Time Saving Tips for Online Teaching (2014)

 A clock made in Revolutionary France,
showing the 10-hour metric clock.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We often hear that online learning takes a lot of time for instructors. I have found that it can, but when a course is set up in advance, using the appropriate tools, a lot of time can be saved. A little work and planning in advance can save teachers a lot of time when it will really count. Many of these techniques make for a more engaging experience for the students and make teaching online less stressful for instructors.

Note: this is an update of a post from 2012 that adds tips that teachers have sent in since then. Thanks everyone! Here are some of my favorite time-saving tips. Please add to them through the comments or via email.

1. Create a "Welcome Letter" that not only introduces the instructor and the course but gives detailed instructions on how to access the course and where to get help.

2. Use a "Week Zero" that opens up before your class. Create a module in your online class that is always open that tells students how to use the online tools for your course. This module would be a good place for links to online student services that may be available to your studnets.

3. Create a comprehensive syllabus.  Use the syllabus to let students know how to find tech support, tutoring, and a librarian. If your college does not provide online tutoring for students, be sure to check out OpenStudy which provides free, facilitated, online peer tutoring.

4. Use a syllabus quiz. Creating a quiz or syllabus scavenger hunt will help students understand how your course is organized and where to find help. I found this to be even more effective if it were worth a few points.

5. Make your course easy to navigate. Keep as much content as you can no more than two clicks away. Use a consistent format week-to-week or module-to-module. Remove buttons or tools you are not using.

6. Schedule your time. Do not work on your online course because you can; work on it because you have scheduled the time. Let the students know your schedule. Access your course consistently (e.g. three times a week) and respond to email promptly (with-in 48 hours).

7. Be strict about forms of communication. If you give students multiple email and messaging accounts to contact you, be prepared for students to use them. Some instructors do not receive class related email but take course related questions only through the learning management system. Some will only use email. Some only take assignments in drop box. Make sure you are clear about how you want to be contacted.

8. Automate your course as much as possible. Take advantage of the time-release feature of announcements and other content in the tools that you are using like your learning management system. Record and reuse lectures. Let online tools handle as much of the grading as you can.

9. Distributing and exchanging documents. Use the assignment feature of your LMS instead of e-mail. Encourage students to share documents using Google Docs or Dropbox.

10. Centralize question and answers. Use a discussion forum for “Frequently Asked Questions.” Create a FAQ page. Ask students to ask questions in the forum rather than e-mail so everyone benefits from the answer.

11. Use online groups with a deliverable. Let the students do the work. Do not respond to every posting, respond to the group deliverable.

12. Use a "common responses" file to quickly paste in answers to common questions. This file can be a Google Docs file that you can open on any computer.

13. Allow students to facilitate online discussions. Giving students an opportunity to discuss what they have learned in their own voice can really help students learn.

14. Use a detailed grading rubric to help answer questions in advance.  Teachers can create rubrics online using tools like RubiStar.

15. Encourage student-student interaction and study groups. Give them the space to solve problems.

16. Communicate to the entire class regularly. Use audio and/or video each week. Try to anticipate problems or sticking points in a class and record a video to address these issues. We like to suggest tools like Screencast-o-Matic. A YouTube account is also very handy.

17. Save a tree. If you are still printing out papers, learn to use the "Insert comments" feature in your word processor. Downloading papers, printing, then scanning and re-uploading is an enormous time sink. Find out if your college uses "TurnItIn" or some other such service with quick grading tools for documents. If you have not learned how to do this, it will make a huge difference. (And yes, we still have teachers doing this.)


What about you? How do you streamline your online teaching process? Leave a comment below if you have any time saving tips.

Related articles

• Why I teach on the first day of class (smallpondscience.com)
• Time Management Strategies for Online Teachers (University of Wisconsin - Stout)
• How To Think Like An Instructional Design for Your Nonprofit Trainings (bethkanter.org)

Essential Skills for Online Students

(Photo credit: London College of Fashion short courses)

I am writing up a page for our students here at Humboldt State University on the study skills needed to be a successful online student. The same skills needed for success in face-to-face courses are needed in online courses, but my research shows that the following are particularly important for online learners:

• Motivation and Self-Discipline - There is often no set schedule - you must make real commitment to your assignments and deadlines. Remind yourself often why you are in school and what you want to accomplish.
• Time Management - Use the calendar in gmail or any task list that will notify you like "Remember the Milk." Print out the course schedule and enter the dates into an online calendar.
• Effective and Appropriate Communication - Even though you are online, your classes are an academic environment; communicate accordingly.
• Engagement - Be an active learner. You have to take responsibility for your education.  Ask questions. Ask questions in the forums where other students will benefit from the answers, and don't be afraid to answer questions either.
• Collaboration - Forming online study groups and participating in discussions online can make all the difference in an online course. The connections you make are as important as what you learn. 

I am basing a lot of this on my previous research working in community colleges with our DE 101 class - an introduction to online learning. I am also very interested in the Connectivist perspective here: we need to include more in our student prep courses on networking which is important for students to connect to content, their peers and instructors. Being able to build smart networks is at least as important as the subject matter because the networks will allow students to continue their learning long after the class is over.

I am unsatisfied with our "tech skills" list too. Lots of emphasis on software and not enough on what you would use it for. We need to teach students how to be effective in MOOCs, mlearning and other platforms and educational environments - not just the online learning model of the 90s.

What would you add to this list? What habits make your students successful? Add them to the comments or email me and I will include them in the list. 

The Trouble with College, Online or Off

There is an editorial in the New York Times entitled "The Trouble with Online College" this morning about online education. It argues that online education has high attrition rates and that students who are unprepared for college will not do very well. The "therefore" is that we should think twice before seeking to attempt the MOOC model (Massive Open Online Courses). The article makes no distinction between "traditional" online classes or MOOCs. It makes no distinction between the different kinds of learning platforms and designs that are going under the name of MOOC. None of this confusion of terms really helps the opinion. All of the research cited in the piece is from Washington State's tracking students in their online classes, not from any research related to MOOCs. With that in mind, I think it is important to look at the success and retention rates of any online class, even MOOCs, and look at what makes for a successful online class.

To begin with, I generally agree with this article but disagree with the take-away. There are problems with online classes but they have the same issues as face-to-face. I recently worked at a college that had a graduation rate of less than 13%, a retention rate of 52%, and a transfer rate of only 15% with tuition at $5600. Not high by national standards but a considerable amount of money to the local population, especially considering the price of textbooks. If a student's classes are not using free, openly licensed textbooks, they can expect to add another $900-$1200 a year to that price tag. No one sounded any alarms; no one suggested that the model is suspect or broken. No one has warned that face-to-face learning may not be cost effective or sustainable. No one has suggested that teachers need special training or that the orientation to college needs to be redesigned - none of that is really possible is it because the face-to-face, brick and mortar model is the best possible systems of education. I would like to see the editorial pages of the New York Times or the Chronicle of Higher Ed hold face-to-face colleges up to the same standards as they do online colleges. But the interesting thing is that online colleges can meet that challenge.

There is a large body of research in online learning that shows that there is no significant difference between face-to-face and online learning that has been going on for decades and is routinely ignored by many educators and columnists. Despite the findings of that research, in the distance education department at the previous college where I worked, we saw in increasing difference between the success and retention rates of our online college versus our face-to-face college. We did some research and decided to do three things to close the gap:

1. Student Orientation
   We designed a free, fully online student orientation that used all the tools that the school's learning management system used. It operated like a "real" online class over two weeks. It included not only the technology the students were going to use but the learning skills needed to succeed online (time management, communication, etc.).
   
2. Faculty Training
   We increased our faculty training efforts. We kept a weekly schedule of workshops that were either presented in-house or we participated in free online workshops from other colleges. Our dream was to create a network of colleges that were already presenting online workshops to their faculty and keep them all in a central calendar.
   
3. Online Student Advising
   We had a dedicated academic advisor who was completely focused on online students. This advisor was very good at his job. He made himself available to be enrolled in any online class and could do things like subscribe to the help forums in classes and call students on the phone who had not logged-in in two weeks.

The results were that we closed the gap between the success and retention rates in the online college first meeting the California community college average and then beating that and passing the national average. I wrote about that here and also presented on it at conferences.

I have also taught developmental English in a hybrid online course and have seen full-online developmental English courses beat the retention and success rates of face-to-face classes. This can happen with good instructional design that incorporates the skills that students need to be successful online and the connections to the same services that all students need to succeed (online librarians, advisors, etc.). 

One of the reasons why online teaching and learning has problems is because college's and instructors continue to believe that the same model that "works" in the face-to-face classroom is the same model needed for the online classroom. We need a different model and a different system of support. Colleges are not getting the same students they did 20 years ago. Students need to learn how to learn online. They have spent 12 years in the face-to-face classroom learning how to be face-to-face students (in the best of all possible worlds), and we can't just assume they will have the skills needed to be successful online - we need to teach them.

Related articles

• MOOCs: Why Do We Need Instructional Design? (cain.blogspot.com)
• Should 'real' students do an online course on the side? (guardian.co.uk)

OER: DE 101 Self-paced version

This is the stand-alone version of DE 101,  the curriculum we developed for our student orientation. It is released to the public with a Creative Commons license. Distance Education 101 is a two-week orientation on how to take an online class and how to be a successful online student. In this seminar, students learn specifically about College of the Redwoods' "MyCR" (Sakai) and how to use other tools to manage their time, work with others, and their information online. In this orientation students have an opportunity to create and participate in an online community where they can find help and make their connection to the online college.

We believe that our research shows that the two-week, free online orientation was largely responsible for the increase in online student success and retention. Our research is in the presentation below. I have written about DE 101 here before as well.


These course materials were designed for a student population new to technology, broad-band internet, and online communication. That is why there is such a 90s feel to the material. These materials need to be expanded to include more on online collaboration and personal learning networks. This is one of the reasons why we are releasing this on a wiki using the Creative Common's license - we want to collaborate with others who would also like to share their materials.

Closing Open Ed with State Authorization Rules

State seal of Minnesota (Wikipedia)

The Chronicle of Higher Ed reported on Minnestota's state authorization rules for distance ed that we in the California Community College's Distance Education Coordinator's group have been wrestling with as well. The state of Minnesota has told Coursera that they cannot offer free online classes in their state without authorization. I am glad this has happened because I am hoping that this will bring attention to a very complex problem that is not going to just come from Minnesota. Each state has its own state authorization rules for distance education. Getting authorized in some states can mean merely filing a piece of paper, in some states, it can cost a lot. There are serious questions about this that need to be addressed at the federal level:

1. Freedom of speech - If someone wants to read and interact with others for free and not for college credit, what business is that of the state's?
2. Commerce clause - Shouldn't the federal government step up to the plate on this just as they have done with other industries like health insurance?
3. Selective enforcement issues - Why choose Coursera? Has Minnesota sent cease and desist letters to other other open colleges? What about religious colleges?

The federal government has already taken the step to say that they will not enforce state authorization. They need to go the extra mile create legislation to ensure everyone's access to education.  There should be federal guidelines for distance ed to prevent the capricious nature of these rules.

The Real Trouble With Online Education

E-learning ( London College of Fashion)

An editorial piece in the New York Times on July 19th by Mark Edmundson attempts to tell us about "The Trouble with Online Education." Despite the fact that the author does not appear to have taken or taught an online class, and despite not having any listed credentials in the field of education, online teaching and learning, or instructional design, Edmundson, and apparently the editors of the New York Times, feel he is qualified to to make the pronouncement that online courses are not "real" courses.

He asks "can online education ever be education of the very best sort?" In that loaded Gatsbyesque question, does he mean the kind of education the 1% can get at the Ivy Leagues? No, most online classes that I know of or have experienced were not small settings where we sat with a professor in big leather chairs sipping sherry. Not everyone can afford such an education and maybe that is why some folks seem to be threatened by online learning - the barbarians are at the gates! Online classes are classes of a different sort. And here is my real problem with this article: the author does not know what happens in an online class so he assumes it is not what happens in a face-to-face class and this is just wrong. 

Edmundson describes face-to-face classes as places where there is engagement, dialog and the inadvertent creation of academic community "the students will always be running into others who are also enrolled" (I am presuming in the halls or the cafeteria - do his students not work or have families?). But the fact is, I have taken face-to-face classes at colleges (U.C. Berkeley, for instance) where the professor had no time for undergrads, directed all questions to the tutors, and did nothing to foster community. Conversely, I took an online course in 2008 from the University of Manitoba (George Siemens and Stephen Downes MOOC "Connectivism and Connective Knowledge") and I am still in touch with students I met there - in fact, we are basically continuing what we learned in online communities. We are still engaged with one another. What instructor wouldn't want that? In the "very best sort" of online classes, this community and engagement is deliberately built into the courses, and the research says that student engagement is the number one factor in the success of online courses. That said, I did take an online class that was poorly run: the teacher would go days without connecting with the course, the feedback on assignments was minimal and late, and there was little direction. My point is that the teaching modality does not matter if the teacher is engaged.

There seems to be a lot of this going around, there were blog postings I read through the Chronicle of Higher Ed from Siva Vaidhaynathan and Joshua Kim's posting in Inside Higher Ed that both gave negative evaluations of MOOCs (Massively Open Online Classes) despite the authors having no experience with MOOCs or online classes. I addressed those issues in my posting "Why MOOCs Work" but I feel that there is a larger issue here. If you read the three articles together, all contra elearning, they all have this alarmist ring to them that somehow online education is a watering down of face-to-face education. You get a real sense that if the world now accepts online education as it seems that it does, and accepts badges and portfolios in place of traditional certification, that it will detract from the value of the precious face-to-face college. You know the college - the one with the tuition that has risen faster than the price of inflation, faster than the costs of healthcare, and the $250 textbooks. 

Edmundson claims that "Online education is a one-size-fits-all endeavor." There are too many kinds of online classes out there for this to be true: there are full online courses that include Skype sessions with teachers and tutors; there are hybrid courses; there are classes that are more self-directed; and there are MOOCs; I could go on. What constitutes an online class can be as individual as the instructor who teaches it. 

He claims that "It tends to be a monologue and not a real dialogue." Again, he is basing this on courses that are filmed and canned but that is NOT the most common teaching modality in online education. Most online classes include discussion forums and students now are using social media and networks such as Twitter and Facebook to engage with one another, with their instructors and experts in their field of study. A glance at the research at sites like Educause would give him an idea about what is happening. 

He says that instructors can't gauge the nuances of a class online. If  online instructors engage their online class with online discussion forums and chat, they can gauge what is happening. In fact, in some of my online English classes I got to know some of my students better than my face-to-face classes because the students will often seek out that engagement, and socialize a lot online, to make that human connection online. 

All of this points to an appalling lack of knowledge about what constitutes online learning. I can't believe that a college professor would accept similar judgements from a student with nothing to back them up but what "seems." All three authors, Edmundson, Vaidhaynathan, and Kim, evoke what "seems" as evidence. It is not like the research is hard to find. There have been hundreds of studies that show that there is no significant difference between the outcomes and success rates between online and face-to-face learning. All Edmundson would have to do is to take a look at WCET's "No Significant Difference" webpage to find a collection of the research that goes back a hundred years. Or to look at any recent study like the one reported in The American Interest called "New Study: Online Classes Just as Good."

The real trouble with online education right now is that online education is currently being defined in unfavorable ways by those who feel threatened by it. Online education is not the same as face-to-face education. Just as you should not believe the hype behind anything "new" (even if it just new to the press) - don't be dissuaded by those who are so embedded in the old paradigm and have so much to gain by its persistence that you miss out on some great teaching and learning opportunities. 

Related articles

• New York Times: The Trouble With Online Education (lawprofessors.typepad.com)
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• Major Universities Begin Offering Free Online Education (bigthink.com)

OER Session 4 - Funding OER: Sustainability

Image via CrunchBaseJoin us for a webinar on October 31 hosted by SoftChalk.

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/962111696

How do OER projects and programs get started? How are they maintained? Where are funding resources? Can OER projects work without external funding?

These questions and more will be answered by our panel consisting of Cable Green (Director of Global Learning, Creative Commons), Paul Stacey (Director Communication, Stakeholder & Academic Relations; BC campus), and James Glapa-Grossklag (Dean, Educational Technology, Learning Resources, and Distance Learning College of the Canyons). Each will take their unique stance on issues of sustainability and open standards, various funding approaches, and success stories involving everything from individual efforts to consortia based programs.

Title: OER Session 4 - Funding OER: Sustainability
Date: Monday, October 31, 2011
Time: 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM EDT

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

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Six Factors Driving Online Enrollments

Image by proper dave via FlickrThis was the article that I wrote for the Times-Standard's Tech Beat:

Many students are taking online classes at College of the Redwoods and Humboldt State University. Even though online learning is called “distance learning,” the majority of our online students are from here on the North Coast. Research, and our experience at College of the Redwood's Distance Education department, has shown us that despite the fact that online learning takes more motivation and commitment on the part of the student, online learning is an increasingly popular option. Why is becoming a more popular option? Here are six reasons that we believe are driving student online enrollment:

1. Flexibility
Online students can work on their courses and listen to lectures between jobs, appointments and other classes. They can access their course materials 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Course work can be done around family schedules, and students can study on their phone, laptop or anywhere else they have an Internet connection.

2. Accessibility
For some students, such as those in wheelchairs or the blind, attending courses on campus can be challenging. Some students use adaptive technology, like screen readers, to assist them in class. In an online environment, the other students and the teacher may not even know that the online student has a disability. In turn, that can make online classes more attractive to students with special needs. In addition, students who are non-native English speakers also get the benefit of being able to review an online lecture multiple times or review complex concepts at their own pace.

3. Reduced cost
Attending courses online saves the students money by eliminating the expenses of gasoline, bus fares, and parking fees. Some instructors use online, free text books (such as College of the Redwood's Math Department) to further reduce the cost of attendance. If instructors are accepting papers online, students and schools alike save money in printing costs.

4. Engagement
Students in online classes tend to communicate more thoughtfully. Some students find it difficult to speak in class. Posting to an online discussion forum allows students to take their time and formulate their thoughts in ways that the face-to-face classroom environment may not allow. In our experiences with teaching online, we have found that we actually know our online students better than many of our face-to-face students because of the social dimension of online learning. Students often find that online classes provide more personalized attention.

5. Networking and technology skills
Online classes give students real world skills. Students who take online classes become more proficient and comfortable with using computers. Through assignments, discussion forums and group projects, students can learn to connect with one another online and with information in meaningful and useful ways. These 21st century skills are increasingly in demand by the workplace. Some students prefer to learn in the same medium they are using for managing information and communication in their life outside of school.

6. Online learning creates options
Students who take online classes know they have options. If a student needs to take a class that they need to graduate, they will be able to take it online if they have to. Students who take online classes are more likely to take classes in order to update their professional skills further into their careers. They will have the ability to take advantage of online training and “webinars” their future employers or universities may offer.

One of the problems with online learning is that students have spent 12 years or more learning how to be face-to-face students and never learn about the time management skills needed to be an online student. Fortunately, more students at College of the Redwoods are taking advantage of the free, two-week, fully online orientation to distance education called “DE 101.” If you are interested in learning more about online learning, or a CR student interested in DE 101, email Geoff Cain at geoff-cain@redwoods.edu.

Geoff Cain is the Director of Distance Learning at College of the Redwoods. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Redwood Technology Consortium. Want to know more about technology and education? See Geoff's blog at http://www.geoffcain.com.

Distance Ed: No Significant Difference (Even Fictionally)

Image via WikipediaI am reading Hermann Hesse's "The Glass Bead Game" aka "Magister Ludi." The perfect novel to get my mind off of work. The novel is about a student who navigates the labyrinthine academic and quasi-spiritual institution of the glass bead game. Throughout the course of the novel, our maverick hero even rises to become the Game Master. What is the game? There is not really a lot of information in the book about the game, but it does talk about how themes in one discipline, such as astronomy, and another, like music, is proposed and the participants set about to make connections. (Is this the first Connectivist novel?) The more elegant the connections, the better. I think the novel is really about our hero's relationship to institutions. Well something interesting happens: there is instruction and lectures around the games each year that lead up to the big match. The hero of the novel gets sent to a Benedictine monastery for a while but asks his superiors if he can still listen to the lectures over the radio and send his completed game in via post. He does. And guess what? He wins. So in other words, there was no significant difference between the outcome of the contest between those who participated face-to-face and those who participated virtually. In this case, 100% of those who participated virtually did better than those who participated face-to-face.

Even though I am only half kidding around here, Hesse has always been a favorite novelist of mine, I could not have survived my teens without Steppenwolf, Journey to the East, or Siddartha. I like to think he would appreciate my playfulness.

Laborare est ludare...

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California Distance Education Report

Image via WikipediaThe Academic Affairs division of the California Community College's Chancellor's office came out with their latest Distance Education Report. They have been doing these every two years since 2002. It give the breakdown on how many students are taking DE classes, demographics, and learning mode. We stack up pretty well with how things are going nationally - California seems to be following national trends - the enrollments in DE are steadily increasing and this last year, there was a 5.96% drop in face-to-face enrollments and a 5.82% increase in online. Then there is that 10% gap between the success and completion rates that I have been chasing since I have been involved in distance ed. I think studies in distance education and interactivity have been addressing some of the issues.  There have been some breaks in that as well. The Instructional Technology Council released a report that said that "The gap between distance learning and face-to-face student completion rates has narrowed significantly, and individual campuses are reporting real progress in exceeding traditional completion rates."

You've Got Mail: Old models of learning are new again

Image via WikipediaDespite the growth of broad-band internet and the increases of online learning, the correspondence model of distance education is still going. According to Wikipedia, distance education dates to around 1728 when an advertisement in the Boston Gazette announced that "Caleb Philips, Teacher of the new method of Short Hand" would offer weekly lessons through the mail. The University of London claims to be the first university to offers degrees via correspondence through its External Programme in 1858. Shorthand was widely used for hundreds of years before recording technologies like the dictaphone took over. We are looking at the correspondence model of education now because we are looking at ways to deliver learning to deployed military, students who live in areas with little technological infrastructure, and prisons. We know the correspondence model works because there are many colleges that use the method and many of us have taken courses that relied on the mail before the internet came along. CSU, Dominguez Hills for instance, had most of its course in their external humanities degree as correspondence until very recently. According to the Bi-Annual Report on Distance Learning, teleconferencing make up 1% of all DE courses in California and correspondence is 2%. Palo Verde College, Lassen College, and Feather River College all still use the correspondence model (mostly for prisoners). Sacramento State University, Montana State University, the University of Florida, and Michigan State all have water management programs that are still available via the correspondence model.

And there is no reason why the courses shouldn't work. At their best, correspondence courses can be just as effective as face-to-face tutorials with a professor. A search at No Significant Difference shows that their earliest citations are studies that show that there was no significant difference in test scores between face-to-face and correspondence students (search "correspondence" at the site).

My questions though are along these lines: is it possible to introduce a group project in the correspondence model? What about a correspondence-hybrid model where the students use a Google Voice number to create a weekly conference call? This would not require access to the internet except to set up the initial phone number. In California, the community college instructors have free access to the state-licensed Elluminate Live which would allow them to set up an on-going conference call for the semester. This would not work for students in some prison settings, but there has to be a way to write these questions so they could be used by individuals or small groups. An individual with no access to a phone can write out answers to questions and an instructor could collate the collective answers of the class and distribute them back. It is possible that students in the same prison could start a "reading group" for the course. Each one of these scenarios would require a particular set of questions.

If you or your institution has used or is using the correspondence model, leave a comment below or email me - I would love to talk to you about your courses.

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OER Africa: Course Development Handbook

Image via WikipediaI am currently reading Santosh Panda's textbook Handbook on In-House Style for Course Development.  This would be recommended reading for new course developers or distance education admins who are new to the field or need to develop a systematic course development program
 with new staff. I am always on the look-out for possible training materials for new instructional designers or ways to enhance or streamline the course development process. This handbook contains a lot of useful materials and seems to be written with an awareness of what actually happens in online classes. It is light on theory and heavy on the practical. I have been in presentations on instructional design where the why was the focus instead of the what and the how. This inevitably leads to having a teacher stand up and say "Great. How does this actually supposed to work?" This not to say that Panda's book is theory-free somehow - the book models a lot of good theory through its use of concept maps and emphasis on course structure, and his discussion of constructivism. I would like to see more examples of student interaction in the example assignments but again, this is a practical handbook for getting things off the ground.

To think I had to travel all the way to Africa to find a book that was written in our own backyard :-) I am always looking for good instructional design materials. If you have a favorite online, please post a link to it in the comments.

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CTE Conference: Are you ready for distance education?

The Distance Education Dept. at College of the Redwoods presented at the Career & Technical Education Conference hosted by CR. We love this conference because it is our chance to meet folks from the high schools, local businesses, and other colleges as well as the friendly faces of our college faculty. Our presentation was called "Are You Ready for Distance Learning?" This question has taken on different meanings for DE departments over the years. It can mean "Are you ready as a student?" or "Are we ready as a college?" or "Are we ready as a community?" Our presentation was meant to cover all three questions. We knew we were going to have a wider variety of people come in from the local community, so we wanted to put up a non-linear presentation that we could adjust to the needs of the participants rather than a forced march through a pre-fab lecture. We also wanted to use tools that would inspire the participants to think of education as a collaborative endeavor rather than a way to fill up empty minds with more stuff. I hope that this presentation serves as a starting point for a broader conversation about education and using technology to facilitate learning and community. We would like anyone who is interested, to go in to the presentation and feel free to add links, comments, suggestions and ideas.

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Student Privacy and Facebook

Image via WikipediaThe Student PIRGs has come out with a guide for controlling your information on Facebook. This has come at a really good time because College of the Redwoods is expanding its presence on Facebook and other social networks. Understanding the benefits and the risks is equally important. We will have to review this frequently to keep up with how quickly Facebook can change.Social networks can be powerful communication tools but they are used by more than just students! I don't want to impede how folks communicate but understanding privacy issues is especially important in an educational setting (thinking possibly of FERPA).

I am interested in how other colleges are managing the issues around Facebook and social networks. Feel free to leave a comment here if your college has guidelines or policies related to Facebook or other social networks.

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Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning

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This report Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development  Policy and Program Studies Service is an interesting contribution to the "no significant difference" phenomena in distance education. I like that this report does not attribute success in online learning to any media but to the teaching and learning practices.

Abstract

A systematic search of the research literature from 1996 through July 2008 identified more than a thousand empirical studies of online learning. Analysts screened these studies to find those that

• contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition,
• measured student learning outcomes,
• used a rigorous research design, and
• provided adequate information to calculate an effect size.

As a result of this screening, 50 independent effects were identified that could be subjected to meta-analysis. The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed modestly better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. The difference between student outcomes for online and face-to-face classes—measured as the difference between treatment and control means, divided by the pooled standard deviation—was larger in those studies contrasting conditions that blended elements of online and face-to-face instruction with conditions taught entirely face-to-face. Analysts noted that these blended conditions often included additional learning time and instructional elements not received by students in control conditions. This finding suggests that the positive effects associated with blended learning should not be attributed to the media, per se. An unexpected finding was the small number of rigorous published studies contrasting online and face-to-face learning conditions for K–12 students. In light of this small corpus, caution is required in generalizing to the K–12 population because the results are derived for the most part from studies in other settings (e.g., medical training, higher education).

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The Art of Describing

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There are often connections between my artistic life and my work in education that are surprising. I am reading a book called "The Art of Describing" by Svetlana Alpers. It is a book about Dutch art in the 17th century and it feels pretty far removed from my work in instructional design and distance education. It is not a new book but I am giving myself a crash course in art history and criticism to work out some ideas that are important to the current novel I am writing. Additionally, I am just interested in art in general. My current novel hinges on ideas of art, identity and authorship. In her book, Alpers talks about Dutch art as descriptive rather than being a narrative art like the Italians (she gives notable exceptions, of course) and in the second chapter, talks about how lenses and the camera obscura began to change how the Dutch defined art, seeing, and knowing. There are two important terms describing art for the 17th cent. Dutch - "naer het leven" (after life e.g. painting from a live subject) and "nyt den geest" (from the mind). Alpers writes "while naer het leven refers to everything visible in the world, nyt den geest refers to images of the world as they are stored mnemonically in the mind" (p.40). This is pretty exciting territory for me because there is an intersection here between this work I am doing for my art (fiction) and the work I am doing in instructional design, which involves visual pedagogy. The 17th century was an important turning point in science and art because the inventions of the lens and the camera obscura were changing how we understood optics and images. Kepler wrote about optics Alpers sums up Kepler's arguments when she writes "To understand our view of the sun, or moon, or world, we must understand the instrument with which we view it..." This is very radical. It implies that there is no concrete "actual" image out there - just a view of the world that is an interpretation by an instrument which could be a lens, a camera obscura, or the eye itself. I think this was a common view of all technology back then. It comes from a fundamental mistrust of the senses and an understanding that all tools for observation are really tools of interpretation and the tool you choose shapes that interpretation.

The lense we are looking through now is the series of connected databases, documents, images, texts and people that make up the internet. Understanding how the technology determines our interpretation of knowledge on the internet is critical. I believe that we are only going to be able to fully understand how we can do that by looking at how we processed technical innovations in the past.

The Future of Education

This is a first crack at thinking about the "Future of Education" question that George Siemens asked us. It is not a finished thesis but just little old me reading off the back of the napkin. I am pretty passionate about the future of education because the future is here now and passing a lot of community college students by. It is not from a lack of money but a lack of vision and will. As an instructional designer and educator, I see nothing "theoretical" about this discussion at all since the answers to the questions can mean real change for people - just look at what is happening in open education resources and open texts right now.

I threw in pictures that represented a history of futures and just basically played around with Garage Band.

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I Predict Things Will Remain the Same...

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...only very shiny.

I always brace myself at this time of year for all the predictions that are going to come out for the following decade. These "predictions" are often a way to express our hopes and fears and often have little to do with how technology and history play themselves out. Who would have predicted medical simulations in virtual worlds? Or that the next latest and greatest computer for the classroom would be the phone? What astounds me about predictions for the future is how much of the past world-views get projected forward. Predictions are often ways to repackage our best loved prejudices and preserve them for the future.

Larry Cuban's "An End of Year Prediction," for instance, gives us the same fears of online learning repackaged.

"Proponents talk about how this form of teaching and learning as a powerful innovation that will liberate learning from the confines of brick-and-mortar buildings. Estimates (and predictions) of online learning becoming the dominant form of teaching turn up repeatedly and, somehow, fade." This has not been the case at all. Online learning has been nothing but a growth industry. And it will continue to be, not just for colleges but for the k-12 as well. The economy is in such a state that online learning is pretty much here to stay. According to the Sloan Report, K-12 Online Learning: a 2008 Follow-Up Survey, the overall number of K-12 students engaged in online courses in 2007-2008 was estimated at 1,030,000. "This represents a 47% increase since 2005-2006" and this number is increasing for this year as well.

"Nonetheless, by 2020, well over 90 percent of public school students will be in places called schools going at least 180 days a year to self-contained classrooms where a teacher will be in charge." This will simply not be the case because no one can afford to build the schools in the traditional sense. This statement ignores what is happening in brick and mortar schools. They are turning more and more towards technology to solve their problems. Notice the concern with the teacher being in charge. I really hope those attitudes change.

Cuban goes on to say that "The error that online champions make decade after decade (recall that distance learning goes back to the 1960s) is that they forget that schools have multiple responsibilities beyond literacy. Both parents and voters want schools to socialize students into community values, prepare them for civic responsibilities, and yes, get them ready for college and career. Online courses from for-profit companies and non-profit agencies cannot hack those duties and responsibilities." This shows a real lack of understanding of what online education is and what is possible. The only way one could write such a statement is to have no real interest in the field of online learning or educational technology. There are many studies that show that it is a successful medium for interacting, learning and building community; all skills that are certainly needed in the 21st century workplace.

"Online instruction will continue to expand incrementally," writes Cuban, "but will still be peripheral to regular K-16 schooling. End of prediction." The joke here is that it is expanding exponentially. Just in my own workplace it has expanded 100% and nationally it is increasing steadily at

According to the USDLA, "Distance learning is used in all areas of education including Pre-K through grade 12, higher education, home school education, continuing education, corporate training, military and government training, and telemedicine.

Research studies have been quite consistent in finding that distance learning classrooms report similar effectiveness results as reported under traditional instruction methods. In addition, research studies often point out that student attitudes about distance learning are generally positive."

I predict that predictions will go on being made that ignore research, the facts, and reinforce the power dynamics of the medieval classroom. There are many articles and stories that discuss the expansion of online learning in the K-12. A good place to start is at eCampus which has a number of articles on this page that discuss the rapid expansion of e-learning.

Time for New Model for Online Learning

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I have been taking a closer look at Straighterline today. The Washington Monthly ran an article on the company called "College for $99 a Month." Their model is that students sign up to take classes for 99 dollars a month. The courses are accepted for credit at four colleges including Fort Hays State University. The courses are supported by a team of teachers, course ad visors, and 24/7 online tutoring. The courses use McGraw-Hill content (like many community colleges) and the courses are further vetted by the faculty and administrators of their partner colleges. The brilliant thing about this arrangement is that it allows students to take the courses at their own pace. One student discussed in the article was able to finish four classes in two months. For colleges with holes in the online schedule, it seems like a perfect fit. If you read the comments at the Washington Monthly you will see a lot of reasons not to do this - and they all basically center around the idea that either a) the purpose of the college is to provide jobs for teachers or b) a new model of education is wrong because education can only be defined by the old model. All of the reasons to not do this pale in comparison with the real issues facing students today.

According to a Michael Mandel in Sept. 12th's Business Week, since 2000, college costs are up by 23% since 2000 and pay for young college grads is down 11% over the same period. How can colleges and universities justify this? We have to come to grips with the fact that costs for the students are out of control - we need to look at alternative cost models like Straighterline; we need to adopt open source textbooks and technology. Straighterline is delivering the same outcomes and content at a significantly lower cost. In my experience, the same McGraw-Hill modules are being taught at many colleges with less interaction and support. Students should not be satisfied with courses with little interaction, little support, and where faculty do not provide timely feedback. What Straighterline can't do, and the colleges can, is adopt open education resources. Straighterline needs the quality assurance and expertise at McGraw-Hill. We should be taking the lead. We should be applying our expertise to free, open source texts and lowering costs for students.

I know that there are going to be a lot of people who are mistrustful or even upset at Straighterline's model. I like the fact that they will bring people to the table talking about things like cost, authentic assessment, and online course quality. It is long overdue.

What is Innovation?

As I have been working here at my new job, I have been thinking a lot about innovation. In previous postings, I have talked about how money, or the lack of it, influences change and innovation.

I am at a new college, College of the Redwoods, as Director of Instructional Design. It is an exciting time at an interesting college (think of the old Chinese curse): a ten thousand square mile college district needs to expand its online college with little to no money and with what I would consider a minimal infrastructure. This is just the sort of climate that breeds innovation. I also have a chance here to work with innovative people like Maggie McVay Lynch, the Dean of Distance Learning. If her name rings a bell it might be from her article on preparing students for online learning; it is often cited. We used these ideas in our health information management class. She is also responsible for bringing Sakai (called "MyCr" here as customized by rSmart), Gmail, and Google Apps for Education to the campus. Many campuses would consider these radical and outrageous moves - especially IT depts. - but they feel like the most natural solutions here.

So a definition of innovation that is useful here is one by David Yost who used to work for Apple's Advanced Technologies Group: "Another way of putting this is that an innovation lowers the costs and/or increases the benefits of a task. A wildly successful innovation increases the benefits-to-costs ratio to such an extent that it enables you to do something it seemed you couldn’t do at all before or didn’t even know you wanted to do." That is certainly what is happening here. We are moving from a linear, hierarchically organized "learning management system" to a "collaborative learning environment" that is much more inline with constructivist (and connectivist) models of online learning. One of the things that makes College of the Redwoods such an exciting place to be right now is that few here have any real idea how a combination of tools like Sakai and Google Apps for Education can dramatically increase the interactivity of their courses and build community among the students and faculty.

Yost also makes a note of James Burke's ideas on innovation: "...the web of innovation has been and always will be highly interconnected, how each innovation brings forth a paradigm shift which enables other innovations that were unthinkable in the previous paradigm."

I often wonder if ideas from people like George Siemens are not acceptable to some because Siemens is answering questions that some people are not asking yet. And when you find yourself in an institution that is short on money that their ability to see beyond their traditional positions also changes. So a few things have to be in place for innovation: the right people, ideas, and a catalyst (like a budget collapse!). Anyone of those may not be enough.