[SueFolley]

Maybe the issue with adult learners and blogging is not so much the technical side of things but it is quite scary to blog. I agree to start small and give the learners very low-risk blogging activities to start with. It can be really frightening to blog about something more academic if you are not confident about yourself. Plan the first few posts, maybe just to write a few lines on their motivations for taking the course, or a bit about their other interests. This will get them into the process of blogging without it being too scary. I always find it hard to write a blog when told I can write about anything, I prefer to be given a remit. The other thing is to try and build some social presence amongst the participants before you ask them to blog. For example try hosting a fun informal webinar when they get to know each other. They need to build a bit of trust amongst each other before they start to blog. This tends to happen more automatically with face-to-face classes but needs a bit of tutor-led help online.

[SueFolley]

Imogen – not sure about Collaborate, but with Adobe Connect you can download a webinar recording for viewing offline. I think it downloads in flash format (.flv).  Then you could upload it elsewhere. I think Collaborate is java based though – but if anyone knows different feel free to correct me :).

Sue

[SueFolley]

It is useful to hold some sort of practical workshop with students as they often don’t know how to do effective reflection. There is a useful reflective exercise that students can do from Jennifer Moon’s book “Learning Journals, A handbook for academics, students and professional development”.  This book comes highly recommended from several staff as a guide for them to help student understand the different levels of reflection and it also helps academic staff useful information on marking and feedback back on reflective pieces.

The exercise involves reading accounts of a critical incident – the students then discuss in groups the differences between the accounts, specifically trying to identify the elements that are reflective, descriptive etc from the following criteria:

·         descriptive writing

·         descriptive reflection

·         dialogic reflection

·         critical reflection.

 

Sue

[SueFolley]

In response to the question about video feedback, a lecturer at our Uni, James McDowell has done a lot of work on this, http://www.studynet2.herts.ac.uk/intranet/lti.nsf/0/F797A8333882631C80257A39003179AE?open In fact he won an ALT award in 2011 of it – this is the link to his screencast about it: http://www.jamesmcdowell.com/Epigeum/.

Video feedback can also be useful when grading something physical like a piece of art, or a model of something. A useful ipad app for this is Explain Everything which allows you to annotate the video (or still image, or collection of images) and record a narration over the top. Very useful for pointing out the positives and areas for improvement.

Sue

 

[SueFolley]

In response to the point about audio feedback, we too have seen some good use of audio feedback particularly in GradeMark. It works well as in already embedded in the tool so there is no uploading of audio files and making sure the right file goes to the right student etc. The problem we have found is that students would like to download the audio file to save, and I don’t think there is a way of doing that. In a similar way, we archive our modules and would like to extract the audio feedback to archive but again I don’t think you can do that unless anyone knows differently…

Our students like the audio feedback as it feels more personal and it is particularly easier to break bad news by audio. In contrast though our international students prefer written feedback, may be because it can be translated easier?

 

[SueFolley]

Ali, In response to your original question about how we ensure students engage with their feedback, we found during a project that students engaged with their feedback a lot more when a rubric was used. Although the use of rubrics are contested in the literature, and are not right in every context, we found that it lead to increased transparency about where a grade came from and also showed the students exactly what they needed to do to improve on the grade. I have just written a quick blog post about it here which explains what we did in more detail: http://suefolleyoctel.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/the-use-of-rubrics-in-assessment/.

I am not advocating their use in all contexts, subjects and levels but in our case they worked really well and the students really liked them.

Sue

 

[SueFolley]

Hi Megan – a couple of points in response to your post.

Firstly if you are using Adobe Connect with only a few participants (you mentioned groups of about 5) you could ask where possible that students use video cameras. I know you can’t insist on this if they are using their own devices, but many laptops etc have built-in cameras. If you do that they are less likely to multi-task or get distracted as they know you can see them. In addition you get a bit of the non-verbal communication that tutors are used to in the classroom – so a nod, smile, frown etc – all let you know if students are understanding what you are saying and still with you…

Secondly re the private communication – this probably happens in f2f classes anyway, students could whisper or pass notes to each other, so I wouldn’t worry too much. In Elluminate you as moderator could see private messages between participants (or at least a setting allowed this), I don’t think this is the case with Adobe Connect but I think students are unlikely to communicate anything negative in this way for fear of it being able to be seen. You can’t really stop student communicating by Facebook, Twitter or text messages but it is the same for f2f teaching as well. You may find it is useful conversation anyway :).

Try and keep giving the students things to do – that will increase engagement, help avoid them getting distracted and heopfully not give them much time to start messaging each other during the session. In some ways I think an online session is more demanding of someone’s attention than a face-to-face class.

Good luck – hope it goes well. 🙂

Sue

[SueFolley]

I have just summarised my notes from the webinar I attended on creating virtual learning sessions in a blog post: http://suefolleyoctel.wordpress.com/2013/05/16/creating-virtual-learning-sessions/

[SueFolley]

I have used Blackboard Collaborate and Adobe Connect as a presenter and delegate before, and although you can replicate the ‘lecture and PowerPoint’ approach online using these tools, you can make it a lot more interactive through the use of a variety of tools including the polling tool but particularly getting people to contribute their ideas on a whiteboard. This gets over the having to speak publically which a lot of people don’t like. One of tips at a recent webinar on tips on presenting online I attended was to get the participants doing something different every 3-5 mins to help retain attention. As we are aware it is very easy when attending a webinar to multitask, so start checking emails and Twitter and before you know it you have completely zoned out of what the person is saying (however interesting it may be). To keep attention change the participants activity frequently, so ideas are to throw in a poll, ask people to contribute an idea about something to the chat space, get them to watch a short video, ask them to contribute ideas to the whiteboard, etc etc. That way it keeps attention and makes it more engaging and allows the presenter a break from talking. As a presenter it is great to see people participating as you want reassurance that people are still there and listening! Also as a presenter don’t be afraid of short silences to give people thinking time. For some reason we are scared of silence and want to fill it. Give people a question to think about, tell them how you want them to respond and say you have 2 minutes to think about it.  In Collaborate you have a timer which you can display to show people how long left they have to think or answer a question which can be useful. So there are a lot of things you can do to try and improve engagement.

[SueFolley]

I assume inclusion in this context just means to include more students to participate. With a VLE/LMS is is normally a closed system, so not open to the public in the same way as Twitter or blogs may be. Keeping your content and blogs/discussion within the VLE normally restricts only people enrolled on that course to access that data. This may promote inclusion as some students would be very reluctant to publically blog or discuss something on the course, but they may be happy to do so if the audience is restricted to their course cohort with whom they have built  trust. Also often students may not have blogs or be interested in facebook or twitter, where as they are automatically included in any module on the institutions VLE, so there is not normally any sign-up or access issues.

[SueFolley]

It sounds like you have given this a lot of thought and are doing all the right things. It is a lot more difficult to design online learning courses where students work through tasks in their own time and not in a corhort working through simiar things at the same time. It is much more difficult to build in peer learning and develop social presence if students are not on the same topic/section at the same time. In terms of eportfolio, I have recently seen an instance of Google sites being used for eportfolios and it looked really good. The tutor was able to create a template for the students to work off, but then the customise it to look how they want. It looked quite impressive, though haven’t used it myself. I haven’t come across Study Cloud before – so off to have a look at what that has to offer.

[SueFolley]

We are battling with this consistency/flexibility tension in terms of VLE use and what we have agreed is that certain elements must be consistent and present e.g. staff information, module documents, and assessment information – and that all staff keep the same labels for these in the menu so that there is some consistency across modules about what they are called and what these items contain. For the actual learning resources though we allow staff full flexibility to both organise these as they best fits their teaching practice and to add the elements they want in their design of modules. We also allow full flexibility in terms of styling/colour schemes (taking accessibility issues into consideration), as although we want some consistency for students, we don’t want all modules to look exactly the same, we want students to be clear as to which module they are in. What we really try and push though is clear organisation and signposting of materials for students. One of the biggest complaints we have had in the past is that students can’t actually find things. What may be obvious to staff members may not be for students. So we ask them to use folders to organise their materials to clearly identify contents whether that be by date order, topic, activity, whatever makes sense for their teaching approach.

[SueFolley]

Hi Anna,

Thanks for the update. It is good to hear that many others including your partner didn’t get too far with it. It made me feel much better about finding it difficult :). You do raise a good point about making sure the learning activities you provide are challenging but achievable. We were able to walk away from that game as we found it hard. Students can’t do that easily with their studies.

The stats you quote on the game are very  interesting. They obviously pride  themselve in making it extremely challenging and that not many people have got to the end.  I can’t believe it has 140 levels, especially as I had enough trouble getting to level 3 :).

 

[SueFolley]

Great summary post for Week 2 – especially for those who felt they didn’t have time to do much on this course last week, and are not sure where to start. I suggest they read through this, watch the webinar recording and check out those suggested blog posts, then move onto week 3. Not forgetting to complete the expectations this week of course :). Thanks for summarising.

[SueFolley]

James – you are totally right. It takes a lot of work to prepare an online course, and it does not follow that a good f2f teacher will make a good online tutor. It is a different skill set they need, and does involve a change in perception of role. I have just completed my EdD thesis on tutors’ experience of teaching online, and the group of tutor I concentrated my study on were not the advocates or early adopters tutors but the early/late majority tutors. They mostly found teaching online very different and very difficult, and expressed a strong preference for teaching f2f.

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