My Thoughts on Moderating Online Discussion Forums Effectively

          In traditional face-to-face courses, use of discussions can be an effective instructional strategy to encourage students to interact with one another and the content (Pollak, 2017).  In fully online courses, discussion forums are frequently the primary means for whole group communications and interactions.  No matter how discussion forums are used for managing formal or informal conversations or opportunities for collaboration, moderation of these online forums requires different strategies from those used in traditional face-to-face discussions.  

          A common misconception in moderating discussion forums is that it's necessary for instructors to respond to all student postings.  The reality?  It is absolutely not necessary to reply to every student post made in a discussion forum.  One of the primary goals of an online discussion is to provide student-to-student interactions through in-depth reflection and deeper learning with the course content.  Too much instructor participation in these discussion forums can quickly make the instructor the center of conversation when, in fact, the student reflections and responses should be the core of the dialog and driven by the students.  

So............how much should an instructor participate in online discussion forums? 

          There is no cookie cutter answer to this question, but the amount of participation significantly depends on how the discussion questions are written and designed, the level of student interest on the discussion topic, and the instructor's interest on the topic.  Having said that, a good reasonable starting point strategy is to comment to 1/3 of substantive student posts.  It is wise to spread out your responses to students over the duration of the week, module, or length of the overall discussion forum.  This encourages students to participate in discussion boards consistently over time.

Why removing yourself from an online discussion forum doesn't work.

          Throughout my experiences as a student taking several fully online courses during graduate-level studies, I noticed about 80% of the time that several instructors simply removed themselves completely from our online discussions.  As a student, I expected some level of active participation from the instructor to ensure my posts were being "heard" and I was on the right track.  I quickly learned that an instructor's silence from our discussion forums did not reassure me if I was on the right track or not with our discussion at hand.  Students need that reassurance to ensure content is understood and learning growth is taking place.  Instructor silence weakens instructor presence, decreases student engagement, and increases the feeling of isolation (Cho and Tobias, 2016). 

Tips to consider when participating in student-driven online discussions

• Avoid "I agree" and/or "good job" responses to students' postings, especially if you don't give credit to students posting these same shallow responses.  As the primary content expert in your course, take the opportunity to model meaningful dialog as posting additional thoughts based on research, provide additional data, or post with follow-up questions to continue deep thinking and conversation.  
• Identify common themes from students' posts and tie them to text/article readings and key concepts.
• Consider implementing a Socratic or reflective questioning approach in your participatory posts and discussion board design.
• When posting follow-up questions and ideas, scaffold your students' learning and avoid talking over the students' heads.
• Give participation points for students for modeling thorough and concise postings.  Ideally, make this part of your evaluative grading rubric.

Resources

• Cho, M., & Tobias, S. (2016). Should instructors require discussion in online courses? Effects of online discussion on community of inquiry, learner time, satisfaction, and achievement. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 17(2).
• Pollak, M. (2017). Designing and managing engaging discussions in online courses. Journal of Teaching and Learning with Technology, 6(1), pp.76-80.

Implications of Web-Based Technologies for Blended Learning Environments

Below is a Prezi presentation I created for a blended learning certification course assignment I'm currently taking through the Illinois Online Network for the Master Online Teacher Certificate (MOTC) program.  This was a thought-provoking assignment prompting me to dig deeper into the implications of my selected technologies (Twitter, Blogger, and Camtasia Studio) for blended learning environments.  I simply wanted to share my project with you.  Feel free to leave your comments or ideas for other technologies that are ideal for blended environments in the comments section below.  Enjoy!

A Learning Technology I Want To Learn More About: Mobile App Development

As mobile learning continues to increasingly make its way into the physical and online classroom, app development is one of the areas I have been interested for some time now.  There is no question that there is a plethora of apps that can address a number of educational learning needs whether a child is practicing basic addition/subtraction to college-level groups of students collaborating on planning documents with Google Drive on the go.  In my initial research into app development revealed that coding languages such as Java, C++, Python, Corona-One, and Ruby to name a few is necessary.  However, over time and further investigation, I began noticing a number of applications and services that require less of needing a programing language knowledge base but including a more graphical user interface instead.  This is similar to building web pages now where you don't have to have a working knowledge of HTML code.  Below are several cloud/Web-based applications I encountered that can potentially offer easy-to-use interfaces for creating educational mobile apps.

1. App Press.  This is a Web-based app builder that targets iPhone, iPad, and Android applications.  App Press uses a Photoshop-like interface for assembling visual assets via layers.
   
   
2. EachScape.  A cloud-based builder that provides a drag-and-drop interface for native iOS and Android apps as well has HTML5 Web apps.
   
   
3. iBuildApp.  This easy-to-use builder provides customizable templates for iPhone, iPad, and Android apps.  No coding required as well.
   
   
4. AppGyver.  This is another drag-and-drop builder that aims at iOS and Android apps.  Apps can then be published to Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store.

From an instructional standpoint, there are apps that simply don't fulfill a particular learning need.  It would be great to have mobile apps made in no time.  However, some level of technical "know how" and time are required to accomplish such task.  As with many learning technologies, time consumption is not always an option for faculty.  As an instructional designer, I would be interested in creating a Baylor faculty development app where instructors can book resources such as our video and audio booths and sign up for training sessions Online Teaching and Learning Services host.  In addition, the same app could contain training resources such as quick "how-to" videos for using Canvas tools such as creating screencasts with Kaltura or implementing quiz options to deter cheating or other forms of academic misconduct.  Let me know your thoughts and interests in app development!

Asynchronous Communications: The Discussion Board

Discussions boards are one of the most commonly used tools to facilitate dialog in online courses.  These boards allow for back and forth communications between students and instructors asynchronously over a period of time.  Students are able to reflect upon their own ideas before sharing them with their classmates, leading to deeper discussions and learning.  Additional benefits of integrating discussion boards into online courses include:

• Building a sense of learning community through sharing ideas,
• Provides students extra time to reflect on their ideas, research, and develop their responses before sharing their thoughts, and
• Help facilitate learning by allowing students to reflect and respond to the work of others.

The image below is a snapshot of an introductory "icebreaker" activity I had students participate in for a summer online version of the MIS 1305 - Introduction to Information Technology and Processing course I teach occasionally.

Discussion board thread in the Canvas learning management system

In my own instructional practice, discussion boards have played an important role in all fully online course that I have taught.  Through varied structured designs, I rely on discussion boards to manage the text-heavy responses.  As illustrated in the image above, Canvas discussion boards create an indented hierarchy of posting to show learners who replied to who and when.  This visual queue makes following a discussion much more efficient for both students and me as the instructor.   One added benefit to contemporary discussion boards is that students can embed other types of media (i.e. images, audio, and video recordings) into their postings besides text.  This is a great enhancement to traditional discussion boards as students can communicate asynchronously in creative ways beyond text.

My Quick Thoughts on Twitter to Support Learning

The short answer to the question “can this tool (Twitter) meet an instructional need?” is yes.  First, Twitter can be a valuable research tool for finding instructional resources, research, blogs, etc. through the use of hashtags.  Using Twitter as a research tools saves a significant amount of time as others already identified resources that may be useful and tagged the posting to share with a much broader audience. The Twitter feed below is an example that shows how postings with the hashtag #edtech are currated making the search process much more efficient.  Second, the 140-character limitation of “tweets” also forces individuals to keep posts short and to the point.  Well-written tweets quickly identify the resource and its purpose.  The third, and one of the most important uses of Twitter in my opinion, is establishing connections with other individuals that have similar interests.  Whether you’re interested in educational technology, science, math, biking, fishing, gaming, or e-learning, Twitter makes it very easy to find and connect (i.e. follow) to others with these similar interests......an essential component of a personal learning network (PLN).  

#edtech Tweets

Twitter’s learning curve is not steep at all.  I have been using Twitter since April 2009.  Twitter’s interface parallels with several contemporary social media services such as Facebook and blogs where the most recent posts are always at the top of the feed.  Twitter also integrates with Facebook, mobile devices, Feed.ly, the Canvas learning management system, and a wide variety of Web-based applications that makes sharing resources to a large audience in a short amount of time quite efficient. 

Instructional Strategies for Enhancing Learning in Online Courses

Teaching in an online environment often presents challenges to faculty members, especially for those that have limited to no experience teaching fully (and even blended/hybrid) online courses.  When online courses remove the face-to-face and seat time elements of traditional courses, faculty must re-think and assess the way they teach and engage adult learners.  Below, I present five instructional strategies to consider that have helped me make the transition to teaching online.

Vary the learning activities.  Implementing the same activity across lessons or units will quickly add boredom and disengage learners. Additionally, you will notice many students tend to duplicate their responses across discussions, assignments, and in their writing when using the same activities.  Consider switching between discussions, collaborative tasks, individual tasks, case studies, reflection papers and reading briefs, blog and journal entries, presentations, and end-of-module live web conferencing sessions.  For example, in one unit/module use a structured threaded discussion in your LMS (learning management system) where students are responding to posted questions and engaging in ongoing dialog with peers and the instructor.  Then, in a later unit/module, instead of a thread discussion board, have students post responses to discussion posting to a blog (i.e. WordPress, Blogger, Edublogs, etc.)

Just A Few More Common Mistakes to Avoid in Online Course Design and Development

As a follow up to my 5 Common Mistakes to Avoid in Online Course Design and Development and A Few More Common Mistakes to Avoid in Online Course Design and Development posts, I wanted to share a few more mistakes that I have been guilty of and observed higher education faculty face themselves in the online course development process.

1. Mistake #8: Not giving yourself enough time to build your online course.  Faculty members are busy.  Whether you're a graduate teaching assistant, an adjunct instructor, or tenure-track (or non-tenure track) professor, we are continuously upholding our teaching, research, and service responsibilities resulting in becoming overwhelmed.  You may even be tempted to delay building and designing your online course; however, doing so typically rushes course creation and causes quality to decline.  This frequently occurs during a learning management system (LMS) migration period or during the summertime when faculty are teaching an online course for the first time in the upcoming fall semester. 
   
   My suggestion:  Begin building your course 16 weeks or more before the course start date, and establish developmental benchmarks along the way.  By beginning the course development process early, it becomes much easier to focus on course quality and devote time to other to other priorities.
   
   
   

A Few More Common Mistakes to Avoid in Online Course Design and Development

As a follow up to my post 5 Common Mistakes to Avoid in Online Course Design and

Development, there are few more mistakes with suggestions that I wanted to share with you. 

1. Mistake #6: Responding to student email 24/7. We often hear the phrase "anytime, anywhere learning" when we read or discuss online learning with our colleagues. For many learners "anytime, anywhere" means just that. Learning and engaging in course activities can occur at 2 p.m in the afternoon or at 2 a.m. in the morning. Additionally, the instructor may be in Texas, but students may be in New York, Orlando, India, China, Spain, Nebraska, West Virginia and so on.  Many students in online courses will email instructors with questions regarding their grades, an assignment, the syllabus, etc. and expect an immediate (or very quick) response from the instructor.  The reality: instructors have lives and other obligations outside teaching their online class(es).  Instructors are not on their computers or smartphones 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  With easy access to mobile technologies that surround us 24/7, we, as instructors, frequently find ourselves responding to student emails at home during family time, while running important personal/family errands, and so on.  This mistake can be easily avoided in several ways.
   
   My suggestion:  Clearly state, at least in your syllabus, a reasonable response time that you will respond to students' email inquiries. 

5 Common Mistakes to Avoid in Online Course Design and Development

In my 12+ years of teaching face-to-face, blended, and online undergraduate and graduate-level courses in higher education and current role as an instructional designer, I've encountered and observed many mistakes in instructional delivery, learning design, and student engagement.  The old saying "learn from your mistakes" has held true in my own instructional practices from my early days as a graduate assistant teaching technology skills in a computer lab to the later days of being a tenure-track assistant professor designing and delivering fully online graduate-level courses in instructional design from scratch.  Along this journey I've picked up many "do's and don't" of teaching online and engaging learners in online environments.  My main point...........we all make mistakes along the way, especially when teaching online.

Below, I outline common mistakes with online course design and development that I've encountered in my own instructional practice and continue to observe in my current instructional designer role.  Additionally, I provide suggestions on how you can avoid these mistakes.

1. Mistake #1:  Using too many new tools at once OR not using any new tools at all.  Instructors are frequently introduced to LMS tools and capabilities, LTI's (learning tool interoperability), blogs, Google apps, cloud storage, and many other online learning tools.  Some faculty will shy away or avoid these learning technologies all together while some faculty are ready to dive in and use as many tools at once.

Flipped Classroom Strategy 4: Muddiest Point (In/During Class Instructional Strategy)

Initial Thoughts and Introduction

In my continued research into flipped learning and its implications in the university/college

classroom, I'm amazed at the creative strategies faculty members use to engage the adult learner and make the best use of class time.  As a current instructional designer at my respective institution, I find myself reflecting on my own past teaching experiences as an educator (tenure-track professor, adjunct, and teaching assistant) in higher education and past leadership experiences as a technology integration administrator working directly with K-12 teachers.  More specifically, two themes begin to emerge in my mind from both higher education and K-12 sectors: instructional strategy and assessment.  In a recent presentation on flipped classrooms I delivered during a summer faculty institute, I used the appropriate term formative assessment in my discussion of how the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy applies to the section of both (a) instructional strategies and (b) assessment techniques to identify student understanding (or lack of) throughout the learning process. 

Flipped Classroom Strategy 3: Think-Pair-Share (In/During Class Instructional Strategy)

A common yet important point about the flipped classroom in discussions among higher education faculty and instructional designers is the fact that there is no one right way or strategy for the flipped method.  This includes the strategies implemented before, during,

and after class time.  However, in addressing the question what is the best use of class time? that is central to the flipped classroom, it is important that we explore the active learning strategies that we are seeing faculty implement in successful yet engaging flipped classroom/learning environments.  One such active learning strategy is think-pair-share.

Flipped Classroom Strategy 2: Identify Where to Flip and Start Small

In a recent presentation, entitled The Flipped Classroom, I delivered to higher education faculty at my current institution, we began our dialog reviewing various definitions of the flipped classroom.  Early definitions and interpretations simply reversed when homework and lectures took place: students watched recorded "lectures" outside of class and in-class activities would normally involve applying what they learned from the videos (i.e. the homework).  More contemporary and refined definitions, such as the one below by the Flipped Learning Network (FLN), describe the flipped classroom as a unique learning environment that requires careful planning, but focuses on learning.  

Flipped learning is a pedagogical approach in which direct instruction moves from the group learning space to the individual learning space, and the resulting group space is transformed into a dynamic, interactive learning environment where the educator guides students as they apply concepts and engage creatively in the subject matter. (FLN, 2014).