Reflections on Learning Technologies

Boris is a great 11 chemistry teacher who is trying to help his weaker students learn the periodic table. He “is trying to find some way to create a stand-alone, self-directed review tool for students learning the Periodic Table”. There are a number of resources available on the Internet and in the form of iOS and Android apps. Therefore I might recommend to Boris, some of the following options:

It’s Elemental: http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/
Jefferson Lab: http://education.jlab.org/indexpages/elementgames.html
Proton Don: http://www.funbrain.com/cgi-bin/pt.cgi?A1=s&A2=1&ACOMMON=1&submit=Play+Proton+Don

Boris might also consider creating his own interactive game using PowerPoint. Here are some samples I created using hyperlinks in PowerPoint: Quiz Creation (instructional video)  or I Spy Drug Identity game

This video shows to create a PowerPoint quiz. To make such a quiz available to his students, Boris can, once the Periodic Table quiz is created, save it as a PowerPoint “show”, save it to a public folder in DropBox and then share the DropBox link with his students in the LMS.

For formative assessments he can either create quizzes using existing LMS tools or he can use Google Forms and link from the LMS to the quiz forms.

Case: “Trinh is an associate professor in museum studies at a comprehensive university. She has delivered an innovative introductory online course on museology; in fact, students enrolled at universities in New Zealand, South Africa, and Finland all take her course. The course is delivered via Blackboard Learn, and features a range of multimedia educational artifacts, and guest lectures delivered via live streaming. Although participating in some of these activities is challenging for students in other time zones, they understand these are required activities and full participation is a condition of enrolment.

Trinh’s committed to delivering learner-centred courses, whether taught F2F, online or blended. But this course – and its over 150 student enrolments – is challenging for her to manage. There are no resources for hiring a teaching assistant or another instructor: Trinh meets half of her entire annual teaching workload requirement by teaching this by herself once per academic year.

Email in particular can be onerous: on some mornings she finds dozens of messages. Some of these come to her university email address; others to her Blackboard email. She even gets student questions as comments to her blog and on Twitter! Were this a F2F course, she would set up office hours – but that’s not an option in an online course, is it?”

What could Trinh do to manage her communications?

Email can be a very time-consuming form of communication, especially if your keyboarding skills are weak. One alternative Trinh is to use voice to text instead of typing. Or, send voice messages via email. Although voice to text and audio messaging isn’t readily available across all platforms, it is becoming increasingly popular and could prove more time efficient than standard e-mail. Remind 101  is an app that some teachers use to communicate anonymously with students via text messaging. Unfortunately however this is only available in a very limited number of countries.

Virtual office hours are not only a viable, but arguably an essential element for online educators and their students. It is also a good supplemental option for teachers who teach in a face to face environment. This is a form of computer mediated communications (CMC) and can be done using Skype, Google hangouts, Blackboard Collaborate, Facebook instant messaging (IM) or any one of number of different communication tools. The key with virtual office hours, for the sake of maximizing Trinh’s valuable time is to schedule and stick to specific hours to reduce the risk of giving students the expectation that they can contact you 24/7. It may also be wise for her to create a specific account for her virtual hours so that students don’t see her available online through her personal contacts and be tempted to contact her during off hours. Balayeva & Quan-Haase (2009) found that students spoke positively about instant messaging, indicating that it “is a useful tool for virtual office hours because of its convenience, interactivity, and ease of use.” In an Australian study, 81% of “offshore” indicated a willingness to use virtual office hours (Wdowik & Michael, 2013). Some of the feedback received from offshore students in the Wdowik & Michael study included comments such as “support[ed] my learning, instant feedback, [felt] valued and [it was] convenient”. From a personal perspective, I would tell Trinh that a number of years ago I began hosting virtual office hours via Skype. This was for a face to face (F2F) group of students, and what I found was that more students took advantage of my virtual office hours via Skype then my F2F office hours. I found it easier because I could answer questions and concerns quickly through audio communication than I could through e-mail or even instant messaging.

Balayeva, J., Quan-Haase, A. (2009). Virtual Office Hours as Cyberinfrastructure: The Case Study of Instant Messaging. Learning Inquiry, v3 n3 p115-130 Dec 2009

Wdowik, Steven; Michael, Kathy (2013). International Offshore Students’ Perceptions of Virtual Office Hours. Campus-Wide Information Systems, v30 n3 p212-221 2013

“Anju is a dietician in Port Alberni, B.C. She works part-time at both a nearby senior’s home and a community centre. All of Anju’s clients are fluent in spoken English, but struggle with materials written in English. Anju thought she might videotape her next workshop and then create a DVD.” As Anju’s neighbour, I am a teacher and she is seeking my advice as to whether a DVD is a good idea.

Anju has carefully thought about the language challenges of her clients with written English. Knowing that these same clients are much more comfortable interpreting English when spoken, she is wise to create a presentation(s) in video format that she can disseminate to the participants of her live presentations. As such I would give her the following advice.

1. Since a camera will likely be placed at some distance from her, as the speaker, the audio quality may be poor and difficult for her clients to hear. She should be able to purchase a wireless lavalier microphone to clip onto her clothing so that the audio is loud and clear.

2. Alternatively, she might consider creating short screencasts from her home computer. With a product like Jing (free) or Snagit (inexpensive) she could create narrated PowerPoint or Keynote presentations for each of the key topics. These are low tech tools that she would be able to learn easily with a little assistance (from me, the neighbour) and the audio quality is likely to be much better since she would be recording the presentation using a headset and mic. In addition, these tools would enable her to create short videos which may be less tedious for her clients to view and would allow them to view only those topics with which they need help. (sample screencast created using Jing and PowerPoint)

3. Anju might also want to consider uploading the videos to YouTube or Vimeo as it’s very conceivable not all of her clients will have access to a DVD player. She can also keep the videos unlisted and share the links exclusively to her clients if she doesn’t want a wider audience. As a follow up, as her teacher friend, I would advise her to conduct a formative assessment when she meets with her clients after they’ve had time to view the videos. This would give her some insight as to the effectiveness of the videos.

I think what Lenora needs is a blog site, such as WordPress, that is intuitive to build, free and can be kept private with access only given to those whom she chooses. Since she has no website creation experience it would be important to use an online source that allows the user to choose from some simple templates. With respect to uploading materials, she should be able to add simple text, such as blogging her thoughts and experiences, using a dial up connection. For larger files such as audio, video or PDFs, she could create those off-line and then upload them when she has a high-speed connection at her school. This would allow her to do the work at home and leverage the high-speed connection from school for the larger files.
Privacy will be important, although presumably she would not be sharing information about her students, and nor would the other faculty who might join in on the discussions or comment areas. At least in the beginning, she will probably want to restrict access to her site to a limited number of other faculty until such time as she decides whether or not it’s appropriate to allow access for others on a more widespread basis.
Some of the other advantages of using a blog site, such as WordPress, is that she can install widgets for conducting polls or to monitor twitter accounts. Being able to conduct polls would allow her to get some quantitative feedback from other teachers about their experiences, their needs and their thoughts about future directions.

Sidebar…My original thought for Lenora was to create a private NING where others who join could participate more equaly. However, Ning now charges for sites. If her school board has access to a Ning, this might be the better option.

Moodle vs Blackboard

Benoit has to choose an LMS, either Blackboard Learn or Moodle. While Blackboard is the official LMS for the University, he has heard that the helpdesk is difficult to get a hold of and can be slow in responding. He has also heard negative remarks about Blackboard in general. Conversely, Moodle is used by faculty in the English department and they quite like it, but there is no IT support for it and he would be on his own.
How might Benoit choose which platform to use? He should create his own rubric in order to choose the best platform for his Comfort level and, most importantly, the needs of his students. He should also invest at least a couple of hours exploring each of the platforms himself to see if in fact they are as good or as bad as he has heard.

LMS Functionality He should make a list of functionalities that are essential to his course. this list should include the basic items of any LMS, including a section for announcements, posting documents, inputting student marks, an area to submit assignments, communication tools such as email, blogs, groups, student feedback, ePortfolios, etc. How do the two platforms compare In these areas?

Most important question Arguably the most important question Benoit has to ask himself is which platform will provide the best support for his students. While Moodle might be the platform of choice by the other faculty in his department, there is no IT support, and this could make life very difficult for the students. It would also make life difficult for him, because when students run into trouble with Moodle they would no have nowhere else to turn but to him to help solve their problems. This would increase his workload substantially and would be a risk he would have to consider very carefully. Blackboard, on the other hand, has IT Support and he could direct students to them when they have a problem. This way he can focus on the teaching and not the technical issues.

Benoit’s time:
Development of an online asynchronous course takes nearly two to three times the amount of time compared to the preparation time for a face-to-face class (Cavanaugh, 2005). There are many things to consider when developing a synchronous online course. John Orlando (2014) lists ten top rules for developing an online course. This top 10 list is largely based on the concept that regular face-to-face contact is not part of the equation. Therefore, the syllabus and expectations have to be much more explicit, there is a considerable amount of web development time, and interactivity has to be built in to the course to ensure students are collaborating with other students and the teacher on a regular basis. Benoit will also have to carefully select a variety of assessment tools to address the diverse needs and skills of his students. According to a survey conducted by the Chapman Alliance (Pinder, 2011), it takes faculty an average of 184 hours to develop an online course. Working at a pace of 12-14 hours per week on course development, that would take 14 weeks. Working close to 40 hours per week, an instructor might be able to complete the work of preparation in 5-6 weeks.
Cavanaugh,J., (2005). Teaching Online – A Time Comparison. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, Volume VIII, Number I. Retrieved from: http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring81/cavanaugh81.htm

Orlando, J., (2014). Top Ten Rules For Developing Your First Online Course. Faculty Focus: Higher Ed Strategies From Magna Publications. Retrieved from: http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/top-10-rules-developing-first-online-course/

Pinder, D., (2011). How Long Does It Take To Create an E-Learning Course? E-Learning Uncovered. Retrieved from: http://elearninguncovered.com/2011/05/how-long-does-it-take-to-create-an-e-learning-course/