the system adapts to meet their needs.  Different students will have different learning experiences based on their needs.

2.  Adaptive learning employs a “one size fits all” approach.  Looking across the landscape of options, a great deal of variety exists.  In their comprehensive examination of the adaptive learning landscape, Education Growth Advisors found a great deal of variety between the eight different suppliers they studied.  Each of the suppliers offers different support structures, content delivery methods, authoring options and assessment techniques.  With a diverse range of suppliers, individual institutions can select suppliers based of their individual needs and the culture of their campus.

3.  Adaptive learning is anti-teacher.  With content delivery and targeted feedback happening online through complex decision chains, many instructors feel the ultimate goal is to replace the classroom instructor completely.  The reality, however, is that the systems work in concert with the instructor’s role.  In a way, the adaptive learning modules prepare students to enter class and move to higher-order concepts.  The adaptive learning systems also report assessment data to instructors so they can walk into face-to-face environments with information about their students’ ability and progress.  Instructors can then adapt their lesson to better meet the needs of the students.

4.  Adopting adaptive learning systems can be costly.  While some academic publishers are marketing adaptive learning system in conjunction with textbooks, some more inexpensive options exist as well.  For instance, the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) developed by Carnegie Mellon University offers free adaptive course materials on its site.

5.  Institutions have less curricular control when they employ adaptive learning system.  While some suppliers offer closed systems with little options for editing, other systems are much more open to individual instructors and institutions authoring content that fits their needs.  Wondering which system would fit your institution’s needs?  Be sure to check out the institutional decision-making matrix in the Education Growth Advisor report.

Define your “moonshot”

“But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”

President John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1962, at Rice University, Houston, Texas

In his recent Educause article, Josh Jarrett examines the different innovation strategies employed by institutions of higher education.  Of the ones outlined in the article, the concept of the “moonshot” really resonated with me.  Taken from President Kennedy’s iconic speech outlining the mission to the Moon, the moonshot as an innovation strategy involves clearly defining the operational goal yet recognizing the difficulty of the task.  In 1962, President Kennedy outlined the goal “of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.” At the time, this was a huge challenge historically and scientifically.  As many people know, the Russians had launched Sputnik into orbit five years earlier and were planning its own mission to the moon. Rather than sit idly by, the President pointed to the heavens and gave a clear destination.  “We choose to go to the moon.”

Examining America’s space program at the time, getting to the moon would be a nearly impossible task for the country.  Sputnik didn’t just mark Russia’s ability to achieve the world’s first artificial satellite; it showed the country’s dominance in space.  Weighing in at 185 lb., Sputnik far outweighed the 4 lb. satellite that America was developing.  How could a country that lagged so far in the space race be the first country to land on the moon? President Kennedy, speaking before Congress, outlined the challenges.  “For while we cannot guarantee that we shall one day be first, we can guarantee that any failure to make this effort will make us last.”  The moon was the goal, Kennedy repeated that day.  And the country got to work.

I think a lot about innovation and the work many of us do in higher education.  In many ways, the traditional academy is being challenged by outside forces.  There are for-profit institutions, online programs, MOOCs, and so many other “disruptions.” Much like America was concerned about its security and its long-term technical competitiveness in 1962, colleges and universities are facing some of the same concerns today.  How should we respond?  Do we hold steady and hope that we’ll weather the storm?  Do we allow our institutions to slowly evolve and transform into some unknown entity that may be more viable in the future? Or do we select some nearly impossible task, define it as our “moonshot” and get to work?  The choice is ours.

It’s important to remember that the “moonshot” involves more than just identifying the destination.  The “moonshot” recognizes that there are challenges ahead and that we’ll learn from the journey.  We just need to select the appropriate target and get to work.

Office hours 2.0

You probably know the routine.  You detail your availability on your syllabi, post times on your office door, and publish information on your website.  You announce that students should come by if they need help and you even offer specially scheduled times for struggling students.  Yet, despite all your efforts, most students don’t take the fullest advantage of the office hours you provide.  While office hours are offered so that instructors can work individually with students, most of us spend our office hours doing other things.

While it’s easy to chalk up students’ absence during office hours to laziness or to their lack of interest or effort, maybe we could be doing more to make ourselves accessible to our students.  With the changing demographics of the student populace and the economy, more students are working to put themselves through college.  Many non-traditional students are juggling family responsibilities as well.  When you also factor in the number of students taking online or blended classes from a distance, it should be no surprise that many students are not attending office hours regularly.  With the technological options at our disposal, there are a variety of ways to support students outside of traditional, face-to-face office hours.  This week, I thought I’d share a few different options I’ve used.

1.  Use Skype.  A few semesters ago, I started including my Skype address on my syllabus and told my students that I could be reached via Skype during my office hours.  While most students haven’t taken advantage of this route, Skype did offer some communication options for those students who had to commute from a great distance.  Instead of driving to campus just to meet with me, they were able to Skype.

2.  Create a Google Hangout.  Google introduced Hangouts a few years ago as an avenue to foster face-to-face interaction with small groups.  With this as the tool’s main motivation, Hangouts work better for meeting with a group of students.  While it’s sometimes hard to get a group of students to visit during traditional office hours, it may be easier to have them join a scheduled Google Hangout.  It can be a little tricky to get started but once everyone is inside Google+, it’s relatively easy to get them into a Hangout together.

3.  Hold office hours in an online classroom.  This semester, I created an online classroom with Blackboard Collaborate and have directed students to meet me in the space when they need help.  Besides voice and video capabilities, Collaborate allows me to share my screen and demonstrate different software steps to students in the online room.  This is a great option when students are having trouble accessing content in an online class or when they’re trying to complete a technology-rich classroom project.

4.  Chat with your students.  While I use the chat rooms that are available inside my institution’s course management system (Desire2Learn), any chat service could be used.  Unlike other technological options, I find that chat room conversations with students are usually short and to the point and great for answering simple questions that students may have.  It can be a little more difficult to explain in-depth, conceptual topics, however.