Mobilizing Faculty into the Future: Using Online Technology as Teaching Tools

More documents

Recommendations

Info

The URLs are active only to me with a password since D2L is not a public site – but here are the links that lead to the main page of the two earliest sessions of online and hybrid MCOM 430 courses: Summer 2008: https://d2l.sdbor.edu/d2l/le/12070/discussions/List Spring 2009: https://d2l.sdbor.edu/d2l/le/88188/discussions/List Here are examples of the kind of “reminders” that are given at the News notes at the course home page to urge students to participate in online discussion. Examples of online course reminder at D2L News notes / Course Home page - You are required to participate in online discussion for 20% of your final grade. The online participation criteria are attached here. Note that even just one good discussion post per chapter gives you 65% for participation. Four or more posts are excellent and is the goal. You can either start a thread of discussion yourself, or respond to others. Discussion helps you learn by doubling up on the journaling process, expressing your thoughts, and sifting through others' ideas. If you have an A going in the class in other projects, but do not discuss online, your grade may drop to a C or D. If you have a B or C going in other assignments, and choose not to discuss, you may fail the course. Posts are accepted for full credit until the end of the weekend - midnight on Sunday - following the week that chapters were assigned EXCEPT the final week of class when all posts are due by the time you take the exam FOR CREDIT. Forums are open 24/7 throughout the course until the time you take the final exam. You can return to chapter forums throughout the course for learning. Late posts will be considered for some credit at the end of the course, and can make SOME difference for you, especially if there is a borderline grade. Final exams must not be discussed online. If so, forfeiture of course grade is the outcome. Example of hybrid course reminder at D2L News notes - IMPORTANT TO REALIZE: participation is a full 20% of your final grade. FIVE percent of that is online discussion related to readings and topic related to class. Reading and discussion leaders will guide online discussion. The rest of participation is related to work and production done in class as individuals and groups - so attendance is important. Online discussion is open up until the time of the final exam at the end of the semester - however, full credit for this participation is given when posted deadlines are met. Twenty percent participation equals at least one grade level and could be more. For example - B work overall can go to a C or even a D if participation is non-existent. And so on...attached is participation criteria, which has been loaded at the Content link, too. Methodology 1 - Purpose: The general pedagogical purpose of the online discussion forum activity is to encourage interactive “social” learning through open-forum discussion in a blog-like space (http://www.blackboard.com/sites/social/thought-leadership/ myths.html). Although not necessarily recognized as a traditional “public” social medium, the privately accessed site of Desire2Learn was my initial introduction in 2008 to a lively online teaching and learning space that a majority of students in either an online or in-person classroom setting accessed and used effectively per my instructions and guidelines. I was able to develop guidelines and assessment criteria to structure and measure discussion activity, just as I would for any in-person class. The realization that in-classroom rubrics and criteria for assessment and measurement were adaptable to online learning spaces was one of my biggest successes - it was really not difficult to figure out. In comparison, in the news industry, the lingo-term is called “shovel work” – wherein any news story that is produced in hard copy can be translated directly to a website in its original form – nothing needs to be changed, as either newsprint or a website is simply the chosen format/venue to present information. The contents of the material remains the same. Methodology 2 - Process: The D2L system is fairly intuitive and non-threatening to the user – it may be aligned with the mass media theory of uses & gratifications http://communicationtheory.org/uses-and-gratification-theory/. Essentially, the instructor 5
can set up the forums however they’d like and however many they’d like and for whatever purpose. The instructor is definitely “at the helm” in creating the pathways for learning. The students are able to take the reins and run with all of it, though, as the guidelines allow them to post in response to the instructor’s posts, start a thread of their own on a topic of their choice, and/or respond to other students’ posts. The forums are open all the time for convenience and for “anytime inspiration”. I created a detailed criteria sheet for how-to-post-for-credit including both qualitative and quantitative examples of how student activity would be measured. These criteria effectively spanned use in both online and hybrid courses, clarifying the goals of achieving a grade. While the D2L system has been upgraded in format over the past six years and has become more complex, in early versions as in 2008 and 2009, a direct link to the Discussion site was located on the navigation bar on the course home page. (In the current version, the Discussion forum is located at the top of a list of options in a drop-down menu under the navigation-bar link of “Communication”.) Once at the Discussion site, I was easily able to create new forums for each of the 14 textbook chapters from “The Law of Journalism and Mass Communication”, by Robert Trager, Joseph Russomano, Susan Dente Ross. http://college.cqpress.com/sites/medialaw/Home.aspx. I still use some of the same posts and questions / prompts that I used for the chapters in 2008 as they are timeless in terms of their content. The instructor has the option on each D2L forum to create multiple topics under the main category of the forum, as well as the option to add small-group activity rather than – or in addition to – having the forum open to everyone at once. While I experimented with these options the first year, I favored large-group discussion – open to all of the students in the course all of the time. I found the most active, lively, diverse learning taking place in the large-group forum. By Summer 2009, I did away with the small-group forums as they were rarely used in discussion by students. During the summer online sessions, in addition to each chapter forum, the first involvement for students at the Discussion site was a forum to introduce themselves and “break the ice” by saying where they were from, describing their former involvement / experiences / impressions of online learning and also briefly explaining their goals for the course. In other years, I added a forum specifically focusing on law vocabulary because of the immense amount of new language in the topic matter. I also experimented with adding a forum focusing on the course’s case paper, as well as a current events section -- only certain students accessed these specialized forums occasionally while the majority stayed with the chapter discussions. These specialized forums were not required for participation points, but were provided rather for convenience, additional detailed exploration of a topic, and/or a space to ask questions about an assignment. The reminder of “netiquette” policy -- and the participation policy, overall -- also helped students from being rude or crude when discussing controversial topics, and or trying to figure out how to post, or what counted as a post, in general. Methodology 3 – Practical Issues: Since the function of D2L allows the instructor to view the exact dates, times and lengths of access of each student, I was able to note that students would enter the Discussion forums for the course at all times of the day and night. Some students accessed the course for short intervals of 20-30 minutes several times a day and other students accessed the course once a day for a longer period of time, such as two-three hours at once, for example. In the 2008-2009 years, I urged students to access the forums on a parallel with the study of each of the text chapters. I did not place a deadline for credit of posts on any of the chapters. The majority of students kept up with posting in a timely way as the chapters were addressed chronologically throughout the course. As the years progressed and students became more familiar with D2L and regular, routine use of online discussion, the novelty and sense of privilege may have worn out (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/02/04/facebookis-10-years-old-and-half-of-users-are-sick-of-the-oversharing/). After a couple years of working with D2L, I found that more students would wait till later in the semester to enter the Discussion forums rather than keep up the pace. Some students even waited to post until the last couple days of class in the online summer sessions and the last couple weeks of class for the spring hybrid session. In turn, in order to keep up the lively pace of discussion for both online and hybrid in a timely way, in 2011 I put a deadline-for-full-credit for posting at the forums. This new policy gave more specific direction to students to take advantage and post “on time” for full credit, although the forums were always open – and postings were welcomed at any time and could “make or break” a borderline grade at the final hour of the course. I have also found in recent years as compared to the early years of D2L 2008-2009 that I’ve needed to remind students much more often about the need to post at the discussion forums. Students were more readily independently active in online posting in 2008-2009. 6
Page 2 and 3: This page intentionally left blank
Page 4 and 5: Mobilizing Faculty to Engage in Soc
Page 7 and 8: Acknowledgments ••••••
Page 9 and 10: The editors of this e-book welcome
Page 11: Desire2Learn in Media Law Mary Cato
Page 15 and 16: social media, in particular, now al
Page 17 and 18: Mary Caton-Rosser Ph.D. Pedagogical
Page 19 and 20: and creativity. Students later tran
Page 21 and 22: 1 2 3 4 5 Poor Excellent Explain yo
Page 23 and 24: udget. My hope is that someone will
Page 25 and 26: Facebook in State & Local Governmen
Page 27 and 28: Joshua Houy J.D. Pedagogical Statem
Page 29 and 30: Methodology 2 - Process: 1. I set u
Page 31 and 32: Blogger in Civil War & Reconstructi
Page 33 and 34: Kelly Kirk M.Ed. Pedagogical Statem
Page 35 and 36: Methodology 4 - Effectiveness: I th
Page 37 and 38: YouTube in Composition II Bernie Kr
Page 39 and 40: Bernie Krambeck Pedagogical Stateme
Page 41 and 42: Methodology 2 - Process: The Humani
Page 43 and 44: YouTube & Google Drive in Basic Wri
Page 45 and 46: indicated that students were ahead
Page 47 and 48: ArtStack in Introduction to Art His
Page 49 and 50: Erica Merchant M.F.A Pedagogical St
Page 51 and 52: 6. The photo that received the most
Page 53 and 54: group 2 •••••••••
Page 55 and 56: Methodology 2 - Process: 1. Set up
Page 57 and 58: Blogging in Social Psychology Aris
Page 59 and 60: let for expressing their views, 23%
Page 61 and 62: Prezi in Early Childhood Ed: Guidan
Page 63 and 64:
explore Prezi as a collaborative le
Page 65 and 66:
Vicki Linn Ed.D. Pedagogical Statem
Page 67 and 68:
Assignment as Given to Students: Th
Page 69 and 70:
Chris McCart Ph.D. Pedagogical Stat
Page 71 and 72:
Blogspot & Blogger in Hydrogeology
Page 73 and 74:
(It would be good to hyperlink to t
Page 75 and 76:
Abigail Domagall Ph.D. Pedagogical
Page 77 and 78:
force in the marketing world.”
Page 79 and 80:
• Describe your Pin [type the art
Page 81 and 82:
An advantage of the Pinterest repor
Page 83 and 84:
glossary r e so u rc e s •••
Page 85 and 86:
glossary r e so u rc e s •••
show all

Mobilizing Faculty into the Future: Using Online Technology as Teaching Tools

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?