The Great Tech Divide

While I was at eLCC listening to the presentations, one thing struck me.  The presenters (usually among the more seasoned instructors) seemed to be very concerned about the technological divide between themselves and their students.  They were concerned about students who are growing up on Facebook, Twitter and texting being over the head of the instructor.  There's nothing worse than having students show you, as an instructor, how to use the tools of the class.

While this is a valid concern, I think there's a bigger one coming; the divide between students' technical knowledge.  We will always have students who have more knowledge regarding technology than us.  (One of the best revelations I ever had in technology was discovering I was never going to know everything everybody else knew.  I just needed to tap into it by asking and observing.)  The problem is how do we keep the upper tech learner motivated while not over burdening the lower tech student.

Let me give you an analogy.  Student 1 is recently out of high school and has signed up for an online English Comp class.  She graduated from an online high school and is familiar with several LMS, blogs, wikis and ebooks.  She doesn't like carrying books, so she picked up an iPad to read and take notes on.  In her spare time, she likes keeping up with her friends with Facebook and is currently the mayor of the local hangout on Foursquare.  (Did you have to look up the last reference?  Here's a hint.)

Compare this to Student 2.  Student 2 was recently informed she will be laid off from a manufacturing job.  So, she has picked up a second job to help with the bills.  She has two children, one still at home, but has not yet reached retirement age.  She has to go back to school to get training to re-enter the workforce.  The first course she is going to take is English Comp because she did so well in it when she took it in 1985.  She has decided to take in online because of her busy home and work schedule.  Her home computer is a "hand-me-down" from one of her children.  She understands opening a browser, basic word processing and saving files.  However, she spends no more time online than she has to.

How do we teach both of these students?

I'm Bored

For those of you new to teaching online, being bored is likely the last thing to come to mind.  However, in my CNG 101 class, I've become bored.  I'm grading the same assignments, posting the same news and discussions and I think my boredom is starting to influence my teaching.  So, I'm going to make some changes.

No, I'm not reinventing the wheel or even changing books, but rather just changing up how I do things.  For example, I've had a weekly quiz which is three short paragraphs.  I'm going to change this up to be a matching question of terms and then some multiple choice questions instead. With the reduction in writing in the weekly assignments, I'm going to add an essay question to the Unit Exams.  They'll be graded the same way, just in different places.

I also want to make the discussion board more formal, at least the initial post.  Right now, students aren't graded on their writing ability (grammar, sentence structure, spelling, etc.) in the discussion boards.  The problem is by this point in the semester, the boards are sloppy and very difficult to read.  Students log in Sunday night, post quickly reply twice to others in the class and call it good.  This isn't what I want.  I want longer, more thoughtful discussions.

So, I'm looking at fewer discussions with more points for each.  I want to make each one more valuable.  I'm also thinking of requiring students to submit their first post before being able to read and post other's thoughts.  I'm just getting too much "group think" in the discussions.  Any other ideas for making the discussion board more formal?

No matter what I decide on the discussions, I'm sure the summer will be anything but boring.

Too Many Tools in the Bucket?

Last week, I was in Vail for the eLCC conference.  These conferences are great.  You get to talk to colleagues from other schools and in other disciplines to hear about what they are doing.  Also, you get to talk to other online instructors and get new ideas of cool things you can put in your courses.

The problem is now many of us have been teaching long enough our courses look like a tool bucket in the garage.  Lots of tools which all work.  That's the problem, there's too many tools and not enough focus on the work to be done with them.

So, instead of looking at the tools to decide what you want to do with your class, first look at the problem you need solved.  Do you need more interaction between students?  Do you need to motivate students to login to D2L more?  Perhaps rewriting your discussions is better for learning than embedding captioned YouTube video into a class Facebook fan page.  Let the course lead you to the right tool.  This is when it helps to have a full bucket to pull from.

Photo from ToolBoxesDirect.com (http://toolboxesdirect.com)

Using Tabs and Email

While for the most part, I like D2L, there are a few things which drive me crazy.  One is if I open an email (I use the pop-up email and not the preview pane), I can't keep the email up, go to another place in the course and then send my response.  This makes it tough to check on assignments, grades, etc. which are the focus of the email.

Well, I may just have a solution.  Open your email, same as normal.  Then, right-click on the CCCOnline Logo and select "Open link in new tab".  (NOTE: This is the Chrome wording.  The same option is available for Firefox and IE, but with slightly different wording.)

Once you open the new tab, you can work in the second tab and respond to email from the first.  This allows you to have your cake and eat it too!

BTW- D2L, unlike Bb, doesn't have a problem with having multiple tabs (or windows) open at the same time.  Just be sure to logoff when you are done.

Wadman's Tech News

I really enjoy teaching technology.  Unlike other subjects, technology is constantly changing and in the news.  So, when my discussions became very stale a few years ago (one of my better discussions was "Fiber vs. Wireless, What's the Future?) I realized it was time to change.  The other thing that came to mind when I was looking at changing discussions was I teach at two different institutions (Pikes Peak and CCCOnline) and many different levels.  How could I change all of those discussions without going crazy?

My answer was Wadman's Tech News.  I started a blog where I would post three tech news articles each week and we as a class would discuss the news.  Everything from the iPhone to Net Neutrality to how candidates in the 2008 Presidential campaign interacted with people online was discussed.  Students would read the articles and start discussing with each other.  They started to learn how what was in the book related to what was going on in the world today.

In subsequent semesters, I have added a weekly video creatively named 4th Blog Post where I go through my opinions on the previous weeks topics.  This allows me to be the moderator during the week and not have my opinions hinder the discussion.  I've also added student submission week where students find articles and email them to me.  I pick the top three and post them.  So, they get to pick topics.  A couple of years ago, I moved the blog to WordPress to make it more attractive.

Drawbacks?  Yes, there are a few.  During the first few weeks of class, I have to be patient and push them to the blog for the articles.  Most other classes don't have an outside location like this.  Secondly, I had to turn off the comments on the blog itself.  Too many students thought the conversation was on the blog itself instead of the LMS.  While this might be okay, I picked the Discussion area for privacy reasons.  Lastly, if there's a quiet week in technology, it can be tough to find topics.  On the other hand, I find we discuss privacy and Google quite a bit, so I have to pay attention to the diversity of the topics.

Will a blog like this work for everyone?  No, of course not.  However, I think it would work for any class where current events are of importance.  Also, if you are teaching for another institution other than CCCOnline, it can allow you to have one common location.

Helping a Shy Student

After 10 weeks of the term, I have finally found out why one of my students isn't posting in class discussions; he's shy.  I know it sounds strange, but I have to admit, it makes sense.  This student has turned in every assignment, done well with the exams, but he won't post in the discussion area.  So, when he opened up to me in a journal assignment, it made sense.

The problem I'm grappling with is how do I move forward with him.  I can just imagine this student in the classroom who says nothing during class, but studies, does his assignments and gets an A.  (This is a Networking class, not speech.)  He doesn't miss a class and stays after when he has questions.  Online communication is important, especially in Networking, but am I asking too much to have him posting weekly?

For the time being, I've asked him to post late in the week.  That way, he doesn't have to worry about replies from others.  If this doesn't work, I was thinking of having him agree to write me his posts and offer to post them for him after he emails them.  I'm not asking for complex posts here, but rather just opinions about current events in Networking.

I'm just at a loss.  Does anyone else have any ideas?

Are You In Sync?

After watching *NSYNC in an asynchronous manner such as YouTube, it got me thinking about how I've been using synchronous tools lately.

With the growth of technologies, such as Second Life, we are seeing more and more emphasis on synchronous teaching methods.  For those of you who don't know, this means you are interacting with your students in real time.  Examples of synchronous teaching include:

• SecondLife
• Instant Messaging
• Chat
• Meeting Software

One big advantage of using synchronous activities is the students get feedback immediately from a human teacher.  This gives the students more of a connection to the course and they don't have to wait for feedback.

Sounds great, right?  The problem is many students have signed up for classes to fit around their busy schedules. So, when do you schedule the synchronous activities to where everyone can attend?  Or do you schedule multiple sessions?  With multiple sessions, is it worth the additional time commitment?

These are tough questions you have to sort out with your content.  Here's some ideas:

Have IM office hours- I open a public IM account and let my students ping me when they want to talk about the course.  Students have to do the initiation, but I can be doing other things online during this time instead of just waiting.

Scheduled Chat Reviews- Right before a big exam, have a couple of different times students can stop in and chat with you.  The problem is you are more committed to the activity than IM.  On the other hand, students are likely to interact with each other more.  These can be done through D2L or any number of Web2.0 tools.

Second Life- I haven't done this, but you could set up a time to meet up with your class in Second Life.  This way, you can have audio as well as text chat.

Elluminate- You can schedule a session through Elluminate and meet with some or all of your students in a meeting environment.  You can share your screen and have students interact with you through text and/or voice.  You can also record the session for later review.

Honestly, I haven't been as good at synchronous activities since moving away from teaching nights.  I used to be able to open my IM and sit back in the office and wait for students.  It's proven much tougher for me since going 8-5 last fall.  (I just am tired and don't want to login during the evening hours most students area available.)  I'm hoping to find something soon as I do think it adds to my classes.