Final project video

http://edtech.articulate-online.com/3264676290

I look forward to your feedback.

My embedded video below has lost its audio, click the link above for the full version.

Virtual organization and collaboration

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I guess that I'm fortunate that I came into education later in life, in my thirties in 2003. My graduate studies consisted of a combination of self-paced, independent study courses, online courses, two-week summer intensives, and weekly f2f evening courses. The first course I taught was a typical meet once a week f2f class. Given my background of a traditional undergrad and nontraditional grad training, I did my best to combine what I perceived as the best of both worlds. Organized chunks of new information presented in an interactive way, combining video, lecture, and class activities, with student derived presentations based on their interests pertaining to the topic - biology for non-scientists. I wasn't as prepared as I would have liked, I created an excel spreadsheet for grading calculations that was so big it almost crashed my computer and certainly didn't fit on my little 256k jump drive. My next set of courses that I taught were hybrid, a combination of an online environment and f2f interaction. I loved this environment, mainly for the gradebook and organization of course content.

In 2008 I switched schools and found myself facilitating hybrid courses with empty online shells. This offered an opportunity to start from scratch, but the basic gradebook structure needed to be created, as well as the entire course content and its organization. I followed best practices in progressive education and worked with the students to take course objectives from the syllabus and co-create course content. There was no time to think too far outside the box as I was overwhelmed with recreating the wheel every term.

In 2009 I began teaching in a fully online environment. I facilitated learning in a very structure learning platform, where the organization, gradebook, and content already existed and just needed facilitation. This took some time to get used to as I was no longer the content master. I wanted to find ways to add to the learning environment and maintain the integrity of the course. At first I became overly ambitious, adding articles and addition key concepts. I quickly realized that I wasn't enhancing the student experience, I was overwhelming my adult students.

The summer of 2009 I took nine Sloan-C courses. I was exposed to online learning best practices, time management techniques and tools, pedagogy, and engaging multimedia and technological tools. I immediately started using Jing for progress reports, added videos into my online learning environment to improve student use of the platform. I embedded youtube videos into discussion boards. I created assignments using social bookmarking, which greatly improved the organization of student research projects. I even toyed with a couple of Twitter assignments.

So, where am I on the static-dynamic spectrum? Though I will always refer to books and journals for foundational and current information, I now encourage my faculty to integrate dynamic tools into their classrooms. I'm in the midst of creating an advanced technology training course for faculty that will train faculty on the advanced uses of the learning platform and web 2.0/3.0 tools for improving the educational experience of our students.

Traditional vs Online, Technology Bridges Gap

This graphic organizer denotes tools available in an online learning platform, such as eCollege, Blackboard, Moodle, etc.

Durrington, Berryhill, and Swafford (2006) make the unoriginal argument for online education because interactive tools can make the online experience a similar experience to face-to-face environments. Why do we so easily fall into the trap of this comparison? Haven't we yet realized that our traditional models are not the model, but rather the baseline? The greatest aspect of online education is the change in paradigm that allows educators to break through the constraints holding back progressive education.

Rather than consider how our online learning environment can emulate the face-to-face classroom, we need to focus on learning models that work. Only then can we move toward improving our instructional methods. What does technology do for us? It allows us a platform where learners can share their thoughts to fruition, rather than endure time constraints and interruptions from peers and faculty. It allows a learner to manage their learning environment, both virtual and physical, by deciding when, how, and where they choose to interact. We've just hit the tip of the iceberg of what technology can do for education.





Resources:


Durrington, V. A., Berryhill, A., & Swafford, J. (2006). Strategies for enhancing student interactivity in an online environment. College Teaching, 54(1), 190-193.

Collaborative Learning Hurdles

This week's topic involves issues that all instructors encounter when they mandate collaboration in or outside of the classroom:
1) How should participation in a collaborative learning community be assessed? How do the varying levels of skill and knowledge students bring to a course affect the instructor's "fair and equitable assessment" of learning?

Collaboration in an online setting, like Google Docs, Titan, and other collaborative capturing tools collect the information and work contributed by the team members and allows for transparency. Other classroom projects, in and outside of class, are not so transparent and there's always room for finger pointing when the project comes to a conclusion. It's a standard in the schools that I've encountered to offer a 50-50 grade, to give equal compensation to the individual for their contribution and to the group, but how is one to know unless the work was divvied and tracked? I typically give one group grade unless I hear a complaint that reveals that someone contributed nothing. I see collaboration as an opportunity for the stronger skill set students to step up and model successful achievement, quiet but thoughtful students to share their brilliance in a more public way, and for students to get through the project together.

2) If a student does not want to network or collaborate in a learning community for an online course, what should the other members of the learning community do? What role should the instructor play? What impact would this have on his or her assessment plan?


Students that do not want to network or collaborate are not new in online learning. In f2f classrooms, there were always students that tried to hide behind their wall of disengagement. This isn't so easy to do with participation requirements in online learning. The best thing for active students is to reach out, without insult, with an open mind, with an intention of including the absent student. The instructor can help reach out if the peer group is unable to get in touch with the absent student, but I find it in the best interest to stay out of such situations. In the business world, students will find themselves needing to motivate such people and these projects are a great practice field.

Elements of Distance Education Diffusion

For Module 2, I was excited to watch the Siemens' video related to the advanatages of distance education. I have taught in all three formats, f2f, online, and hybrid. I personally enjoy hybrid. It allows learners an opportunity to have structured freedom and the best of both worlds. Students can study at their own pace, have asynchronous discussions that elude time and peer interruptions, and adds a sense of personal ownership and responsibility. In the f2f classroom, students seem to reliant on the instructor. Even with a facilitator who embraces learner-centered education, the dynamic is difficult to shift. Hybrid puts responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the student and still offers the security of f2f social interaction, another important element of education. Purely online learning is another excellent option that works well, but seems to require a level of personal motivation. The biggest complaint that I hear involves a lack of motivation. I suspect that though motivation ebbs and flows, adult learners signing up for online classes already have a motivational edge. As a student enrolled in a project based PhD program, I stuggled under the guidance of a very laid-back mentor. Now that I've switched to a course-based program, I am much more motivated by the week-to-week interaction, deadlines and feedback.

Video Project Storyboard

My initial thoughts:

• Visual representation of redundant, inefficient data storage
• Another visual of an ideal content data storage process
• Bridge the two images with demonstration of research, best practices, and support for presented ideal process
  • Guthrie (1996) nine-step collaborative program
  • Means (2010) collaboration of software and data management processes
  • Mehr and Kruse (2008) SAS software implementation for data management
  • Pancerella, Rahn, Didier, Kodeboyina, Leahy, Myers, Oluwole, and Schuchardt (2007) evaluated an open-source team and data collaboration tool
  • Rodriguez, Jose, and Camarero (2010) compared exeriential learning techniques
  • Tiwari, Snape, and Field (2005) investigated bioinformatics and data management for an environmental, genomics project
• Conclude with highlights of efficient system, noting key supportive elements of research

References

Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development., ebrary, Inc., & Guthrie, L. F. (1996). In How to coordinate services for students and families. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Means, B. (January 01, 2010). Technology and education change: Focus on student learning. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 42, 3, 285-307.

Mehr, D. R., & Kruse, R. L. (January 01, 2008). Data management for prospective research studies using SAS software. Bmc Medical Research Methodology, 8.

Pancerella, C., Rahn, L. A., Didier, B., Kodeboyina, D., Leahy, D., Myers, J. D., Oluwole, O. O., Schuchardt, K. (January 01, 2007). Portal-based knowledge environment for collaborative science. Concurrency and Computation: Practice & Experience, 19, 12, 1703.

Rodriguez, J., Jose, R. S., & Camarero, C. (January 01, 2010). A comparison of the learning effectiveness of live cases and classroom projects DOI: 10.3794/ijme.83.254. International Journal of Management Education, 8, 3, 83-94.

Tiwari, B., Snape, J., & Field, D. (January 01, 2005). Bioinformatics and data management support for environmental genomics. Plos Biology, 3, 8.

Module 1:

Moller, Foshay, and Huett (2008) offered recommendations to online educators, especially instructional designers. I found the article informative though ancient in this incredibly dynamic field. In the five years that I have spent teaching in various learning formats (classroom, hybrid, and online), I have seen the issues that Simonson (2000) and Moller, Foshay, and Huett (2008) noted. Originally, online shells rarely involved instructional material nor followed good instructional design format. I've been privy to incredible change, growth, and quality in this area. In 2005, online courses typically housed a syllabus, a discussion board, quizzes/exams, and assignments. I cared little for the environment and its instructional capacity, but loved the ability to post in-class material, assignments, and most of all, the grade book online for all to see. No longer did students have to come to me for an assignment. Gone were the excuses that assignments didn't get completed because they missed the last class. Most exciting, questions about grades almost became extinct. At this early stage, I had the ability to have my courses copied from term to term. I modified assignments and discussion questions based on the student interests, but there was little instruction involved in the online format. In 2008, I moved to another school that provided blank shells to faculty, with the option of copying content from previously taught courses. Again, this was more of a communication space than instructional space.

Today, I'm proud to work as the Instructional Technologies Manager at CSU-Global where our online courses trump all other online learning spaces that I've seen. Our courses are developed by a collaborative group including an instructional designer, content expert, and web developer. The final product offers incredible instructional material, in a variety of learning formats (video, audio, visual, and written), easy access of resources, appropriate informational chunking, review material, self-assessments, interactive discussion boards, and applied assignments and portfolios that often directly assess and improve the student's professional experience. In addition to proper instructional design, our courses have additional technologies that support synchronous and asynchronous collaborative learning.

Not only have we met the equivalency theory with our design, we've exceeded face-to-face outcomes. While there's still room for improvement and growth, I believe that our courses are what these researchers had in mind when they were evaluating the needs for the future of online learning.

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008, July/August). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the Web (Part 2: Higher Education). TechTrends, 52(4), 66-70.

Simonson, M. (2000). Making decisions: The use of electronic technology in online classes. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 84, 29-34.