FOR TEACHING EXCELLENCE
Insights into Teaching and Learning Fall 2012 Meet the Staff
The William H. Koehler Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) supports teaching and learning at Texas Christian University (TCU). The resources and activities of the CTE are focused on responding to the present needs of instructors, as well as on keeping the TCU community informed of new educational possibilities created by the continuing development of pedagogical theories, teaching practices, and technologies. The Koehler Center is dedicated to facilitating ongoing, reflective discourse regarding teaching and learning, including working with faculty and teaching staff to help them design and implement meaningful learning opportunities for their students.
Events & Workshops
Articles
Educational Technology
Meet the Koehler Center Staff Romana (Romy) Hughes is the Director of the Koehler Center for Teaching Excellence. Her primary duties are to support the Koehler Center for Teaching Excellence, assisting faculty with teaching strategies and professional development for improved student learning and teaching excellence both in the traditional and online classrooms. Romy has twenty-seven years of higher education experience and sixteen years faculty development experience. Romy has ten years of teaching experience in higher education. Romy earned her graduate degree from TCU.
Amanda Irvin, PhD is the Senior Faculty Developer in the Koehler Center for Teaching Excellence. Amanda provides leadership in faculty development by designating, implementing, and assessing comprehensive programs to support faculty at all career stages with teaching effectiveness. Her primary duties are to develop and conduct workshops, seminars, and orientation programs designed to improve learning and teaching by consulting with faculty and staff. Amanda has ten years of teaching experience in higher education and five years of faculty development experience. Amanda earned her M.A. from Radford University and her PhD from TCU.
Desmond Morris is the Assistant Director of the Koehler Center for Teaching Excellence. Desmond oversees the coordination of compliance activities related to state authorization and online learning. Desmond provides leadership and support in the design, implementation, and assessment of online learning programs and classes. Desmond’s experience in teaching, training, and instructional design has helped in the development of TCU’s distance education solutions. Desmond earned his graduate degree from Northern Arizona University.
Kerrie Conover is the Manager of Instructional Design in the Koehler Center. Kerrie is responsible for managing the operational plan for all product implementations and critical operational activities around Pearson LearningStudio. She is also responsible for training faculty on using Pearson LearningStudio. Kerrie manages the instructional design team for the Koehler Center and is the web master for the department website. Kerrie’s experience is varied: professional photographer and artist, art exhibition curator, graphic and web design, and teaching experience. Kerrie is a TCU graduate.
Gina Hill, PhD, RD, LD is a Center Fellow, as well as Associate Professor in Nutritional Sciences and Director of Didactic Program in Dietetics. Dr. Gina Jarman Hill joined the faculty of the Department of Nutritional Sciences in 2003. Dr. Hill was appointed the Director of the Didactic Program (DPD) in 2007. Dr. Hill earned her B.S., M.S., and PhD in Food and Nutrition at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX. Her current teaching responsibilities include Medical Nutrition Therapy I and II, Community Nutrition, Infant and Child Nutrition, Supervised Practice in Medical Nutrition Therapy, and Career and Professional Issues in Nutrition.
Brian Elmore is the Instructional Designer in the Koehler Center for Teaching Excellence, providing instructional design, multimedia, and educational technology expertise and support to faculty as they develop new online and web-enhanced classes. He earned a Bachelor’s degree from the University of North Texas.
Kate Marshall is the LMS Technologist in the Koehler Center. Kate works with students, faculty, and staff supporting Pearson LearningStudio and education technology strategies. Kate is the primary author of the Koehler Center blog conducting research on educational technology trends. Kate has instructional design and teaching experience and holds two master’s degree from the University of Washington.
Peter Worthing, PhD is a Center Fellow, as well as Associate Professor and Department Chair for History. Peter Worthing holds a PhD in Chinese history from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and has been at TCU since 2002. He teaches undergraduate courses on East Asian Civilizations, modern Chinese history, and the Vietnam War and graduate seminars on China in World History and the Vietnam War.
Cecilia Lunt is the Project Coordinator in the Koehler Center. She has been at TCU for four years. Prior to coming to TCU her career spanned 27 years in banking as a Loan Administrator Officer and Business Development Coordinator. Cecilia’s primary responsibility is to manage the Koehler Center’s faculty development and distance education projects.
TA/GA/Phd Professional Development Pedagogy Certification This is an online 10-week graduate student professional development training course that prepares Teaching Assistants, Graduate Assistants, and PhD Candidates for teaching at TCU and beyond. In this professional development course, we’ll examine and create student learning outcomes, create course and teaching portfolio materials for future use, and examine teaching as a reflective practice for research and publication in your academic field. Additionally, we’ll discuss the challenge of work/life balance while in graduate school and building successful relationships with graduate mentors. The course curriculum is designed for educators from a range of experience levels (from brand new to “seasoned”) and takes an interdisciplinary approach to successful, engaged teaching at TCU. Monday, September 10 thru Friday, November 16
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Teaching Fully Online Teaching Fully Online Course is an instructor-led online course that takes 5 weeks to complete. This workshop covers strategies for quality of online teaching, and completing this workshop fulfills one of TCU’s required policies to teach fully online. Faculty will receive a portfolio and certificate when the course is completed.
Key points of the course include the following: • Preparing for online instruction • Student Learning Outcomes • Designing your online course • Assessment of your course • Instructing your online course • Resources
Monday, October 8 thru Friday, November 9
Outcomes-Based Teaching and Learning Outcomes-Based Teaching and Learning is an instructor-led online course that takes 5 weeks to complete and is designed to help TCU faculty use Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) in their class. The workshop provides TCU faculty the opportunity to examine their course by reviewing: • Student Learning Outcomes • Assignments and tasks • Teaching and learning activities • Course content • Teaching techniques • Course assignments • Aligning assignments with SLOs • Writing measurable SLOs and rubrics • Measuring Student Learning
Monday, October 8 thru Friday, November 9
Instructional Design Strategies This 5-week instructor-led, hands-on course focuses on creative uses of instructional design Web 2.0 tools for enhancing student learning and improving content delivery in the Pearson LearningStudio. This course is designed for faculty teaching or planning on teaching fully online at TCU. Week 1: Course Design (instructor bio, announcements, Course Home introduction) Week 2: Visual Editor / Templates Week 3: Instructor generated content (audio, video, images) Week 4: Delivering Content (PowerPoint delivery , Slideshare, Prezi) Week 5: Tools for building community (flash cards, mind maps, shared documents)
Monday October 8 thru Friday November 9
Changing Perspectives Through In-class Writing Workshops by Dr. Steve Sherwood
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As Doug reads his short story aloud, the entire class laughs. The story is about Cowboy Willy, who has lost his ranch, horse, and girl to Big Bart, the evil sheriff. It contains nearly every dusty cliché ever used in tales of the Old West, but Doug has warped each tired phrase enough to make it and the story fresh and funny. Assuming too much, his fellow students and professor congratulate him on these masterfully satiric moves.
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The problem: “I didn’t write a parody,” Doug says. “It’s a serious story about a good man trying to protect the things he loves.” Misreadings of authorial intention occur often in writing workshops. Though sometimes jarring, they prompt shifts in perspective that make revision possible because they help the writer see a piece through an audience’s eyes. Such shifts in perspective sometimes teach important lessons—about the use of clichés, for example—more effectively than a professor can do through lectures alone because the writer’s words bring an immediate reaction from his or her peers. In-class workshops have other benefits, too. They motivate writers to do their best work before making it public, they clarify an assignment’s criteria, they reveal approaches and techniques that help or hurt a piece, and they allow students to test their ideas before turning them in for a grade. Though
most often used in creative writing classes, in-class workshops can be as effective in writing emphasis courses—especially if the instructor can circumvent the anger, confusion, and wounded feelings that can result from harsh feedback. Careful planning can help reduce writers’ negative reactions to criticism. Effective workshops often hinge on the instructor’s setting ground rules that encourage students to give honest yet humane feedback to their fellow writers. Honesty and humanity are equally crucial. Without the honesty, students may resort to insincere praise, giving writers a false sense of confidence; without the humanity, the workshop can become brutal, preventing writers from looking past obvious weaknesses to see hidden potential in their work. Below are guidelines that can set the stage for an effective workshop: 1. Once a writer begins presenting a piece, other students should be quiet and attentive. 2. When the reading ends, students should begin by discussing what they like best about the piece and continue until they exhaust the virtues. If they fail to see a particular strength, the instructor should bring it to their attention. This approach helps anchor the writer in the positive. There’s something good about every piece, if only the latent potential of the idea. That said, students should give an honest assessment and avoid false, faint, or insincere praise. 3. Students should discuss strategic issues of writing, such as structure, argument, transitions, evidence, and whether a piece satisfies the assignment (or the author’s implied purpose) before mentioning such tactical issues as phrasing, diction, and punctuation. 4. Minor spelling, punctuation, or grammar errors can hurt the readability of a piece, so the workshop must
address them, but such issues come last. Because errors can confuse the meaning of a sentence, the students’ puzzlement or misreading can be highly instructive to the writer and should be part of the critique. 5. The instructor should remind students before each session to avoid meanspirited, bullying, or aggressively insensitive comments that inspire fear and defensiveness rather than open, productive discussion. When harsh or inhumane behavior occurs, the instructor should intervene (in a humane, honest manner). 6. After presenting a piece, the writer should remain silent while students offer feedback. He or she should take notes, answer any direct questions, and thank the critics for their help at the end. This “rule” allows the writer to maintain dignity and composure instead of attempting to argue points, explain away faults, or defend the indefensible. 7. Finally, the instructor should make clear that, as an author, each writer is free to accept or reject any advice given in the workshop, including the instructor’s, since only the writer will benefit or suffer from this decision. Such a stipulation reemphasizes the writer’s responsibility for the quality of his or her work.
In a workshop, writers should be able to assume that everyone involved, especially the instructor, is offering advice with the best of intentions. Criticism should never intentionally wound or humiliate. In Doug’s case, his classmates’ praise unintentionally hurt his feelings but also caused him to reconsider his approach. After class, with an abashed expression, he asked the instructor, “So do you think I should go with the parody?” “Only if you think the rest of us are right,” the instructor said. “If not, maybe you should eliminate the clichés and come up with some fresh metaphors of your own.” Doug chose the second option. To the extent that an in-class workshop helps a writer briefly step out of his or her perspective and take a clear look at the strengths and weaknesses of a piece, though the eyes of an audience, it is doing its job. Such shifts in perspective are a first step toward fruitful revision of a single piece, but they may also lead, over time, to long-lasting improvements in a writer’s processes and style.
Teaching and Learning Conversation with Provost Nowell Donovan: “The Academy of Tomorrow”
An examination of relevance as we attempt to capture the imagination of those we profess to lead.
Thursday, October 11, 2012, 11:30-1:30pm, Lunch included
Contemplative study and contemplative practice as a liberal art by Andrew O. Fort
For the last few years, I have been involved with an emerging academic field called Contemplative Studies (CS). CS includes both the standard “third person” study of contemplative traditions and actual “first person” practice of contemplative exercises as part of coursework. Aspects of CS have been controversial in certain quarters, seen by some as not completely compatible with the rigorous “critical inquiry” of liberal arts study. While there are agendas within CS which go beyond the traditional questions and issues of liberal education, my view is that CS has, for a number of reasons, a place right at the heart of such inquiry. CS is being utilized in many disciplines (including psychology, medicine, and neuroscience as well as literature and visual/fine/performing arts), and I would like to begin a conversation about CS at TCU. Yet to begin, and give a flavor of some issues in play, I will focus below on its place in liberal arts humanities generally, and Religious Studies specifically. First, to briefly define some terms: “contemplation” refers to ways of knowing and focusing attention which include a wide variety of practices: sitting or walking meditation, yogic postures, reflective self-inquiry or nature observation, silent prayer and group chanting, visualization, and many others. “Liberal arts,” or liberal education, has many qualities and purposes, but ones most relevant here include: 1) reflective self-awareness, recognizing and critiquing one’s beliefs and assumptions, 2) respectful and empathetic understanding of others (what I call “mental migration” into other worldviews), 3) understanding that humans are socially and culturally conditioned, existing in and shaped by an historical context, and 4) learning about various ways of thinking or modes of inquiry.
CS clearly has the goals of enhancing both self-awareness and “mental migration” into other worldviews, and an expected outcome would be ongoing critical reflection on such learning. CS values the analytic study of contemplative states and traditions: scientifically, historically, culturally, and personally. While few would disagree that scientific inquiry, historical study, and knowledge of sociocultural context are significant in learning about contemplative traditions, there is more dispute about the value of actual “first person” practice of contemplative exercises both for scholars and for students in an academic course, during or outside of class. Recently, numerous scholars have eloquently argued that such first hand personal experience is one important way of illumining traditions and alternative ways of knowing and valuing (see, for example, Meditation and the Classroom, edited by Fran Grace and Judith Simmer-Brown, SUNY Press, 2011). To make the case fully for contemplation in liberal education would take an extended essay. Here I’d like to simply offer a series of connected reasons why this view should resonate for a liberal arts teacher. Each is legitimate on its own, but gains power in relation to the others. 1) There are a variety of ways of knowing self/ consciousness and world, and it is important to investigate and understand these alternative ways. In fact, recognizing that there are different kinds of knowing increases one’s capacity for critical analysis. 2) One of the sources for comprehending the diverse ways of knowing (including contemplation) is contemplative reflection itself. 3) Contemplative inquiry has been important to many people in a large number of cultures (not just Asian) and a significant pattern in history, so it should be understood (through both study and practice) to gain a more accurate (and “lived”) understanding of others’ worldviews and practices. 4) Given this broad and long-standing interest, there are, naturally, diverse contemplative traditions and experiences. We should learn how this variety is understood and explained by “insider” practitioners (focusing on their first person significance) as well as by science (focusing on their third person nature). Relatedly, such study offers useful practice in “mental migration” into others’ worldviews.
5) Those within contemplative traditions have themselves long argued about and critically analyzed various introspective states, so we should learn about and attend to both the states and those arguments, 6) In evaluating what contemplative thinkers say, it is valuable to attend to what and how we ourselves experience, and to examine how we know what we know: again, we learn important things from both third person cognitive science and first person training in introspection. Obviously it is difficult to determine the degree to which one can “neutrally” observe and examine one’s consciousness. Such observation may be hard to do, and the investigator needs training, but one’s ability to both observe and analyze can be increased. 7) All the above bring attention to what and how we study, and illumine what issues and perspectives are
What is Contemplative Studies, and what is its place at TCU?
important in different models of reality. Contemplative inquiry opens possibilities for critical thinking about both philosophical arguments and one’s own and others’ mental process and content. It further can challenge reigning paradigms, modern or post-modern, positivist or religiously sectarian. Finally, by opening alternative views of human being and flourishing, this study and practice offers new models and possibilities in thinking and being. Again, the above is simply a jumping off point for reflection and discussion. If you are interested in joining the conversation, please come to our meeting Sept. 19 at 2:30.
The study and practice of contemplation in the academic context (now called Contemplative Studies) can be found in almost any aspect of the arts, humanities, and sciences, including such disciplines as psychology, medicine, and neuroscience as well as religion, literature, and visual/fine/performing arts. Under the auspices of the Koehler Center for Teaching Excellence, we plan to hold a panel discussion about the state of the developing field of contemplative studies, then follow with a brainstorming session to see what is possible and desirable in this context at TCU.
September 19, 2012, 2:30-4:30 Panelists will include Andy Fort and Mark Dennis, Religion Dept., TCU, and Donnalee Dox, Associate Professor, Department of Performance Studies and Director, Religious Studies Interdisciplinary Program and Minor at Texas A&M University.
Social Learning at TCU: An exploratory study
By Suzy Lockwood, Romana Hughes, and Ann Zelenka
Overview The Koehler Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE), Professor Suzy Lockwood at Texas Christian University (TCU), and Pearson partnered to improve the use of social tools in online learning. In this exploratory study, the TCU/Pearson team found that doctoral students can be guided towards more substantive, focused discussion contributions through the use of a structured grading rubric combined with limits on student response length. In the process of studying the impact of grading changes on discussion thread responses, the team developed an innovative approach to quantifying student engagement and contribution based on the topical content of each post and its relationship to the content of earlier posts. This new model for evaluating discussion posts provides a means of assessing discussion thread participation that can give instructors a better idea of how students have achieved learning outcomes and may additionally provide course designers with a way to improve discussion thread design and structure.
Research design The team selected a course from TCU’s Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program for which the instructor of the course had introduced a structured grading rubric with the goal of making student contributions at once more focused and more substantive. The TCU/Pearson team compared thread posts from the course before and after introduction of the rubric. This provided an experiment-like setting that allowed the evaluation of whether the redesigned thread grading had a beneficial impact on student discussion thread posts.
Custom content analysis approach After reviewing the research literature on content analysis of discussion thread transcripts and undertaking some preliminary content analysis using a variety of schemes, the team developed a custom content analysis approach based on the pattern of introduction and repetition of topics appearing in a post. This approach proposed that there are four levels of discussion thread contribution, representing increasingly higher levels of “topic spread�: Participation occurs when a student posts a response that does not cover topics relevant to the discussion but merely states agreement or disagreement or offers social conversation.
Explanation occurs when a student posts a response that covers topics that have already been introduced in a thread. Elaboration occurs when a student posts a response that provides new topics that are closely related to topics already introduced in a particular top-level threaded response. Expansion occurs when a student posts a response that connects topics already introduced into the discussion to distantly related topics. Content analysis may give an evaluator or researcher a much better idea of how students are engaged in the learning and knowledge construction process, but it is time-consuming to code transcripts. Also, content analysis requires a useful coding scheme that can be applied reliably by different raters. Part of the purpose of the current evaluation study is to test a content analysis coding scheme to see if it is useful and reliable in analyzing discussion forum content. The study involved the following steps: 1. Course review 2. Threaded discussion content analysis 3. Threaded discussion database-querybased analysis 4. Quantitative analysis/comparison of content-based and database-based measures Each of these is discussed in more detail below.
Additional grading requirements for the rubric course were as follows: Students are required to respond to threaded discussions by midnight (MN) on the date designated on the course schedule. Each student’s original posting should be limited to no more than 350 words; your response should be no more than 150 words. Your citations are not included in the word count. Failure to stay within this limit will be taken into consideration when grading, There are several reasons for this, the primary one being I want you to demonstrate understanding/synthesis... plus encourage you to make sure you are answering the question or focus of the thread. The control course did not use a structured rubric for discussion forum grading. In order to provide context for the later steps in the evaluation, Suzy Lockwood was interviewed. Discussion points and questions included: • Confirm that the two sections used different explicit grading instructions/ rubrics. • Were there any other important differences between how the two
sections were graded or organized? • What motivated you to introduce the more structured rubric? • Did you sense a difference in student engagement or learning in the section with the structured rubric? • Did you find the rubric helpful in grading? • Do you have additional ideas around making discussion threads useful for online learning?
Threaded discussion content analysis The rubric used in the intervention course called for students to “add significantly to the discussion.” Students may add to the discussion in a number of ways: • Explanation – simple discussion of topics that have already been introduced. Describing or quoting what’s in the reading. Giving personal examples that illustrate concepts and ideas in the original topic or points that have already been made. • Elaboration – providing additional details that are directly related to topics already under discussion. Extending discussion to closely related areas. • Expansion – introducing distantly related topics that can shed light on the topic at hand. Making crossdisciplinary connections. Providing
external evidence from research, history, or current news. In the preliminary content analysis, all of these activities were seen. By extracting concepts from posts and by noting the use of examples, posts could be coded as explanation, elaboration, or expansion of the discussion. Appendix B presents coding instructions refined based on the coding practice exercise.
Conclusion Discussion threads are one of the key interactive and social components of online courses today, yet instructors and course designers do not have adequate tools and methods for analyzing how well students are contributing and whether threads are structured appropriately. The purpose of this study was to develop a new approach for analyzing discussion thread content and then apply it to an experiment-like setting, with the goal of evaluating whether a structured grading rubric for discussion threads promoted more substantive student posts. The Explain/Elaborate/Expand model developed for this study identified significant differences in substantive contribution across the rubric and nonrubric course sections, with the rubric section showing greater topic spread. This provides evidence that a more structured
rubric that explicitly calls for substantive contribution can drive greater elaboration and expansion of the topics under discussion. Basic summary statistics around discussion threads such as posts per student and thread depth did not differ across the rubric and non-rubric sections, which suggests that simple comparisons of database summary statistics around threads may not identify actual differences across sections. A contentbased approach seems more likely to produce useful information about what’s actually happening in discussion threads. While the approach outlined here was undertaken by human coders, it could
relatively easily be automated using text processing techniques. Concept extraction such as by stemmers could identify topics in each post then code for explain, elaborate, expand by considering the successive repetition and introduction of topics. Pearson hopes to explore such automated content analysis of discussion threads and eventually perhaps incorporate it into the platform.
or non-rubric section. This finding suggests that posts with higher topic spread attract more attention and participation from other students. Future work might explore the hypothesis that driving greater topic spread via a rubric calling explicitly for substantive contribution increases student engagement overall. To read the full report, email Romana Hughes: r.hughes@tcu.edu.
The post hoc exploratory analysis of the data found that posts with greater topic spread were associated with higher numbers of responses, controlling for other important factors such as date of post relative to due date, level of post, and whether the post was made in the rubric
Structured rubric for grading discussion threads CATEGORY
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Responding to 2 peer postings &
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Responding to 1 peer
Responding to one (1)
Does not respond to any peer
ALL peers who posted response
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Posts add moderately to
Posts that do not add to
Post is simple. Examples
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discussion by suggesting other
discussion by suggesting
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include but not limited
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solutions, pointing out problems,
other solutions, pointing out
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comments made with
“Yes”, “No”,
Substantiates comments made
disagreeing. Substantiates
reasoning or source
“Makes sense to me”.
with reasoning or source citation.
comments made with
citation.
reasoning or source citation.
What’s New in the World of ELearning by Kate Marshall
Talk of technology as a transformative force for teaching and learning is both intriguing and a little daunting. Where does an instructor begin? How much prior knowledge or technology ownership is it fair to assume students have? And how does one adopt new approaches while remaining true to course content and learning objectives? The best eLearning tools provide tangible benefits in terms of enhancing the ability to get work done, providing valuable feedback, helping students visualize data or concepts, and increasing student engagement. While there are many new products, the most exciting changes have come in the areas of devices, collaboration (including social learning), reworking instructional time, and accessibility. Depending on your course and comfort level, there are a number of eLearning tools you might consider.
New Devices Although the iPad is currently stealing the show, there are a host of new devices that can enhance the learning experience. An added benefit is that some of these new devices also provide immediate and indepth data to the instructor.
A 2012 study by the Pearson Foundation found that “tablet ownership among college students and college-bound high school seniors has more than tripled from a year ago. Further, a large number of students plan to purchase a tablet within the next six months.� The large screen size, intuitive content navigation, easy portability, and wide variety of apps available for tablets make classroom use a real possibility. No matter your discipline, there is likely an app with relevant content. You can have students take measurements with seismograph app, plan a virtual tour through a museum, examine constellations, navigate a newspaper in a foreign language, or verify drug dosing recommendations. Of course, you also have access to the myriad of internet sites with streaming videos. Best, with a wellplanned learning exercise and the devices in the hands of your students, this is active, engaging learning: students are the ones doing the work and making the meaning. Tablet devices are part of the larger trend toward mobile devices. Some analysts are suggesting that a key back-to-school trend this year will be BYOD (bring your own device). While the variety of devices can lead to some logistical challenges, the benefit is that many students will be able to access and share course-related content as long as they have network access. Clickers are another useful tool for increasing student motivation and
participation. These hand-held devices use radio frequencies to collect and tabulate student responses to true/false, multiple choice, or short answer questions. Using clickers, an instructor can poll her class about their recall of information, factual misconceptions, perspectives on an issue, or present a scenario requiring critical thinking skills. In addition to recording the data, she can instantaneously share and discuss the results with her students. There are also polling options that can be used with smartphones, although this set-up is dependent on access to a strong and reliable wireless signal. Clickers or other response systems create an environment in which student data drives discussions, providing instant relevancy to course content. While you can instruct your students to buy clickers for classroom use, the same is not true for tablets or smartphones (some students may not have these devices or may not have pricing plans that allow for additional usage). The challenge is to figure out how to integrate experiences with these devices and include all students. Taking an anonymous survey of students at the start of the term might help gauge device availability; likewise, with a handful of willing students, groupwork might be a possibility. Devices are exciting in their own right, but they also allow for some great experiences in terms of collaboration, the use of class time, and content accessibility.
Collaboration Depending on what sort of collaboration you are seeking to facilitate among your students, there are a myriad of file sharing, bookmarking, mind-mapping, scheduling, presentation, and digital storytelling tools. Many of these have cloud-based data storage, allowing users to access updated content no matter where they are or what kind of device they are using. With some forethought and organization, groupwork need not fall prey to issues related to scheduling, physical location, or document sharing issues. Selecting the right tool can minimize potential problems and help equitably distribute work among the group members. Social learning involves broadening the classroom – including how instructorstudent and student-student interactions take place and the possibility that a larger potential audience that may read, participate, or benefit from work done in the course. Students take an active role in knowledge construction via observation, modeling, imitation, and purposeful participation. While this definition includes well-designed in-class activities, there are some digital options that allow students to choose when, where, and how they participate. Twitter is an option for a social learning
approach. A professor can establish a hashtag for a course, discussion, or assignment. Students can then share their brief insights with their peers who are reading the Twitter feed. An intriguing variation is to have students use the voice of individuals from course readings: what would Juliet tweet about Romeo, anyway? Professors and students have also created Facebook pages for courses. Users with Facebook accounts can share information, organize review sessions and projects, and receive updates seamlessly. These approaches have the potential to marry the classroom community with the students’ own authentic communities, letting them share their learning with their own personal networks. Whatever you select, be sure that students without devices or access or social media accounts are also able to get the same important information. Cross-posting information to the course shell or communicating key details via email or a blog can help everyone stay on the same page.
Reworking Instructional Time ELearning tools can help you change the way you and structure the learning process. In the blended or flipped classroom, students use their
own time to become familiar with the content – perhaps via reading texts, watching videos, or listening to recorded lectures. When students and the instructor come together, the emphasis is on the application of skills, practicing techniques, solving problems, experiments, artifact study, and other kinds of active learning. Although it may be premature to announce the death of the lecture, this approach emphasizes using eLearning tools to vary the way instructional time is used with the goal of creating more engaging, dynamic classroom spaces. Another way to re-think instructional time is driven by student performance data. Of course, students receive grades and wise instructors adjust their teaching of topics that have proven challenging for students. But the new, more intensive approach to learning analytics is based on mining student activity in the course shell, course activities like clicker use, quizzes and other assignments, and overall student academic performance. With this comprehensive lens, instructors and support staff can proactively approach students who might struggle in the course. A small start to leveraging course data is to review the usage details for your own course shell or examine the time spent in selected units or on particular activities for students about whom you are concerned. Armed with
this information, you can then reach out to students and help solve any issues before students fall too far behind or leave the class.
Accessibility An increasingly important eLearning focus is to make sure that all your students are able to access course content, links, videos, and readings. Embracing some principles of universal design and making a few simple formatting changes can make a world of difference. The bonus is that clear organization, properly labeled links and pages, and the efficient use of tables and images will benefit all users in the course. It is also important to make sure that transcripts, captions, and summaries of visual elements (like charts, graphs, and animations) are available. Keep in mind that Flash animations or cues that rely on color may not be rendered properly by accessibility software. Items that require unnecessary mouse clicks in order to navigate will be challenging for individuals with mobility impairments. If you’re using Word to prepare your syllabus or other course documents, use headings. Many of us enlarge the font or add emphasis via the stand-alone toolbar options; the far more accessible strategy is to use the built-in styles in Word, selecting the options for titles, headings, subheadings, etc. This will greatly help students who use accessibility software. Last, you
might save your Word documents as PDFs and share them with your students in that format, as PDFs have more accessibility features than Word documents.
References Bruff, D. (2012, February 7). Some inspiration for using clickers in medical education. Retrieved from: http://derekbruff. org/?p=1952 Clark, C. (2012, June 5). Going mobile with Keynote.
There are also some great simulations that allow you to experience how students with disabilities might interact with your content. After all, the best way to ensure that your content is accessible is to try and access it as one of your students might.
Retrieved from: http://ltlatnd.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/ going-mobile-with-keynote/ Dawson, C. (2011, December 22). Top 5 Ed Tech Predictions for 2012. Retrieved from: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ education/top-5-ed-tech-predictions-for-2012/4761?tag=nl. e623 New Media Consortium (2012, February 2). Horizon report:
Institutions and individuals are opting to make more and more content available online; the availability of “real world” examples is expanding exponentially in nearly every subject. The key is to make sure that this content enriches everyone.
Conclusion Adopting every innovation discussed in this article would be too much—both for you and your students. Rather, we encourage you to think about what fits with your content, students, course objectives, and teaching style. There is no “best” way. Consider selecting one or two things to try. Give it whirl, solicit student feedback, reflect on how it went, and let us know. We’re always eager to hear about what works (and what doesn’t), and to help you figure out how to use technology to improve teaching and learning.
2012 higher education edition. Retrieved from: http://www. nmc.org/horizon-project/horizon-reports/horizon-reporthigher-ed-edition Pearson Foundation (2012, March 14). Pearson Foundation survey on students and tablets. Retrieved from: http://www. pearsonfoundation.org/downloads/PF_Tablet_Survey_ Summary_2012.pdf
Check it out! The eLearning website has lots of resources on collaboration, multimedia, web 2.0, mobile devices and more. Go to our Multimedia & Teaching Tools page for more information!
TurnItIn
i>clicker News
Turnitin adoption has grown 68.5 percent during 2011-12 year. The Koehler staff worked with Turnitin and Pearson LearningStudio to find a one-stop shop solution for students who submit electronic assignments. The new embedded tool was launched summer 2011. Below is the adoption growth over the past two years.
We have a new Regional Technology Specialst for i>clicker, effective June 2012.
We have two i>Clicker training workshops this Fall: September 14 & November 16.
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Our training focuses on using Turnitin as a teaching tool, giving students the opportunity to improve their electronic homework assignments and to understand plagiarism.
i>clicker Contact Information: Adam Frese Regional Technology Specialist Macmillan New Ventures | i>clicker 908-770-9538 adam.frese@macmillan.com
Adoption Growth Year Instructors Students Submissions Originality Reports
10-11 135 2901 9495 9490
11-12 192 5030 16000 15904
We also have one of the inventors of i>clicker coming for our November Koehler Event. See the next page for more information.
Audio & Video Resources The Koehler Staff has worked towards building more how to instructions and resources on our website for Recording Audio & Video, along with how to for getting your content into Pearson LearningStuido
Link: Video Link: Audio
Teaching With Techonlogy: Tips & Tricks Blog We are just about to celebrate our one year anniversary of launching our TCU eLearning Teaching with Technology blog! More than 100 posts have been published about teaching technologies! If you haven’t looked, please go subscribe! http://tcuelearning.wordpress.com
Accessibility Update The Koehler Center staff has been doing a lot of research on Accessibility. Our goal is to make all course content accessible and compliant with Section 508 of the American Disability Act. This is a big process and requires faculty involvement to make this happen. Course content, whether posted in Pearson LearningStudio or on a website, created by TCU faculty, or an outside source, needs to be accessible and readable by all users, regardless of their disabilities. The most illuminating
piece of information we have found is that a website or course site can be compliant if images & text are set up propelrly, however, if a Word, PDF, or PowerPoint is linked within the site and doesn’t use styles for headlines, paragraphs, etc., the entire site cannot be considered compliant.
What does this mean? If titles and headlines in a document are set up by manually making them bold and a larger font size, this is not compliant. Use of styles to create Headling 1, 2, 3, etc. makes the document compliant. Also adding in Alt Tags to images and graphs/charts in Word & PowerPoint documents is required.
We know that most MS Office users do not use Styles to create their documents, so the Koehler Staff is creating some best practice documents and will be holding workshops to help train faculty to create accessible course content. Look for more information soon from us on Accessibility & Best Practices!
Connect With Us!
Using Clickers to Enhance Student Learning Clickers (classroom polling systems) can enhance student participation, learning, and motivation. Join Dr. Tim Stelzer from the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois for a discussion of best practices in clicker pedagogy, and an overview of the logistics of the i>clicker response system. We’ll also provide hands-on experience and practical advice for introducing clickers into your classes. Learn more about Dr. Tim Stelzer. November 9, 2012, 11am-1pm, Lunch included