Flight Path Precis

Although I pursue teaching for the sheer love of it, I have also always envisioned myself working within urban public schools and kept this as my goal throughout years of preparation.  Now, 7 years after I received my certification, I have not taught a single day within any school board.  However I consider my time within a small International private school in Mississsauga as fortunate, indeed, as it has been some of the most grueling work I’ve ever done. I’ve been able to grow as an educator, leader, and collaborator in a way that may have otherwise been restricted to me if I had immediately gotten into the public system.

At the beginning of this course, what I most hoped to learn was how to best use technology to guide students in their learning in ways that teaches them not just course content, but skills like inquisitiveness, constructive collaboration, independent problem solving, and ‘grit’.  At the beginning of this course I was unsure that I needed to learn yet another LMS platform, despite knowing that a moodle was likely in my future, and thought instead that I would like to sharpen my skills in discerning the best tools to choose.   What I have found, and will discuss in this reflection, is that by making my way through the challenging process of creating an online course through an LMS like moodle, I have indeed sharpened the skills I had hoped to – I would say that I am now better at selecting, evaluating, creating, and shaping learning technologies to ensure that they meet my pedagogical goals.

Substantive, comprehensive and detailed reflection about overall ETEC 565A experience:

Module 1: Selecting & Using Technologies

Prior to taking this course I had completed ETEC510 “The Design of Technology-Supported Learning Environments”, which had within it many of the elements of this course, taught through a different lens.  I believe that taking 565 prior to that one may have been beneficial, but both have been highly instructional through constructivist techniques and have left me feeling highly comfortable in choosing and creating digital spaces.  The concept of “Technology as Lever” introduced by Chickering & Ehrmann (1996) was made explicit through both of those courses, but I think that the concept really ‘clicked into place’ in 565, perhaps because of the repetition, perhaps because it was taught in such a transparent fashion.

I returned to the Bates (2014) and Nel, Dreyer, & Carstens (2010) readings from this Module throughout the course, because although both were reviewing concepts I had been previously introduced to, they did so in new frameworks that I used more than once when justifying my own work choices.  The SECTIONS framework clearly structures the considerations needed for the kind of teaching studied in this course, and I appreciate how it could be used within professional development contexts, to help teachers newer to educational technology begin reflecting on necessary considerations to take action.

Module 2: Presentation Tools: Spaces, Places and Platforms for Learning

What I appreciated most about the content and activities of Module 2 were the small-group case studies, wherein the tasks were contained and therefore more intimately collaborative.  Having to decide on a reasonable time frame to create and implement a course through an LMS was an excellent exercise in practicality, and when I look back now, it helps me understand why creating my moodle – at only a quarter completion and borrowing from one of my past WikiClassroom sites – took as long as it did.  Spiro’s (2014) article expouses well-founded threats to the future of LMS, but so far it appears that students are integrating those ‘threatening’ eLearning techniques into the requirements of online courses – at least that is what I have done, myself.  I capitalize on my own mobile technology and personal curation of sources to better understand the course material I’m assigned, and I’m fine with still following ‘the rules’ of graduated education.  That said, I’m of the generation with my foot in two camps, both swept up in but not quite part of the digital revolution to education, so students coming behind me may indeed wish to take learning into their own hands and skip the rigors of institutional learning.

Week 5’s topic allowed me to thoroughly reflect and organize my past endeavors with using mobile technology in the classroom, and I enjoyed the chance to retroactively apply the excellent reading by Ciampa (2013) to my past practices.  The four criteria for intrinsically and extrinsically motivational activities are ones that I will bear in mind for future design, as they are succinct reminders of what I have found necessary to make effective tasks for my students.  At this point in the course I began to fully understand and appreciate technology’s capacity to meet the needs of my students, and hopefully surprise them with how engaged they can become in their work when courses are designed with so much consideration.

Module 3: Interaction and Assessment Tools

In the school where I last taught, assessment was a major focus of many professional development sessions, and thus the content of this module again felt like a review and building-upon of previous knowledge and experience.  Implementing technology as formative assessment was something we had been trying to do school-wide, and some teachers had joined me in providing digital options for summative assessments as well, although it was often a choice students could make, rather than a mandate.  If I was in a school situation where technology had been effectively integrated throughout my course, I believe I would be more comfortable now in making a summative task exclusively digital, as I could better choose the most effective platforms to channel students’ energies.   The educational interaction framework in Anderson (2008a, p. 58) beautifully illustrates effective relationships within learning, but when integrating technology we must thus consider the model of online learning provided on page 61.  It is certainly a more complicated looking approach, but as Anderson explains the autonomy it affords allows for “particularly rich…learning of social skills, collaboration, and the development of personal relationships among participants” (p. 61).

Prensky’s idea of shifting focus away from “how students learn” to “how do they learn what?” (as cited in Anderson, 2008a, p. 62) is an important one when considering effective assessment, as Gibbs & Simpson (2004) explore in the reading for week 8.  Their thorough categorizing of conditions that best support learning (p. 4) emphasize the unfortunate stress that is often put upon conventional grades, and how that can take away from the process of learning itself.  The hope when using well-integrated technology would be to make more tangible the relevant and real-world application of a course, and better facilitate feedback that both peers and an instructor can offer that can be so vital in creating a learning community.

Module 4: Social Media

What I enjoyed so much about module 4 was the important distinction that ‘interactivity’ can mean the simple act of clicking around, but that this is not what engages and inspires students.  Social media is so often demonized by the education community as a mere distraction from our purpose, and a venue for grandiose vanity.  While it certainly can at times feel that way, when a student is taking selfies or Snapchats in class instead of staying on topic, it is also be the site for immeasurable constructivist opportunities.

I had been exposed to the work of Alan November prior to this course, and his work has been a huge influence in my understanding of my role as a teacher.  In his book (and subsequent keynotes and YouTube videos) Who Owns the Learning?, he outlines the role of the new learner as “a contributor, collaborator, and leader in the learning culture” (2012, p.6).  In the week 9 reading by him, where he outlines the potential Twitter has to encourage these skills in our students, his belief that “the most essential skill of the 21^st century is knowing how to ask the most interesting questions” (p. 5) is clear.

I was glad that we spent some time explicitly addressing the issue of copyright, as this is a topic that has felt overlooked or glossed over in so many other courses.  How to best impress upon my students the importance of academic integrity is something I continue to struggle with, as with every new class it feels like a fresh battle.   Perhaps the key will be in finding a way to teaching it alongside the importance of digital citizenship and issues around privacy and rights, as we all continue to live in both physical and digital spaces.

Module 5: What’s on the horizon?

As I wrote in my reflection for week 12, I believe that the most progress in best serving the needs of our students will come through the proactive, rather than reactive, use of technology.  Instead of discerning a ‘problem’ and then looking for the best app or LMS to solve it, if a teacher designs their course so that technology is integrated from the beginning, many of the benefits I have already addressed will be able to grow organically.  If adjustments need to be made or direction slightly changed, that is obviously acceptable, but if the culture of growing as a community is already in place the students will feel part of that process rather than removed from it, waiting for their teacher to ‘fix things’.

My thoughts on this were encouraged by the vision presented by Alexander (2014), which imagines a future where medical specialists are revered among us, as our needs as a population disconnected from death grow ever greater.  Although I seem to live in a culture addicted to ‘quick-fixes’, what I have learned from this course is the importance of taking the time to objectively assess my needs, my present capabilities, and the best course of action in order to meet whatever goal I have therefore set.  This can apply to physical health, financial stability, or of course – educational practice.  There is a wealth of resources that anyone can tap to help them effect a desired change, but careful discernment based on the principles within this course will not only save on time, but help provide critical frameworks with which to assess its effectiveness.  For what is on my own horizon, I will go into that with further detail in the last section of this reflection.

Assignment #1: Rubric

This assignment was my metaphorical ‘wake-up call’ for the purposes of this course, although I entered into it knowing that my ability to fully apply myself was compromised due to the goings-on in my life at the time.  I was leaving my job and doing all of the work that such a transition entails, as well as trying to manage another course, and I made the conscious decision to put in less of an effort to this group task and accept the consequences.  That said, I found communication was difficult within my group and my role was so small that my final mark for this task reflected it – and I was not content!  The activity itself was a sound one, but at the time I found it difficult to wrap my head around it and this was evident in how I was able to contribute to my group’s attempt at a rubric.  Discerning necessary criteria to build a rubric that would help select an appropriate LMS was a relevant task, but challenging to do in a collaborative way.  All of this said, what I learned the most from this activity was that this course would demand my full attention and energy, and I have not been proven wrong since.

Assignment #2: Introductory Module

When the time came to take on this assignment, I was determined to redeem myself (if only in my own eyes) after Assignment 1, and do the best that I could.  I logged onto as many of the example moodles as I could as a ‘student’, and made use of as many YouTube tutorials as needed to wrap my head around this new LMS.  I decided to create a moodle for a course I have taught twice before, most recently in the fall of 2015, that had blended both face to face and online learning with the use of a WikiClassroom.  So while the content of my moodle was mostly taken care of, the big challenge was in choosing how to best tailor it to an online-only environment.

The greatest change I had to make was in providing more detailed expectations and more sophisticated infrastructure than would be needed in a blended environment.  I would not be able to rely on ‘checking in’ with students during class time, and thus has to predict what their needs might be and how they could communicate those to me.   The quiz I designed for Unit 1 posed one of the greatest challenges at the time, but I later understood that it would provide important formative assessment for both the student taking it and myself, as it was built around reviewing the entire unit prior to engaging in a larger summative task.   The readings around this time were related to assessment, and the criteria from Gibbs and Simpson (2004) was fresh in my memory, reminding me that students prefer course-work to examinations (p. 7) – something I knew from my own experience but was bolstered for having read.  When I have taught this course in the past it too was without an exam, but rather many smaller tasks that would hopefully be cumulative in both knowledge and skill, to prepare the students for one final large summative assessment with a long time-line and many parts.

This assignment proved to me that if I put in a strong effort, reached out to my peers (thanks again to Victoria and Colleen), and took risks, I would be able to meet my own exacting standards.

Assignment #3: Content Module

For Assignment 2 I received feedback that a more detailed explanation of the online behavioural expectations was missing at the time of my submission, and after having some time apart from the moodle I came back to it with fresher eyes and realized this was indeed a hole in the LMS.  Thus my first steps were in fixing up the moodle as per the feedback I had received, and then looking for other opportunities to stream-line the experience.  I was of course responsible for creating a full content module, but as previously stated I was able to greatly benefit from work I had done before and thus this part did not feel too difficult.  While working, I kept in mind that I wanted this course to be designed and guided by me, but require that the students show a high level of autonomy and collaboration in order to really succeed.  With each lesson I decided to incorporate the use of discussion forums, and make it a requirement that they critically reflect and comment on each other’s work.   I found it helpful to stipulate what this would mean in a ‘Course Conduct’ page that I added to the introductory module, and borrowed from a document called How to Prepare and Moderate Online Discussions for Online Learning (2013). My other course, ETEC532, leans very heavily on participation as a course requirement, and the supplied criteria for it seems to be borrowed from this document – at least according to a Google search – and I feel that it lends itself well to my own online course.

Creating a course (or at least much of it) in this style was a true exercise in designing backwards.  The only thing that I chose to exclude was the final culminating activity, because of my own time constraints and the fact that this depth of work was not required for Assignment #3.   Despite missing this element, I attempted to build a course that would provide students opportunities to learn through as many of the demonstrations as possible, as postulated by Prensky in Anderson (2008a, p. 18-19).  Even speeches and performance-tasks can be required through the use of video, these days, and the assessments I did include provided that as an option for students to choose throughout the course.  What I would hope, should this moodle actually be executed, would be to provide students a learning experience that would feel diverse, dynamic, supportive, and ultimately in their own hands.

My Next Steps

“[e]ducation is not preparation for life; education is life itself” (John Dewey, as cited in November, 2012, p. 5).

When I was acting as a department head in my last school, I felt strongly that I had to lead by example, and could not expect anything of the teachers under my charge that I was not willing to do myself.  Obviously the same must be true of my students, especially if I plan on asking them to embody the above quote.  My experience in the MET so far has shown me just how much learning is, and is going to be, impacted by the integration of technology, and that for every teacher bemoaning their students on a cellphone in class there is another voice lifting up the world of possibilities held within that device and that same student.

At present, my greatest goal as an educator is to figure out how to best teach so that my students feel empowered, and where possible I know with certainty that thoughtful design and use of technology can play a huge role in this process.  However my largest question at present is how technology can be used in under-served classrooms and communities, and my hope is to get the chance to take what I have been learning in this program and apply it to challenging environments.  My experience in the private school sector has not been easy by any means, teaching is never ‘easy’, but having a 1:1 device:student ratio and reliable wifi has allowed me to see the benefits of technology with clear eyes and few challenges.  In comparison, how can voices that do not have the same privileges benefit from all that we discuss in this program – this is the heaviest question on my soul.

At the very least the open channels for communication that social media (including YouTube) provides is one of the teacher’s greatest allies, if used correctly, and at most having technology that allows students to create and collaborate within technology-integrated learning environments is the hope.  Going forward as a life-long learner and lover of education, I want to keep my eyes open for relevant and dynamic resources that can be used not only by instructors but students as well.  My favourite discoveries are always apps, site, or platforms that I can put into my students’ hands with the instructions to ‘go, play, share what you learn!’  What I am learning and want to continue to learn is how to best focus mine and their attentions to be critical of the world as it is presented to us through media and digital venues, and how to take advantage of everything that helps us connect with each other, the planet over.  If I need to figure out Twitter, or moodle, or YouTube first before I can channel it for best practice within my classroom, then that’s exactly what I’ll do, but the end goal is to always have students see their own power and potential within these learning environments.

‘Education’ is not about what happens in the classroom, but rather how we approach all challenges in our lives as they present to us or as we seek them out.  We take risks, look for help, hope wildly, and reflect for next time – that is education, and that is life well lived.

References

Alexander, B. (2014). Higher education in 2014: Glimpsing the future. Educause Review, 4(5) Retrieved                from http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/higher-education-2024-glimpsing  future?utm_source=Informz&utm_medium=Email+marketing&utm_campaign=EDUCAUSE

Anderson, T. (2008a). Towards a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F, Elloumi (Eds.),Theory and practice of online learning. Edmonton AB: Athabasca University. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/02_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf

Chickering, A. W., & Ehrmann, S., C. (1996). Implementing the seven principles: Technology as lever. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), 3-6. Retrieved from http://www.aahea.org/articles/sevenprinciples.htm

Ciampa, K. (2013). Learning in a mobile age: An investigation of student motivation.Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 30(1), 82–96. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcal.12036/epdf

Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf

How to Prepare and Moderate Online Discussions for Online Learning (pp. 1-13, Publication). (2013). Contact North: Ontario’s Distance Education & Training Network.

November, A. (2012).  How Twitter can be used as a powerful educational tool. November Learning [Weblog] Retrieved from http://novemberlearning.com/educational-resources-for-educators/teaching-and-learning-articles/how-twitter-can-be-used-as-a-powerful-educational-tool/

November, A. C. (2012). Who owns the learning?: Preparing students for success in the digital age. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Spiro, K. (2014). 5 elearning trends leading to the end of the Learning Management Systems. Retrieved from http://elearningindustry.com/5-elearning-trends-leading-to-the-end-of-the-learning-management-system

First published Mar. 29 2016 for ETEC565:

Sometimes my overly-eager spirit and desire to make things ‘look right’ come in handy,  as it did this time when I tackled the task of creating my moodle’s GUI splash page as part of Assignment 2 rather than 3.  As a result, my greatest challenge for Assignment 3 was in creating my first content module (or on my page – ‘unit 1’), and making sure that everything flowed with a logical progression.   I was very grateful for my previous experiences with creating web-spaces for my students, specifically with the use of Wiki-Classrooms, as it had already given me some idea of the layout and content that provides senior high school students with the information they need, in an easy to navigate format.

When designing blended or fully online learning spaces, I always find it somewhat challenging to know how to best format a page so that it has the content the students require, but will not overwhelm them to the point of glossing over important parts to later claim “they never got that information”.  I attempted to strike the right balance in my pages, while keeping in mind that students taking an online course would be best to heed the advice I put in a ‘Course Conduct’ page, which was to make themselves familiar with all of the course pages as a whole.   That said, were I to actually launch this moodle and course, I think I might take a ‘staggered release’ approach to each unit’s content, and wait for certain intervals before making all lessons visible to them.   I would provide them with a unit description and outline for each, but wait until closer to the scheduled dates to open the lessons to them.  Not only would this help avoid an overwhelming amount of pages and content at the beginning, but it would hopefully help them pace themselves in the course, and tackle each section at the most appropriate time, since the course does indeed build upon itself as it progresses.  For students wishing to work ahead I would release each unit in full perhaps a week prior to the unit’s scheduled start, allowing both student autonomy and opportunities for asynchronous completion, while encouraging collaboration by requiring them to attempt the work at a somewhat similar pace.  This format allows for Anderson’s (2008a) ‘How People Learn Framework’ as per the “affordances of the current web”, with some elements of what he calls the “semantic web 2.0” (p. 66).  Although moodle is a platform that is largely designer (e.g. teacher lead, it contains opportunities for student and content agents to shape the personal experience of the course, depending on the subject.

In my course design I attempted to provide opportunities for choice, interaction, and reflection, to encourage students to take as much ownership over their learning as possible.  As I mentioned in my reflection for Assignment 2, I see my role as more of a ‘content curator slash guide’, rather than an ‘instructor’, especially in an online context.  In fact I would be dismayed if I were to learn that my students were relying solely on what is delivered in the confines of either the online or in-person classroom, never seeking out their own information.  The trick, of course, would be ensuring that they did their own exploring with a critical eye, but without monitoring their every action or search the only way to do this would be through modeling the use of reputable research and observing their discussions in the course forums.  As Martin (1999) writes: “When students feel themselves identifying with us and our disciplines, they come to appreciate the struggle for knowledge, some may even choose to become part of the intellectual adventure” (as cited in Palloff and Pratt (2013).  Although I did stipulate the use of a class textbook, the website and the students’ own research would become its own growing body of ‘text’, hopefully striving together to meet the learning goals of the course that feel authentically achieved.

My Digital Story

If I am completely honest, I chose Voice Thread in part because it was a format that I had no prior experience with, and after a simple Google search I had not found many previous examples of teachers using it to create their Digital Stories.  However, I also determined that it was the right platform for this particular task, as per the criteria for evaluating the appropriateness of media stimulated by Siemens (2003).  I knew I wanted the platform to support personally-chosen images (e.g. not preloaded graphics), a voice-over, and text.  In the past I had used a program called Screen-Cast-O-Matic to create video-lectures, were essentially just me reading aloud a powerpoint presentation and uploading it to YouTube.  If there is a computer tutorial involved, this platform is perfect, and I watched more than one such tutorial when trying to learn some of the more challenging elements of moodle.  For this purpose however, I felt that Screen-Cast-O-Matic would actually offer a bit more than would be necessary, and the extra time I would spend navigating the program would not result in any better version of my Digital Story.  What really clinched my decision was when I learned that Power Point slides could be uploaded to Voice Thread as individual images through a simple drag-and-drop of the entire file, so I could exacerbate the benefits of images, text, audio, and video.  I created a simple Power Point presentation with minimal text to allow greater focus on the audio, uploaded it to Voice Thread, and then added in my voice and a few simple animations using my tablet and pen.   The end result is a fairly simple, but I believe effective, presentation that reflect on larger elements of my moodle course through a personal lens.

In my moodle, I presented my Digital Story as an exemplar for a small student assignment that would take place later in my course.  What I often find when teaching a challenging course is that students benefit from reflecting back on previous content in both personal and dynamic ways, to help them trigger memories of what they have already done and hopefully create new connections with their work and experiences as a whole.   Their choice of platform would be an open one, but encouraging as in Lesson 1 of the course, I would require their choice to be made for maximum effectiveness.   As Ciampa (2013) outlines in Learning in a mobile age: an investigation of student motivation, in order for activities to engender both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation they require elements of “challenge, curiosity, control, cooperation, competition and recognition” (p. 83).  The moodle course as whole, and potentially this task, exhibits many of these elements, especially as students are both encouraged to post to forums with questions for each other, collaborate where required, and then post their work to forums where their peers are prompted to critically reflect and comment.  Especially with online courses, finding ways to weave in techniques that increase motivation and interest are vital, and so my aspiration with this assignment is that it will function as an opportunity for students to not only review the course and their own places within it, but how its themes can be extracted and applied to their “real” worlds.

References:

Anderson, T. (2008a). Towards a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and             practice of online learning. Edmonton AB: Athabasca University. Retrieved                from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/02_Anderson_2008Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf

Boyes, J., Dowie, S., & Rumzan, I. (2005). Using the SECTIONS framework to evaluate flash   media. Using the SECTIONS framework to evaluate flash media, 2(1). Retrieved from         http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.186.6505&rep=rep1&type pdf

Ciampa, K. (2014). Learning in a mobile age: An investigation of student motivation. Journal of       Computer Assisted Learning, (30), 82-96. Doi: 10.111./jcal.12036.

Siemens, G. (2003). Evaluating media characteristics: Using multimedia to achieve learning  outcomes. Elearnspace. Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/mediacharacteristics.htm

Palloff, R. M., Pratt, K., & Ebrary Academic Complete (Canada) Subscription Collection. (2013). Lessons   from the virtual classroom: The realities of online teaching (Second ed.). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

First published Mar. 23 2016 for ETEC565:

I visited a friend and former work-mate last week at his home, and conversation strayed into education and technology, in no small part due to his growing interest in pursuing the MET.  He said something I found quite interesting, which was along the lines of: he believes, in the future, that schools will not have set class times or sizes, but will organize and present students with ‘modules’ that they can pick up, finish at their best speed, get help with as needed, and submit as they are able.  The role of the teacher will be to provide the tailored help to each student as they require it – something that many of us have spoken about doing more and more even in our ‘traditional’ classroom environments.  Apparently some schools are already trying out this model, and whether or not my friend knew about it, he hit on ideas very similar to the readings from this week.

Alexander’s (2014) ‘2 cultures of the future’ idea poses some interesting possibilities, and ones that don’t seem hard to imagine as coming to fruition.  The idea of medical specialists being treated like superstars is certainly an appealing idea, but if I’m to be cynical about it, I think first there would need to be a more wide-spread recognition that such people are going to be needed in the coming future.  I was an avid watcher of CBC’s ‘Keeping Canada Alive’ when it was first on tv this fall, and was absolutely ‘wowed’ by some of the technological advancements on display there, from mobile monitors that allow skype calls with doctors into remote Northern hospital rooms, to unobtrusive laser chemo treatments that target brain tumors without surgery – but I had to ask myself, why is this the first time I’m hearing of it!?  I wonder if it’s due to our cultures reactive response to medical issues, rather than a proactive one.  So instead of eating and moving and living our lives in such a way that will help stave off future issues, we are told to just ‘live the good life’ until something starts to go funny, and THEN start consuming a product or pill.  Instead of glorifying the wonders of medicine as they advance, they stay in secret, hidden by our fears of becoming ill and the process of dying, only coming to light when we need them.

I’ve gone off on a bit of a seeming rant here, but this does actually tie-in to my ideas and values around education, and how technology will play a role if used properly.  I’ve had some of my more meaningful teaching moments in recent years when I saw students understand how something they do, love, pursue, or understand, relates to the world around them and outside of their small every-day experiences.  Technology can not only help them make those connections, but it can also inspire them to see possibilities – whether through communicating and ‘disrupting’ the normal cultural narrative in a MOOC, or collaborating and innovating and inspiring each other despite distance.  I think the greatest challenge that exists at the moment, and that I have faced so far as an educator, is wrenching our students out of their worlds, which are so small and over-saturated with consumer media, and helping them see the potential of what is available to them and their place in it.  So far I only have experience doing this on small scales, with individual classes or students, but I would love to be involved in seeing this happen in much greater terms, and ideally, in contexts that serve usually marginalize or under-served voices.  It’s not hard to convince a wealthy private school student that their voice matters, or that they can benefit from technology and getting out there in the world – I would much rather see what students who don’t get to hear that message consistently can do with the right support.

First published March 7 2016, for ETEC565:

That’s how it feels to try and teach copyright issues to my students, most of the time.  Many of them who came from other countries reported having zero awareness that copyright law even existed, for most of them it was like re-training them to understand the importance of avoiding plagiarism.  In some cases, especially for the students from China (and I will be interested to hear about Meghan has to say about this), they had been told that the only thing that mattered was the right answer, and where it came didn’t really matter.   Like I said, head -> wall.

However it’s come to my attention recently that I’m no copyright saint, either.  Although I strive to follow a set of rules similar to UBC’s ‘Fair Dealings’ policies, I know I’ve fudged that ‘10% allowance’ when using resources once or twice, especially when I needed to use a textbook that didn’t have enough copies for every student.  I also love finding sources, whether visual or text, to incorporate into my courses, but I haven’t always been the best at citing them – this is something I’ve become more aware of recently and plan on being much more disciplined around, to be a better model for my students.  Even though teaching them how to cite an online image can be a test of one’s saintliness, I need to make it clear to them the importance of abiding property laws.

For a very long time I didn’t heed my parents’ warnings about the internet ‘never forgetting’, and considered it a fairly anonymous place.  In recent years I’ve been learning just how misguided that is, although thankfully not because of any personal experiences or run-ins with the law.  It hit home in a big way one day when my Principal told me she was screening some of the teachers she had interviewed online, seeking them out on Facebook and other social sites.  Now my digital footprint is almost entirely ‘professional’, or mundane enough that it wouldn’t prove incriminating.  It feels like more than ever my students are creating vastly connected worlds online, many with the illusion of anonymity or impermanence, but just as my parents said years ago about Facebook can be said now about Snapchat – the internet never forgets.

The Digital Tattoo site is something I could see using to try and increase conversation with my classes in the future, to open up discussions about copyright and the possibilities and pitfalls of using the internet.  As of yet I haven’t had the opportunity to take on this endeavour with students born in Canada, where they will have (hopefully) heard the narrative around academic integrity throughout their schooling – but perhaps some of my classmates will have experience in how this tends to go!  Thankfully there are plenty of online resources available now, including Plagiarism.org, TurnItIn.com’s free resources (including this excellent run-down of the 10 most commons forms of plagiarism), and plenty of articles about people caught in the act.  I would like to think that with discussion, teaching of skills, and peer-and-self checks (along with high standards kept by me) students will learn how to avoid the common errors around plagiarism – and hopefully even understand the moral implications of it, too.  Perhaps it’s a maturity issue, perhaps we all assume we’ll never be the one to get caught – but whatever it is, it’s going to be worth integrating into our teaching more than ever.

End note: At my parent’s home last year I picked up this copy of the Walrus, that featured an article about what it called the ‘plagiarism epidemic’ in Canada’s universities.  I don’t have enough confidence to recite it, and it looks like you have to buy the issue to read it, but if any of you come across it, it was a good read!

First published Feb. 29 2016 for ETEC565:

I chose the above title because it really jumped out at me from the end of the Bates (2014) reading.  While I agree that it’s important for us as social media users to be discerning in our selection of resources, the statement to me reads as just another attempt at pithy fear-mongering.  Oh no, the internet is here, any yahoo will get to have a public opinion now, the academic world is ending.  Yes, the amount of chaff to sift through has grown exponentially, but what social media also does is lift up voices that would have previously been silenced for not meeting elite criteria.  The Black Lives Matter protests that first unfolded in Ferguson a few years ago would have been censored had it not been for ‘guerilla’ journalists at the scene, taking photos and or videos and uploading them along with tweets or instagram posts.  Social media is the ultimate media democratizer, and some would say it’s for worse, but I’m of the belief it will prove to be for the better.  That said, this TVO documentary titled ‘the Thread’ explores how social media rose as a news outlet, it’s an interesting watch: http://tvo.org/video/documentaries/the-thread  It shows both the incredible power to do good, and the incredible potential for social media to feed into mob-like behaviour online which can lead to tragedy.

I’ve as of yet struggled to use Twitter in an academic context, as November lays out in his article, in part because of my own lacking expertise with it, but in part because almost none of my students were acquainted with it either – I’m not sure if that is because of the generational disparity in who uses it, or if was due to the fact that many of them were from overseas, but as such I didn’t find it motivating.  I have experimented with it as a PLN tool, participating in a number of #edchats and haven striven to keep it a solely professional space.  November’s article shed more light on how it could be integrated into classes in the future however, especially those that want to track cultural events as they are taking place.  I have used current events to spark student interest in the past, for example encouraging anybody interested to follow the Umbrella Protests in Hong Kong a couple of years ago in our Challenge and Change (HSB4M) course, but hadn’t fully taken advantage of twitter as a united action.  Still, many students were exposed to content and ideas that had previously been censored in their home countries, and I could tell they were waking up to the possibilities of social media and connectivity.

Bates’ statement that “social media can make the learning of how to learn much more effective but still only in most cases within an initially structured environment” is a sound one, but I think a key point is around ‘initially’.  Especially with older students, but also hopefully with younger secondary students, there should be a scaffolding of ability with how to use social media for academic purposes so that they can carry on those skills outside of the class setting.  If we look at social media as just another tool for students to receive training in, our roles may become as clear as they would be in teaching them how to write.  The difference here is that we can reach out, as can they, for assistance – as long as we are all wary of the ‘idiots’ that some seem to be so worried about.

The second question regarding whether or not a course should be re-designed around social media is an interesting one, and at this point if I’m honest, I don’t have a clear answer.  My first impulse is to say ‘no’, but I can understand the intent behind the question as well.  Perhaps it’s just the last threads of my ‘traditional’ upbringing in education, but I don’t know that structuring a course around social media is wise – but maybe that is just because I’m not sure it would be wise to design a course after ANY one source.  I’ll be interested to see what my classmates say about this question this week!

References 

Bates, T. (2014). Pedagogical differences between media: Social media. In Teaching in digital age.Retrieved from http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/chapter/9-5-5-social-media/(Chapter 7, point 6)
November, A. (2012).  How Twitter can be used as a powerful educational tool. November Learning [Weblog] Retrieved from http://novemberlearning.com/educational-resources-for-educators/teaching-and-learning-articles/how-twitter-can-be-used-as-a-powerful-educational-tool/

First published Feb. 28th 2016 for ETEC565:

My moodle: HHG4M – Human Development Across the Lifespan

General Reflection

I chose to make a moodle because I identified it as a gap in my knowledge and skill-set.  I kept hearing about the platform but had no experience with it, whereas I had done some tinkering with Blackboard Connect in a previous course.  Since moodle is a free platform I could also better see the use of learning it for future use in my teaching.  I found that my previous experience with simple coding and Wiki classrooms were beneficial in tackling some of the finer details of the moodle, but for the most part YouTube tutorials were all I needed to guide me in the right direction when things became less intuitive.  I decided to take on the creation of a navigation bar at this stage, although it is not due until later in the term, because of how much clarity and ease of use it provides.  I was also lucky to benefit from the kindnesses of two of my classmates, Victoria and Colleen, who had already created their navigational menus and passed along valuable information to me.

Course Development

The course I chose to design around my moodle is one I have taught twice before, the second time with a blended approach using Wiki classrooms.  I would see the students every day in class, but the vast majority of the course materials were on the Wiki, and students were also occasionally responsible for building it themselves, as a Wiki allows.  By the time I was preparing to teach the course a second time I had read Anderson (2008a), and had begun to take the ideas within it and other literature into consideration when designing my blended classes.  What I appreciated so much about the use of Wiki classrooms was, as Anderson elaborates, the opportunities for “project-and workplace-based (assessment activities), that are constructed collaboratively, that benefit from peer and expert review, and that are infused with opportunity and requirement for self-assessment” (p. 50).  Especially in the social sciences, a dynamic and constantly developing field, I felt that students would be limited rather than fully served by the strict adherence to a class textbook, and thus wanted them to learn the important critical skills required for responsible research in academic journals and online.

As students become more accustomed to functioning and working online, I would both model but also assume a high standard of interaction with online materials.  My role would be something of content curator slash guide, who would expect an increasing level of independence when searching out the content required for concept comprehension and engagement.   The flipped (or inverted) lesson model, as created by Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams in 2007 (Phillips & Trainor, 2014, p. 104) follows similar principles, which is that students arm themselves with the required content prior to face-to-face interaction, at which time they are required to engage with and apply it in a more critical way.  The online class could function in a similar way, in that teacher-chosen or created materials would be provided to students for self-study, and later engagement in meaningful formative assessments and project-based tasks.  Just as online courses required a front-heavy planning and workload for the teachers in order to ensure smoother instruction later on, so does flipping, and if careful attention to interactivity is paid, both models can provide the instructor with a clear idea of how individual students are faring in their understanding and progress.  This interaction can be as simple as mandatory posts in the forums or labeled participation in Google docs, but it can also be encouraged through other social media tools like blogs, wikis, or Twitter.  In fact for this reason I decided to embed a Twitter feed into my moodle, which is currently set to display tweets from my username, but in a real-life application of the course would follow instead a class hashtag, with students encouraged to create tweets for their peers to follow.   Through this and other interactive communication strategies, which will be further explored in this reflection, hopefully a positive learning environment that would feel “collaborative and social, not competitive and isolated” (Nel, Dreyer & Carsons, 2010, p. 245) would be established.

Communication & Assessment Strategies

As Anderson (2008a) describes on page 50, online tools can help to further assessment opportunities for students without the need for greater teacher participation.  Online quizzes are included in the article’s list, and provide important check-points for both the students and teacher in their knowledge base, but I believe these quizzes should be carefully partnered with other forms of assessment, especially those with a greater degree of critical thinking required.  Other than the essay questions, the moodle quiz question options were almost all knowledge-centered, and based around the retrieval of facts.  I was slightly shocked when I discovered that the ‘short answer’ option was actually more of a ‘cloze reading’ type of question, and not the format of question I was expecting from an English teaching background.  In a fully-online type course, I would likely use quizzes more often than in a blended environment, where I could check in with students and their understanding more frequently, but in both I would stress the importance of students interacting with each other and acting as collaborators.  Establishing this important “community centered” (p. 51) approach would be a key challenge in an online course, but in an effort to do so I have woven weekly discussions and occasional peer collaboration through Google docs throughout the course.

Despite being online, frequent opportunities for student assessment and feedback would be a vital part of keeping students engaged with the material, each other, and myself, the instructor.  All smaller forms of assessment would be building towards the final culminating activity, which I have deliberately chosen not to be an exam.  When reading Gibbs and Simpson  (2005), I heard my own experiences and beliefs echoed in their assertions that students prefer coursework to exams (p. 7).  I personally believe the opportunities for the teacher to get to know the students and their individual strengths and weaknesses are much more easily facilitated through consistent engagement and low-stakes assessment, so that by the end of the course there is rarely a surprise in a student’s abilities when submitting their final products.   Unmarked frequent assessments, peer assessments, and opportunities for constructivist learning – all of which could be facilitated through the moodle forums and/or external platforms like Google docs or Padlet – would all be better indicators of student understanding than occasional tests or one large final exam (p. 8).

The challenge implicit in the above aspirations for such an online-course environment centers around student motivation – although this is perhaps always the challenge of any teacher.   Ciampa (2013) outlines six elements that “make an activity both intrinsically and extrinsically motivating for a learner: challenge, curiousity, control, cooperation, competition and recognition” (p. 83).  In my experience the variable most difficult for teachers to encourage is that of curiousity, as many students will respond to the question of ‘why did you sign up for this course?’ with ‘because I had to’.   The other elements can be engineered through effective course design and varied tools that meet the students at their individual levels of ability and need, for example freedom of choice in topics or format for products, the use of varied instructional materials, etc.  However as outlined by Ciampa, curiousity falls into two categories, sensory and cognitive, and only the second could be truly stimulated online (p. 84).  Students would need to “discover that their knowledge is incomplete or inconsistent”, and then “have the desire to explore and attain new information and competence” (p. 84).  I have learned how to better foster curiousity through in-person interactions and rapport with students, but it would be an unknown as to whether or not students with low levels of curiousity could be equally encouraged through online interactions alone.  The hope is that through peer and teacher interaction, and the use of the other five elements of motivation, even students who begrudgingly signed up for the course would be able to complete it in a way they found satisfying.

In Conclusion

Although at times this assignment felt like a daunting one, I was glad to again have the chance to ‘get my hands dirty’ with a new form of technology, and acquaint myself with this popular platform.  I have constructed it around the assumption that the senior-level high school students would be exercising a high level of autonomy and self-direction, but have tried to integrate approachable means for communication and collaboration in order to better enrich their experience.   Although it requires a significant amount of backwards-design, the appeal of teaching through a moodle-designed course is clear, and despite the asynchronous and distance-based nature of the platform, could still facilitate an enjoyable interpersonal learning environment.

References:

Anderson, T. (2008a). Towards a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and             practice of online learning. Edmonton AB: Athabasca University. Retrieved                from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/02_Anderson_2008        Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf

Ciampa, K. (2013). Learning in a mobile age: An investigation of student motivation. Journal of Computer              Assisted Learning, 30(1), 82–96. Retrieved from  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcal.12036/epdf

Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’               learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31. Retrieved from               http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf

Nel, C., Dreyer, C., & Carstens, W. A. M. (2010). Educational technologies: A classification and     evaluation. Tydskrif vir letterkunde, 35(4), 238-258. Retrieved from         http://www.ajol.info/index.php/tvl/article/download/53794/42346

Phillips, C. R., & Trainor, J. E. (2014). MILLENIAL STUDENTS AND THE FLIPPED CLASSROOM. Journal of      Business and Educational Leadership, 5(1), 102-112. Retrieved from                http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/docview/1644485724?accountd=14656

First published Feb. 22nd 2016 for ETEC565:

In the small private school where I worked, and only recently left, for 5.5 years, assessment was often a major point of discussion for our staff.  In the past year or so specifically, incorporating what the Ontario Curriculum calls ‘triangulation of assessment’ received a lot of attention and effort towards implementation.  For anyone who isn’t familiar with this, here’s a handy picture:

At first we all groaned at the idea of MORE assessment, but before long we all started to realize how empowering it can be, and how well it can be integrated with technology.  Products have now become a tool we all use much more sparingly, and often only after there have been other kinds of formative feedback provided to the students to help them prepare for the summative (graded) assessment.

Observing student interaction or work can obviously be done with a simple checklist, but many of my peers have started to use apps that help them stay organized, as well.  Class Dojo (best suited to grades under 9, I would say) and Socrative (great for senior students) are apps that allow teachers to create checklists for certain behaviours, skills, or even content that they are looking for – Google forms will do this too, if a teacher is willing to make one – and then have it be visible for students to check their own progress.  Providing students will the criterion with which they will be assessed – or ideally, co-constructing it with them – and not always telling them WHEN to expect such evaluation (or making it clear to them it will happen every day), improved our student attendance greatly.    When we were told we could use such evaluations to help inform our professional judgment towards the student’s grade, and the students themselves became aware, they took class-time much more seriously as a whole.  As a result many of the conditions for effective assessment as outlined by Gibbs & Simpson (2005) were met, especially numbers 4 – 8.  Doing this kind of timely feedback, and putting it online where students can check in on it when they wish, also helps take away the phenomenon of them just ‘studying for the exam’ and cuts down on students being able to get a high grade while being “selectively negligent” (p. 6) of the elements they don’t see as valuable.

Gibbs & Simpson also explain the preference students have for coursework over exams, and how studies show that courses in which there was greater emphasis on coursework students achieved better grades – and it didn’t even need to be ‘marked’ (p. 7-8)!  Flipping lessons, where students watch a video or read something content-heavy PRIOR to class and then engage in activities DURING class time that test their understanding, is also made much easier through the use of technology.  Hosting the ‘homework’ (e.g. the content) on the class LMS makes it easy for students to access, so that when they arrive in class they can begin to engage with it and the teacher can get a quick idea of who needs what.

The challenges of this kind of integration of technology can certainly be in the learning and designing process for the teacher – in my experience thus far I’ve found students are quite quick to pick up on how to use the various platforms I’ve attempted as long as I’m confident with them.  Flipping is a front-loaded type of work, but the lessons can be re-used for future teachings of the course or class, and easily shared between peers.  I’m the type of teacher to just jump into trying new technologies or methods, but have learned that scaffolding its implementation is important for many of my teaching colleagues, as it can appear quite intimidating.  Just as with students however, when teachers get to the point where they are creating their own content (whether it’s videos or just lessons that USE technology),  their enjoyment and understanding becomes authentic.  Students have thus far shown a positive attitude towards this kind of technology-based support through assessment, when I’ve had the organization and time to make it come together – but I’ve also been able to benefit from schools with 1:1 device:student ratio.  It would take some creativity to figure out how to proceed if a class had a percentage of students without access!

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Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning.Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31. Retrieved fromhttp://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf

First published Feb. 22 2016 for ETEC565:

This case study is an example of rote memorization being an unfortunate must – a piece of the foundational construct of knowledge that is necessary for higher-order learning.  Just as we try to ensure that students have the basics of writing under their belts, so they have more mental capacity freed up for tougher concepts, it sounds like knowing the periodic table needs to be down pat.

In my experiences the times when this kind of retention is needed have been relatively few and far between, with skills being the emphasis rather than content.  When it’s come up, however, I’ve found that providing students with a combination of options tends to work well, although it’s important not to overwhelm them with choice.

Using platforms that make studying into a game might be a great way to engage Boris’s students, and can be done either at the start of class (if he can spare 10 minutes, it’ll likely set a fun tone to the rest of their time together) or on student’s own time.  Kahoot! is an awesome quiz game platform that students can play from any kind of device – and Boris wouldn’t even need to make the game to host, as a quick search of Public (user-shared) Kahoots just showed me a bunch related to the periodic table.  Boris could download the class results after the game, and keep them as a measurement of progress – even sharing them (with pseudonyms) if students want to watch their own progress.

A site like Quizlet offers not only a simple game or two for students to test their knowledge, but a flash-card and quiz option, to take it a little more ‘seriously’.  Boris could also ask the students to complete a brief quiz on the table throughout a week (or more) as part of their daily tasks, through either a quiz or even survey-making platform.  He would be sent the students’ results to help with his own tracking, and it would tell the students their gaps in knowledge with immediacy.  If the quizzes are brief enough they will hopefully not feel overly burdened, but if they are frequent enough results should make themselves known before too long.

I’ve used all of these tools in the past with success, but haven’t applied them consistently over the long-term.  If I was in Boris’ shoes and felt that certain content-specific knowledge was needed for bigger-picture success I would try to plan out a program that would get his lagging students to where they need to be, and hope that it wouldn’t take too much extra time out of their busy work-weeks to see improvements!

First published Feb. 17 2016 for ETEC565:

Even before I knew it was a ‘thing’, I’ve been using the internet as a way of furthering my own learning in personal areas of interest, as I’m sure many of us who miss the ‘Net’ generation moniker have.  Before it was more than a burgeoning service and system, and certainly before it was explicitly being used in education, the net has been a place where motivated individuals could create their own learner, knowledge, community, and event assessment-centered experiences.  In my case, it was learning simple code to create a website to house my teenage attempts at artwork and writing, mostly fanworks but also including some original work.  As I was a self-directed learner, I was self-assessing my areas of knowledge and weakness as I went, and looked for teachers both in peers and online (prior to the days of YouTube it was written tutorials).  The knowledge acquisition was highly contextualized, embedded in my desire to create an attractive site that worked without bugs, and the assessment came in the form of feedback from visitors who either could or could not enjoy the work I hosted on the site.  I was constantly self-checking the code, my understanding of the process, and re-vamping the site as I either learned more or felt the need to mix it up.

As a teacher, I think the greatest challenge thus far has been creating interactions with students in a blended classroom environment that both encourages their own autonomy and self-efficacy but also supports them at their present levels of ability.  In schools where I have recently been working, inquiry-based learning has been a major point of discussion and development, and I believe it’s because it encompasses the four attributes of effective learning as described by Anderson (2008).  True inquiry-based learning is not something I have been able to achieve as of yet, but I have been making attempts to use its principles more and more, in that I give the students a framework within which they can exercise inquiry-based principles.  This has made a world of difference in the amount of interaction with my students, which as Anderson (2008) explains on p. 55, “is a key learning component in constructivist learning theories and in inducing mindfulness in learners”.

Providing students with learning goals, with may be skill AND content based, and then giving them license to explore within those, has lead to some of my favourite teaching experiences.  An example took place with a grade 12 human development course last term, where the learning goals (pulled from the Ontario curriculum) where these:

Learning Goals:
I will be able to..

• Social-Emotional Development: demonstrate an understanding of social-emotional development throughout the lifespan and of ways of influencing such development;
• Personality and Identity: demonstrate an understanding of various influences on personality development and identity formation throughout the lifespan;
• Factors Affecting Social-Emotional Development: demonstrate an understanding of how factors affect social-emotional development, with an emphasis on the process of socialization.

They had to also meet learning goals related to thesis development and choosing an appropriate mode of communication (they could choose between an essay, website, or presentation), but within the framework of those learning goals they were free to choose their topics based on their areas of interest, as piqued through in-class lessons we had participated in together.

One student, as part of her exploration of personality and identity and factors that effect it, wanted to research introversion and extroversion and how physiological factors might affect these traits.  Through her own research, she discovered – and in fact, taught me – about recent studies that show how the blood flow in the brains of introverts versus extroverts differs, and what this means for information processing.  She found this originally on a .com site, but thanks to good citation, we put our heads together and found primary source case studies (I used my UBC library access to help dig these up), and she used these to learn more about this fascinating development.  I believe this was an instance, rare as it may feel at times, where the “students transform the inert information passed to them from another and construct it into knowledge with personal application and value” (p. 55).  I stressed students use the internet with academic integrity, and mirrored this in my own use of a class Wikispace and through explicit lessons.  At times I had students share or construct their work with each other by building pages on the wiki, but I also tried to emphasize the nature of the internet AS a community, one in which they must have responsible conduct in academic roles – and in general, although they did not generally show an understanding of having one authentic self in all of their online personae.  Assessment took place on an individual and community level in the form of check-lists and peer assessments, as well as with me in almost constant-conferencing.

What I seek to learn is even better ways of pursuing these kinds of interactions, especially at the younger levels.  I’ve been able to play with these methods in grade 10, but those students needed a lot more guidance within their frameworks.  As of yet this is the case with inquiry-based learning for me – it works well with students who are curious AND responsible, but those who are not struggle to find meaningful connections to the curriculum that also meet the academic standard.  I taught myself how to make a simple site, but could I have passed a computer-science class, at the same age?  Probably not.  I think new understanding of technology and its potential provides teachers with the ability to meet students where they are, help them find themselves within the curriculum, and then push them within and outside of it.

—

Anderson, T. (2008a). Towards a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F, Elloumi (Eds.),Theory and practice of online learning. Edmonton AB: Athabasca University. Retrieved fromhttp://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/02_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf

First published Feb. 9th 2016 for ETEC565:

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.