Week 6 Reflections and Observations

I particularly liked the opportunity this week to investigate hybrid courses and techniques of teaching hybrid courses. In fact, I enjoyed it so much, I almost feel like a convert to the hybrid model! I have been teaching a fully-online course at Boise State since June of 2005. While it has been a great learning experience for me, I find that I really miss the face-to-face aspects of classroom teaching and somewhat resent the limited options that a course management system provides. I collect data every 5-week session of the course from the students and they continually express their frustration at aspects of totally online learning; particularly the connection with the instructor and some of the difficulties of communication. Part of my students' issues are related to the fact that the course is an introductory one to online learning and the use of Blackboard. More experienced students don't have the negative view that the new students do. In any event, I believe that, where practical, the hybrid model provides the best of both worlds for now.

A website that I discovered (WorldWideLearn.com) contained many articles on advances in education, one of which I selected to discuss this week because of its conciseness regarding the basics of hybrid education. It can be found at: http://www.worldwidelearn.com/education-articles/hybrid-education.html.

The article stated that "hybrid instruction, or hybrid courses, refer to classes where there is a carefully planned blend of both traditional classroom instruction and online learning activities." The author also asserted that the classes combine the best of both kinds of instruction. Some of the advantages to resident classes are that "students are able to make a meaningful connection with their instructors, as well as other students, and yet they are no longer required to travel to campus on a regular basis in order to attend courses because the majority of the coursework can be completed on the Internet." While she did not specify the percentage of coursework to be done in residence versus online, obviously, that will probably depend on the type of course being presented. A course in English, for instance, requiring a lot of writing is much more amenable to having the bulk (80-90%) of the course online. A course in Geology, requiring rock and mineral identification, would require the students to be able to experience the tactile sensation of rock texture, density and sheen, all things that do not translate well to the online world (yet!).

The author also makes the point that "instructors must adjust their class content--particularly their lecture materials. However, in doing so, they are often making their materials more effective than traditional classroom instruction. The reason? Rather than having students sit in a lecture hall taking notes, instructors can teach through more “active-learning” assignments such as case studies, self-tests, tutorials, and online group projects, all of which takes place over the Internet." Notes are available online any time of the day or night for review and download. I would have loved to have instructors' notes available this way! As it was, the lecture hall experience was one of "sprint notetaking" with very little comprehension taking place or opportunity for questions. This feature, in my mind, is one of the really strong aspects of hybrid or fully-online courses: having the lecture notes and assignments always available for reference. Besides these advantages, the reduced necessity to spend the time and frustration to travel to campus, find a parking place and make it to class on time is huge! On the other hand, if you want your courses to be available to a wide geographic distribution, having students drive 150 miles to campus once or twice a week is a real hardship. So, in some circumstances, hybrid classes simply might not be an option. Some other advantages, which have already been identified as predictors of success in online classes, are the time management skills, development of self-direction in learning, increased computer skills, and writing ability (I'm not so sure about this one!)

A final point that the author makes is with regard to how much improvement in subject-matter knowledge takes place in hybrid courses rather than strictly online courses or traditional classrooms. I was interested in her summary statement that, "While it's still fairly new, many instructors are reporting good success with hybrid courses, and here's why: Students are required to do more work on their own--and this kind of “active learning” results in better test performance and what is known as subject mastery (or subject knowledge). In addition, students in hybrid programs are more likely to participate in group discussions and collaborate online with other students because there is not only ample opportunity to prepare a response, but also because they are not physically speaking in front of a group. In fact, hybrid class participants tend to be more outgoing and responsive because they are “speaking” online versus in a classroom setting. However, even though students seem more confident about being involved with discussions online, it is important to keep in mind that it is because of the actual on-campus classroom component that students are more likely to find success in a hybrid course than in a strictly online class." There's just something about the hybrid course model that really appeals to me. As someone who is interested in adult education, I'm thinking that this model will fit the bill for adult learners very well, and I intend to pursue that avenue of inquiry.

Finally, the author provided a link to another good resource for your future reference regarding hybrid education, located at: http://courses.durhamtech.edu/tlc/www/html/Special_Feature/hybridclasses.htm

Week 5 Reflections and Observations

In the preface to Palloff and Pratt, they make the statement: "Collaboration. This is a word that sends chills up the spines of some instructors. For them, collaboration brings visions of students who resist working in groups, the struggle to create equitable teams of students, uneven participation, and the difficulty of evaluating and grading the products produced by a group." As a student, I can readily relate to this statement. In the online world, communication is more difficult, is visual rather than verbal, requires much more time, and is often asynchronous...so that the thread of the discussion is more difficult to maintain. How do you develop "equitable teams" when you know so little about each student? And, who hasn't been frustrated at some time about the student who doesn't pull his weight in a group collaboration?

Despite these frustrations, I have seen that collaboration can work more smoothly. Just from my observations, I have seen that as students are exposed to collaboration more, they tend to respond more appropriately. In addition, as communication becomes synchronous and visual, as with Breeze, collaboration becomes much more enjoyable and more analagous to a classroom situation where you can see and hear each other. As technology improves to bring the online world more in line with the ways humans like to interact, the more I believe online collaboration will succeed.

I found myself in total agreement with the process P&P described with building a learning community online; it's very much in sync with the face-to-face process: build trust, have integrity, and have concern for others. I also have directly experienced the process (in the face-to-face world) of the process that all teams go through as they collaborate on a project or assignment: normative phase, problem-solving phase, disagreement or conflict phase, an action phase and termination. I had heard it described briefly as: norming, forming, storming, and performing. The most significant statement made by P&P in this regard, in my opinion, is the fact that it takes TIME to move through both the community-building process and the phases of the collaborative process.

Palloff and Pratt also comment on the fact that collaboration has been defined as "the heart and soul of constructivism." I frankly admit that I have been struggling with aspects of constructivism; in particular the concept of "constructing knowledge". This sounds too much like the atmosphere of moral relativism that pervades this country: right and wrong is relative; what's wrong to you is not necessarily wrong to me. Therefore, knowledge is what you happen to think it is. I see knowledge as truth-based. We may debate right and wrong, but that doesn't change those things which are true or false. It would be much more worthwhile to focus on the fact that we are never at our destination when it comes to knowledge; we're always at some point along the path of "knowing" the truth.

While we will never have full knowledge of any topic, we can develop a degree of understanding "constructed" from what we learn (or are told) integrated with what we already "know". The point that I am trying to make is that there can be no fully common ground between individuals on any subject. Constructivism says that each person's knowledge of a subject is based on internally stored experiences and learned information which cannot be the same experiences and learning of others. So, does that mean that collaboration is the preferred vehicle for achieving a higher percentage of "common ground"? I've expressed my views; I'd like to hear yours...

Chat - Is this a real online tool or what?

The online teaching tool that sort of intrigued me is chat. My view of chat prior to reading of its use in online education was of a pretty lightweight, informal means of communication that didn't have a lot of substance. Good for saying, "How ya doin'?" or "Meet me at the SUB", but not much else. As it turns out, I was partially right (or mostly wrong!). I researched several journal articles through the Albertson's Library at Boise State University, using the search terms "synchronous communication". I selected two references to discuss.

One reference, "A Field Study of Use of Synchronous Chat in Online Courses (Spencer and Hiltz, 2002)", provided results as follows (paraphrased):
1) Chat was hard to schedule due to conflicting schedules of students and instructor. Works better if fewer students are online at one time.
2) Instructors complained that even when students agreed to a specific time, most did not participate
3) If students had no previous experience with chat, they tended to have a negative view of using it at all
4) Students who were required to use chat 2 or more times in class tended to rate it more "rewarding" than those who only used it once.
5) Chat sessions as virtual "office hours" seemed to be a good use of chat from both the student and instructor's perspectives.

In "Evaluating the use of synchronous communication in two blended courses" (Cox, Carr and Hall, 2004), their study compared the use of chat in two different courses, which highlighted the fact that chat is not universally suitable or applicable in the same ways. In one course, the students were asked to participate in discussions of only the topic at hand; in the other course, students were asked to engage in a highly competitive and interactive activity. In the first course the primary conclusion was that chat at most lent itself to development of more social cohesiveness in the class. In the second course, it was found that chat was quite useful for both mobilising group production as well as providing a self-documenting record of collaboration that occurred.

Learning Objective Definition: What learners should be able to achieve by the end of a learning experience.
Given the above definition, what can we say about the learning objectives applicable to chat as an online tool? Perhaps the primary one is: The student will be able to apply chat as an online tool as a means of synchronous communication in a variety of circumstances. I would like to hear from anyone who has applied chat effectively in whatever environment in which they operate!! Give me some feedback...

Week 4 Reflections

This week's readings in Ko and Rossen are again both instructional, providing new approaches to features that I already use in Blackboard, and reassuring, in that they obviously are very experienced online instructors and their advice and suggestions have considerable credibility. Several "ah hah!'s" came to mind for me, some small, others more important:
1) Make the syllabus easily downloadable and printable, allowing students to have all pertinent material at hand even when not online. This material should include the course calendar, with all due dates for assignments and quizzes.
2) In the introductory e-learning course that I teach, there is a plethora of links provided for outside resources, ranging from profiling software that gives the student a snapshot of their technological abilities and knowledge to learning styles and time management, to netiquette, to website evaluation. Comments from students indicate that there is almost too much opportunity to explore the resources, requiring too much online time on their part.
3) Students frequently have a hard time tracking their progress, despite their access to the Gradebook feature of Blackboard. I also provide a one-page checklist of assignments that they can use to keep track of their progress. This is one item that I need to include in a course FAQ that could be either a supplement to the beginning of course e-mail message sent to all students or incorporated into the first announcement or two.
4) In Chapter 12 of Ko and Rossen, they discuss how to incorporate online elements into a more traditional classroom. With the experience that I've gained from teaching online, I believe that I am well-positioned to do just that, or to help other teachers do that.
5) Also, in Chapter 12, there was some discussion about how much course material to make available online at once. As a student, most of my instructors have followed the one-week-at-a-time approach. In the intro to e-learning class that I teach, the students have a clear preference for having the whole course content available to them. The course doesn't require a lot of collaboration at this level, so synchronizing discussions is not critical. The course essentially becomes self-paced. This 5-week session has seen one student complete all the course requirements in 3 days; another, in 8 days. Typically, these are advanced students who just need one credit to complete other degree requirements and would be bored stiff waiting for weekly assignments. Instead, they complete the one-credit course and turn their attention to other coursework they may have.

In all, Ko and Rossen have provided assurance that their approach is sound and I have been excited to incorporate some of their techniques into my course.

Also, I decided to review an article dealing with the chat feature available in many LMS's and a feature available in Breeze, which we will be using more extensively in EDTECH 582. I have used chat very little, maybe because I associate it with teens endlessly (and mindlessly!) "talking" to one another about inane topics. An article that interested me was found at: http://www.itdl.org/, entitled Faculty Use of Technologies in Online Courses. Chat was one of the three features reviewed in the article. The author's findings are summarized below:

Faculty used chat for two primary reaons: (1) students felt more comfortable since real-time chat was more informal; it brought in some authenticity and helped build a sense of community; and (2) it was efficient to use real-time chat to communicate and give immediate feedback.

Other faculty, who may or may not use chat gave the following reasons: (1) it was difficult to arrange for both instructor and students because students were from different time zones and had different schedules; (2) asynchronous discussion was more important because it forced students to reflect more and provide them more time flexibility; (3) it would take away one of the advantages of taking online courses; and (4) it would be an unreasonable burden for students.
Faculty who used chat used it in the following ways (responses listed in order of frequency from high to low):
1) Had students share their ideas for their own or group project and get feedback from the instructor and peers;
2) Had students visit virtual environment to explore possibilities of use in their [student ]teaching
3) Used Instant Messenger for office hours: Students can “pop in” to ask questions; and see when students are online and remind them of things
4) Used for interaction with a guest speaker;
5) Introduced everyone to each other at the very beginning of semester, and to answer any concerns that have come up in terms of using the tool;
6) Used for unit wrap-ups, discussed the main topics of that week, and clarified assignments;
7) Used for readjust course schedule; and
8) Used for personal communication.

It's clear that chat was used in lieu of other means of communication and seemed to be used when timeliness was not necessarily the most important factor; for instance, numbers 2), 5), 6), and 7) could perhaps be better accomplished by means of Announcements, group e-mails, or even student homepages. Another negative of chat that has bothered me is skill in keyboarding is a requirement for rapid communication and not everyone is skilled and spelling typically suffers, leading to unfortunate and unwarranted judgements of a learner's abilities.

Week 3 Reflections and Observations

This week has been one of comparisons. Since I teach a class online using Blackboard, and have since June, 2005, I am beginning to feel more comfortable in that environment. I feel limited in that my job is not that of an instructor, but support staff for the Department. Any analysis or improvement that I might do with the course is third in priority (at least!) behind job, coursework, and family. In Chapter 2 of Ko and Rossen, I found that I was in quite a privileged position: having some of the best resources and support available for online coursework. In all cases, I found that Boise State University has committed wholeheartedly to supporting online courses, instructors and students. This is not to say that other universities not have matched or surpassed BSU, but only that I am very impressed with the level of commitment of BSU. In every element of the material discussed in Ko and Rossen, BSU rated in the high-resource, high-solution categories. BSU has committed significant resources in quality IT support staff and Blackboard support staff, infrastructure in the form of redundant servers, high-speed networks, and some of the best equipment in order to serve the educational community.

As for other comparisons this week, our assignment to use a rubric of objective criteria to evaluate a sample of online courses was somewhat revelatory. The range of quality in the sample courses was significant, particularly in presentation, content, course management, assessment and communication. It was quite apparent to me that a course management system, such as Blackboard, made all the difference in providing a viable alternative to students who were used to the more traditional classroom. I came away feeling pretty good about the course I teach, even knowing that it can be improved significantly. I'm thinking that perhaps one part of it could be a pretty good project for this course...a win/win situation.