Reaction to readdings Blendkit 2017 Week One.

For Blendkit 2017

Is it most helpful to think of blended learning as an online enhancement to a face-to-face learning environment, a face-to-face enhancement to an online learning environment, or as something else entirely?

In response to the question of how to conceptualize a blended course, I must say that based upon my experience, blended learning can’t easily be defined in terms of face-to-face vs online. Sloan defines blended as 30-70%, but I wonder if perhaps a better measure is how much the online portion impacts the rest of the course. 10% of a truly meaningful online experience could be more than adequate to influence the remaining 90% in the classroom, so is this web-enhanced, or truly blended?

To me, blended is more of a spectrum of implementation from a single assignment online to the other extreme of a single meeting in the classroom . My first experience with what I suppose could be considered blended learning was in 1995 when I created a series of images based upon period for a face-to-face art history course. The idea was to augment the classroom experience by presenting students with themed artwork from a period or style to support classroom learning. Each section had a quiz online attached. While that differs greatly from many modern implementations, it illustrates to me that any technology-enhanced online experience that supports or replaces portions of a classroom experience can be defined as part of a blended course. That said, the definition of blended makes no claim as to the quality of the final product.  That is a separate issue. 

 In what ways can blended learning courses be considered the “best of both worlds” (i.e., face-to-face and online)? What could make blended learning the “worst of both worlds?”

This has more to do with the quality of the content and the approach than anything else. Poor pedagogy that is not informed by best practices and a lack of awareness of the differences between blended and either online or classroom is going to lead to poor outcomes. Course design that is aware of best practice and that leverages ideas that can best be conveyed in a blended modality will result in a better outcome. It is more driven by the dewsign and commitment of the instructor than  anything else.

Thoughts from the readings in BlendKit 2016, week 5.

Thoughts from the readings in BlendKit 2016, week 5.

The first statement that struck home this week was that accrediting bodies articulate requirements for academic programs where “Such statements typically define levels of minimum acceptability for particular dimensions.. ”

Having been involved in this field for several years, it is the truth that when faced with areas of expertise that are not familiar, people have a tendency to shoot for minimum acceptability. One problem comes in when there is no agreed upon measure of what acceptability is, or when acceptability is based upon a single teaching paradigm or example. Much like everything else in education, there is no one-size-fits-all. When it comes to program or course or approach, evaluation is best framed in the context of the educational institutional goals, philosophy, and the teaching style of the individual instructor. That is not to say that best practices should not be present, but that there should be recognition within the organization that there are many different means of expression when designing and teaching a course, regardless of medium.

So perhaps part of the standardization of measurement should be based upon the structural requirements and minimums there rather than in the curriculum itself, in much the same way that one can dictate a minimum participation within a course, a set of requirements for a syllabus, or even a set of behaviors in the classroom.

Measurement of a course, be it online, hybrid, or classroom will be subject to the variables of the organization and the individual instructor.

Another area in the reading that works with this idea is the Evaluation Checklist for Onlineand Blended Courses from UW Milwaukee. This contains a list of specific items and general philosophies to include in courses, rather than talking in terms of specific course structure and delivery. To me this seems a much more realistic approach as it leaves the creator of the course free creatively, while providing elements for the best practices that can be incorporated or not depending upon approach. There are numerous other takes in terms of standards from Blackboard to iNACOL, allof which have merit. The question that I believe will never be answered is how to apply any single assessment instrument or for that matter assessment philosophy to all cases.

Since this is the last week of the course, I'd like to provide the URL to the readings for the course, You can find these, and a plethora of thought provoking information here.

Thoughts on the BlendKit 2016 readings Week Four

Thoughts on the BlendKit 2016 readings

Content + Assignments = Modules as a “boxed lunch” of learning experience.

When we are talking about organizing content in a course that is designed to be partially taught online, and partially taught in the classroom, the question becomes how to build the experience so that the best parts of both mediums work in conjunction to create a complete, coherent, and naturally flowing experience.

This is one of the topics that are explored in the readings this week, and one that I personally am very interested in. The trick is to integrate the learning in such a fashion that each experience, be it online or in the classroom supports each desired outcome clearly. Content, understanding, and measurement of understanding must make sense to the student and also be clearly documented. Some of that is accomplished by attaching clearly articulated expectations, objectives, and narrative to the learning experience, but in in a hybrid format the mode and construction for each portion of the experience is equally important.

Some questions to ask would be how (in what mode) the content best is presented? How much of the content is technology dependent? Based on the objectives, what methods and technologies will best achieve learning from exposure to basic understanding, to mastery? What is the composition of the course in terms of online component vs. classroom? Also, what mode does the instructor work best in, flipped, partially direct instruction, or some combination of constructivist, constructionist, or other presentation mode?

Another aspect of this is how the students learn best. Does the course lend itself to the use of technologies and software design learning experiences, or is the approach more social, and if so how social? Is there a place for social media, or does the social aspect best reside in the course shell as chat and discussion board? That, in my experience, is dependent upon the comfort level of the instructor, the topic being covered, and the environment that students find themselves most comfortable in. In the many MOOCs that I have participated in for instance, there are clear preferences within the population for different communication methods. A group within a course may prefer Facebook or Twitter, while another group within the course may prefer asynchronous discussion boards. Do we differentiate for both groups, or does the instructor pick a single method?

The reading also covers learning activity types and technologies associated with them. These are broken down into Assimilative, Adaptive, Communicative, Productive, and Experiential. These would seem to be fairly inflexible categories, but they are not. One could have a productive assignment (such as journaling), with an assimilative  aspect if the journaling were was to be done by an appointed student exemplar who was tasked with reacting to next week’s readings prior to them being released to the rest of the class. Further, that journal could become the basis for individual reactions could be discussed in the classroom or as comments to the journal online. What I am trying to point out here is that there is any number of possibilities when constructing assignments and these can address multiple types and also integrated across online and classroom.

Ultimately, the tools that we use to construct meaningful lessons and assignments across online and classroom experiences that bridge the gap between the two modes is limited only by our imagination.

Thoughts from the BlendKit 2016 readings for week 3.

Ideas from Week three readings in BlendKit 2016.

I’ve been involved in assessment for quite a while. One of the areas covered in this week’s reading is the need to provide assignments that clearly are ready for assessment. I find that a rather odd thing to present to an audience that does instruction for a living. Perhaps it is my background in assessment and experience with accreditation, but the idea that an assignment (or even course) would be presented for academic credit without such things as objective and outcomes, expectations, and some sort of process is foreign to me.

In order to have an assignment that clearly lays out to students what they are expected to do, how they are to do it, and how they will be graded as a result, the assignment needs universally present component.

Blendkit 2016 lists these as name of assignment, objectives, recommended resources, expectations in terms of time, effort, and format, level of group participation, process, and grading criteria.

In my experience, a well-organized assignment is a narrative or roadmap. It can be organized chronologically, in terms of organization, or a combination of the two. From a student perspective, I think the order is critical as well.

I would probably combine these a bit more. Students will want to know up front

1. What the assignment is (title and description)
2.  What it is worth (in terms of points and also in terms of overall value in the total course grade), which wraps grading criteria and method such as rubric or objective quiz/test in as well.
3.  When it is due
4. Overall process to complete it. That wraps expectations, level of work expected, and participation.

Using these as headings in the assignment universally within a course, especially in a standardized format helps students better understand the assignment and expectations without having to search for information. Of course this is assuming that there isn’t a large amount of variation in explaining the intricacies of the assignment.  You mileage will vary.

Student generated test questions

The idea from the reading is that students be asked to come up with their own questions for inclusion into an upcoming exam based on the content.

This is another one of those AHA moments for me. I’d never considered doing some sort of assessment by having students create their own test questions. It is a great idea for an understanding check and also as a potential diagnostic tool.  You could tell a lot about what students are learning by what they put down as potential quiz questions, and probably even more by what is omitted. If you get nothing back on larger segments of the content, that may indicate that there is not as much emphasis, or that there is another problem. You may even find that they have generated questions in areas that you had not considered. 

Blendkit 2016 Week Two Reflection

One of the areas that are covered in this, the second week of Blendkit 2016 is the role of the educator. Coming from a predominately constructivist perspective which I have come to understand over the years is not all-inclusive in its effectiveness, this is of great interest to me.

The first question that resonated with me was that of whether learners require guided learning or can construct understanding by themselves. This is a tension between constructionist and constructivist ideas that have been present since I first started in this profession. The answer that I have come to myself is that there is really no right answer to this question. It is entirely situational. If you are teaching low level skills, the types of things that one would find, coincidentally or not, easily translated to a self-study tutorial, then yes, minimal guidance is appropriate. But there are other variables to take into account.

If the content being presented is higher level and requires a degree of prior knowledge that students are not guaranteed to have, then available guidance is a an important part of assuring that learners are able to understand the materials. Another aspect, which is not as obvious, is learner motivation in learning. If the person engaging with the content has a strong desire to master the materials then there is more internal incentive to go the extra steps to assure that they understand the materials. If there is not that level of engagement, then an outside voice serving in a guiding capacity may help the student over whatever hurdles may have been discouraging otherwise. This is strength of peer to peer communication in classes following a constructivist model, that voice can be another student providing clarity.

Another question in this is the overall makeup of the learner themselves. I have been involved in three programs over the years. One is a graduate program in education, the second and third are continuing education programs. In all cases the makeup of the students attending these courses causes the formation of different communities with different personalities and levels of engagement and collaboration overall. Because of this there are, across multiple offerings of the same course, times when more guidance is needed for the group as a whole, and times when students are more self-directed, and times when they are in need of guidance.

So to me there really isn’t any one-size fits all approach, at least in my experience, to the question of guidance. It is critical for the instructor to be involved and to be able to “read” the group of learners with whom they are dealing, and provide the appropriate level of support as needed.

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I also found very interesting the section constructing assignments that encourage expression. This is by its nature a question of engagement, as to my mind one cannot express some creative product without having a context to work from, which, if we are doing the instructional design right, means interacting with the materials presented at the highest level of Bloom.

The first question posed is who the learners will express them to. I have to confess that audience above and beyond the class itself had not occurred to me. I suppose that hearkens back to my insular traditional undergrad and being, at least then, a product of a direct instruction model where the only real two way interaction possible was with the instructor and the other members of my classes (usually accompanied by a PowerPoint). So the idea of “student” (and I use this is the traditional classroom sense) work being available to the public is not an idea that I automatically gravitate to because of my traditional college experience.

Based on what I am doing right now, posting this reflection to my blog, I was really missing the boat on this approach.

The second question is how students will express themselves? That is almost an infrastructure question really. It has more to do with what the instructor/facilitator is comfortable and capable of accepting than it is possibilities. Portfolio, Storify, podcasts, blogs, wikis, Infographics, and so on, can all be valid depending on the . Perhaps that is a question that is better addressed in a syllabus based upon the goals of the instructor and the their comfort level with embracing new forms of expression?

Next is the need to provide some sort of guidelines or framework for this expression. Again this depends on the comfort level of the instructor and whatever level of structure is required. The reading points out  that clear instructions and guidelines for plagiarism are two examples of guidelines. Other guidelines might be a list of potential platforms for creating the assignment for submission, as is mentioned above, and an example of an exemplary submission or two certainly wouldn’t hurt in setting expectations based on example.

Finally, we have the need to acknowledge student views, or providing feedback on the assignment. There are so many potential means of accomplishing this. In a hybrid setting this might include voting or student peer review (in Canvas, our current LMS, “likes” are even an option), classroom review by students and facilitator, or perhaps even bringing in an outside expert to talk about the assignments where appropriate.

All in all, this reading was thought provoking and pointed out the myriad ways in which we can provide valuable experiences for learners in the classroom and online. Clearly, even if a single well designed exploratory assignment is offered through a face to face class using a web enhanced model, the possibilities for creative and engaged responses are limitless.

-Lloyd

Reflections from readings in Blenkit 2016

I have been following Blendkit for three years now, and have basically taken what I need and not completed. That has been primarily because I have been working solely in online course development. Now I am actively involved in reinventing a program from a purely classroom mode to one where the course takes place 50% online. This requires a different take on my current skill set. So Blendkit 2016 become much more directly relevant to my continued education. Over the next few weeks I will posting reflections here as part of the assignments for this MOOC, based upon the readings.

The reading for the first week is on the nature of blended learning and the differences between it and a standard face to face course. While I appreciate the theory and the approaches to hybridizing courses, I find that what works for me is a little different. I'm not  a systems guy as much as I am about individualizing the experience of creation for the instructor, differentiated design for the strengths and weaknesses of the faculty member.

Much like anything else related to education, there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to developing a blended/hybrid learning course. Based on the reading and my experience with faculty, the amount of blend and what is contained within it has a lot to do with instructor teaching style, what they find valuable in terms of the interaction that they want directly with students, and also their comfort level with moving content online in the first place.

The type of course components that are best suited for a blended approach are also dependent on the instructor, which is why I think that a systems approach, while valuable if you can get buy in from your faculty on a standard delivery method and look and feel, many times will not work. Some faculty will see more value in a standard lecture approach, with the study materials and some student to student interaction in the online component, while others will wish to flip their course so that the majority of their time will be spent reinforcing the content.

In our case, since we do not wish to deal with accreditation issues in our courses, blended means less than 50% online. At the other end of the spectrum one graduate course that I attended was entirely online with the exception of being bookended with face to face courses that acted as an introduction to the course at the beginning, and a wrap-up and in-person presentation of class projects at the end. Again, it appears to me that the decisions is based upon what works best for the subject matter, the curriculum, the faculty, and student needs.

Design is an important aspect that ties back to everything I have mentioned above. Leveraging what faculty do best in the classroom is important, as is meeting student needs realistically. There are potentially a huge number of factors that play into design.  I suppose in the end I am more of a broad conceptualization type of designer.

 There are so many potentially valid approaches to mixing online and face to face content and delivery that using a single prescribed approach won't work in most cases. As I have redesigned courses that are fully online using my own experience and best practices, practices that I have arrived at over the last twenty years, I  am frequently reminded that my approach, and for that matter any given standard approach to ID, does not fit all cases. It pays to know what your tools (theories, technologies, and social interaction) do best, but it also pays to be flexible enough to help faculty leverage what they do best.

Thank you Linda for reviewing this!

Flipped video and the value of asynchronous playback.

I had not thought about it this way: I have been working on adapting a program from classroom to blended/hybrid (20 years in this business and still not sure of a definitive difference between these two), and ran across the document below in a MOOC. It struck me reading this that part of the value added by recording parts of a classroom lecture and using this in the LMS is the ability to emulate what is done in an asynchronous discussion, but with video. Students have the ability to replay portions of the video to catch content and nuance that they might miss in the classroom. I think we all go into meetings or classes and from time to time miss critical ideas or cues because the cell phone vibrates or some other distraction occurs.

If lecture videos are chunked, and edited for relevant content, they become potentially a more valuable learning opportunity than a simple video capture by itself.


http://www.educause.edu/library/resources/7-things-you-should-know-about-flipped-classrooms

Interesting and accessible reading from Campus Technology on ADA standards for classroom AV

This area has been an interest of mine for some time, and I have read up quite a lot on ADA compliance in a number of areas, but this is one of the best short overviews, complete with graphics, that I have seen recently.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/11/11/decoding-ada-standards-for-classroom-av.aspx

Seven Keys to Effective Feedback

This article is very helpful in defining the difference between true feedback, advice, and evaluation. The specific characteristics of feedback provide a means of evaluating your feedback to students prior to providing it. The could be adapted to a rubric for student peer assessment very easily, with fields of goal-oriented, timely, actionable, tangible, and user friendly. It also could easily be the basis for a PD exercise or brown bag.

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept12/vol70/num01/Seven-Keys-to-Effective-Feedback.aspx

Teaching Adolescents How to Evaluate the Quality of Online Information | Edutopia

This is an excellent and very accessible article on helping middle school (and I daresay any other level) students evaluate online resources for relevance, bias, accuracy, and reliability. If you are experienced in this area then you will find little in this article that is not familiar, but Julie Coiro's approach was useful to me in thinking about how to structure a lesson plan on this topic.



Teaching Adolescents How to Evaluate the Quality of Online Information | Edutopia

Reading a lot of iconoclastic writing about instructional design this week.

Today was sort of a watershed for me in terms of coming to grips with instructional models. I'm out actively looking for employment again, having been a "house Dad" for a year and a half. Earlier today. Many, if not most of the positions out there in distance education are citing the need for deep understanding of a model of one sort or another. ADDIE comes up frequently, as does ARCS and some variation on Merrill's component display theory (or at least some portion of it) in the advertisements. I'm familiar with, and have used these. My problem with them in the past is that they are fairly rigid and do not necessarily account for the organic nature of the teaching and learning processes, or with the individual idiosyncracies of the instructor or the content? So I have been pondering whether or not I am the only person finding these inadequate for the way I work.

So I am reading the materials in BLENDKIT2014 and I run across this statement:

"Brent Wilson (1995), a pioneer in e-learning, has been cautioning online course designers about the  downside of a systems approach for the past decade: An environment that is good for learning cannot be fully prepackaged and defined A more  flexible approach will open the doors to more possibilities based on learner goals and needs. However, as pointed out by Bates and Poole (2003), “a flexible approach requires a high level of skill to be effective”."

Yes! That's it. A model is simply a set of guidelines, and a set that may not be completely applicable in every situation. So what can we do to make the model more closely fit the organic nature of the educational process?

Canned feedback in online courses. What educational theory does that?

I just ran across an example of a means of feedback that I found a bit disturbing, but perhaps necessary in some cases.

In the past when I have needed to give feedback on assignments in classes I am am teaching, I have individually crafted responses. I will admit to having reused phrases when running into the same issues in essays over and over. I tend to treat these opportunities as "teachable moments", and so there is a requirement on my part to address the issues in a personal manner reacting to the individual and what I know of them instead of just the question or issue.

My experience is based upon class sizes that were never in excess of 50 individuals. That is my caveat.

But what do you do when you are dealing with the work of say, 150 individuals and you only have so many hours in the day?

Apparently a popular answer to this is to create a document with canned responses to assignments or problems. It is simple enough to copy and paste from the document into the feedback section of the assignment or the discussion and then customize with student name and any other information that is pertinent. In addition some instructors use macros to insert specific feedback into documents. These are interesting ideas, though I am hoping to never be in a situation where I need them. In an online course that is built on a basic constructivist model the primary role of the instructor is that of guide and/or curator and/or facilitator and/or concierge, which demands individually tailored interaction with the students.

Given that the ideal class size (the last time I looked) in an online class was something in the late 20s to low 30s, I wonder if these larger class sizes can meet the definition of constructivist, or are they constructionist, or something else?

Using Audio and video in the online course, some recent observations.

I am currently taking four MOOCs at the moment and finding some very interesting applications of video in these classes. To start off, video introductions and lectures seem to be quite common in the MOOCs that I have been associated with. That is not my mode when teaching, but that is partially due to my own preferences in mixing content. I'd prefer to use video by professional speakers and of ideas and concepts introduced by something other than a talking head. However I do understand how this might be valuable based upon your teaching and learning styles. It is particularly valuable when illustrating something highly visual, such as math or science.

After having spent several weeks with a variety of different approaches to video I have a few observations for what I consider to be best practices in the area. The suggestions below are equally applicable to regular online courses. Here is the list:

1. Chunk. A 40 minute video followed by a 15 question quiz is not a good way to avoid cognitive overload. I can understand this approach if the video cannot be edited for some reason, but at that, there should be some attempt at reinforcement prior to trying to assess. My approach would be to either break up the video into  minimum of half a dozen segments, each reinforcing  a concept or related objectives, followed by some sort of exercise to reinforce, and then followed by a short quiz for each segment. Give students an opportunity to interact with the concepts introduced and deep process them prior to the quiz. A single long video forces students to take notes in order to make certain that they record each point. While this is similar to what happens in the classroom, it is without benefit of being able to interact with the instructor. In effect it is the worst of a lecture format.

2. This is actually related to the above. If you are going to use a classroom lecture or a conference presentation for your course, make sure that it is miked properly. If it is difficult to hear, then that compounds the difficulty students will have in understanding and engaging in the materials. Most video editing programs allow you to modify the sound in a video. Modify the content to be easier on the ears.

3. If you must narrate a PowerPoint or series of PowerPoints as content, there has to be some creativity in the presentation. Two most common problems that I have seen so far have been using the same bank of a dozen background slides for numerous presentations and allowing computer screen items to pop up on the screen while narrating. The former gives the impression that little thought went into the presentation. By this I mean that even in  a series of short videos designed to create a 60 minute presentation you need some variety. Using the same dozen slides over and over again doe not build student engagement. In my case it breaks concentration while I wonder where I have seen the image before. I suspect that I am not alone here. The other issue is having something like an Adobe acrobat update notification pop up in the middle of the recording. It is distracting and does not lend itself to a professional looking content piece. Also it takes little time to correct, just pull your video into an editor and replace the popup with the slide for the duration.

4. Do use closed captioning. In a MOOC, many of your students will be taking your class outside of the normal work day. Your students will thank you if they can watch your videos with the sound turned down while sitting with a baby or significant other sleeping next to them.

5. Do use a transcript. I'm thinking of how much easier it would be to review for a quiz or test (see number 1 above) if there is a transcript to read rather than having to scan through the 40 minute video in order to locate a concept that you would like restated. At the very least, if possible, make the outline for your lecture downloadable from the course.

6. Make your lecture video available as audio in MP3 format. It is not difficult to use a video editor or Audacity to strip the audio portion from your video. Making this available for your online students gives another means for them to access the lectures. Again, many students will be non traditional, and allowing them to listen to your lecture while driving to work or working out at the gym is just another way to help make them successful. It is also a much smaller file size and can easily be downloaded even with a slow Internet connection.

7. Allow your video lectures to be downloaded. Again it gives students more opportunity to view the videos away from the computer. It is easy enough to load a lecture in the proper format onto a multimedia device or cell phone and the view it at leisure.

8. Do use video in your online class, but be sure that your audience can access it. Use common formats and always be aware of your audience. I realize that high speed internet seems ubiquitous to those living in highly populated areas, but if your audience is rural, or low income, there is a chance that they will not be able to view streamed video of high quality.

Building faculty participation in blended learning: Scaffolding the experience to create more interest.

Right now, as I go through BlendKit2014, I am thinking about how one entices faculty into using the LMS and then eventually teaching regularly in it. I actually started thinking about this a few weeks ago when a friend of mine, who is an instructional designer/other duties as assigned type, told me that her university required all faculty to upload their syllabi into the LMS for student access. It initially didn’t kick in as to what that might accomplish. It occurred to me that doing so requires that all faculty have at least the basic training to be able to accomplish that task.

It was sort of an AHA!! moment for me. The first step toward acquainting faculty to the LMS had been accomplished.

This week in the readings for BlendKit2014, I am faced with the same idea. To get faculty to start looking at blended learning as an opportunity, you can simply start with the syllabus. Let’s think about that for a moment. As a teacher, I have always put my course syllabi in a prominent place in the course online. The benefit there is that no student can claim to have not had access to the syllabus. I make it available in Word and PDF formats for download, and also an HTML version to read online. It is actual a bit freeing knowing that you will not get the excuse that the student did not see the assignment or deadline in the syllabus. If they have access to the LMS, they have access to the syllabi.

So making faculty put syllabi on the LMS, even if they use it for nothing else, provides a great perk. It also potentially opens the way for other time saving additions such as posting class materials and other content that insures that students can get to the assignments and lecture materials anywhere, again creating a situation where the responsibility for providing the content is moved from the instructor.

So now we have a very positive slippery slope. As instructors rely more and more on the LMS, they may be more and more tempted to see how it can not only simplify their teaching but also provide different means of teaching. At that point we begin to leave the realm of web-based course supplement into the realm of blended learning.

Thinking about blended learning

So I have started reading up on blended learning as an alternative to both online instruction and completely face to face. I have done a great deal of both of these modes of delivery, but I have never really considered (above and beyond having to incorporate online resources into a F2F class, or having an in-person or synchronous web conference in an online class) quite what the differences might be in implementing something intended to be used equally and of equal importance in both . I guess you could say that it never occurred to me to put the chocolate AND the peanut butter together.

 Right now I am working through what pedagogical advantages there are to connecting these two modes. The first I can take from all of the experience that I have in online teaching and learning.

Blended creates:
1. A sense of place. This is so hard to accomplish in an online course.
2. Makes instructor and other students "Real". Suddenly there are real humans with real mannerisms involved.
3. Group work that doesn't suck. Yes, there are real people working on the assignment, and it is so much more difficult to not participate when you can't simply walk away from the computer.
4. Community can be built in a number of different ways. If you have ever been in a strictly online course, you have probably run into someone who you would like to meet in person. Here you can.
5. Allows the instructor to do what they do best in person. Let's face it, some of us are dynamite lecturers in a way that is hard to duplicate on video. Alternately, some of us are better online and should probably stay there most of the time and flip the class during F2F sessions.
6. the Technologies can be a major or minor consideration depending on how they support class objectives.
7. You have more types of tools to build the course with.
8. Students can use resources for self-study that just aren't practical otherwise.
9. It is easier to change content for the online component in reaction to student interests and  understanding.

BlendKit 2014 starts next week!

Free MOOC for teachers starting next week. It is offered in part through EDUCAUSE and University of Central Florida. From the research that I have been reading lately, blended learning is the fastest growing segment of distance education. After all it allows you to move some of what you do from the classroom to an online mode, saving time for instruction in the classroom among other things. Note that there is also an optional certification that might be useful for proof of professional development/growth. Have a look!

BlendKit 2014 - Becoming a Blended Learning Designer.

So how do we assess the casual MOOC student?

 This is actually a continuation of the post below.

I have continued playing around with the idea of student participation in MOOCs and have come up with some thoughts about the nature of student involvement and motivation. I am wondering, now that I have been in three different MOOCs, if we might be measuring success using the wrong criteria. In general, success is measured by retention and grades. From my limited experience so far it seems to me that many people do not necessarily come into a MOOC with the intention of finishing. Instead they are present for the solutions to specific questions. If they are only there for a short period, but get from the materials and the discussions what they joined the course for, then how do we measure that success? If they complete then that is reflected in the conventional sense, but to not complete does not necessarily mean that the individual’s objectives were not met. Perhaps the measurements are too linear? Or perhaps they depend too much on conventional academic “trip wires”. So how do we build in a means of measuring the success of a course that does not necessarily have to be completed in order to meet the learner’s needs?

I think the most obvious would be a survey of some type, but that too is very conventional and since there is no requirement, because of the nature of the free MOOC, for a student to respond to a survey, then there is really no guaranteed means of returning useful data for evaluation of course success. Another thought that was rattling around in my skull re this problem was some sort of embedded assessment. Let’s say something similar to what is in this course, where there is discussion in support of a set of concepts that culminates in a product of some sort. One could put some kind of assessment at the end or perhaps embedded in the materials itself to gauge understanding and satisfaction, Likert scale maybe? But that really doesn’t do it either. The student does not have to respond to that either.

Then it occurred to me that one of the best methods might be in the discussions themselves.  That is the permanent persistent record. After all it is just one large database of information. If one could export all of the database fields related to the discussions, sort these by the user, date, and initial post vs. response, and then run some sort of search for key terms within it, then that could indicate from within the discussions that there was a question/solution within that discussion. That might be one way to handle evaluating MOOCs for success. You would not be able to do that with any of the major private MLS providers because the database schema is proprietary, however it could be accomplished if the course were in Moodle, Claroline, or Sakia, (and probably others) which use an open source database as a backend.

The key could be in designing a series of searches for key words or phrases that  demonstrate a question and an answer or series of answers. I don't know just how fuzzy these searches would have to be, but probably the more potential "action words" the better. If the search were run against both post and response then a pattern might emerge that indicates that learning has taken place. If the response that most closely answers the question of the original poster is the last post that the OP makes, then there is a probability that the answer has been found. Likewise, if we could search the posts that the OP accesses, we might be able to find, based upon the last few that were viewed, that the OP has found what they came into the MOOC for.

 I am thinking that the casual MOOC student has a great deal to draw upon from the community that is established by those who are in the course for the long term. These people, as I posited in an earlier post, become the community of practice/learning community, and so act as a pre-fab resource for the casual participant. They become a kind of corporate memory that the casual user can use to answer those specific questions they are participating for, complete with background information provided by the preexisting discussion posts. Who the casual user responds to and in  what context might also be helpful in developing a sense of what defines success for them. That again might be something that could be mined from the database of discussions. 

Thought on MOOCs, retention, value, and community (of practice?)

A friend of mine posed a question that I have been reflecting on. I am in the process of participating in no less than four MOOCs, and have noticed some patterns.I've also been reading about poor retention rates for MOOCs and also the nature of community in MOOCs. This has led me to the following questions and ideas about the dynamics of communities and the nature of learners in these environments.

Several people enrolling in MOOCS that I am participating in seem to check in for a short period of time and then leave, not completing the entire course. That seems natural enough to me given that most MOOCS, at least the ones that I have been involved in so far, have no tuition, and no credit hours associated with them. That means no investment, and so no requirement to complete. A few in the introduction discussions state flat out that they are in the course for the parts that interest them specifically..

So when I was asked what a MOOC that was designed for the short term learner would look like, I suspect it would look much the same as the MOOCs that I am in now, where the goal, at least ideally is to have students complete the entire course. My reasoning for this is that ultimately, unless we are talking about modules for e-learning for some sort of incremental professional development, the goal of a course is to build ideas and concepts across a series of lessons to a consummate whole of some sort. Individual modules don't do that. There are always students in any fairly well designed course who will stay for the duration in order to get the whole picture, obtain the certificate, or simply learn all that they can about the subject matter. So maybe the MOOC has a dual purpose where some view it as a complete course while others view it as a shorter term educational opportunity.

The benefit to those that stay with the course only long enough to gain information on some subset of the content is that they do not have to sit through an entire course in order to get it. It is essentially just-in-time education to them. But what is fascinating me is the role of those students who complete the whole course.

If we assume that one of the building blocks of a successful online course is the establishment of a learning community, then those who stay with the course the entire length and participate in the discussions in an engaged and deep sense develop into that learning community. They also become a sort of corporate knowledge for the course. If that is the case, then those who are there only for a short period have access not only to the content that is specific to their needs and goals, but also to a community that has developed around these materials. So for the length of time that students participate in the MOOC they are also gaining the benefit of a community that reflects more depth and variety of understanding than could be had if they were only accessing the content itself.

So in the end, the long term MOOC participants add value for those only attending for specific content and ideas. The learning community becomes a source of instant expertise and support for those who are only there a short period of time.

I'm finding this a very interesting concept. So far I have seen a few people enter the MOOCs with what appears to be a single question that they would like to have answered. Maybe that is part of why MOOCs succeed. There is depth enough for those seeking it and at the same time a community that can address the needs of those who are there to simply mine the course for specific answers.

It could be that current means of measuring retention in a MOOC is not reflective of its success. If we only measure those who complete the entire course we may be missing some different kinds of learning that the MOOC is successful providing. Also, perhaps creating a MOOC that gives some sort of incremental credit based upon time in the course might make a better measure of the relative success of the course. Interesting to ponder.

Moocs

OK, I admit it. I have been somewhat against the idea of the MOOC for serious academic work for some time. Part of my trepidation has stemmed from the lack of a structured community that can be created using a traditional course shell and a great deal of instructor/student interaction. I have always felt that it is the facilitator that makes the course, acting as that "guide to the side" who helps assist students in their journey to understanding without overtly forcing content down their collective throats (now there is a picture).  Students should have the ability to build relationships to better create community and so a higher level of synthesis ala classical constructivism. This model has been my mantra for many years.

Since I have time on my hands, I have decided to dive into MOOCs and see what they have to offer from the inside. I have done this in the past with online courses when I have wanted to see the methods (for better or worse) that others use in facilitating and designing courses. I have tried one MOOC, shortly after Stephen Downes started advocating them a few years back. It was a less than stellar experience. At the time I was not impressed, as it resembled to me the online equivalent to a mosh pit. Little organization and even less self restraint in discussion.

I am currently participating in two upcoming MOOCs. The first is through Swinburne University on a type of rapid online course development known as Carpe Diem. The second will be yet another distance education certificate, this time through Coursera. I'm already detecting some real differences between what I saw in the past and the current MOOC. The Swinburne team has had the foresight to start a facebook page on the course, which I think is acting to help acclimatize students to the course prior to actually beginning the Blackboard based exercises. This is one of those AHA! moments for me, in that using a familiar widely used social platform can be a gateway to helping people transition to a system that they may not otherwise have used in the past.

More to come...

New provider, new site.

I'm going to start developing a new website over the next few weeks to refresh my memory on using ASP.net and PHP. It will be at disorderedsystem.com (my domain for the last ten years or so). I'll also be developing a new site for onlineeducator.us (only had this one for about 8 years) in the near future. This "could be" a distance education news aggregator, or perhaps something similar, though not quite. :-) More as it (literally) develops.