Issue Contents

Save Time by Taking the Student Perspective and Using Technology

Shari McCurdy, Associate Director, Office of Technology-Enhanced Learning, University of Illinois at Springfield

Creating a well-defined course includes navigation and communication.
All ventures benefit from a well-executed beginning. This is especially true for online courses. Consider the entry point of your course from the student's view. The first time you enter a school or building you would look for important things first such as restrooms, stairwells, and meeting places. Likewise, online students look for essential items such as expectations, requirements, schedules, and due dates. If these are hidden or not well-explained, confusion can rob both the student and the instructor of valuable time. Be sure to include timesavers such as ways to track deadlines, guidelines and expectations (such as rubrics and modeling), and clear information about expectations in the syllabus and assignments. This advice is simple to give but harder to achieve without excellent planning. Many online instructors forget to mirror the various checkpoints students need to verify class information in on campus courses in online courses. Your students need to know how to talk to you about different issues they might have. A careful description of the communication tools you will use will establish expectations, reduce multiple postings, and limit confusion.

Simple technologies help with feedback, assessment, assignment management, and research.
Course design should take advantage of the numerous feedback tools available in learning management systems, such as surveys, RSS, peer review, performance tracking, and a host of Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, blogs, and web-based multimedia upload sites which can be linked directly into the course management content areas. Blackboard and Moodle, for example, provide survey instruments that can deliver short Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATS). With very little time commitment, these short and simple surveys provide your students with another opportunity to voice their opinions, share their worries, or reflect on their progress and furnish you with remarkable feedback on where your instruction might need emphasis and what students understand. Many learning management packages allow conditional release of new content based upon a student's previous work or assessment, helping students progress at their own pace and freeing instructors from the worry of individually sequencing content. Moodle users can subscribe to RSS feeds to be notified of changes, and this feature can be added to other learning management systems. If you are willing to put in some practice time with new technologies, you do not have to limit the technology you employ to that which exists in your own institution. For example, you can use RSS feeds to track your students' work through their own blogs, create customized class search tools for research and investigation summaries, and use YouTube and podcasts for evidence gathering or presentation rather than written reports.

Online instruction is an incremental process. Step in at your comfort level and explore as you go. Periodically look for opportunities to exchange what you currently do for new ways to leverage time-saving instructional technologies that can easily offer new learning experiences for you and your students.

(Join Shari McCurdy, University of Illinois and Kathleen Ives, The Sloan Consortium in the Sloan-C online workshop, Workload Management Strategies for Online Educators, July 11th - 20th.)

Blended Learning and Engagement in Higher Education

By Chuck Dziuban, University of Central Florida and Tony Picciano, Hunter College

Blended learning is a boundary object [1], a concept that is embraced and shared by many constituencies but understood differently by them. Although various educational communities might differ in their definitions, blending serves as a confluence for innovative ideas, a common forum for embracing the academy as we know it, and the burgeoning world of asynchronous learning networks. Almost everyone agrees that blended learning offers an excellent opportunity for increasing engagement of both students and faculty in the education enterprise.

Recent preoccupation with the Net Generation [2] and its penchant for technologies that feature collateral learning and a participatory culture shows that this student cohort learns through social networking, gaming, multitasking, distributed cognition, and trans-media navigation [3]. These preferences provide an excellent vehicle for engaging students with technologies through which they entertain themselves and form virtual communities. The online components of blended learning are particularly well-suited for capitalizing on these "Web 2.0" thinking styles [4]. Also, increasingly younger incoming faculty members represent the Net Generation themselves and resonate with their students' learning values. The combination of asynchronous and face-to-face components of blended learning provides added value and a counter balance for net savvy students, engaging them in interactive activities and encouraging reflection on the instructional tasks at hand. The importance of engagement, interaction, and reflection in instruction cannot be underestimated and are as important now as they were when John Dewey [5] espoused them.

The National Survey of Student Engagement [6] indicates that post secondary learners become engaged when they: experience quality interaction with their faculty, participate in collaborative and active learning, experience a supportive environment, and face genuine academic challenge. In the reflexive sense, these components engage instructors as well. Further, the multiple modes of blended approaches present opportunities to reinforce learning at many levels. For instance, the learning communities formed online are greatly enriched by face-to-face sessions, and the complex concepts that cause confusion in class can be collaboratively clarified online. In this respect blended learning offers promise for accommodating multiple learning preferences leading to increased student engagement.

Of course, this potential comes at a cost. Blended learning requires a genuine instructional paradigm shift; a change in role expectations for both students and faculty members; and the development of evaluation methods that are interpretive, contextual, and authentic, all of which require time and instructional support. On balance, however, blended learning offers the best opportunity for engaging students in the academy and the new "Web 2.0" world.

References

1. Star, S. L. The Structure of Ill-structured Solutions: Boundary Objects and Heterogeneous Distributed Problem Solving. In M. Huhs & L. Gasser (Eds.), Readings in Distributed Artificial Intelligence 3, 37-54. Menlo Park, CA: Kaufmann, 1989.
2. Oblinger, D. & Oblinger, J. Educating the Net Generation. EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, 2005. Available at http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/PUB7101.pdf.
3. Jenkins, H. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006.
4. O’REILLY Media, Inc., 2007. Available at http://www.oreilly.com/.
5. Dewey, J. Democracy and Education. New York: The Free Press, 1944. (Original work published in 1916 by the MacMillan Company).
6. National Survey of Student Engagement. Engaged Learning: Fostering Success For All Students. Center for Postsecondary Research School of Education, Indiana University, 2006. Available at http://www.nsse.iub.edu.

(Join Charles Dziuban, University of Central Florida and Anthony Picciano, Hunter College in the Sloan-C online workshop, Blended Learning: Enhancing the Educational Experience, July 18th - 27th.)

Tap Into Elluminate-Provided Resources to Improve Your Online Programs

Elluminate, a provider of live web conferencing tools and sponsoring partner of Sloan-C, recently launched a number of initiatives meant to help support online educators. There is no purchase necessary to participate in these programs. Sloan-C recently discussed these resources with Gary Dietz, their Solutions Marketing Manager, so that we could share this valuable information with our members. Following are the key resources discussed:

1) Elluminate Community Partner Program
Sloan-C has joined with Elluminate as part of the Elluminate Community Partner. The program provides valuable products and services to a wide variety of select organizations, including nonprofits, education consortia, academic institutions, and others, for research, special projects, one-time events, long-term initiatives, and much more. It's all about working together to leverage limited resources, broaden inclusion, increase accessibility, and provide opportunities for online teaching, learning, and collaboration worldwide. Elluminate's support has enabled Sloan-C to hold over forty highly engaging workshops, online seminars, and meetings. In fact, Elluminate's support was instrumental in holding meetings among online program administrators during the the Sloan Semester project in response to the Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita disaster.

2) Receive Speaking Stipends for Sharing Your Elluminate Experience As part of its Community Partner program, Elluminate provides financial assistance to those who deliver important and engaging presentations that help the online education community learn and grow. That means as Sloan-C members, you are eligible to apply for a speaking stipend worth $250 or $500! If you are scheduled to present at an educational conference, you could be selected. For details and submission guidelines, click here.

3) Utilize Elluminate's Free vRoom™ For Small Group Work To date, almost 5,000 users have signed up for Elluminate vRoom, a FREE, 3-user version of Elluminate Live! that's perfect for small group collaboration and one-on-one meetings. It's a great way to get started with live eLearning and web collaboration or to enhance your online toolset if you are already using the technology. Sign up today.

Learn From the Experts - The Sloan-C 2007 Workshop Series

Marketing Online Programs: If You Build It, Will They Come? - June 13 - 22

As the market shakes out the weaker competitors in the next few years, student focus will increasingly be on the brand of the institution and the pedagogical model the institution uses. This workshop will address many of the challenges facing higher education institutions when marketing online programs. Topics include: the basics of marketing an online program, leveraging your institutional brand, developing a budget, ROI, developing a communication plan, selecting appropriate marketing channels, utilizing tactics and metrics, and scaling your efforts to meet growth. Participants will walk away with a marketing plan ‘template’ they can use to move their online programs forward.

Click here for details and registration.

Learning Online 2.0: Engaging, Interacting and Syndicating Applications - June 20 - 28

Web 2.0 technologies are revolutionizing the way in which we engage and interact with students online. Through RSS syndication, we are automating the delivery of learning objects to the students. Through Web 2.0 applications a whole host of new ways to engage and interact with students has emerged. Wikis, blogs, podcasts, interactive whiteboards, VoIP, tagging, image sharing, discussion rooms, and many more learning tools are freely available to educators.

This workshop introduces and explores 20 of the most engaging and promising Web 2.0 technologies that are freely available for use in online learning. Workshop facilitators will discuss and demonstrate both the technologies and the pedagogies associated with best applying those technologies. Participants will be assisted in developing mini-projects using their choice of the applications. An emphasis will be placed on practical application and implementing working models that can be expanded by participants for immediate use in their own online learning classes. The workshop facilitators will also look to the near horizon for ways in which these and soon-to-be-released technologies will be implemented in mobile learning applications, virtual environments, and the next generation of online learning.

Click here for details and registration.

Workload Management Strategies for Online Educators* - July 11 - 20

Instructors need to develop new time management skills when transitioning to online teaching. Online teaching can redefine faculty members' teaching schedules. While the advantages for participating in online education include flexibility; the reality of the 24/7 classroom can prove daunting due to the investment in curriculum development and planning as well as the need to be responsive to student inquiries. This workshop offers strategies enabling online educators to manage time demands while teaching online courses. Topics include: course planning, information presentation, frequency of interaction, and scheduling.

*This workshop is part of the Select Series and College Pass Members must use their additional 50 seats provided to take advantage of this workshop.

Click here for details and registration.

Blended Learning: Enhancing the Educational Experience - July 18 - 27

At the nexus of education and technology, blended learning is growing rapidly. Integrating face-to-face and online learning, blending can enhance learning and optimize seat time. How can blending transform today's learning environments? Representatives from leading institutions illustrate how to design and deliver hybrid courses. Student interaction and student satisfaction are discussed. Strategies for training and preparing faculty are offered. Case studies involving successful hybrid courses are presented.

Click here for details and registration.

The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C), sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is composed of institutions and organizations dedicated to continually improving the quality, scale, and breadth of their online programs, according to their own distinctive missions, so that education becomes a part of everyday life, accessible and affordable for anyone, anywhere, at any time, in a wide variety of disciplines.

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