Category Archives: CS3: Oak Group

It seems that the main problem is to organise communications in an organised manner. I would put a policy:
1. I need a 1 week minimum to reply to emails or blog posts, tweets…etc.
2. Webinars will be hosted weekly for 2 hours on Friday 12:00PM EST (It works for most of times zones)
3. Posted questions or problems must be accompanied with a proposed solution

I recommend using the free online webinar service: www.bigbluebutton.com

Teaching presence as defined by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (1999) is crucial when establishing a community of inquiry. It is therefore important that Trinh be able to respond promptly to any queries and have her presence felt by the students, without it becoming a burden.  I would suggest a two-fold solution; first by carefully transferring over some responsibilities to the participants and the website itself and second to establish something similar to office hours.

I would highly recommend that Trinh first consider the questions and queries that she is receiving.  She needs to determine if these should be addressed directly to her as a teacher or whether technical support or a well-designed FAQ could help divert some of the incoming mail.  Equally she could establish, if not already done so, a place on the course website where people could ask questions to the entire group.  This hopefully would alleviate some of the emails by sharing the facilitation responsibility (Garrison et al., 1999) with the other participants of the class.

The second part is establishing a fix session in which her students can reach her online through a live forum, collaborate or google hangouts.  The transcripts of these online discussions can be saved and shared; hopefully alleviating some of the communications.

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), 87-105.

My main suggestion for Trinh is to develop a routine and strictly follow it. My first year of teaching saw me teaching 300 students and it’s an understatement to say I was panicking about how to handle that many students and their many, many needs. However, a veteran teacher gave me the best piece of career advice that I have ever received—don’t smile for the first month. My colleague didn’t mean it literally, rather, the statement really means to get into a routine and follow it strictly for a month. My colleague explained that, if you can follow something for a month, it will become routine for the teacher and for the students.  So, don’t smile, Trinh.

It’s hard to tell someone else what to do, but if I were Trinh, this is my suggestion:

Cut down and set boundaries.

Trinh’s students have multiple ways to contact her, and while that seems to make her accessible, I think it’s achieving the opposite. With so many ways for students to contact her, there is no way Trinh can keep up with the volume of incoming messages and something is sure to slip through the cracks. So, the first step is to choose only two avenues for contact: one for urgent matters and the second for less-urgent matters. I think Trinh should provide a single email address to students for urgent matters and a social media outlet, Twitter, for example, for less-urgent matters. By cutting down on ways for students to contact her, the barrage of messages should subside.

Which email should Trinh use? That’s up to her, but it should be one that she checks regularly and it should preferably be an email designated for work only. If Trinh uses Twitter, she should implement a hashtag so she can easily view all relevant tweets easily. I imagine Twitter would be used much like we’re using it in this class—students sharing interesting things and engaging in casual social interactions. The Twitter feed could also allow students to help each other—if someone posts a question or solution while using the hashtag, other students will benefit from the shared information. The Twitter feed will also help the students in different locales a way to create a sense of community, which is extremely important.

Now that Trinh has streamlined the communication methods, she needs to set boundaries for responding to messages. What I personally do is I tell students that they can email me anytime, but that I will only respond to emails between 8:00 am and 6:00 pm (my working hours). This is the same suggestion Jo made. Only responding during work hours probably won’t work for Trinh because of the various time zones she has to accommodate, so the best bet may be to have a 12 hour window (8:00am-8:00 pm)—this hits working hours in most time zones. Building on Jo’s suggestions, I would add that Trinh should set a maximum response wait time (12 hours, for example) and communicate this to her students. Setting a maximum wait time will cut down on students constantly messaging because they’re not sure if Trinh has received the message. If a student doesn’t receive a response within 12 hours (while also keeping the acceptable hours of response in mind), then they are free to email again. The time frame will also keep students accountable—they’ll learn not to leave things to the last minute if they expect a timely response.

Once these boundaries are explicitly stated, Trinh needs to follow them strictly. I don’t teach at the university level, but I think students are fundamentally the same—they like routine. A routine is comfortable and students want to feel comfortable, so they’ll follow the routine.

Anticipate and Prepare

Another suggestion for Trinh is to set up an FAQ page on Blackboard Learn. If it’s not the first time the course has been offered, Trinh can probably anticipate potential questions or problems. Addressing these directly on Blackboard Learn provides the students with a resource to consult before they resort to contacting Trinh directly. I’m not very familiar with how Blackboard Learn works, but I assume there is a way to “pin” the FAQ post so it is always visible?

This is an aside in response to Jo’s question about why the guest lectures must be viewed as a live stream. I realize this is just a case study for discussion, but as a student on the other side of the world from British Columbia, I find this requirement quite unreasonable and baffling considering Blackboard Learn has the Collaborate feature (although maybe this isn’t a feature included in all licenses?) Expecting students to make themselves available for live streams, even when it’s stated as a requirement of enrollment, is a significant demand with significant consequences. Having the Collaborate sessions recorded for this course was a godsend for me as there was no way I could attend the two scheduled sessions—one was at 3:00 am my time, and the other was during Lunar New Year where it would have been completely inappropriate for me to excuse myself from my partner’s family’s celebration. (I realize that I am responsible for setting priorities, but this was a special case—it was my first time visiting my partner’s hometown and the first time meeting his extended family.) The recorded sessions allowed me to feel included instead of feeling disadvantaged because the scheduling didn’t work out for me this time. I’ll be honest, if recordings weren’t available I would be feeling very resentful right now–either for having to wake up at 3:00am or for missing out. I think, with so many options for recording and sharing lectures available, that it’s an outdated notion for students to be required to view a live stream. What happens if technology fails? Do the students in locations outside the host university miss out? Additionally, requiring students to view live streams does help foster a welcoming community for learner, rather, it sets the students in other time zones up as outsiders.

Reading this case study, my first impression is that Trinh fell into a common trap for educators who want to make themselves available online, which is that her students are spoiled for choice.   I too have made this mistake in the past, receiving student questions through more than one e-mail address (gmail and the school system), Edmodo, and wiki comments.  Students would ask why I didn’t reply to them, and it was because I hadn’t checked absolutely all of the different venues through which they might have contacted me!   I learned I could synch all alerts to push to my smart phone, but this wasn’t exactly ideal, either, as I still had to login to the specific platforms from which the message was sent in order to reply.

If I were to do this again, and the advice I would give to Trinh, would be to choose one (maximum two) venues for students to be in touch, and insist they stick to them.  Ample alerts and postings should be enough to hold at least post-secondary students accountable, and after a failed attempt at contacting the professor after not paying attention, they would likely not make the mistake again.  She could set a signature for all posts that remind students to be in touch through the preferred venue.

In previous courses with MET I’ve had instructors post specific times of the week where they could be reached via chat, through skype, typically.  Not all have been as available as Natasha, but I’ve never felt ignored by an instructor when I’ve reached out through their Blackboard contact.  By specifying these digital ‘office hours’, perhaps with exceptions granted when students were especially struggling, Trinh may find her correspondence needs more focused.

In another group Victoria raised the excellent point that Trinh may be able to enact preventative measures by encouraging students to assist each other in the course by turning to each other as peers, rather than relying solely on their teacher.  It has also been raised in more than one thread that live-streaming or video chatting may be a useful tool, which can be later archived and kept for others to view at a time that better works for them – just as Natasha recently did with the LMS Q&A sessions.

By whittling down her options to those that Trinh feels are the most useful, and stressing the importance for students to also be thusly focused, she would hopefully find her time more effectively managed.  I know I will be keeping these thoughts in mind for the next courses I plan and create a blended environment.

It is interesting – once we take down the physical walls of our classroom, so to do we take down conventions of time. Where once we would wait outside a professor’s office door to ask a question, now it is customary to email a professor at 2 in the morning. With that comes the expectation of a timely response. Asynchronous learning places a new level of stress on instructors – while the goal was to provide students with an opportunity to learn on their own schedules, this can make educators feel like they are teaching on everyone else’s schedule. Some ways that educators, and Trinh in particular, can help alleviate this stress, could include:

1. Define communication protocol – educators need (very early on in the course) to identify for students ways that communication should take place. Whether that be by personal email, messaging within Connect, blog, etc., teachers need to identify what manner they would like students to communicate ideas and concerns. By defining these guidelines, Trinh will be able to ‘cut-down’ the number of platforms she needs to check on a daily basis to ensure that her course is running smoothly.
2. Define a response time – most people identify a 24hr period within which they will reply to emails. It can become overwhelming, especially when email is forwarded to personal devices such as phones. Restrictions and self-discipline become important concepts.
3. Create a ‘Q&A’ forum within the course so that students can pose course-related questions and other students can answer as well. Creating this sharing environment further develops the skills that are at the heart of eLearning.
4. Provide opportunities for synchronous Q&A sessions – in several other MET courses, professors used the live chat function in Connect to offer ‘tutorial’ style sessions. These sessions were not mandatory, but provided people an opportunity to join a live discussion about the course and ask questions and seek clarification. Often these sessions allowed the professor an opportunity to go into more detail and explain more clearly a topic or idea. These experiences became very rewarding. For Trinh, this could provide her with an opportunity to discuss common concerns that have been expressed by students and possibly eliminate some of the asynchronous communication that she normally experiences.

Cheers,

Mark

I am wondering if the following strategies might help Trinh:

1. Trinh could set up some potential guidelines to help students be a first line of support for each other before contacting her. For example, she could ask them to ask each other if there are general questions about the course that they may want/need help with. It would only be after they have asked each other, and not been able to resolve a situation that she would be contacted. I have found that this is a process that other teachers in f2f  have employed, and it seems like it would also be effective for on-line courses. However, it can be taken a step further. At the beginning of an on-line course (especially one the size that Trinh teaches) students may have difficulty establishing a sense of community. In some situations it could be beneficial to immediately “pod” some students to be form initial support peers for each other. Members of pods could also access each other for additional support. This might cut down on the number of contacts students make and also benefits the class by encouraging students’ development of a learning community – often a foundation of a learner centred course.
2. As far as organizational logistics, although this does not address the number of e-mails she receives, Trinh could clearly specify which e-mail address she will respond to, and which she will not. Ideally, only one would be used to send information to students – this way students can use the same one to contact Trinh. She could also clearly state that questions via her blog and twitter will not be responded to (and stick to that rule). While this will probably not eliminate students contacting her through multiple avenues, it might help simplify some of the contact.
3. Another organizational decision Trinh could make relates to the concept of “office hours”. When the above While the conventional “office hours” are not possible, there are ways to streamline Trinh’s contact for the times when students do need to contact her. A number of people I know have designated specific times in the day when they will read and respond to e-mails. People are free to e-mail when they want, but they are automatically notified that their e-mail will be read during a specific time period. Given that Trinh’s students are in different time zones, she may prefer to have her “on-line office hours” staggered to respond (as best she can, given her own time zone needs) to different time zones.

I do have a minor question regarding this scenario. I wonder why it is necessary for all students to participate in the live stream of lectures (as one example of the range of multimedia activities). Why couldn’t the lectures at least be saved and made available for students to view at their own convenience (especially as it is an on-line course with students in diverse time zones)? Asynchronous communication can still occur relating to lectures.

Jo