Quality DOES Matter!

So BlendKit 2012 wrapped up yesterday with a final webinar where the topic of discussion was course quality. Let's face it, jsut like in a face-to-face class there are great online/hybrid courses and there are not so great courses. For some reason, probably because it is easier to do so, online and hybrid courses are held to a higher standard than F2F classes. And that is okay with me because I have taken enough classes in my lifetime to tell the difference and I want any course that I am involved with developing (or teaching) to be of the highest quality. Quality doesn't come easily but a sincere attempt to align objectives with content should result in pretty decent organization. And then if we can keep the content student-centered with engagement and support in mind, we will probably end up with decent quality.

For the courses we are developing here at CMC, for the Integrated Energy program, I had planned to use the QM Rubric to review each course prior to student involvement. This makes sense because of my experience as a certified Quality Matters Peer Reviewer. However, I have been so closely involved in the development of these courses that it might be better to get another set of eyes so I think I will take Kelvin Thompson's (BlendKit Guru) suggestion and try to get a peer to review the courses using the peer review form provided within the course. The BlendKit form covers most of the important parts of a well-designed hybrid course while giving an instructor plenty of chance for improvement. The QM rubric will be more appropriately implemented after the course has been taught at least once and by then we at CMC should have our QM process in place.

Math Help Requested: Students Need to Show Their Work Online

As we near the end of the BlendKit 2012 course, I am amazed that our blended course development here on campus has gone along at the same pace and so we have arrived in the same place at the same time: Content + Assignments = Modules. My developing faculty know what they want students to learn and they are pretty good at determining how they will assess the learning, but we have hit a few technical roadblocks that will become my responsibility as the instructional designer to resolve. First as far as content goes, the courses we are developing are in our Integrated Energy program, such courses as Solar Photovoltaic Components, and National Electric Code; these are hands-on demonstration type classes, so somehow I must motivate the instructors to create (or fin) enough demonstration videos to provide learning while keeping the personality of the instructor an integral part of the class. This will not be easy because these are busy instructors with either other classes and campus duties or full time jobs, and families and outside lives as well; if I can get them the tools, when will they record? This is one thing I cannot do for them.

Now for the next technical roadblock, and I could use some help with this one. Math calculations are a large part of the above mentioned courses but not general math, actual math that takes place when for example, figuring out load calculations for a kitchen in a new house. The instructor can pretty easily demonstrate how this is done but when it comes to students turning in their homework online, or showing their calculation steps for a test, how can they do this online? I know there are many ways such as scanning or taking a picture with a mobile phone but for my non-traditional students this just seems like so much to ask. Is there an easier way? Help!

Or "help thyself! This turns out to be a great tool, students can show their work

http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathtype/ Also if they have Word 2010, the equation editor is not bad at all. :)

So Much to Do, So Little Time!

Week 4 of the BlendKit course concerns chunking courses into modules and choosing the content and the assignments that will be in the module. Amazingly enough, this is exactly where we are in the course development process so faculty are hearing from me the same questions that are presented in the course: what kind of learning activities will take place in your course? Hopefully they had time to look over the Learning activity types with technology-integration ideas matrix provided in our readings; this will give them some good ideas for activities that could take place in their classes.

Once they have decided, I have the freedom to take those activities and make them online environment friendly for students but it does keep me pretty busy and I am always concerned that I may have overestimated my abilities to get our courses developed before they are populated with students. Luckily, faculty have been very cooperative and enthusiastic for the process which makes my job easier but there is some pressure to justify their faith in me.

Lastly, the list of  Open Source Digital Content that was provided should keep me busy for the rest of today and probably beyond -gotta go!

How Do We Know if Students are Learning?

For the third week of the BlendKit2012 course, faculty are asked to focus on how they will know that students are learning. Or in other words, how will we know if the students are able to achieve the objectives of the class? Many different types of formal assessment methods are discussed and the following research based elements for written assignments are provided - in my opinion these elements make an excellent checklist for a variety of assessment types because in my experience instructors often forget at least one element. I have found that the better we can explain what we want from students, the better they do on the assessment.

O’Reilly and Kelly (2008) recommend eight elements to include in written assignment instructions distributed to students online:

1. Assignment title (exactly the same as title used in syllabus and other course documents)
2. Learning objective(s) to which the assignment relates
3. Assignment due date (if receiving electronic submissions, include time/time zone also)
4. Submission details (electronic submissions only? required file format? via email? via assignment upload?)
5. Scoring criteria/rubric
6. Level of group participation (individual assignments, group or team projects, and entire class projects).
7. Mechanical details (number of words/pages, preferred style guide for citations, number/type of citations, etc.)
8. Any supporting resources necessary for assignment completion

Lastly, on the topic of formal assessment, buried deep inside some of the materials and resources provided this week, I came across a real gem for developing quiz questions http://www.caacentre.ac.uk/dldocs/otghdout.pdf

Rethinking What We Do and How We Do it

Today starts the second week for the BlendKit 2012 course where this week we are asked to ponder these questions:

• Is there value in student-to-student and student-to-instructor interaction in all courses regardless of discipline?
• What role does interaction play in courses in which the emphasis is on declarative knowledge (e.g., introductory “survey” courses at the lower-division undergraduate level) or, similarly, in courses that cultivate procedural knowledge (e.g., technical courses requiring the working of problem sets)?
• As you consider designing a blended learning course, what kinds of interactions can you envision occurring face-to-face, and how might you use the online environment for interactions? What opportunities are there for you to explore different instructional strategies in the blended course than you have in the past?
• What factors might limit the feasibility of robust interaction face-to-face or online?

I hope that when my group of hybrid developing faculty ponder these questions that they find that interaction is important for any discipline because when students experience a variety of perspectives such as those of their peers, rather than that of just the teacher or just the book, they tend to think critically rather than making the assumption that there is only one true way.

Also today, I was able to attend the synchronous webinar provided each week as part of this course. The guest speaker, Dylan, shared how he had offered his course in hybrid format but decided to meet with half of his class one day of the week and the other half another day of the week. He like the intimacy of the smaller group but quickly realized that it was more work for him. I suggested he consider team teaching with the hyflex model discussed in this article http://sloanconsortium.org/effective_practices/using-quothyflexquot-course-and-design-process which in similar to hybrid in that a portion of class is online and face-to-face, however, students can attend either online or on campus and the work load is shared.

Lastly, I watched the TED Talk video suggested "Sugata Mitra shows how kids teach themselves" which suggests that motivated kids will find a way to learn. This was well worth my time and I recommend it as food for thought as to why we educate in the traditional models: