Category Archives: CS3: Maple Group

Well, it seems that Trinh is in a bind for sure. Some questions and suggestions that come to mind are:

*Did she explicitly state that students can get a hold her via numerous avenues and not set up just one direct email for questions or concerns?

*I understand that teachers and professors like to give students options for communicating between one another, but perhaps comments and questions between students can be done through blogs, twitter and Blackboard discussions? Leave questions to the professor via her personal email only if they can’t find the answer to it from their colleagues?

*Why are students emailing her so frequently? Are the course instructions not clearly stated in the beginning?

*She could set up 3 different blogs for the student’s living in South Africa, New Zealand and Finland? This way, all comments and basic assignment questions could be asked between the students and not having to always involve the professor? We do something similar with our Maple, Oak and Aspen groups. The groups wouldn’t be private either, allowing everyone to see and share their ideas.

*She could adopt the SOUL (Slow Online and Ubiquitous Learning) theory (Feng & Petrina, 2012). In my ETEC 511 course, we used this method and it allowed for a more deeper understanding of content and less stress by assignment deadlines. Perhaps her emails from students are asking for extensions or clarification, when the students could perhaps answer their own question if given more time?

*She could set virtual office hours via Skype or Blackboard Collaborate?

*At the end of each course, she could send out an online feedback form to the students asking for comments or suggestions? She could use this feedback for her future courses. ie) What do you find is the best way to communicate with the professor and with your colleagues?

Feng, F., & Petrina, S. (2012) SOUL (Slow Online and Ubiquitous Learning). Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/5065965/SOUL_Slow_Online_and_Ubiquitous_Learning_

Trinh certainly has some challenges to overcome. Seeing that all her students are already on-line rather than face-to-face allows her some opportunities. She could create forums for general questions and encourage other students who know the answers to help out. There are often many ‘experts’ who could help with technical issues for example. Also by having a central question bank, answering a question once will likely clarify the same question for other students.

She could schedule an ‘office’ time where any students could join via video conferencing such as Skype. As was done with this course, these sessions could be taped for those who couldn’t make it, but were still interested in the information. (This was very helpful by the way, thank you).

Trinh could have one email account forwarded to the other, creating only one place to check which would also avoid people sending communications to both. She also could use the Do Not Reply feature depending on the information she was sending.

I had a professor who explained that they would be highly active during the week but took their weekends away from the course, so to only expect communication on weekdays. She could choose a time when she is not available for communication.

Students working in groups could be directed to ask questions within the group first, then select one team member to communicate with the instructor and relay the messages.

Using feedback from previous years of commonly asked questions, she could make changes to the course reflecting clarified instructions or expectations.

Reading this case study, I immediately had questions.
What type of queries were Trinh’s emails asking?
Was there something about her course design that made the need for so many emails inevitable?
Were her students globally less experienced using the Blackboard Learn LMS?
Had Trinh indicated how students should communicate with her?
Were there boundaries in place? Perhaps, by making herself available in so many ways to her students she had opened a ‘floodgate’ of 24/7 access to her?
I am not blaming Trinh for bringing the problem on herself. However, there may have been something she had done inadvertently to create/ allow the masses of emails to happen. Likewise, I would not want her students to see her make a ‘retreat’ from being available to them. However, there has to be an effective communication system or else, Trinh will eventually burn out from teaching the course.
Here are some solutions:

• Create a F.A.Q.’s page
• Allow students to help answer some queries through a specified discussion thread
• Create guidelines for when a personal email is most appropriate – of course, sensitive emails, assignment extension requests, etc. would have to go directly to Trinh. These guidelines would also include whether or not it would be appropriate to ask questions of Trinh in her blog or via Twitter.
• Within some grouping system, have peers check in with their group when situations/ problems arise that may be handled by the group
• Initiate ‘virtual’ office hours for a chance to get immediate responses to queries, these could be set a few times a week to guarantee that all time zones have an equal opportunity.

My first reaction to Trinh’s communication issue is that appropriate community-building and teacher guidelines for students need to be put into place within the Blackboard community. She should create a dedicated space for public questions much like our 565A community on Connect; every other MET course I’ve been in has offered the same kind of space for student queries. Through encouragement of questions to be publicly asked in a specified forum, Trinh would certainly cut down on the amount of online spaces she should be looking in to remedy student queries. Secondly, with a course as large as this one, it might be a good idea to establish that peers may also feel empowered to respond to other peers’ questions if they know the answer. For questions that require more privacy, Trinh should specify that students ask them while sending to a specific email (either her campus email or Blackboard email) to alleviate those questions from going to two different places. If there seems to be a matter that is common across private email requests, she could make an announcement to alleviate the issue instead of replying to each individually with long-winded responses. When students post in the incorrect location, she could kindly remind them of the appropriate protocol for questions (to the discussion board or to a specific email) in order to reinforce management on this issue.

Trinh could also work to create some social presence within the course in order to strengthen the learning community. Garrison, Anderson, & Archer (1999) define social presence as “the ability of participants in the Community of Inquiry to project their personal characteristics into the community, thereby presenting themselves to the other participants as ‘real people.’” (p.89) By promotion of networking and story sharing within the student group, peers could also be alleviating one another’s questions and supporting one another in coursework, sometimes even in online venues other than the Blackboard discussion boards (social media, Google Hangouts, etc.).

Additionally, Trinh is hoping for learner-centred outcomes so I would suggest some flexibility in her approach to the differing student timezones. If lectures are being livestreamed, I see no reason why those livestreams cannot be archived and asynchronously discussed later. For example, if you record using Google Hangouts on Air, it will automatically archive to a YouTube channel. Those videos can be linked in a discussion forum and that can be an area that students can tap into while the event is occurring as well as after it is complete. This also creates a learning artifact that can be used in future iterations of the course. If Trinh is looking to make these discussion groups more meaningful to students, she could use Garrison, Anderson, & Archer’s (1999) strategy of breaking into smaller groups to provide more focused discourse on any topical issues. If she wanted to provide feedback in these scenarios, she could have those groups create a general report on their primary discussion points so that she didn’t have to read and give feedback to every single post.

Lastly, it’s not mentioned in the case specifically, but I would be under the assumption that qualitative student feedback for such a course would be a nightmare. In a student-centred environment, I would make the assumption that Trinh is not assigning quizzes or tests (I have not experienced any such assessment throughout my MET experience), but that she would rather provide students with enriching learning experiences through creative assignments. These assignments could be primarily group-oriented, and she could even include peer- or self-assessment components in order to aid her own assessment and feedback. Of course, not knowing the specifics of what would be included in an introductory museology course, I am unable to imagineer what such assessment and instructor-to-student communications might look like.

References

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (1999). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), 87-105. Retrieved from http://www.anitacrawley.net/Articles/GarrisonAndersonArcher2000.pdf