Ask the Students...Share with Others

A great strategy one of our adjunct instructors has been using in his classes with great success is asking his students:

• What do you like about the class?
• What works well for you specifically to be successful in this class?
• What strategies have you found for doing well in my class?
• How can I be a better teacher?

Then, taking that feedback and implementing it into his teaching strategies and sharing it with other students he has been able to help his students be more successful overall.

Here is an example announcement he shared in a class at the beginning of the quarter to help students "see" how to be successful in his class by "seeing" it from the experiences of others: 

>> Hi everybody!!

>>

>> Each quarter I send out this list of suggestions that students have e-mailed me over the years describing their strategies for doing well in my classes. I hope you find it helpful!!!!!!!!!!!

>>

>> NOTE: A special thanks to all those students who have sent in their suggestions in the past.

>> Please find their suggestions below:

>> ___________________________________________________________________________

>>

>> This class was to me difficult at first as I have never had much interest in this field of study etc, but one needs to be open to learning.

>> Other than the quiz's, which I do less than stellar on, what works the best for me to take each assignment and discussion board in pieces.

>> If I try and tackle the big picture for the week it can be a little overwhelming. It helps to break it down and focus on one thing at a time and in the end it all comes together.

>> I am sure because I am a little older than most of the students that makes a difference also, as I work a little harder to figure out how I can bring myself up to the challenge and respectfully complete my assignments each week.

>> The teacher providing feedback also allows us to be more successful in the class.

>> __________________________________________________________________________

>>

>> Every week I print out the unit content for the week. Then I highlight everything that I need to do and then once I complete each task I cross it off.

>> __________________________________________________________________________

>>

>> In this course it is important to provide an in depth analysis of the assignments/discussions.

>> Even if you think you are not on the right track, or stray from the topic- your effort is noticed! Especially when the assignment requests your opinion, your opinion can never be wrong.

>> Pay attention to the instructor's feedback, it provides you with great advice on how to improve your performance.

>> Use the skills you have developed in English composition. (Always use Spell-check!)

>> And last of all, effective time management. This is a skill that will get you through all of your courses.

>> If you are like me and procrastinate, there is still hope yet! Figure out what works for you and stick to it.

 

And the suggestion list continued with many more tips...the length of tips is truly impressive as it shows just how much feedback this instructor requests and receives, which I think is reflective of his connection to his students.  As we've heard many times, a strong sense of instructor-student connection positively impacts student success and student retention rates!  Give students a voice, and you'll grow as an instructor!

I encourage you to give this strategy a try for yourself and let me know how it goes!

Thanks,
Heather Thomton-Stockman
Online Instructional Specialist

Polls...What role can they play in your class?

This week I'd like to share with you a great teaching strategy that Jan Tucker uses in her classes and that was mentioned briefly in Friday's Main In-Service session, that is using Student Polls in your classes.  Polls are a great way to interact with your students and to gauge their understanding of concepts or expectations in your course.

Jan has been trying out Flisti, a free online polling site, in her classes and has found it especially beneficial in her discussions and announcements.  For example, in a matter of a few short seconds Jan created and embedded a poll during Unit 1 that stated:  "I have read and understand the class expectations --- Yes or No."  What a fantastic way to get immediate feedback from your students on something like this!

As I mentioned, Jan has been using Flisti, which allows you to create quick, free polls without signing up.  Our presenters on Friday also mentioned polls and one they mentioned was Polleverywhere.com.  Polleverywhere.com allows multi-modal polling, including via text, and is free for a single user with up to 40 responders. 

Particularly since we are mid-quarter, I encourage you to take this opportunity to check in with your students through a poll to see how they are doing.  Give it a try and let me know how it goes!

Thanks,
Heather Thomton-Stockman
Online Instructional Specialist

Plagiarism Help

We are getting to the point in the quarter where research papers and projects are getting underway.  Regardless of whether you teach a 100-, a 400-, or even a graduate level course, students can benefit from guidance and assistance in avoiding plagiarism.  There are many resources available to us as instructors to help our students navigate proper citation.  In addition to the great resources found at our online library, Stephanie Heald-Fisher, our Online Graduate Program Chair, shares with us a resource called plagiarism.org.  This site guides students on:

• What plagiarism is;
• How to cite sources; and
• Where to find citation and plagiarism resources.

Another tool for our students in avoiding plagiarism.  

If you have any questions please let me know.

Heather Thomton-Stockman

Online Instructional Specialist

Technology Can Infuse Motivation and Enthusiasm in Students

Veteran and top-notch online instructor Cathy Kennedy uses technology to enhance her teaching and her courses on a daily basis, and I am excited to share with you what Cathy says about technology in her classes and even share many of her great examples at work!

From Cathy:
"Using technology in online courses can infuse motivation and enthusiasm in students. One of the goals of using technology in my classes is to provide students with opportunities to interact within the course, with the instructor, and with other students. I believe that students want and need richer and more engaging online learning experiences and become immersed in the course when a deeper connection is made.

With the increase demand for online learning, it’s important for instructors to try to incorporate more technology into their courses, as technology plays a vital role in the development and expansion of online education.

Teaching an online course is quite different than teaching in the traditional classroom. I have done both for many years. These new technologies allow instructors to convey concepts in new and different ways.  I have seen students benefit and succeed in my course through my use of multiple teaching strategies. I see more engaged learners in the discussions, as I not only provide a “Prepare for Discussion” (Example) in each of my units, but I also engage every student in each discussion for the first three weeks to ensure that they understand what is expected, that they have been recognized, and have been given feedback (both in and after the discussion). I give them links to explore and summarize if they are not on track, and I also ask them to research to find more information that is on topic; expecting them to research and find information each week.

Using varied technologies in my courses (announcements, discussions, assignments, instructor profile, and e-mails) allows students to understand what to do, where to go in the course, what to consider, and how to complete assignments accurately, through the use of programs such as: Animoto, Go Animate, YouTube videos, Glogster, Cyberlink Youcam, Jing or Screencast-o-Matic. These are just a few of the many, many tools that you can use to engage, motivate, lecture and encourage your students.

Around the mid-term I make an Animoto video with music as a way to tell students they are doing a great job, and that the light at the end of the tunnel is near. Most of these programs can be downloaded into a YouTube video. I sometimes make ridiculous videos of myself wearing hats or something corny, and yes they are corny, but students seem to like them; or at least they tell me they do! This makes a connection and shows that I do have a human side. I try to incorporate music, graphics, explanations, motivation, clarification and animations to help reiterate a point or topic. Sometimes topics can be rather dry, such as limitations on tort lawsuits. I created rather fun Animoto using a Mission Impossible music and theme to get them interested, which I provide along with written instructions. I also have a weekend video that I made in Animoto as a way to let them know that I know they have been working hard, and that it’s also important to take a little time to relax.

Rather than explain how to do these things, I put together a video by splicing some of the technologies that I use together (using Cyberlink Power Director11). I’ve used most of the technologies listed above. You can see how I use them by clicking this link. CLICK HERE and turn up your speakers!

I hope you will try out some of the tools listed above. Most are free (except for Power Director).

There is also a way to make interactive videos in YouTube where students can make choices.

Here is an example and further below is a website to tell you how to do this.

CLICK HERE FOR INTERACTIVE YOUTUBE VIDEO

Below are some websites that offer advice, tips and discussion on using technology in the on-line courses that may help you.

Using the Technology of Today in the Classroom

http://education.mit.edu/papers/GamesSimsSocNets_EdArcade.pdf

Eric Klopfer, Scot Osterweil, Jennifer Groff, Jason Haas

The Education Arcade

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Prof DeBock’s Innovator Network

http://innovationslab.wordpress.com/best-of-the-blog/

Prof DeBock has helped me with many youTube videos in his “how tos”

A quick guide to interactive YouTube videos

Barach, Paper, Scissors (YouTube interactive video examples)

http://www.mediabistro.com/10000words/quick-guide-to-interactive-youtube_b334

Animoto

How to Make an Animoto Video

http://help.animoto.com/entries/415073

GoAnimate Quick Video Maker

http://goanimate.com/video-maker-tips/how-to-make-a-video-quickly/

Glogster

http://goanimate.com/video-maker-tips/how-to-make-a-video-quickly/

and

http://edu.glogster.com/

Screencast-o-matic

http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/

Last, many of these have been discussed in Heather  Thomton-Stockman’s blog!"

Thanks for these great ideas and examples, Cathy!  I encourage all of you online instructors to try out at minimum one of Cathy's ideas and let me know how it goes.  After all, as Cathy said, "technology can infuse motivation and enthusiasm in students!" 

Thanks,
Heather Thomton-Stockman
Online Instructional Specialist 

Put it to video!

Do you have announcements, examples, directions, or any other written document in your course that students routinely DO NOT read?  If you answered yes, you are not alone!  In fact, Linda DesJardines, Lacey Finley, Laurie Haj Ashab, Meggan Hansen, Catherine Neset, and Elise Roberts all shared with me that this was an area they struggled with previously but have seen success in hurdling over by putting things to video!

When I say "put it to video" you don't need to have sophisticated recording devices; rather, using your headset and one of the free online screencasting tools -  like Screencast-o-Matic or Jing - you can quickly and easily articulate, demonstrate,  and explain to your students both visually and with audio what you are trying to convey.

• Catherine Neset shared with me that when she put to video some documents that previously were in the class but seemed to have been ignored by students, she immediately saw a difference in student use and understanding of that information.  
• Meggan Hansen uses screencasting to help demonstrate processes for students to emulate in their own process completion (seeing then doing).
• Lacey Finley highlights to her students the importance of viewing these videos by placing "IMPORTANT, PLEASE VIEW" with the videos and she has seen their viewing rates triple in certain courses.  

Our goals as instructors are to get the information to students, help them comprehend, synthesize, and utilize the information, and ultimately be prepared to use it after course completion.  But if we aren't successful at getting the information to them to begin with, we cannot progress to the next steps.  Video might help in being more successful in that first step.  Give it a try!

You can find information on Screencast-o-Matic and Jing - as well as other video resources - by clicking on the labels on the side of this blog.

Thanks,
Heather Thomton-Stockman
Online Instructional Specialist

Evernote...Tracking Student Success

Good Morning!

Building off of the great strategy for taking notes that I explored in last week's blog post, this week I'd like to share approaches Meredith Butulis, our online Health Fitness Program Chair, and Katie Adams use in their classes.

Meredith shared with me how beneficial Evernote, a free online notebook readily available to you from any online medium, is for keeping track of her students in a quarter and beyond.  Meredith points out some of the great benefits of Evernote for her and her students:  "I keep a notebook for every student in Evernote.  That way I cannot only refer back to it to make material individually relevant throughout the course, but also accumulate information on students in the program.  This is very handy when it comes to trying to help with letters of recommendation, Externship searches, or career placement!"

As the Evernote website states:   "Evernote makes it easy to remember things big and small from your everyday life using your computer, phone, tablet and the web."  I encourage you to check it out and give it a try!

Katie also takes notes on her students, particularly if she receives messages from them about sick kids, a lost/stolen/broken computer, a dog being put to sleep, a scheduled surgery, weddings, etc.  Then after about a week or two Katie sends the student an email to follow-up asking how he/she is doing, congratulate him/her on the event, mention she is there for support, or communicate whatever is appropriate for the specific life event.  This is yet another way Katie shows her students she is there for them and recognizes that "life" also happens during one's education.  As Katie said to me, this has been "hugely successful - learners are incredibly overwhelmed by these communications."  Katie puts herself in her students' shoes and looks at how she would respond if she got these communications too, "I like to think if this was me as a learner, I would feel connected regardless of the online environment!"

Thanks for the great resources and ideas, Meredith and Katie!  And I encourage all instructors to give one or both of these strategies a try!

Heather Thomton-Stockman
Online Instructional Specialist

Welcoming Students and Making that Personal Connection

Good morning and welcome to 2013 and a new quarter! 

This quarter in my blog I will be posting best practices from some of the "best of the best" of our instructors so that we can all learn from one another.  If you have something you do that works great in your class(es) please let me know as I'd love to share with the rest of the faculty too!

With it being the start of a new quarter, I want to share with you a great strategy Catherine Neset has used in her classes during Unit 1.  During Unit 1's discussion, Catherine responds to each student's initial post and personally welcomes each student to the course, which I know many of you also do, which is great!  It is a great way to extend that personal touch right from the start. 

What Catherine also does during this process that I'd like to highlight is she jots down notes for each student based on what he/she has communicated in that discussion thread.  Those notes help Catherine connect individually with each student and to the class as a whole throughout the quarter.  This process has benefited her students greatly!  Here is a great example of how:
"A few quarters ago, I had about 1/3 of my bankruptcy class that were already employed and working in a creditor-type job.  Some worked for collections, some worked in mortgages, some worked in billing in a business.  The bankruptcy syllabus and course is designed from a debtor point of view.  Knowing that a chunk of the class needed a creditor perspective to benefit their employment, I was able to find examples and post additional resources to meet that need.  Personally, my background is on the creditor side of the equation, so I had fun with this."

This great example shows how connecting with our students from day one can really help to shape the success of the class as a whole!  I encourage you to give this technique a try and let me know how it goes!

Once again, welcome to a new quarter.

Thanks,
Heather Thomton-Stockman