Are you interested in teaching a condensed five-week course during the upcoming winter intersession? Since the winter intersession is more condensed than the standard semester, there are additional considerations to be made when preparing your courses for this shorter session:
If you use weekly modules, consider that 3-4 weeks of content during a normal semester must be taught in a single week during winter intersession.
Determine which assignments meet essential course objectives and outcomes, and consider revising or eliminating other assignments that could be difficult for students to complete in a condensed timeframe.
Time management and clear deadlines are crucial for both you and your students!
Group work may be more difficult to manage in a condensed timeframe, as students may not have enough time to build rapport and create quality collaborative work.
As the winter intersession spans many holidays, and students will likely travel during this time, consider an exclusively asynchronous format to promote student participation. Additionally, provide enough time for students to submit exams and projects.
Consider that various student and faculty support services may be more limited during this time, particularly around December 25 and January 1.
The HyFlex (hybrid flexible) learning model is both a teaching format that bridges and blends the physical and digital classrooms and the pedagogy that informs the design of HyFlex learning. Originally conceived by Brian Beatty and his colleagues at San Francisco State University, the HyFlex model provide students more flexibility while maintaining high quality instruction for all students, whether they are joining the course face-to-face, online synchronous (Zoom), or asynchronously online. A short overview of HyFlex is below. View instructional strategies and additional resources on the HyFlex Pedagogy page on the COLRS website.
HyFlex Pedagogy
Overview of HyFlex Pedagogy from Harvard Extension
Learner Choice: Provide meaningful alternative participation modes and enable students to choose between participation modes daily, weekly, or topically.
Equivalency: Provide learning activities in all participation modes which lead to equivalent learning outcomes.
Reusability: Utilize artifacts from learning activities in each participation mode as “learning objects” for all students.
Accessibility: Equip students with technology skills and equitable access to all participation modes.
Sample HyFlex Lesson Plan
Excerpt of a sample HyFlex lesson plan. The plan contains the activity, time allotted, and what in-person, synchronous remote, and asynchronous online student activities will be. View the full HyFlex lesson plan on the COLRS website.
June 28, 2021 / John Freml / Comments Off on Using “Thinking Aloud” Strategies to Create Equity in Distance Learning
The increase in online, hybrid, and remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic has, in many ways, required all of us at UIS to think more about new tools and teaching strategies to reduce barriers and increase access for all our students, especially those who come from underrepresented or disadvantaged backgrounds. In our continual efforts to bring equity and justice to our students, and to help in their academic success, one potentially useful pedagogical strategy is called think aloud.
“Think aloud is a strategy that enhances student’s comprehension and intellectual growth by removing … barriers. By expressing one’s thoughts while reading, students develop their reading skills because they can acquire information from what they read, add to their knowledge, enlarge their way of thinking and reasoning to advance toward academic excellence. In addition, this strategy provides a better way to assess students’ learning.” Read more at Academic Impressions.
Through UIS’s institutional membership with Academic Impressions, UIS faculty can access this article and more simply by logging in or creating a new Academic Impressions account with a UIS email address.
April 23, 2021 / John Freml / Comments Off on Incorporating Anti-Racism and Anti-Bias in Your Teaching
As increasing emphasis in higher ed is placed on learning
outcomes, assessment, accreditation, and accessibility, it might feel
burdensome or overwhelming for some instructors to be asked to incorporate
anything else into their teaching practices. However, this doesn’t have to be
the case! In our student-centered approach to education, we must take into
account how our existing practices and teaching tools may incorporate
unconscious bias that could disadvantage certain students.
Here are some places to begin thinking about how you might
want to incorporate anti-racism and anti-bias in your courses:
Incorporate diverse
voices. Do the authors and creators of your primary texts and other
learning materials reflect the diversity that exists in our student
population and in our world? There are subject matter experts of color in
practically every academic field. How do you use their voices in your
courses? One way to ensure a greater diversity of voices and a reduction
in barriers to access is to use open educational resources.
Recognize your own implicit biases and racial
illiteracy.
Do your subjective evaluations allow for unconscious bias against students
of color or other marginalized students? Do you sometimes expect students
of color to speak for entire racial or ethnic groups in class? Do policies
related to testing, late work, and grading potentially disadvantage
certain students who have varying personal struggles and life situations?
Anti-racism and anti-bias work cannot begin and end in the
classroom. Recognizing that each of us work within a larger organization, ask
yourself: How are you working towards and advocating for institutional change?
COLRS invites you to review these additional resources from the Center for
Faculty Excellence for further ideas:
UPCEA is the leading association for professional, continuing, and online education. With our institutional membership to UPCEA, you have access to several resources that may be of interest to you including:
May 24, 2020 / mgribbin / Comments Off on Development Opportunities for Online, Blended & Remote Teaching
As you take a moment to reflect on your experiences teaching during the Spring 2020 semester, COLRS encourages faculty to discuss your teaching experiences and further develop your skills in teaching in an online or blended environment. Upcoming opportunities include:
COLRS Workshops
Throughout the summer, COLRS will be offering workshops on Technology Tools for Remote Delivery, Blended Learning Best Practices, and HyFlex Teaching. Check the COLRS Workshop calendar for dates and Zoom connection links. These workshops are free and available to all UIS faculty and staff (full or part-time).
Self-Paced Options
COLRS Building Digital Community Course on CanvasThis self-paced faculty development course meets the requirements of the Higher Learning Commission for required faculty training in online instruction. It consists of six modules: Foundations of Online Learning, Accessibility, Instructional Design, Learning Theories, Facilitating Online Learning, Putting it Together. This course is free and available to all UIS faculty and staff (full or part-time). COLRS Canvas Migration Resources on CanvasThis Canvas site is a central location for support, materials, and resources to help you migrate your course to Canvas. These resources are publicly available.
Illinois Online Network (ION) Course Options
ION offers several non-credit courses including Overview of Online Courses, Blended Learning Design & Instruction, Instructional Design, Student Assessment, and many more. See the ION schedule for all upcoming course offerings. These courses are free for UIS faculty and staff (use code DV412 during registration).
For-Credit Course Offerings
UIS offers relevant for-credit courses. Please contact Human Resources for tuition reimbursement possibilities.
EDL 515 – Online Teaching and Learning. This course will introduce students to online and blended teaching and learning. Major concepts and issues, research in the field, and emerging technologies are covered, as well as practical strategies for designing and teaching online, which students actually get to practice in the course.
EDL 555 – Foundation for Technology in the CurriculumBasic technology skills and knowledge necessary for today’s education professionals. Computer operation, electronic communication, and computer applications with emphasis on the tools most applicable to the classroom setting.
Time is the commodity, which none of us seems to have enough of. For those who make their own class videos, I’d like to save you some time. Based on most cloud based video services, the average watch time of a video is 2:03. When we’re thinking about educational videos I like to think of this as the maximum per video in an introductory or 100 level course, perhaps adding about 2 minutes per course level maxing out at around 10 minutes. However, different disciplines may have different student demographics, and for those faculty I’d like to show you a way to check out how much your students are watching.
When you first login to BlackBoard, on the left, usually at the top is the My Media option, click on it.
You will then see a list of your media you use in your class, select one of the videos to click on. Either click on the video or the video title.
Below the video on the right is a back button and an actions drop down menu, select the actions drop down menu and select analytics.
You will then see the analytics for the video.
There is some interesting data about the video, which is about 27 minutes. It has been visited 29 times, and played 24 times. To protect student information I am not showing that on the right of the analytics screen you can see which students played the video, and the number of times they did so. Several students played the video a few times.
I think the most useful piece of information here is that the students stop watching about 38% of the way through the video, at 10:43. About 16 minutes of the video is unviewed. So how can I use this data to improve my videos, and help my students learn more? I can do one of two things:
I can edit and split this video into three smaller videos of about nine minutes each which should be lower than the 10:43 overall. Then next semester see if the average view time overall for the three videos has increased.
I can see what I am covering in the video, and rerecord it in one smaller segment or several smaller segments aiming for each to be under 10:43. Then next semester see if the average view time overall for those videos has increased.
So where does the time savings come in? If we know the average overall time our students are watching our videos and we make them within that range, then can save that time to create a shorter, better video they will be more likely to watch entirely.
And to bring this back to accessibility I’d like to point out two things:
If you’re reshooting your videos, please think about adding audio descriptions to the video. In practice this means if you’re using images, , talking through a PowerPoint, or walking through something on your computer in the video describe what you are doing.
It usually takes around three times the runtime of a video to accurately caption it. So a ten minute video takes about thirty minutes to caption, an hour video, three hours. If we make more succinct videos the captioning time overall is decreased.
A final note. On the analytics screen in the upper right there is a dropdown menu which should default to 30 days. You can choose the amount of time the analytics cover. So if you are looking back on a Fall video, select Last 365 days, if you’ve used it for several years use the custom setting and go back as far as you want.
September 26, 2019 / nle27 / Comments Off on Assess and Tweak at the Midpoint: Tips for Teaching Online
In this workshop, learn our top tips for assessing and tweaking your online course at the midpoint of the semester, as well as the process for online proctored exams and more.
Various scholars and researchers have summarized how to use Bloom’s Taxonomy as a guide to writing measurable and effective learning outcomes. This is important when designing an online class, because without a clear idea of what you want your students to have mastered at the end of the class, it is difficult to design assessments and activities that will help your students achieve the intended outcome.
Identify the noun, or thing you want students to learn.
Example: seven steps of the research process
Identify the level of knowledge you want. In Bloom’s Taxonomy, there are six levels of learning. It’s important to choose the appropriate level of learning, because this directly influences the type of assessment you choose to measure your students’ learning.
Example: to know the seven steps of the research process (comprehension level)
Select a verb that is observable to describe the behavior at the appropriate level of learning. A tool we use for choosing appropriate verbs corresponding to selected levels is the RadioJames Objectives Builder.
Example: Describe these steps
Add additional criteria to indicate how or when the outcome will be observable to add context for the student.
Describe the seven steps of the research process when writing a paper.
There are some verbs to avoid when writing learning outcomes. These verbs are vague and often not observable or measurable. For example, how would you measure whether someone has “become familiar with” a particular tool? Use a more specific verb. If you want students to “understand” something, think more closely about what you want them to be able to do or produce as a result of their “understanding.”
How Bloom’s works with course level and lesson level objectives:
Course level objectives are broad. You may only have 3-5 course level objectives. They would be difficult to measure directly because they overarch the topics of your entire course.
Lesson level objectives are what we use to demonstrate that a student has mastery of the course level objectives. We do this by building lesson level objectives that build toward the course level objective. For example, a student might need to demonstrate mastery of 8 lesson level objectives in order to demonstrate mastery of one course level objective.
Because the lesson level objectives directly support the course level objectives, they need to build up the Bloom’s taxonomy to help your students reach mastery of the course level objectives. Use Bloom’s Taxonomy to to make sure that the verbs you choose for your lesson level objectives build up to the level of the verb that is in the course level objective. The lesson level verbs can be below or equal to the course level verb, but they CANNOT be higher in level. For example, your course level verb might be an Applying level verb, “illustrate.” Your lesson level verbs can be from any Bloom’s level that is equal or below this level (applying, understanding, or remembering).
Steps towards writing effective learning objectives:
Make sure there is one measurable verb in each objective.
Each objective needs one verb. Either a student can master the objective, or they fail to master it. If an objective has two verbs (say, define and apply), what happens if a student can define, but not apply? Are they demonstrating mastery?
Ensure that the verbs in the course level objective are at least at the highest Bloom’s Taxonomy as the highest lesson level objectives that support it. (Because we can’t verify they can evaluate, if our lessons only taught them (and assessed) to define.)
Strive to keep all your learning objectives measurable, clear and concise.
If you are getting ready to teach online for the first time, there are several critical items to consider:
What are my learning outcomes or intended course objectives?
While there are several theories or models of online instruction that may be helpful as you begin to conceptualize and design your online course, many instructors find it helpful to begin with backward design, in which you first consider the learning goals of your course (i.e. what you want your students to have learned when they finish your course). Only after you have determined what your goals are, should you begin to think about assignments and activities that help students achieve those goals. Objectives and outcomes should be measurable and aligned to professional standards in your field.
Who are my students?
Universities serve an increasingly diverse array of students from the traditional college aged, to adult learners who come back to school to advance in their professions by acquiring new skills and knowledge. As you consider your audience, think about how you might develop assignments and activities that encourage self-determined learning (i.e. a heutagogical approach).
How can I make sure my course materials are accessible to all students?
Employing principles of universal accessibility and design means that your course content will be accessible to all student who might enroll in your course, including students with visual, auditory, or other impairments. Additionally, it means that you have taken the extra step to ensure that your content reaches students with a variety of different learning styles; this means using varying formats and methods to impart knowledge.
While this may seem like a challenge, COLRS staff is ready to assist. Please contact your individual liaison for individual consultation, or contact our main office for any further assistance you may need:
Liaison to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences: Carrie Levin, 217-206-8499, levin.carrie@uis.edu
Liaison to the College of Education and Human Services and the College of Public Affairs and Administration: Emily Boles, 217-206-8311, boles.emily@uis.edu
Liaison to the College of Business and Management: Michele Gribbins, 217-206-8251, mgribbin@uis.edu
August 10, 2019 / nle27 / Comments Off on Starting the Semester: Tips for Teaching Online
In this workshop, learn our top tips for starting the semester in an online course. Later this term, we’ll offer tips on the midpoint and concluding your online courses.
The following is from Constructivism and Online Education by Doolittle:
Constructivism is a theory of knowledge acquisition, not a theory of pedagogy; thus, the nexus of constructivism and online education is tentative, at best. Constructivism posits that knowledge acquisition occurs amid four assumptions:
Knowledge involves active cognizing by the individual.
Knowledge is adaptive, facilitating individual and social efficacy.
Knowledge is subjective and self-organized, not objective.
Knowledge acquisition involves both sociocultural and individual processes.
These four assumptions have led, indirectly, to eight primary pedagogical recommendations:
Learning should take place in authentic and real-world environments.
Learning should involve social negotiation and mediation.
Content and skills should be made relevant to the learner.
Content and skills should be understood within the framework of the learner’s prior knowledge.
Students should be assessed formatively, serving to inform future learning experiences.
Students should be encouraged to become self-regulatory, self-mediated, and self-aware.
Teachers serve primarily as guides and facilitators of learning, not instructors.
Teachers should provide for and encourage multiple perspectives and representations of content.
The question then arises, can an online medium support this pedagogy that is based on the constructivist assumptions?
November 3, 2015 / nle27 / Comments Off on Maximizing Learning, Creativity & Innovation for All: Teaching and Technology Day 2015
Jessica Phillips, MAEd, MAPsy, Instructional Designer &Universal Design and Accessibility Coordinator, Ohio State University
In “Maximizing Learning, Creativity and Innovation for All”, Jessica presents tips for providing learning experiences that will be meaningful to students of a wide variety of abilities,disabilities, experiences, learning preferences, and motivation through principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL).
October 12, 2015 / nle27 / Comments Off on 10 Tips for Creating Accessible Online Course Content
In our media-centric society, the desire and need for online learning is at an all-time high. However, as more academic content goes online, the industry is running into a stumbling block as they struggle to make their online courses accessible. With recent lawsuits in higher education and updates to Section 508 on the horizon, it is more important than ever that online learning content be made accessible to students with disabilities.
In this webinar, Janet Sylvia, Web Accessibility Group Leader and Web Accessibility Trainer, will provide you with 10 tips for making your online course material accessible.
Janet will cover:
The challenges of making online course content accessible
The legal landscape for online learning and accessibility
Challenges and solutions for instructors and administrators
Developing an accessibility statement and accessibility policies
The annual Innovating Pedagogy report explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation.
Produced by the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University, the report identifies ten educational terms, theories and practices that have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice in the near future.
The Institute for Women’s Policy Research completes research “conducts rigorous research and disseminates its findings to address the needs of women, promote public dialog, and strengthen families, communities, and societies” (source).
Cable Green, Director of Global Learning at Creative Commons, led a discussion of “eTextbooks and Open Educational Resources” to help University of Illinois Springfield (UIS) student leaders understand the local and global education opportunities when digital content, the internet and open licensing are combined. View the recording of Cable Green’s lecture.Movie Fifty Shades Darker (2017)
March 10, 2014 / Emily Boles / Comments Off on Educause Quarterly issue on Online Student Retention includes UIS strategies
Sustaining Students: Retention Strategies in an Online Program
by Emily Boles, Barbara Cass, Carrie Levin, Raymond E. Schroeder, and Sharon McCurdy Smith
Published on Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Key Takeaways
With students spread across 47 states and a dozen countries, the University of Illinois at Springfield faces a significant challenge in promoting student persistence.
Program coordinators who know each student majoring in their online degree program keep in close touch with those students to assure that their learning and academic planning needs are met.
Online student peer mentors who model best student practices and serve as a liaison between students and faculty members provide effective support in selected classes.
These and other approaches have resulted in an online course completion rate that hovers just two to three percent below the on-campus completion rate, and the degree-completion rate among online students is equally strong.
Adding TEC-VARIETY is the latest book by Curt Bonk of Indiana University, written in collaboration with Elaine Khoo, from the University of Waikato in New Zealand.
It is an OPEN book, which means it is freely available online. Download your copy at http://tec-variety.com/
Endorsement:
“What a grand book! This is going to be a highly valuable resource for countless instructors and designers in online learning. “Adding TEC-VARIETY” is unique in that it combines the theoretical and pedagogical foundations of effective learning with 100 easy-to-implement activities that promote the engagement of online students in deep learning. These strategies can instantly breathe life into courses that fail to tap the enthusiasm and imagination of students. TEC-VARIETY has become a handbook for my design of engagement in online classes.”
Ray Schroeder, Associate Vice Chancellor for Online Learning and Founding Director of the Center for Online Learning, Research and Service (COLRS), University of Illinois Springfield
April 15, 2013 / mgribbin / Comments Off on Strategies for Increasing Course Evaluation Response Rates
The Timing – A barrier for course evaluation completion is timing the evaluation close to finals (Cottreau & Hatfield 2001). At UIS, course evaluations become available three weeks prior to the end of the semester. Thus, begin asking for feedback earlier in the semester!
You might be concerned that that timing may be too early to get accurate feedback from students, as not all activities and assignments have yet been completed. Research has shown, however, that the results of course evaluations completed earlier in a course are highly correlated with results of course evaluations completed finals week or after (McNulty et al. 2010). Not only do you increase the likelihood of having a higher response rate, students completing evaluations earlier provided more qualitative feedback than students completing evaluations later (McNulty et al. 2010). At UIS, these additional (write-in) comments are provided only to the instructor and are not added to the instructor’s faculty file.
The Frequency – For online course evaluations, post announcements as many times and in as many places as you can:
Post the link in your syllabus.
Create a specific announcement about the evaluation.
Sample Announcement – Course evaluations are open online. These are very important in improving the quality of classes at UIS. They also are an important instrument used in the promotion and tenure process for faculty members. Please take a few moments to fill out the evaluations for this class and any others you may be taking that have online evaluations: https://uisapp-s.uis.edu/courseevals/login.aspx. These evaluations are available only through Saturday, May 4.Faculty members do not see the results of course evaluations until after final grades are submitted for the term. Thanks for taking the time to fill them out!
Include the link to the evaluation in emails and announcements until the end date (And remember the course evaluation is available at x until x date).
Add as an item to the course calendar
Tell Students Why It’s Important – Remind students why course evalutions are important at UIS and remind them that you cannot see the feedback until after final grades are due and that it will not impact their grade in any way. Students are more likely to respond if they knew how their evaluations will be used and what decisions their responses will influence (Kidd & Latif 2003, Anderson et al. 2005; Cottreau & Hatfield 2001; Hatfield & Coyle 2013). The largest factor for not completing evaluations is that students believe the evaluations will not result in change or would not benefit them (Hatfield & Coyle 2013).
The Method – For on-campus classes at UIS, faculty have the choice of having online or in-class evaluations. Research is mixed on whether online or paper evaluations result in higher response rate, as shown below:
Compared with paper surveys, online evaluations have been associated with increased response rates (Barnett & Matthews 2009; Anderson et al. 2005; Thorpe 2002; Hatfield & Coyle 2013).
Online ratings produce a lower response rate than in-class ratings (Avery, Bryant, Mathios, Kang, & Bell, 2006; Benton, Webster, Gross, & Pallett, 2010 ; IDEA, 2011; Nulti, 2008).
Your class’s typical attendance rate should be considered when deciding whether the in-class or online evaluation will be more effective.
Each year the New Media Consortium (NMC) and Educause Learning Initiative (ELI) publish the Horizon Report, a look ahead at technologies that will impact education in the next one, three, and five years.
The report “charts the landscape of emerging technologies for teaching, learning and creative expression” based on interactions with “technology professionals, campus technologists, faculty leaders from colleges and universities, and representatives of leading corporations” (from Horizon Project).
A publication by Virginia Commonwealth University provides 7 Steps for Providing Constructive Online Discussion Feedback Successfully. Their suggested template for feedback includes:
Start with something positive – “You did very well in this week’s discussion.”
State the grade and reason right away – “This week you earned 20/25 points.”
State the correction as a reminder or recommendation – “Remember, five postings are needed for full participation points.”
Provide an example or tip to reach the goal – “Here’s an example of a solution that earned full points.”
State your expectation – “In the upcoming weeks, I will be looking for….”
Remind them of available help – “Your success is important to me, so please email me when you have questions.”
End with something motivational – “This was a tough assignment, but you did well overall.”
“Based upon proven research and informed by practical experience, this Blended Learning Toolkit will offer guidance, examples, professional development, and other resources to help you prepare your own blended learning courses and programs.”
