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)

Is Midnight the Beginning or the End?

This is a little point, but one which has burned many of us, myself included.  You have an assignment you want due on Sunday at midnight.  So, you write a News item telling your students the item is due at midnight Sunday and you set the Dropbox Folder with the restrictions of Sunday at 12:00 AM.  Of course, this is also included in your schedule.

Sounds good right?  Well, that depends on how you think of midnight.  You've set the assignment to close between Saturday night/Sunday morning.  While this might be exactly what you want, a group of your students will be confused and think it's the midnight between Sunday and Monday.  This is almost guaranteed.

To avoid this confusion, give the due date at 11:59pm.  I know it sounds trivial, but this one minute can make a big difference.  Besides, '11:59pm' only has 7 keystrokes and 'midnight' has 8.  :-)

Squirels

Last summer, I took my daughters to see the movie "Up".  It's a great movie.  In the movie, though, the dogs have the issue of being distracted anytime they think a squirrel is near.


Unfortunately, I could relate all too well to the dogs when it came to teaching online.  There I was teaching my class, minding my own business when cool new tech stuff comes along.  Okay, let's get back to my class...Twitter, Facebook,  Blogs, YouTube, Chat, Podcasting, SecondLife,... UGH!  Too much stuff!

Okay, here's what I've learned about all of this.  Yes, there are many tools out there to do really cool stuff to your class.  However, you need to ask yourself, "Will this make my class better?"  Remember, you have to run the class, including being comfortable with the tools.  If not, you aren't making the class better.

So, pick one or two tools each semester and focus on doing them well.  That way, you aren't so distracted and confused by your class.  They don't have to be special either, especially if you are new to teaching online.

This semester, I'm adapting to D2L, focusing on the News items and Groups.  I want to focus on the News to be that "front page" for students as they come into the class.  I want it to be pleasing to the eye, while still directing them to the areas of the class they need to focus on.  The other item of focus this semester is Groups to better filter my crosslisted course. Items should not bleed over to the other class in the same shell and I'm hoping this filter will work.  So far, so good.  I'm seeing other tools I might want to add, but I'm not following such squirrels.

What are your tools you want to focus on this semester?  What squirrels are you trying to avoid?