From valued commenter Immanentize –
You’re saying I must now teach On-Line?
It seems that there are a number in this community who are having the immediate surprise of having to convert their teaching to all-online. It has been crazy! And there is so much information that seems contradictory out there. And how do I decide what to teach? How to do it? How do I keep my students engaged? And, how do I test/assess online?
All worthy questions and the speed with which teachers are being asked to switch what, in many cases, has been a career of successful teaching methodology has just been tossed out the window. I think (almost) every teacher understands the need for this switch at this moment in our national Thunderdome, but it sure feels like punishment.
Well, many of us are hoping to help you through some of this transition. There are so many commenters who are experienced and eager.
My creds – I am a law professor who, for three and a half years during massive institutional upheaval, acted as the Vice Provost for Faculty and Curriculum at my “Mid-Size Comprehensive University” (about 6000 undergrads and another 3000 grad students including law). I was inter alia, responsible for our Center for Teaching Excellence and was also put in charge of our school’s creation and expansion of online offerings, Hybrid classes, and MOOC productions. We also prepared a proposal for creating an in-house online production unit with the goal of starting a non-degree university extension program (certificates and specialty areas). Well, the Higher Ed. Crash of 2013-ish put most of those projects on ice, but I still learned a lot!
And I am hoping to share some of what I learned with you. In this first post, the plan is to start off with some basic definitions, then offer some ideas about where to start your new design. I also will briefly mention online assessments. We really will need another full thread focused on tech – but even now get to know your institution’s Learning Management System (LMS)!
First, so we can all be on the same page in this discussion, let’s discuss some terms. I know many institutions use variations on these, but I will use the following terms:
F2F – Face to face, in person, teaching. What we all currently think of as how education happens. There are all sorts of different methods that can be employed in such a class – lecture, Socratic method, image-based learning (remember the old art-history course slide decks?), Team-Based Learning (not to be confused with group projects), discussion leaders, etc. There are a LOT of F2F pedagogies, and every teacher has their favorite or blend of favorites in the classes.
Hybrid – This is also often referred to as a “flipped” classroom. In a hybrid course, the idea is to take a great deal of the knowledge learning out of the classroom (minimal lecturing) forcing students to do their learning work before any F2F meeting. In the Hybrid model, the idea is to have fewer F2F meetings, but maintain the same learning level among students. There was a large double-blind Carnegie study regarding statistics that demonstrated that Hybrid methods improved learning outcomes. Institutions liked it because it meant you might be able to double faculty class sizes without them having to increase teaching loads.
Online Synchronous – This is what most people think of when they first think of online teaching. And it may be the way, in some cases, to go. A professor teaches a course, often to a live audience, while a further audience is ‘attending’ the course via the internet at the same time. This is the Harvard Extension School model of online education. Now, however, the same thing might be done without any live audience – just people webbing in to watch a lecture or demonstration.
Online Asynchronous – This is the Kahn Academy model of online teaching – lectures about topics, or even whole courses, that can be viewed or heard at any time by the learner either on the intertubes or after download. There are obvious convenience advantages for the learners, but the relationship between the teacher and the student may be limited, or non-existent. Imagine if you could still take a course from Dr. Carl Sagan! Well, you can, but he doesn’t have office hours….
MOOC – “Massive Open Online Course.” The MOOC was pitched as a democratic solution to some education ideas. And it can work, BUT – really good MOOCs are expensive to produce and really only suited to evergreen topics (more on this later). Luckily, MIT and Harvard started a joint project around the promise of MOOCs called EdX. Their business model wasn’t great – but their course research and data are phenomenal, and their baseline conclusions can be very useful for you as you get ready to go online.
Assessments – OK, tests. But not all tests need be graded, at least not by the teacher. There are formative assessments – that solidify learning; and there are summative assessments that are intended to rate the learning. I am putting up a PowerPoint I once did about assessment on the vertical (how are students doing in the course) and on the horizontal (how does my course fit into the overall learning objectives of the program in which I am teaching). In both axis both formative and summative assessments can be designed to help your students and help you make a better course.
[Now, if this was an actual online course, I would make you do a formative assessment right now to make the above ‘sticky’ in your head. But I’m not gonna.]So, with some of the lingo out of the way, let’s talk about your class. Most everyone (some lab instruction excluded) are now moving to fully online – not even the version where there is a live and online synchronous audience. At least at my University, Professors have been told not to let students sit in the classroom while they are recording their class, even if it is a synchronous course being taught at the regular class time, in the regular classroom while being simulcast on the web. Students just are not welcome on the campus right now if that can be avoided. Some schools are pushing their faculty to do this and offer your online whatever only during your regularly scheduled class time. I get the impulse. Students are already into a regular schedule and keeping them on the same schedule is probably a good idea – but, not necessarily the best way to convey your lessons. If you are required to produce synchronous pre-scheduled material, your challenges are different than if you can present the course in a completely asynchronous fashion of a blend of the two.
Designing an online course may feel daunting because of the technology, but let’s push that off for a moment. The tech can follow your design. When I was a kid, there was a Saturday morning show of international children programs. One of the foreign segments was about a boy in the Australian Outback with many wonderful animals. But he still had to go to school! Which was via the shortwave radio in the family room of their home. It was question/answer and lecture. Please don’t teach online like you are using a shortwave. Sadly, many of my colleagues teach exactly like that. F2F. It will be boring for you and twice that for your students.
Backwards Design Your Course
First, go backwards. Most teachers know this concept now – in fact, I think the younger the students you teach, the more you have been trained to course design in this fashion.
FIRST – What is/are the overarching GOAL of the course
SECOND – What are the OBJECTIVES related to each goal
THIRD – What TASKS of learning will be assigned or recommended to achieve each objective?
FOURTH – what assessments will you deploy to monitor student achievement of the tasks, objectives and goals.
You are now done designing your course! ? We can talk a lot more about specific online course designs later, but let’s get something ready for the next week?
Conveying Knowledge
Now how does this go online? Your first step is to get a clear idea of the capacities in your Learning Management System (LMS). We use Blackboard, I like Canvas, and many public schools in my area are using Schoology. They all offer roughly the same suite of apps, with each product emphasizing this or that functionality. In many cases, an online course could be designed entirely around the functions available in your LMS. The most critical ones for a quick online setup will be the boards, or comment sections. You all blog, so this should be a natural! Every LMS has the capability of tracking responses and student engagement. They also all have some capacity for assessments, usually including timed “check out” testing where students can take a test out but only have a limited time to complete. Colleges use such systems for language proficiency exams now. You could spin up a completely acceptable online course completely within your LMS – especially if it allows links to external content. Considering the rush, I urge those who have flexibility to use the least complicated technologies as you start and save more complex tech (like Zoom) which require more tech support, set up time, etc. to take full advantage of. So, you first step is to take your re-designed course and figure out how to get the learning to the students.
Back to the Evergreen! – In the future, which is now being catapulted by this crisis, the best courses will have all their evergreen material online. All of it. Evergreen material is that which does not change from class to class – like “There are nine members of the US Supreme Court.” That may change some day, but it has been true for a very long time and will not switch anytime soon. It is safe to consider this “knowledge” that can be put online as an evergreen fact. It is a waste of everyone’s time to lecture about material in a roomful of students when they could learn that material outside the classroom. This is, in theory, the first step of the Socratic method – students should learn everything they can from the assigned material and then classroom time is spent testing, challenging, and confounding that “knowledge” by the Professor. Of course, that is not how it works, but how it should. And it doesn’t work that way because most teachers teach like they were taught which included a very heavy amount of knowledge transfer from teacher to student in the classroom, often in lecture format. So, first identify all the lecture material you generally deliver and put it online. Students do not need to look at your shayna punim while you deliver this information! In fact, it is probably better if you do NOT record yourself YouTube-style sitting in front of your computer lecturing.
My suggestion for the easiest rollout? – make a podcast of your lecture materials. These can be heard anywhere – train, gym, bathtub – without the need for anything more than a phone. Then, in your LMS, put up an outline or PowerPoint of that podcast lecture. Your students will learn more and thank you for doing it. But, as mentioned by other commenters on Thursday – do not make your evergreen podcasts or viddys last longer than 15 minutes or so! This is a very important learning reality. The research (by EdX) suggests that the most optimal timer period for a learning module is 10-12 minutes followed by an assessment. This creates the student learning that sticks in their brains. 15 minutes is a good target because there should be a quick preview and an overview bracketing the substance of your knowledge material. Most teachers do this instinctively in class, mixing up knowledge transfer with other materials, anecdotes to make the material stick, other student interactions, etc. Boredom and loss off interest is the mind killer….
Next up – we will post a more detailed something about the techniques of staying in touch (and being nice!) to your students (see the last link below).
A quick word on tech – What does your institution support? Which technologies is your LMS most compatible with? (For example, many of my colleagues use and love Panopto (but it is more compatible with Canvas than it is with Blackboard). So many people are discussing Zoom, but there are many other options for group meeting management. Even Google GotoMeeting is good. Skype also has such capacity for smaller groups. Please do not get involved in a new technology in the middle of the semester if you or your school cannot support it
Generally, here are some nice online class primers with Zoom focus:
St. Mary’s of CA: Humanizing Online Teaching
Immanentize
And for Zoomers, I learned that they are having daily web trainings for novices
ZOOM Webinars
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
My university has moved to extend the ban on face-to-face classes until the end of the semester based on the expected peak of COVID-19 in late April to mid-May. Clinical rotations have also been suspended until further notice
Brachiator
Have some idea of what hardware and Internet access your students have, and the hardware requirements of the resources you will use.
Students may not have Microsoft products (or the free Libre Office, I think it’s called) so instead of making PowerPoint slides available, it might be useful to create a PDF of the PowerPoint presentation.
Mary G
I took a couple of online community college classes via Blackboard when I had to quit my job, but still didn’t want to apply for disability. One was great and one was awful, mostly because one instructor was engaged and the other was not. Seeing the good teacher’s dog jump in front of the camera demanding attention and hearing his wife yelling at their kids in the background once or twice made it a more human relationship. The other was reading a mass of material all by myself and having a question answered by quoting the book back to me. I read it! I didn’t understand it, that’s why I asked!
Immanentize
@Brachiator: This is really important. Luckily, our University adopted a minimum tech requirement for students (although I am sure not all followed it). Also, we offer Microsoft 360 free to all students. It helped us be able to move swiftly.
Immanentize
@Mary G: This is a great point — online cannot be ONLY conveying info. Every LMS has tools for student engagement including forums, named or anonymous boards, chat options, etc. The key is getting the students into the LMS and then creating opportunities to engage. Frankly, if not with the teacher, at least (or especially) with each other IN the online classroom frame.
West of the Rockies
I taught online for about six years (using Blackboard, Angel, Moodle, and one other).
Keep in mind, typically you can be producing material on a weekly basis. For instance, put the finishing touches on your Week 6 course material on Saturday, open it on Sunday, and then while the students are working on that material, you’re constructing/compiling your Week 7 stuff, which you make available the following Sunday.
A word of caution… At some point, it felt like I was never, ever finished. No sooner have you responded to all student essays, assignments, emails, then five minutes later there are more emailed questions, etc. It is wearing. It can be done though.
Immanentize
@West of the Rockies: So true. That is why I really urge people to get their evergreen stuff — just the knowledge transfer things — into some form that can be web distributed, whether it is written, a podcast, viddy, whatever. So that next time those can be used to get you ahead of the curve you describe.
Also! You DO NOT HAVE TO DO IT ALL! There are great resources about the topic you teach that are open source and available everywhere. Khan Academy, Canvas MOOCs, specialty produced shows (think NOVA or European art shows like Sister Wendy (those are great!), or just plain old YouTube experts as long as you vet the material and discuss it online. Use their product, and link when possible, while you work toward meeting the immediate demand.
WaterGirl
This is great, Imm!
FYI, we’ll have another guest post on this topic on Saturday – this time from commenter Pika, who is writing about ways to address the emotional component for students who are feeling grief about being ripped out of their life, with little or no notice.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Immanentize:
Sort of OT, whatever happened with that trip you and Imp were going to go on?
JPL
I guess Pelosi and trump are close to an agreement and truthfully I will be disappointed if she gives in to his demands. At this point, I’d rather a you get nothing approach.
Immanentize
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Cancelled. In a complicated way? I kept asking the cruise line for itinerary updates, because it was clear Italy ports would be closed. Crickets. They required we cancel more than 24 hours before the cruise to receive a voucher (rather than rebate). With much hesitation, we cancelled. Then 12 hours before when the we were required to embark, they cancelled the cruise (after Trump’s Wednesday night “close Europe” speech. I am still salty, but I luckily know lawyers….
JPL
@Immanentize: Good go get em. Get them quickly before they can declare bankruptcy though.
Dennis
Another way of thinking about this problem from someone in the academic precariat. One of the best things I’ve read around the whole coronavirus pandemic:
https://anygoodthing.com/2020/03/12/please-do-a-bad-job-of-putting-your-courses-online/?fbclid=IwAR2BcQ6akEB3PyoFcDC1iUX_u9WVIaYhvcj5NJRZ8nMBYZLs9TgBVZJwO8A
Mary G
I know she’s a crazy Berner and all, but Nina Turner nails it:
ETA: Sorry, I meant to put this in the last thread.
Felanius Kootea
My school uses Blackboard and Blackboard Collaborate. I’ve used Blackboard in the past to assign and collect homework as well as term papers (there’s a great anti-plagiarism tool) but never for video. It’s always been face to face teaching for me. Luckily, I’m not teaching this semester – I’ll have a whole bunch of colleagues to learn from if I still need to by fall.
Blackboard put on a training session across the country Tuesday and my school is having a whole bunch of localized training sessions to get professors up to speed. We haven’t yet cancelled clinical rotations (because our accreditors haven’t changed clinical contact hour requirements for graduation) but that may change soon. We have had other universities cancel visiting clinical rotations for our students who were supposed to be out of state this semester. Our psychologist is going to have to figure out how to ramp up online counseling because many students are anxious about graduation.
Yutsano
I’ve instructed classes via Skype (which is every bit the Hades you can imagine) but the one piece of general advice I can give is don’t feel bound by the material. I also never follow my lesson plan or read the PowerPoint exactly. I find that boring when it happens with me and I know that other people feel the same way. So yeah, mostly just be how you are when you’re live with people. It’s nowhere near ideal, but bugs be bugs and we be stuck.
(Side note: English really needs to adopt the habitual be.)
West of the Rockies
Also, it may be obvious, but YouTube has tons of links for material. You’ll find Ted Talks and loads of lectures long and short. Need a 3-minute vid that explains semicolons? Lots available, including Grammar Girl.
Immanentize
I am going to send some more helpful (I hope) things (documents, PowerPoints, viddys) to the powers that be for filing in the new teaching area. I will be back later, but right now, I have to feed the Immp….
Thanks all!
trollhattan
The millipede keeps dropping shoes–our school district extended their planned closure from three days (announced yesterday) to two weeks (announced minutes ago). By Monday it’ll be “See you, in September.”
IDK how the teachers are supposed to plan anything for the break when it’s announced after Friday dismissal. “Bring this in when you’re back Thursday” does not equal two weeks of instruction.
Johns Hopkins rejected my kid’s app, her first no. Can’t win them all, but now she has time to dwell on it, so that’s good
OTOH she’s gonna rake in the tutoring bucks now! Parents will be scrambling to keep their kids busy.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Immanentize:
Probably for the best.
Because it was cancelled, are you supposed to receive a refund even though you cancelled? I’m confused
debbie
Badgetoon
Add photos of you and ask your students to post a selfie, cat photos and all the other stuff of their life. In a pure online class it really bumps up engagement. IN a LMS you can isolate it in a gossip discussion thread so it doesn’t interefere with actual subject matter.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Will this have any effect on your graduation?
FlyingToaster
@trollhattan: This will be ongoing mission creep.
Originally, our school wasn’t closed. Today was a professional development day for teachers.
Then, every local public school district, except for Boston Public, closed starting Monday (several were semi-open today to pick up materials).
This morning, our school’s CV advisory committee (which includes two Kendall Square biotech people) told them that a minimum 2-week closure is mandated; too many presumptive cases (in line to get tested when tests become available) mean too much community transfer. So at 9am the “nope, closed at least to March 30” e-mail came.
We’re waiting to see how much the Biogen mess, and the RSA attendees, and whatever other inputs have caused in community transfer. So far we’ve seen no symptoms either at WarriorGirl’s school or HerrDoktor’s work.
There is a non-trivial chance that if we see serious numbers of infection hereabouts (Watertown, MA and environs) that school will be closed until May. Hence jumping right on board with the distance learning, because in-person might be a while.
Similar situation for music school. And, alas, both the aikikai and my gym are closed for the duration.
RSA
@trollhattan:
If it’s useful, you can tell your kid that depending on her intended major there are a number of better places within an hour’s drive. :-) So says a Hopkins grad, at least.
Mandarama
@trollhattan: I’m sorry she had to get that no! I just went through this process with my oldest last year, and I was so traumatized by it that I am already nagging my 10th grader. It’s just a lot harder than it was for us! Sending her good thoughts.
Yutsano
@trollhattan: She’ll be good. I didn’t get into Syracuse but I got into Stanford. College admissions are…weird.
Off to do some leg wrestling with a Mormon. And no that’s not dirty. Unfortunately.
WaterGirl
@Yutsano:
Thanks for the laugh!
RSA
If you could give a citation, I’d be interested in seeing the work, partly because of interest in empirical research in the area, and partly because I don’t understand the double-blind aspect.
Barbecue Swinger
Thank you for posting this, Immanentize. I teach English to non-native speakers in an Intensive English Program at a small language school. We have a mix of business people and international students who want to go to U.S. universities, and we’re scrambling to figure out how we’re going to continue instruction online. I’ve learned quite a bit from your useful post and am going to share it with our director.