Good Evening Online Instructors,
I hope you had a nice holiday weekend. This week's blog post is dedicated to sharing a new tool with you on how you can personalize TED or YouTube lecture links you may add to your courses. "The free tool located here allows instructors to personalize YouTube videos and TED.com talks with additional content like discussion questions and links to resources."
What a great way to personalize your courses a bit more and tailor these already created lectures to be very course specific for you! Give it a try and let me know what you think.
Thanks,
Heather Thomton-Stockman
Online Instructional Specialist
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Monday, May 21, 2012
May 21, 2012
Good Evening Online Instructors,
This week I'd like to share with you some additional Teaching Tips on Discussion Board facilitation. These tips come from Cheryl Anderson, our Online Health Care Management Program Chair. Cheryl shares with us some great ideas for promoting early participation in the discussions, even participation in the discussions, and exemplar presentation in the discussions. I hope you find her thoughts and insights as beneficial as I do. If you have any questions or thoughts you'd like to add too, please just let me know.
Tips from Cheryl:
1. "When the discussion board starts each week, I thank the first learner to post for being the first to post. Encouraging an early start to the discussions is a big positive."
2. "As I am responding to posts, I will pick those who have no responses first. It seems that a discussion thread with many posts gathers even more. This means that those who have no responses often do not get read. The same students are often in this 'ignored' group. If I start responding, there is a little momentum going forward. All students then feel included in the discussion."
3. "I create an 'Exemplar' Discussion thread on the discussion board. I place this near the top of the discussion board. Every week possible, I invite learners who completed excellent assignments to post their assignment to this thread. I invite learners in the grade book as I am grading. It is up to the learner to share themselves. Almost all take great pride in doing this.
Posting exemplar work spurs others to see what is expected or what could be achieved. Those who are striving for excellence try to mirror this same type of scholarly work. Those that are chosen are rewarded for their accomplishments.
I post a personal note in the thread thanking each learner who shared for their nice work."
Thanks and have a great week!
Heather Thomton-Stockman
Online Instructional Specialist
This week I'd like to share with you some additional Teaching Tips on Discussion Board facilitation. These tips come from Cheryl Anderson, our Online Health Care Management Program Chair. Cheryl shares with us some great ideas for promoting early participation in the discussions, even participation in the discussions, and exemplar presentation in the discussions. I hope you find her thoughts and insights as beneficial as I do. If you have any questions or thoughts you'd like to add too, please just let me know.
Tips from Cheryl:
1. "When the discussion board starts each week, I thank the first learner to post for being the first to post. Encouraging an early start to the discussions is a big positive."
2. "As I am responding to posts, I will pick those who have no responses first. It seems that a discussion thread with many posts gathers even more. This means that those who have no responses often do not get read. The same students are often in this 'ignored' group. If I start responding, there is a little momentum going forward. All students then feel included in the discussion."
3. "I create an 'Exemplar' Discussion thread on the discussion board. I place this near the top of the discussion board. Every week possible, I invite learners who completed excellent assignments to post their assignment to this thread. I invite learners in the grade book as I am grading. It is up to the learner to share themselves. Almost all take great pride in doing this.
Posting exemplar work spurs others to see what is expected or what could be achieved. Those who are striving for excellence try to mirror this same type of scholarly work. Those that are chosen are rewarded for their accomplishments.
I post a personal note in the thread thanking each learner who shared for their nice work."
Thanks and have a great week!
Heather Thomton-Stockman
Online Instructional Specialist
Monday, May 14, 2012
May 14, 2012
This week's blog post offers an odd perspective that you normally wouldn't hear from me, but I think the following link from The Chronicle of Higher Education offers some interesting food for thought and serves as a good reminder of the importance of writing content quality: http://chronicle.com/article/Citation-Obsession-Get-Over/129575/
I wanted to share this article with you now as you may be grading mid-term papers or essay exams from Unit 6. It can be very easy to get solely focused on APA and mechanics when grading writing documents, because we emphasize these so often (and don't get me wrong...they are important!), but the overall content and critical thinking strategies exemplified in a student's work need equal (if not more) attention too. As the author of the article states, we need to teach our students the importance of "selecting credible sources, recognizing bias or faulty arguments, paraphrasing and summarizing effectively, and attributing sourced information persuasively and responsibly" (http://chronicle.com/article/Citation-Obsession-Get-Over/129575/ ). By doing this, and by emphasizing the importance of proper citations and mechanics, we will be serving our students well.
One final reminder, I am by no means pushing aside the importance of APA or mechanics, and I don't necessarily agree with the author's overall tone and approach, but I do believe he offers some interesting food for thought that can serve as a reminder to all of us about the intricacies and complexities of teaching strong writing skills and grading student work.
If you have any questions let me know.
Thanks,
Heather Thomton-Stockman
Online Instructional Specialist
I wanted to share this article with you now as you may be grading mid-term papers or essay exams from Unit 6. It can be very easy to get solely focused on APA and mechanics when grading writing documents, because we emphasize these so often (and don't get me wrong...they are important!), but the overall content and critical thinking strategies exemplified in a student's work need equal (if not more) attention too. As the author of the article states, we need to teach our students the importance of "selecting credible sources, recognizing bias or faulty arguments, paraphrasing and summarizing effectively, and attributing sourced information persuasively and responsibly" (http://chronicle.com/article/Citation-Obsession-Get-Over/129575/ ). By doing this, and by emphasizing the importance of proper citations and mechanics, we will be serving our students well.
One final reminder, I am by no means pushing aside the importance of APA or mechanics, and I don't necessarily agree with the author's overall tone and approach, but I do believe he offers some interesting food for thought that can serve as a reminder to all of us about the intricacies and complexities of teaching strong writing skills and grading student work.
If you have any questions let me know.
Thanks,
Heather Thomton-Stockman
Online Instructional Specialist
Monday, May 7, 2012
May 7, 2012
Good Evening Online Instructors,
This week's "Teaching Tips" offer additional strategies for ways to maximize the benefit of discussion boards for you and your students.
The first tip comes from Nancy Hislop, full-time medical assisting instructor. Nancy uses the discussion boards as a great way to teach and allow her students to practice proper APA citation formatting. In Nancy's words:
"I use the discussion boards to help students learn to do APA citations in my classes that have a paper assignment. I require students to do research for their discussion posts and they have to have citations and source lists in their discussion posts. I give them the first two weeks to start trying to cite their work and then they do not earn all the points on the discussions if they do not cite their work. By the time the papers are due, they are pretty good at doing citations."
The second tip comes from Brian Craig, Online Paralegal Coordinator. Brian likes to bring current events into his unit discussions and often uses Google News to insert key words and locate recent articles pertinent to those key words and topic focal points.
I encourage you to give one or both of these strategies a try in your own discussion boards and let me know how it goes.
Have a great Unit 6 and let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks,
Heather Thomton-Stockman
Online Instructional Specialist
This week's "Teaching Tips" offer additional strategies for ways to maximize the benefit of discussion boards for you and your students.
The first tip comes from Nancy Hislop, full-time medical assisting instructor. Nancy uses the discussion boards as a great way to teach and allow her students to practice proper APA citation formatting. In Nancy's words:
"I use the discussion boards to help students learn to do APA citations in my classes that have a paper assignment. I require students to do research for their discussion posts and they have to have citations and source lists in their discussion posts. I give them the first two weeks to start trying to cite their work and then they do not earn all the points on the discussions if they do not cite their work. By the time the papers are due, they are pretty good at doing citations."
The second tip comes from Brian Craig, Online Paralegal Coordinator. Brian likes to bring current events into his unit discussions and often uses Google News to insert key words and locate recent articles pertinent to those key words and topic focal points.
I encourage you to give one or both of these strategies a try in your own discussion boards and let me know how it goes.
Have a great Unit 6 and let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks,
Heather Thomton-Stockman
Online Instructional Specialist
Monday, April 30, 2012
April 30, 2012
Good Evening Online Instructors,
This week I'd like to share a "Teaching Tip" with you from Brian Craig, our Online Paralegal Program Chair. He offers a great, and very simple, strategy for connecting personally with each of your students in the discussion boards. The strategy Brian uses himself to make sure he responds directly to each student at least once during the quarter is to create a simple Excel spreadsheet with student names in the rows and the unit numbers in the columns. He then places an "x" in the appropriate cell when he personally responds to that corresponding student's discussion post. In Brian's words, this can "show that we care about each student." Thanks for this idea, Brian, and I encourage others of you to give this a try too.
If you have any questions, please let me know.
Heather Thomton-Stockman
Online Instructional Specialist
This week I'd like to share a "Teaching Tip" with you from Brian Craig, our Online Paralegal Program Chair. He offers a great, and very simple, strategy for connecting personally with each of your students in the discussion boards. The strategy Brian uses himself to make sure he responds directly to each student at least once during the quarter is to create a simple Excel spreadsheet with student names in the rows and the unit numbers in the columns. He then places an "x" in the appropriate cell when he personally responds to that corresponding student's discussion post. In Brian's words, this can "show that we care about each student." Thanks for this idea, Brian, and I encourage others of you to give this a try too.
If you have any questions, please let me know.
Heather Thomton-Stockman
Online Instructional Specialist
Monday, April 23, 2012
April 23, 2012
Good Evening Online Instructors,
I received some great responses from last week's blog post where I shared with you one of Sam Osterhout's "Teaching Tips." I'm so glad you are finding these tips helpful and beneficial. If you have a tip of your own you'd like to share, please just send it my way!
This week's "Teaching Tip" comes from Catherine Neset. She shared with me a great article from the American Psychological Association. This article highlights study strategies to help students at all levels of education succeed. Catherine has shared this article with her Ethics graduate class and I would like to share it with all of you in case you too, would like to share it with your own students. The article title is: Study smart: Make the most of your study time with these drawn-from-the research tips and can be accessed at http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2011/11/study-smart.aspx.
A particularly interesting finding highlighted in the article discusses the importance of interweaving - or mixing - topics and tasks when studying rather than focusing solely on one topic for a long period of time. As stated in the article, "the mixing — he calls it 'interleaving' — forces students to notice and process the similarities and differences among the things they're trying to learn, giving them a better, deeper understanding of the material" (2012). By emphasizing this to our students, we can help one another by helping our students see the connection of their course material and thinking more broadly about their education as a whole, which will ultimately help them to be more successful.
I encourage you to check the rest of the article out and share some of these ideas with your own students.
Thanks and have a great week!
Heather Thomton-Stockman
Online Instructional Specialist
I received some great responses from last week's blog post where I shared with you one of Sam Osterhout's "Teaching Tips." I'm so glad you are finding these tips helpful and beneficial. If you have a tip of your own you'd like to share, please just send it my way!
This week's "Teaching Tip" comes from Catherine Neset. She shared with me a great article from the American Psychological Association. This article highlights study strategies to help students at all levels of education succeed. Catherine has shared this article with her Ethics graduate class and I would like to share it with all of you in case you too, would like to share it with your own students. The article title is: Study smart: Make the most of your study time with these drawn-from-the research tips and can be accessed at http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2011/11/study-smart.aspx.
A particularly interesting finding highlighted in the article discusses the importance of interweaving - or mixing - topics and tasks when studying rather than focusing solely on one topic for a long period of time. As stated in the article, "the mixing — he calls it 'interleaving' — forces students to notice and process the similarities and differences among the things they're trying to learn, giving them a better, deeper understanding of the material" (2012). By emphasizing this to our students, we can help one another by helping our students see the connection of their course material and thinking more broadly about their education as a whole, which will ultimately help them to be more successful.
I encourage you to check the rest of the article out and share some of these ideas with your own students.
Thanks and have a great week!
Heather Thomton-Stockman
Online Instructional Specialist
Monday, April 16, 2012
April 17, 2012
Good Morning Online Instructors,
One of the requests from the end of the year survey I sent out before my maternity leave was for even more teaching tips and tricks in general, so for the next several weeks I will be sharing some specific expert tips with you. And to help me with this, I have solicited the assistance of your fellow experts in the fields...the online program chairs and full-time faculty members.
The first tip I will be sharing with you comes from Sam Osterhout, a full-time faculty member in the area of General Education (primary focus is on writing courses). Sam offers a unique and insightful look into a teaching strategy to help open the door to more student-instructor dialogue and to promote a more complete student-content/student-text relationship (I think we can all agree that getting students to read their texts thoroughly and critically can be a challenge at times...Sam's strategy strives to overcome this obstacle).
So here is the teaching tip for the week, in Sam's words:
"Give them zeroes. This one won't be for everyone, but I've found it helpful recently, particularly for assignments that seek to reinforce a specific skill that is covered by the text. If a student completely misses the mark, I give him or her a zero and tell him or her to revise/redo the assignment after reading the chapter on that topic, and submit it to me via email. If it's done properly, I'll give points for it. Let me give you an example. In composition, there's an assignment that requires the student to write several thesis statements to match several different topics. There's a chapter in the text dedicated to thesis statements. Still, I get some pretty amazingly off-the-mark assignments. On the topic of Pets, I get "thesis statements" like, "Pets. Dogs or cats?" On the subject of higher education, I get statements like, "College - to tell about college?" Clearly, there wasn't a lot of chapter reading going on. I used to give half credit and go to great lengths to give immaculately detailed feedback about what makes a good thesis statement, and how theirs didn't fit that criteria, and suggestions for change. Then I realized I was essentially just rewriting the chapter ten times a week. Additionally, I was doing a lot of the heavy lifting for my students, and while they followed my instructions, they didn't retain much of the lesson. Subsequent thesis statements on subsequent assignments weren't any better.
Now, for poorly written thesis statements, my feedback is simple: they receive a zero and a note: "You're on your way to a good thesis statement [I always start positive], but this isn't there yet. Reread the chapter on thesis statements, revise this assignment and send it to me, via email, with a note describing why these thesis statements aren't thesis statements. If your revision is effective, I'll give you points."
I find that the zero scares the students into taking action ("This guy's serious!"), and the revisions are usually gleaming jewels of perfection (well, almost). I also find that this opens the door to two-way discussion between me and my student. The revision email thread usually goes back and forth a few times. Imagine that - having a substantive email conversation with your student about thesis statements (or about any subject you teach). It's less work for me in grading, more work in dealing with email, but it's a more effective approach to teaching the concepts that drive my courses. And it builds on my relationships with my students. PS. when you go back into the grade book to add points, leave your original note in the comment box and add something like, "*Revision received via email." This just gives you a paper trail so down the road you won't wonder how you could have ever possibly given the submitted assignment points."
And just to add an additional thought to Sam's suggestion here, I would recommend when you go back into the grade book, that you actually upload a copy of the revised assignment using the Instructor Feedback area so that a copy is retained within CampusConnect too.
If you have any questions on this "Teaching Tip" please let me or Sam know. And if you have any great "Teaching Tips" you'd like to share with your fellow instructors, please send them my way!
Thanks and have a great week!
Heather Thomton-Stockman
Online Instructional Specialist
One of the requests from the end of the year survey I sent out before my maternity leave was for even more teaching tips and tricks in general, so for the next several weeks I will be sharing some specific expert tips with you. And to help me with this, I have solicited the assistance of your fellow experts in the fields...the online program chairs and full-time faculty members.
The first tip I will be sharing with you comes from Sam Osterhout, a full-time faculty member in the area of General Education (primary focus is on writing courses). Sam offers a unique and insightful look into a teaching strategy to help open the door to more student-instructor dialogue and to promote a more complete student-content/student-text relationship (I think we can all agree that getting students to read their texts thoroughly and critically can be a challenge at times...Sam's strategy strives to overcome this obstacle).
So here is the teaching tip for the week, in Sam's words:
"Give them zeroes. This one won't be for everyone, but I've found it helpful recently, particularly for assignments that seek to reinforce a specific skill that is covered by the text. If a student completely misses the mark, I give him or her a zero and tell him or her to revise/redo the assignment after reading the chapter on that topic, and submit it to me via email. If it's done properly, I'll give points for it. Let me give you an example. In composition, there's an assignment that requires the student to write several thesis statements to match several different topics. There's a chapter in the text dedicated to thesis statements. Still, I get some pretty amazingly off-the-mark assignments. On the topic of Pets, I get "thesis statements" like, "Pets. Dogs or cats?" On the subject of higher education, I get statements like, "College - to tell about college?" Clearly, there wasn't a lot of chapter reading going on. I used to give half credit and go to great lengths to give immaculately detailed feedback about what makes a good thesis statement, and how theirs didn't fit that criteria, and suggestions for change. Then I realized I was essentially just rewriting the chapter ten times a week. Additionally, I was doing a lot of the heavy lifting for my students, and while they followed my instructions, they didn't retain much of the lesson. Subsequent thesis statements on subsequent assignments weren't any better.
Now, for poorly written thesis statements, my feedback is simple: they receive a zero and a note: "You're on your way to a good thesis statement [I always start positive], but this isn't there yet. Reread the chapter on thesis statements, revise this assignment and send it to me, via email, with a note describing why these thesis statements aren't thesis statements. If your revision is effective, I'll give you points."
I find that the zero scares the students into taking action ("This guy's serious!"), and the revisions are usually gleaming jewels of perfection (well, almost). I also find that this opens the door to two-way discussion between me and my student. The revision email thread usually goes back and forth a few times. Imagine that - having a substantive email conversation with your student about thesis statements (or about any subject you teach). It's less work for me in grading, more work in dealing with email, but it's a more effective approach to teaching the concepts that drive my courses. And it builds on my relationships with my students. PS. when you go back into the grade book to add points, leave your original note in the comment box and add something like, "*Revision received via email." This just gives you a paper trail so down the road you won't wonder how you could have ever possibly given the submitted assignment points."
And just to add an additional thought to Sam's suggestion here, I would recommend when you go back into the grade book, that you actually upload a copy of the revised assignment using the Instructor Feedback area so that a copy is retained within CampusConnect too.
If you have any questions on this "Teaching Tip" please let me or Sam know. And if you have any great "Teaching Tips" you'd like to share with your fellow instructors, please send them my way!
Thanks and have a great week!
Heather Thomton-Stockman
Online Instructional Specialist
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