Reading16 Theme 7: Focus on the online teacher

Reading 16. Second reading on Theme 7: Focus on the Online teacher.

McNaught, C. (2003) Supporting the global e-teacher. International Journal of Training and Development 7:4

link: to source through Massey Library

Carmel McNaught is an Australian who at the time of writing worked in Hong Kong and taught online in a New Zealand University.

The paper addressed the role of academic staff development in preparing university teachers to work effectively within the changing boundaries of their institutions.

There is an expectation that both staff and students will operate comfortably within an electronic environment, but changing educational practices and styles can produce negative reactions and negativity needs to be acknowledged and managed effectively by a supportive environment. The institution must offer staff opportunities to manage their own level of comfort. There needs to be a congruence of policy, culture and support if e-learning is to be successful.

Globalisation means that the online instructor in higher education is confronted by various perspectives on knowledge that need to be negotiated together with the increasing student diversity and increasing range of tools and strategies for design

Innovation and change requires adequate support and time must be made available to build staff confidence and motivation. McNaught recommended 3 strategies to provide flexible, appropriate and adaptable support for e-teachers:

1. focus on supporting individual teachers in their own workplace setting

2. focus on supporting good curriculum and educational design

3. focus on policy

McNaught sums up with a list of 7 principles for staff development for the global e-teacher:

• Have meaningful, inclusive conversations about change
• Leaders must show commitment to academic principles
• Global university partnerships must be negotiated
• Departmental support projects rather than institution-wide should be established
• Realistic expectations of staff and workload
• Support needs to be on-going and multi-faceted
• Establish & maintain teachers’ motivation for e-teaching

DISCUSSION & QUESTIONS

In searching for an article on this theme I was interested to discover that there appeared to be so much about the learning process and the student and comparatively little specifically about the instructor. In face-to-face teaching, teachers are continuously communicating to each other about teaching methods, students and related issues. I would think that by contrast, the online teacher could easily become socially isolated. Do the many edublogs, discussion boards and wikis compensate the total online teacher? In a large institution like a university, should online instructors also be allocated face-to-face classes to provide a variety of experience - would that postpone or accelerate burnout?

reading 15 Theme 7:A Focus on the Teacher

Reading 15: First reading on Theme 7: A Focus on the teacher

Sheridan, R. (2006). Reducing the Online Instructor's Workload. Educause Quarterly. 29. (3). Downloaded on 29 August 2008 from http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/ReducingtheOnlineInstruct/39983

As a face-to-face teacher, I have found maintaining good online communication and "marking" essays online to be more time-consuming than the same activities in face-to-face situations, so the title of this particular article caught my eye.

Sheridan writes from practical experience, as he is experienced in both hybrid and full online courses. As introduction, he deals with the pros and cons of online teaching - the advantages of self-paced, flexible, preferences for written vs spoken communication and geographical freedom as opposed to the disadvantages for both student and teacher of mastering a technological learning curve, lack of direct contact or support personnel, difficulty of recognising and understanding drop-outs, internet connection issues and on-screen reading.

His advice for managing time includes several practical pointers:

• Automate parts of the course – use online development tools for frequently asked questions, self-correcting quizzes, etc
• Minimise e-mail questions by creating a “what’s new” section to get students to focus on new assignments or learning materials without reviewing the whole course
• Design courses in dreamweaver or another HTML program that allows updating of several pages with one correction
• Organise a support group (e.g. students) to help support when there are technical problems
• Design courses with an awareness of assessment workload. Avoid instructor burnout by reducing workload through peer, computer or self-assessment options or group assignments.
• Attempt to have administrative staff deal with certain aspects of the course and encourage experienced students to support others.
• Communicate early on how best to use the course; encourage continuous feedback to be responsive to needs.

He concludes with the reminder that the students’ satisfaction with the online experience and whether they learnt the required material determines the success.

Question and discussion:

This paper offers little new after my readings on design. However a problem was highlighted in a caption to an illustration in the PDF version of the article – “High-enrollment courses especially may need to use fewer personalized grading assignments or high-tech features”. Bearing in mind that personalised grading offers good feedback, does this not compromise the learning? Secondly, should the “high-tech features” not be included only for the purposes of enhancing learning or easing things for the instructor? If they do not serve at least one of these, they would be no loss…but if they serve the purpose, their absence could lower the quality of the course and damage the instructor’s sense of efficacy in teaching.

Reading 14 Theme 6

READING 14: THEME 6: ASSESSMENT ONLINE

Grayton, J.& McEwan, B. (2007) Effective Online Instructional and Assessment Strategies. American Journal of Distance Education, 21 (3) 117-132. Downloaded on 22 August 2008
by Swets

Assessment is not simply to answer accountability; the main purposes include monitoring of learning, improving academic programs and enhancing teaching and learning.

The purpose of this study was to better understand the instructional and assessment strategies that are most effective in online learning environments. The investigation involved an online questionnaire survey of all faculty teaching online and students enrolled in those courses at two southern state universities during the fall semester of 2004.

In terms of learning strategies, the findings suggested the need for open communication, accommodation of a variety of instructional methods and student-teacher and student-student interactions.

Effective online assessment include a wide variety of regular, clearly explained assignments. Feedback must be meaningful, timely and supported by well-designed rubric where possible. E-mail messages, chatroom conversations and discussion board postings also provide the instructor with feedback regarding the students’ interpretation of the assessments.

Effective assessment techniques should include variety, e.g. projects, portfolios, self-assessments, peer evaluations, weekly assignments with immediate feedback, rubrics, timed tests and quizzes and asynchronous discussions. The findings supported the importance of continuous assessment because it allows the instructors to become familiar with students’ work and to ensure student understanding. However Wilson (2004) cautioned that frequency does not automatically lead to effectiveness. Careful, systematic planning and meaningful feedback are crucial.

DISCUSSION
One reason I selected this article was for its recency of publication. This proved rather disappointing however because the investigation was in fact completed 4 years ago. Perhaps it is together with the fact that I am in the latter stages of this paper that I feel that this paper offers nothing new.

The article confirmed the need for effective interpersonal interactions in both learning and assessment activities.
What is again emphasised in this paper is the need for clarity and planning in the design of assessments, coupled with the short turn-around of feedback.

Reading 13 Theme Six Assessment Online

Reading 13 Theme Six Assessment Online

Mason, R., Pegler, C.& Weller, M. E-portfolios: an assessment tool for online courses. British Journal of Educational Technology. 35 (6) 717-727. Downloaded on 1 August 2008 from http://www3.interscience.wiley.com.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/cgi-bin/fulltext/118747751/HTMLSTART

The article refers to the different uses of e-portfolios in an educational context depending on purpose – developmental, presentation or assessment – and the characteristics of collection, selection, reflection, projection and presentation but its relevance to this theme lies in its discussion of the e-portfolio used with learning objects for end-of-course assessments (ECA). This paper presents data`and results of an application of e-potfolios as the final assessment of a course (LCE or Learning in the Connected Economy) designed in learning objects. The authors demonstrate the similarity of e-portfolios and a collection of learning objects – both assemble discrete pieces of electronically available material that can be manipulated, stored and re-versioned to suit different audiences. Both involve the same technology and components of re-use and selectivity. The LCE course is written entirely in learning objects. Each learning object was designed as a holistic learning experience with internal integrity as a unit of study.

The authors exploit e-portfolios for their potential use as an authentic student outcomes assessment for distance learning courses - students are able to share their ideas and feedback. In this case, the work-in-progress webfolios were accessible to each other through the Web during the course. They thus provided a new perspective on student evaluation where students learned to experience the “synergy of collaborative learning rather than the competitiveness experienced during testing or examinations” (p.718). The e-portfolio substituted the traditional essay and counted for 50% of the total mark. This course design offered an integrated learning experience and enabled students to work through a range of activities.

The learning objects consisted of three elements:
• Topic overview highlighting problems, ideas, issues
• Links to further resources, websites or journal activities for further reading
• One or two activities, some individual others collaborative

Students were offered a choice from 55 learning objects. This amount of choice demanded required a relatively sophisticated, self-directed and confident learner to really benefit from the strategy.

Evidence showed that this was a demanding form of assessment but that the e-portfolio was a fitting assessment model as it allowed for discrete pieces of work to be brought together meaningfully. It was also an independence-building tool that developed learning-to-learn skills. One student observed that the e-portfolio was “a big step to affirming what we had learned”. It brought together work that had been learned during the course and forced reflection on the learning objectives.

QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSIONS
1. According to the article, all participants achieved "at least a pass" which implies that there were various levels of passing. How does one fairly grade student efforts when there is a heavy emphasis on student choice as a starting point?
2. The great advantage of the e-portfolio is that it offers the ability the serve not only as showcase for assessment but as a source of reflection. With traditional paper essays, they become almost "dead" after submission. The e-portfolio however, remains a dynamic facility, thuis giving it on-going relevance.

Reading 12 Theme 5

Reading 12
Second reading on Theme 5 : Online Communication

Mazzolini, M & Maddison, S. (2004).When to jump in: The role of the instructor in online discussion forums. Computers & Education 49 (2007) 193-213. Downloaded on 1 August 2008 from Science Direct

Background: This article is a report on research on 40,000 postings to nearly 400 discussion forums. It was a follow-up to earlier (and smaller) research as published: Mazzolini, M & Maddison, S. (2002) Sage, guide or ghost? The effect of instructor intervention on student participation in online discussion forums. Computers & Education 40 (2003) 237-253.

Context: asynchronous forums used for tutorial-type teaching purposes and form part of the assessment mix in Swinburne Astronomy Online (fully online postgraduate courses at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia.)

The authors investigated how instructor participation rates, the timing of instructor postings and the nature of their postings relate to student participation and perception.

The central issues are highlighted by citing Paloff & Pratt (2001) that “the instructor needs to maintain a balance between too little and too much participation”. The instructor should determine the appropriate time to jump in, make a comment, ask another question, or redirect the discussion. Too much participation by the instructor can reduce the amount of interaction among the students and create an unnecessary degree of reliance on the teacher.

It was found that the volume of student and instructor postings in forums did not necessarily indicate how well the forums were going.

• on average, instructors who played a prominent part in forum discussions or who were active in making significant numbers of initial postings did not appear to stimulate more discussion, and may possibly have even limited the amount of discussion (with the more advanced students) and the lengths of discussion threads (with all students). The more instructors posted, the less frequently students posted and the shorter were the discussion threads. Instructors who attempted to increase the amount of discussion in forums by initiating new postings did not succeed. This differed from instructors’ perceptions - most felt that higher frequency of instructor postings either did not affect or increased the \level of student discussion.
• Even if, in the process, their own contributions to the discussions tend to decrease, students perceived instructors who posted often as enthusiastic and displaying greater expertise
• No correlation with whether the bulk of instructors’ postings are made during or at the end of the discussion period. The rearchers speculate that students will still wait to hear what an instructor has to say at the end rather than continuing to debate an issue at length, once they have determined an instructor’s practice of “wrapping up” at the end of a forum.
• Student responses suggest a preference for discussions with initial and follow-up questions, no unanswered questions at the end and a statement of the instructor’s own opinion.

QUESTIONS, DISCUSSION & REFLECTION

This research suggested a reliance on the instructor’s final words in a discussion. I would suggest that two other factors could influence this – the nature of the subject material (this issue is also raised by Wallace (2003) and the age or level of expertise of the student. Perhaps even a gender variance could be considered. Further to this - would it be preferable to resolve an issue entirely or to leave a few threads hanging for students own reflection and resolution?
This research did not investigate the impact of student-student dialogue as opposed to student-instructor dialogue in the active learning process. While the research seems to confirm Moore’s theory of transactional distance (Wallace, 2003, p. 244), Jon Dron’s theory of transactional control (Dron 2006, 2007) possibly explains the tendency for students to rely on the ‘wrapping-up” process by the instructor – whereby the less knowledgeable learner chooses to delegate control to the knowledgeable instructor. It seems to me that the theories of transactional distance and transactional control working together together could account for the findings in this research.

References:
Thanks to Leah Dewijze for the class discussion reference to idolresources.com which led me to the following articles.

Dron, J. (2006). Social software and the emergence of Control. downloaded on 2 August 2008 from http://www.cmis.brighton.ac.uk/staff/jd 29/papers/icalt 2006.doc

Moore, M. Theory of transactional distance. Keegan, D, ed. Theoretical Principles of Distance education (1997), Routledge, pp.22-38. downloaded on 2 August 2008 from http://www.tamu.edu

And from the E-learning course booklet:
Dron, J. (2007). From transactional distance to transactional control. In Control and constraint in e-learning. Choosing when to choose. pp. 18 - 39. Hershey, PA: Idea group.

Wallace, R.M. (2003). Online learning in higher education: a review of research on interactions among teachers and students (Online version). Education, Communication & Information, 3(2), 241-280.