Thoughts on Teaching – Summer School – 7/9/2015
And so the summer session begins. I am teaching the second of our two summer sessions, which means that I just finished up roughly 8 weeks off before starting teaching again. I have never done that before, as I usually teach the first summer session, which means 3 weeks off, teach for 5 weeks, and then 5 weeks off. I can’t say I got any more or less done in having the 8 weeks off together, but I will see how I feel at the end of this summer session on how that change affects me.
I have 44 total students in two online sections this summer. We are on day 2 of the session, and 10 of those students have not yet logged into the classroom. Of the 34 who have, things seem to be going well so far. I have fielded some questions, and I have found one minor mistake in the material that I had prepared. Otherwise, I would say that it has been a smooth start so far. About 20-25 students have been at least somewhat active, starting to complete some assignments and interacting with the introductory materials.
The summer is always strange, as I pointed out to the students directly in one of my initial announcement posts. As opposed to a traditional, long semester, the students have just 5 weeks to complete all of the material. And, if you consider when I have to schedule exams (the school and Testing Center are only open Monday-Thursday over the summer), things get even more rushed. The first half of the course will take a little less than two weeks, which is normally the first seven weeks of a long semester. As I pointed out to the students, this means that each two days, they are covering a week’s worth of material. I would have let it go a bit longer, but with the school schedule, I have the first exam running a Wednesday and Thursday, leaving only 13 days to cover the first half of the course before the exam opens. Then, they will have about 2 1/2 weeks for the second half of the class, because I had to schedule my exams around the college’s schedule. I understand the need to have shorter work weeks in the summer and the less need for long hours with a much smaller student presence in summer classes, but 4 days a week is limiting when compared to 6 days a week in the long semester.
I have made some suggestions to the students on how to complete the material in time. I have the class set up with two major deadlines, one at the end of each unit. I know that the temptation for the students will be to put it all off until the end of each unit, but I have warned them that there is more material to complete than can be done in a day or two. My suggestion is that they take the class with the goal to complete each “week’s” worth of material from the long semesters every two days. If they do that, they will be on a path to complete the course material with no problem. I cannot, of course, force them to do this, but it is my suggestion. Of course, I could actually force them to do it, by putting in intermediate deadlines, but I like the flexibility that the current format allows students to have. The summers are always complicated, and I want to make this a process that works well for all of the students regardless of vacation and work schedules.
We shall see how the summer session progresses, but it has been a good start so far.
Thoughts at a Conference – Texas Distance Learning Association, Day 3, Part 1 – 4/9/2015
The second full day (third overall day) at the conference (Texas Distance Learning Association) started early for me. To beat traffic, I got here quite early. There was no scheduled breakfast, but, luckily, there were some basic muffins and drinks, so that carton of yogurt hours earlier got a supplement before the session started. I have taken advantage of the quiet time of getting here early to clear some stuff out of my inbox and do some general grading for my classes, so it was not a waste of time by any means. Today looks like a fuller schedule of sessions than yesterday, and more of them appear to be directly focused on the teaching side of things. So I am hoping for some good content today.
Roundtable: Instructional Design: Solutions and Resources
A general discussion and networking opportunity – no focused guidance but an open-ended discussion
First major question raised – standardization vs. instructor freedom in design
TXDLA putting together a MOOC on teaching people how to teach online. Also proposing a certification track for instructional design. Question also about do they need their own certifications or should they be a repository of what is out there and worthwhile.
One of the things discussed was the question of instructional design when most of us who teach were never actually taught how to teach. We are experts in our subject, but we are not taught how to put together things like student learning outcomes, cross-course competencies, and the like.
Another funny thing, of course, is that I’m in the room with instructional designers who are talking about the struggles they have with faculty and such, and as I just noted, we don’t actually have instructional designer at all. So, it ends up being a funny conversation because people are talking about having instructional designers and how to make it a priority for instructors to get instruction on how to teach, especially to teach online, as we simply do not have it.
Assessments that Rock
Presenter – Sheree Webb – Instructional Designer – Tyler Junior College
OK. It has not started yet, but here’s a good sign – there’s a history assessment up on the screen before we get started. This might be directly relevant in the best way.
The question of what our students actually retain out of our classes – assessments chosen well give you the best ability to choose what students retain. Since they are so focused on what is on the test, giving them assessments that aim at what you want them to get out of the course makes it more likely they will retain that information.
The question of the assessment not matching the learning outcomes. The example given were the traditional history multiple choice tests that are so incredibly poor at focusing the students on what they should learn. Who cares if they can recall random facts in history. Recall (or as I call it in my class, memorize, regurgitate, and forget) questions are poor assessments of student success. Are we really so poor in teaching history that what we want the students to be able to do out of the class is recall random irrelevant facts or do we want them to be able to do higher-level learning? I just get so frustrated at the way history is taught, like multiple choice exams matter. That we should care whether they can recall the facts has always seemed to me to be a base level of teaching history. Of course, the argument on the other side is that you have to understand the facts to be bale to make the connections. But, I just wonder if any of us really believe that the students completing a multiple-choice exam actually shows that they do understand that material, or have they just memorized and forgotten?
Assessment level – you want to give frequent assessments – Frequent assessments keep students engaged in the course and help them gauge how they are doing. Recommendation – at least one formative assessment a week. Formative means – quizzes, short essays, debates, discussion forums, short case studies, reflection questions, questions or problems with the answers posted. Keep they engaged on a regular basis and have them be assessing their progress as they go along.
Authentic Assessment – Real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of essential knowledge and skills. Could be – performing a task, real-life situations, construction/application, student-centered, and direct evidence. This doesn’t mean you can’t do traditional assessment – selecting a response, contrived, recall/recognition, teacher-centered, and indirect evidence. You need a combination of the two, but you need to have authentic assessment, which is often left out.
You Have Me at Hello
Presenter – Dr. Wendy Conaway – Ashford University – Assistant Professor
This one is intended to discuss the introduction forum in online classes and how it can increase student engagement. This may not go well, as there seems to be technical issues in getting going here. This has happened more often than not in my sessions here, as everyone seems to be having some sort of problem getting the provided computers to do what they are supposed to do.
I wonder at what point you give up on a session? Is there a 15-minute rule on a 50-minute session?
Discussing first impressions – how we connect with students throughout the course. We represent us, the course in general, and for students who are in a course with us the first time, it can shape how they feel about the whole college. We represent all of the courses if we are the first ones that we encounter. It also can give you the benefit of the doubt with the students later in the semester.
Instruction Forum – a place to create social presence – creating a persona and creating a connection between you and the students.
Introduction forums promotes a sense of community – opportunity to share and learn about each other. People here require their students to respond to others – getting to know them. I can’t imagine doing this. I have eliminated mandatory responses in my classes, and I certainly would not include it here.
Introduction forums help student engagement – it helps to alleviate anxiety and can be motivating to participate. Helps with student retention as well, keeping the students in the course.
I am going to break here for lunch and go ahead and post this one up for the first half of the conference. I will post the second half at the end of the day.
Thoughts at a Conference – Texas Distance Learning Association, Day 2 – 4/8/2015
Today, I am attending the Texas Distance Learning Association Conference in Dallas, TX. Today is the first full day of the conference, and I will be here throughout the day today. I am going to be blogging this event today and for the next two days, with a breakdown of each of the sessions that I am attending.
As a note, I have already been here a long time, as I came in rather early to beat the traffic of driving into Dallas. Thus, I had about a 2-hour starting window for the breakfast (yay! food!). Getting here at 7 with the first session at 9 meant a long breakfast. The good thing is that I was joined by several people that I was able to talk with and pass the time.
According to what I have heard from people, attendance is down this year, maybe because it is in Dallas rather than in Corpus Christi or Galveston, as in previous years. Still, there seems to be a good variety of people here at this point. I do not have any concept yet about how many either instructors or community college members are here this year. I hope to find that out as I hit the more specific sessions.
Session 1 – Opening Keynote
Presenter – Ross Ramsey – Executive Editor and Co-Founder, The Texas Tribune
A general overview of the Texas legislate session, discussing issues that affect out budgetary outlooks, both at the state level and in terms of educational focuses. An overall interesting talk about what the issues are going to be in the last 8 weeks of this legislative session.
Session 2 – SoftChalk – Create-Your-Own Interactive eBooks for iPads and Chromebooks
Presenter – SoftChalk – Paul Miller
I have always been interested in SoftChalk but never seen anything about it. One distinct idea is that anything you create in SoftChalk can be shared with a web link on any platform. Following the twitter handle @PaulSoftChalk gives the link for this session. I am going to be following along with his presentation through his created SoftChalk page.
Showing the use of internal polling, use of frames to display content inside your lesson, use of media (video, images), quizzing embedded in the lesson.
As a note, if you are going to give a presentation to a room full of professionals, you should at least spell check your presentation. Some credibility is lost, either in the presenter or in the product. It raises the question to me if spell check is a part of what you can do. It is so key to what you need in preparing course materials that, if it is not included, this is a weakness.
Next part of the presentation – SoftChalk Cloud – started as a desktop application – now it is in the cloud for both development and distribution.
To create an eBook, you use the eBook Builder within the SoftChalk application. In this example, he pulled in from a Word document with the majority of the formatting coming over as done in Word. So, you can bring in material well from what you have created elsewhere – it creates the html code for what you bring in. Then, you insert page breaks to paginate your book. Inserting activities goes through the menus with 20 different types of activities available to insert. As for media, they have a set number of things (Khan Academy, Getty images, and the like).
Seems pretty straightforward in use. The question is, how different is it to create when you don’t have content ready to go? How long would it take to set up a new lesson? And, do you want all the small activities that the students have to do as you go along? That is what SoftChalk seems designed for, if you want essentially PowerPoint like slides with interactive materials in it. I am not sure if it would work for something more robust in scale.
Also, as was raised in the discussion here, the question is if you want online or offline access. The advantage to online access is that you don’t have to imbed the whole media content in the lesson, making it a smaller file overall but requiring internet access to use. If you want it to be completely offline, then you have to embed the material into the eBook itself, leaving you with restrictions on the size of your document, depending on how much stuff you brought in.
And now, the link that I had above is now the thing that he created here (using already made content) in about 15 minutes here. Something to look at and see what I think about it. The final .epub file is here that you can download and use with students. I tried opening it in iBooks, and it is certainly pretty rough in how it carries over. This is a beta product, and it is not all the way together and ready from what I can see.
Session 3 – Exploring “Helper” Apps to Hit Productivity High Notes
Presenter – Sharon Huston – Texas A&M University – Instructional Designer
Looking for ways to make the annoying busy work side of our jobs less monotonous. How much time do we spend copying and pasting and the like rather than the real essence of our jobs.
ClipMate – clipboard manager that keeps track of what you have copied and pasted so that you can pull multiple different things out of it to paste. Not a Mac tool – PC only – paid product (about $20) – couldn’t use on work computer, as you have to install program.
ColumnCopy – Chrome extension – Allow you to copy a column of material off of the web
Text Mechanic – webpage that allows you to manipulate text in multiple different ways.
Example of using these two together – pull a list of student email addresses and then clear spaces and add commas to delineate them.
Text Expander on a Mac (Phrase Express) – shortcuts for commonly used phrases – why haven’t I thought about using this with grading? Can turn my standard comments into something that I can use by typing a short phrase and then getting the entire thing written out.
word2cleanhtml.com – if you want to convert a word document to clean html
Passwords – LastPass – 1Password – DashLane – All set up to get you to have to have one password to work through all of your different password. LastPass is a browser extension. Also, the passwords are completely random and not tied to anything that you would have as a connection.
Using Google Docs Technology to Promote Collaboration
Presenters – Carolyn Awalt and Teresa Cortez – UTEP
Google Docs, Voice, Calendar, Scholar – to be demonstrated today.
Google Docs –
- upload and save from your desktop
- edit any time, from anywhere
- pick who can access your documents
- share changes in real time
- files are stored securely online
- can tell who does what work and people can’t easily slack off
Google Drive – essentially a cloud-based hard drive. For students, this can be used as a student portfolio if your program needs that. For instructors, you can share information with students that you are working on with them. You can determine their level of participation, read only or edits allowed.
Google Contacts – can use it to tag based upon what class they are in. Not that relevant for me and the way we interact with students.
Google Calendar – ability to share your schedule, access on any computer/mobile device, send invitations and track RSVPs, sync with desktop applications, work offline Could use with students to schedule office hour visits and appointments. Would that get more students to come by my office hours if they saw that I was available there? Could also automate when assignments were due without having to send out Announcements to my students when I remember to. With all students having access to Google through our student gmail accounts, I could add them all to my list and have these things set up for them. Need to talk to IT to see if I can use my gmail account to add in our students, even if their emails aren’t ending in gmail.
Google Voice – Can set up one number to get at your cell, home, and work phone – that way students call one number and it will ring wherever I am. Are we allowed to put this as our office number for students? Accommodates both phone and text, and it will give you a transcript of the phone call.
Google Scholar – for research – an alternative to just the basic Google search – even being able to set up alerts on when certain topics come up.
I was going to stay for one more session, but with not having a hotel room here, I really needed to leave before rush hour traffic began. As with so much of any conference, I certainly miss out on a lot by not being able to actually stay at the conference hotel, as I have to drive in and out and organize my time around traffic. I made it to the sessions, but I essentially missed a lot of the networking possibilities by not being able to do any of the late afternoon to evening sessions.
Thoughts on Teaching – Snow Days – March 5, 2015
So, here we stand. Our third snow day in the last two weeks. All of them in late February to early March in Texas. Yes, that is unusual. It poses the same challenges that happen any time you have unscheduled time off from school, and, without a doubt, it is better than last year, when our big frozen, snow days were during finals period of the fall semester. Missing days in the 7th and 8th week of the semester is not bad overall, especially since I do not give midterms. Those who do midterms are struggling to figure out how to make those up, with the real result that most of them just get pushed to after Spring Break, which is next week.
I know that a snow day is nothing particularly unusual, and that what counts as a snow day would be an average winter day in Pennsylvania, where I spent 8 years of graduate school. Still, it poses interesting challenges. I want to talk about those challenges in two ways — first with school and schedule and second with personal time.
The most obvious problem with a snow day is making up the material. For my online classes, there is no problem, except when students have their internet knocked out from losing power and the like. Otherwise, the semester just goes along like normal. And, unless it were to happen at a time when we were testing, days off are essentially irrelevant to an online class. Since half of my load is online, three of my classes were totally unaffected. My other three classes are hybrid classes, where the days off are more directly problematic. We only meet once each week, and if the day is missed, that week is missed. If the classes were distinct, I could make up in one class for one set of assignments missing, but I am teaching three of the same classes, all at the same point and doing the same assignments. Thus, to make up the material in any meaningful way means making some of my students do significantly more work for the grade than what they would otherwise do. There also are no built-in make-up days this semester for me, meaning that when I miss, that material is just gone. I do have some safeguards built in, however. For one, they all have pre-class writing on the subject to complete. So, they are, in fact, directly held accountable for the material that we were to discuss that week. As well, I have an assignment on the chapter(s) for the week also due before class, and that also means the students are held responsible for the material. What they are missing out on is the actual classroom discussion of the material. Two of my three hybrid classes have now missed a day (different weeks of material, of course), and that means that I have not had a chance to discuss the material with them. One of them was last week, and so I did make some references to the material this week in class. The other one missed this week, which means I will not see them again until two Thursdays from now. That is a long time to carry over material. The other big problem for me is that we were in the middle of a three-class themed set of material. We covered the World War I to World War II period looking at the theme of American neutrality in the world as it related to the US becoming a world power. Since the three were linked, missing one means that material was not covered and topics got lost. As we were doing a narrow look at the issues, it also means that the broader context of what was going on in the world also didn’t get connected to the material. What’s the effect of all of this for the students? They’re probably just happy to not have to come to class. But for me, I’m just trying to figure out how to stay on track and cover what I want to cover. By the next time I see the class that didn’t meet today, it will be two weeks later, and we will be on to the post-war period. Sigh. I worry too much, I’m sure, but I can’t help it, as it is my job.
The other side is my personal experience with the snow days. It seems like an unmitigated good. A day off from school. No travel, no obligations. But it never works that way. Of course, as I said above, for one thing, my online classes just continue as normal. The days off we had last week were in the middle of my own grading period of their material, and so I graded in my time off. But I actually feel like I got less grading done with the days off than I would have if I had gone into work. The problem with everyone being home is that we are a household of 6, and getting things done at home when everyone is home is not always the easiest thing. An even bigger problem, however, is the feeling that I get that is like how the students feel. I have the day off, why should I work? I have to force myself to get something done. For example, take today. If I had been at school, I would have gotten to campus around 9:30. I would have been in my office doing work from 9:30-11. I would have taught from 11-12:15. Lunch until 1:30. Then back in the office doing work from 1:30-3:30. On my own at home, I could barely force myself to sit down for an hour to do classwork. The temptation to view it as a full day off, especially as this would have been the last work day before Spring Break anyway, is strong. But I have a lot to do. I have things to catch up on, both in grading and in preparation. I owe my hybrid students grades on quite a few small things, and I do not even have the next week of material up and ready for them. But I find it hard to get any real work done. That means that I am not getting what I need to do done and feeling guilty about not doing the work at the same time. Isn’t the human brain wonderful?
The solution to this? Treat a snow day off from work as a work day. Or, treat a day off from work as a day off. I have to choose one or the other. If I try to treat is as partly one or the other, I just feel guilty.
Those are my thoughts on it. What do you think? Do you enjoy unexpected days off? Do you get anything done? Do you feel guilty about not getting things done?
Thoughts on Teaching – Quick Thought – 1/23/2015
One thing I wonder by about the time I have reached the end of the second week of the semester – if I have heard very little from my students at this point, does this mean the class is going well or badly?
Thoughts on Teaching – Pre-Semester Preparations – 1/10/2015
Well, here we go. Another semester is set to start, with just a little over a day left until we get going. I am teaching six sections this coming semester, three online sections and three hybrid sections. This last week has been the preparation time to get ready for the semester. We were worried over the course of this holiday break because we were updating our learning managements system (LMS), and so there were some cautions about doing too much ahead of time in case there were problems. There turned out not to be any problems, but I scaled back most of my plans for possible changes. In fact, with my online class, I am simply redoing the course I did last semester, meaning that there were mainly just some changes of dates and a few minor updates. Otherwise, that course is ready to go.
I have put together a few more changes for my hybrid class. They have finally gotten my hybrid classes scheduled correctly here, as they are set for meeting only one day a week. In the past, I have always had them scheduled for two days a week, and then I met for one of those. Now, I have one class on Tuesday, one on Wednesday, and one on Thursday. The only negative to that, is that I used to meet for both of the days in the first week, which gave me two days to introduce the class. Now, I have to get that introduction done in one day. So, I have developed some introductory materials to show the students how to access my online material and the textbook material. I used iBooks Author to develop the material, making a .pdf file that is set up like a book and includes both images and links. I am hoping this provides my students with the information they need in an attractive and accessible format. If I knew how to attach a .pdf file to this post, I would put an example here, as I am pretty proud of what I did. It is something new I am trying out, and it worked well.
On that same note, I have put together similar presentations for my hybrid class weekly assignments. In the past, I had very basic assignments for the students, such as having them watch a documentary, write a response paper, and then discuss it. Over the years I have been doing this, I have come up repeatedly unsatisfied with my students’ preparation and background knowledge. So, I have beefed up the activities, providing background information, helpful links, stronger and more involved assignments, and more detailed response papers. I want the students to be more prepared and to have more engagement with the material. Again, if I had the ability, I would post one of these up, as I do feel that the iBooks format works pretty well for the material and presentation. I am not planning on publishing these to the Apple Store, but I do like the ability to create something that looks nice and can be exported in a format that is generic enough for anyone to use.
So, that is what I have been working on. I have all of the dates in my classes adjusted to the Spring semester. I have all of the Course Outlines done. I have the online classrooms ready to go. The first five weeks of the online course are visible and ready when students get in on Monday. I have the first three weeks of the hybrid course ready to go, and I hope to get the fourth work done tomorrow and have that be my preparation point to get the students in on Monday.
How about you? Are you teaching a class this semester? Are you taking a class? How ready are you for the semester?
Thoughts on Teaching – End of Semester Wrap-Up – 12/17/14
And so another semester has come to a close. I have not blogged nearly as much as I would like to, but I hope that changes soon. This was my second semester in a row of an unasked-for double overloads. While it may not seem like much to add in an extra 30 students over my normal single-overload semesters, that means more grading, more emails, more student issues, and more time.
My free time becomes less academically oriented the more that I have to actually work on my academic career. I have more time, I find, for blogging, reading academic newsletters and email subscriptions, and reading in my field, when I am not stretched to the limit on teaching. I was just catching up on my Chronicle and Inside Higher Ed newsletter subscriptions and realized that I had not read anything there since October, despite getting 3-5 emails a day. That means that I am behind by a lot, and yet I would like to look at each email I get there, just to keep up with what is going on. In fact, before deciding to sit down and write a post, I read through a week of the emails, meaning that I am still in October, but in late October versus mid-October.
I staggered out the due dates for material this semester, as I knew I had a lot of students to grade and a lot of work to do. My assignments for the end of the semester actually started coming in on the Sunday before the last week of classes and were staggered through the Thursday of finals week. So, while I was grading pretty constantly for about a week and a half, I was never under the big push of having everything needing to be graded in 3-5 days. In fact, if we had not had our internet service go out at my house from Tuesday through Saturday of finals week, it would have gone relatively smoothly overall. That added layer of complication made for a more stressful period, but, outside of those last stressful days, I can’t say it was a bad semester overall.
Now, I am winding down toward Christmas at home. In addition to being selected as Faculty Member of the Year at the end of last spring, I was chosen for the Jack Harvey Academy of Exemplary Teachers this year, which will come in late January. So, it has been an exciting year for honors. I hope also to make it to at least one conference this spring, as i try to get back into the academic side of things for my job. I would like to get back going with continuing education and building my skills rather than just trying to make it from one day to the next. Teaching fewer classes and students will help, as I will be down to just six sections this coming semester, topping out at 180 students, assuming all of my sections fill. I hope for more time with my work and with my family.
Thoughts on Teaching – Drop Deadline – 11/16/2014
We have reached the late points in the semester. With Thanksgiving Break coming quite late this semester, we have 2 1/2 weeks of classes left, followed by finals. The deadline for withdrawing from classes was last Friday, and every semester I am surprised how late in the semester that students are allowed to drop their classes. They can go 12 weeks into the a 15-week semester and drop the class at that point if they want to. I do not know the reasoning behind it, but I can say that I do have my own opinions on what such a deadline does to students. I know one of the reasons for it is to give the students as much leeway to succeed in a class as possible, and, if students used that time for that, I would wholeheartedly support the late drop deadline. However, what I see from the teaching side is that the students who drop at the deadline overwhelmingly were ones who should have dropped after week 4 or 5. That does not mean there aren’t a few who needed that extra time to carry forward and try to get it going over the rest of the semester, but the majority are not in that situation. We are required to put a last date of attendance when we sign drop slips for our students, and the majority of the drop slips that I see are from students who have not participated since September, and they are dropping in November. Again, there are always a couple who are attending and participating all the way up to the deadline, but even for many of these, the writing was already on the wall that they were not going to be successful.
So, what is my point here? Let’s start with the students who should have dropped much earlier. We have an early alert system at my community college, where we send out warnings to students who are falling behind as the semester goes forward. We can send as many or as few early alerts as we choose, and I know some who send none at all, while others have been known to end up sending some students 7-9 alerts over the course of the semester. I send out two alerts, one just after count day, when I am first asked to sit down and officially look over my rosters. At the first point, the alert is very simple, if you have not done any significant work at that point (meaning just a few introductory assignments and a couple of chapter assignments), then I send an early alert. I have not sat down and looked at the numbers, but just on my general remembrance of names, a good number of these will drop the class or not drop and fail. The second alert goes out when I have graded the first round of major assignments, which is usually by the 6th week of the semester. The overlap between the first and second alerts is high, although a few more alerts do go out this second time. I do not send out alerts after that, as the last round of alerts would hit so close to the drop deadline that I generally don’t have time to sit down and do them. However, since 65% of the grade is determined by that point (ie. by the end of last week), there really is no further need for an alert at that point. So, as I said, the majority of students who should drop are fairly obvious by fairly early in the semester. Students who do not complete the early assignments are not likely to continue doing work. Students who do not complete the first round of major assignments are not likely to pass the course. What that means for me, when I look at it, is that the majority of the students who will drop generally should drop somewhere around the 6th to 7th week of the semester. So, giving them 12 weeks only allows them to drag out the semester unnecessarily.
What about the others? There are a few who do drop later in the semester who were not obvious earlier. Some of these are people who were making marginal grades (low Ds and high Fs) after the first round of major grades who do not improve by the second. Others are ones who don’t run into problems until that second round of major grades, where they either drop significantly in their performance or miss some of the assignments. The final group are those who are not making the grade they want to make. We always get a few students who drop because they are looking for an A when they have a C in the class. I guess the question is, are these students worth the longer drop period?
Here is my fear of what the long drop period gives students. They can drag out the decision for far too long, when some should cut their losses and get out once it become obvious that they will not be successful. Of course, it might not be obvious to the students, but it certainly is obvious for me in looking at them. I do not think we are doing them a good service by letting them keep hanging around. What I mean by cutting their losses is that some students would be better dropping a course or two and concentrating on the ones that they can succeed in. If they were to drop one or two early in the semester, they could do better in the classes they remained in. Some might not take advantage of that, and there is the issue that people always hold out hope for success despite the evidence in their faces. The financial aid system also makes this route difficult, as students who drop can lose their aid. Those not on aid lose the money they spent on the class as well, which is something that makes them stay in longer in the hopes they can pull it out.
The question that remains, after this wandering look at the drop deadline as I see it, is, what can we do about this? Certainly, systems like an early alert are a step in the right direction, but I have received very little feedback from students who I send alerts to. It takes a couple of hours to get the alerts together and send them out, and I often wonder if it is worth it, as I see very little direct feedback from the students after sending out the alerts. However, I can certainly say that I did my part to let them know, which is at least one step. I can’t sit down with each of the students in trouble and get them going. This is largely because the students who I would need to sit down with are already not coming to class or participating in my online class and I have no way to get a hold of them besides sending an email (which is what the early alert does anyway).
Of course, then the question is, would things really be any different if the drop deadline was earlier? I don’t know if it would. The same students would probably drop either way. It is certainly not directly hurting anyone to have a later deadline, unless we believe that all students are rational and cut their losses earlier when they would need to by dropping the classes that were not going well early to concentrate on the ones left. I think both psychology and financial aid makes that a difficult prospect. It would make my own job neater and cleaner, as it certainly is nice to have people cleared off of the roster that I no longer have to keep entering 0’s for on every assignments. It’s not that this really takes a significant amount of time, but it does get irritating as the semester goes on. It also leads to lots of lamentations among the faculty, as I cannot count the number of conversations that I have either participated in or heard as we talk about the students who we have given chance after chance to without any real results.
So, maybe I am making too much out of something that is really not a big deal. I don’t know, but it is what is on my mind. What do you think?
Thoughts on Teaching – Third Week of Online Classes – 9/14/2014
This has been a mixed semester so far. I really thought it was going to be a rough one after the first week, which I referenced in my last post. I got everything cleaned up from my first mistake of having the incorrect link up for my classroom, and things have been fairly smooth since then. I always forget from one fall semester to the next how clueless about how to work online many of these students are in their first classes at college. Many students get shuttled into online classes as they work well with any schedule and are often perceived as easier than face-to-face classes. Yet, many have had no experience with online classes and really have trouble in those first weeks of classes. So, I end up doing a lot of technical support and repetition of information to the students as they try to grasp what they need to do. Luckily, by the time you get to the third week, most of that is behind, and the rest of the next couple of weeks is mostly maintaining the course and keeping it going.
What is interesting is how these first weeks are the same every semester. If I could somehow get it through to all of my students, I would set up a couple of things:
- The reaction I get from students who are taking their first online class with me is that my class is complicated and hard to understand. By contrast, any student who is coming into my class from other classes (and often the same students who were confused at first by the end of the semester) comments on how well laid-out and straightforward it is. I wish I could tell those students more directly that they will get used to it.
- Read the course outline. Again, read the course outline. And, read it again. Have a question? Read the course outline. Have a specific question? Look in that section of the course outline and see if I have answered it already.
- If you have a question that you can’t find the answer to, let me know as soon as possible. Do not wait until the second or third week to ask me a question that you had from the first moment in the class. By then, assignments will have come due, and it will be harder to fix things.
- Come by and talk to me if you have any questions. I can show you how everything works, and it often works better to show you how things are done rather than tell you.
You might think, well, why don’t you just say these things. The issue is that I do. In fact, I say them over and over. However, here is an example of what I am up against. Shortly after I wrote my last post, I got an email from a student. He said that some students (including him) were have trouble getting to the correct assignment and I should really tell the students about the problems there. If you will remember from my last post, the issue was that I had two contradictory links on how to access the textbook site in the classroom. I discovered this on Tuesday and corrected it at that point. So, I am getting this email about a week later telling me that I really needed to tell the students about this. As I then pointed out to that student, I had sent out 4 different announcements to students addressing this issue. I had also answered two questions posted in the questions forum in the class about this issue. I had answered about 20 different emails from students about this issue. So, when this student emails me telling me that I had not done anything to inform the students about this problem, I just had nothing left to say. And, this is the problem, no matter how many times I say anything, I can’t say it enough to reach every student.
So, what really is the answer is that I just have to keep my cool and remember that every student is new to this. Their problems are unique to them and they do not have the eight years of online teaching experience behind them. Unfortunately, this is not something I am particularly good with, as I get easily frustrated after dealing with issues over and over everyday. I just have to remind myself over and over about this.
The good thing is, by the third week, this section of troubleshooting and explaining is pretty much done. Some scattered issues with my online classes will come up, I’m sure, but things should be fairly stable until the first set of big assignments are due. I can’t say as much for my hybrid classes, but that will be another post.
Thoughts on Teaching – Class-Testing a New Book – 6/4/2014
I am teaching this summer. The summer sessions are always interesting at a community college, as we get a completely different crop of students. While there are certainly a number of continuing students from the semesters, we also get a significant population of students who are attending a four-year university who take a class or two from us over the summer. Thus, in many cases, we get students who would not normally be in a community college here over the summer. I am not saying they are better students, although some certainly are, but they are definitely a completely different group of students.
This summer, I have decided to class test a new textbook. So often, the textbook choice time catches all of us completely off guard. We choose a new textbook every three years, and, so often, we start making that choice essentially at the last minute, relying on a quick glance at the book, a demo of the online material, and a visit from a rep. Sometimes that is enough to get a sense of a book and to choose a good one, but it has also led to some duds over the years. When approached this year about a new textbook from a different company than the one we are currently using, I decided to take it for a test drive to see how it might compare. I will leave the names of the companies out of this, but they are all major publishing companies for college history textbooks.
I am not trying out the new textbook and company because I think that what they offer is superior, I am trying it out because I do not have any idea if they are superior. We have used two different publisher’s books so far since I have been in my current teaching position, and I strongly disliked one and generally like the other. When this third company approached me, I couldn’t help but be interested because I want to see what is out there. I certainly have the time to go out and explore on my own, but if nothing is forcing me to, I probably won’t. So, a class test forces me to delve into a different book and online system in more detail. It also allows me to see how it actually works in practice.
I have launched on this with full openness to my students that this is a class test. They have to know it anyway, as only this class has a different textbook than the others, as we use a common department textbook. However, I also wanted to let them know, as I want their feedback as well. It is just as important to me that the textbook and online system be manageable and accessible to them as it is that it be something that works for me. It could be the best book in the world, but if they can’t deal with it, it is a failure.
The summer session started this week, and I have kept the students completely informed about the changes and expectations. In my course outline, this is how I explained it to them:
Over the course of the summer session, we will cover the first 15 chapters of the textbook, which is what is included in Volume 1. This section is what I am class-testing this summer. Thus, all of the assignments in this section are new to me, just as they are new to you. I will be working through them along with you, and I will be evaluating them from my own historical perspective as well as looking at your own responses and performance in this section. We class-test material such as this both to ensure that we are using the best possible material for our classes at Weatherford College and to evaluate new content that we have not seen before.
What that means for you is that the material is presented to you in a way that explores all of the different options available from XX [censored to not show what book I am using]. What I have seen appears to be a manageable amount of material, but I will be evaluating as I go along in case what is here is too much. I am very happy to change if necessary, as this is all about testing out the material, both in quantity and quality. I also will be looking at how the material is assigned and accessed. It appears to be fairly obvious what material is due when, and it appears to be clear what assignments you need to do. If there is a problem, I will work with the material to try to figure out what is going on. As of right now, the material is organized by chapter, with the exception of the introductory assignments at the top.
Again, I want to be as open with them, so that I can evaluate the book and they can evaluate the book. That way, when our choice comes up next spring, I can talk about not only the book we are currently using but another one as well. We can all make an informed choice at that point and come up with the best possible outcome for our department and our students.
Thoughts, Ideas, Ramblings, and Other Things 