Although this was a rather hectic semester, I did have a chance to try out some new ideas. Some of them worked and some did not. Here is a brief summary.
Weekly assignments did provide some interchange and feedback, but it was still not responsive enough for certain key topics. Sometimes, students got on the wrong track, did a lot of work, but got the wrong answer. I feel I need something more immediate and interactive.
Centra review sessions were quite successful. This semester, I use them for orientation and unit reviews. I budgeted 90 minutes per session, but the students held on for two hours or more. What I discovered was that students were asking fundamental questions that they should've asked and had answers to weeks earlier. In most cases, the misunderstanding was so fundamental that either students were not aware that there was a concern or could not verbalize their concern. Therefore, for the next course, I plan to have weekly Centra sessions, during which I can quickly check fundamental assumptions and clear up misconceptions before students end up doing a lot of useless work. I feel weekly sessions will probably be shorter. I collect schedule information from my students at the start of the semester. If I am lucky, there will be a common time block for everyone. If not, I could alternate between two time blocks and see what students prefer. While some students may not be able to participate, because the sessions are recorded they still have access to the review.
There are two related changes. For one, if I'm getting weekly feedback through the Centra sessions, I can reduce the number of assignments. I would want to time them so that students have an opportunity to participate in or playback the relevant Centra session. I feel that if students correctly understand the basic principles, they will tend to be more successful and the time lag will not be so detrimental.
The other change will be to the lectures. My plan is to have one f2f videotaped lecture and one Centra session per week. Essentially, I'm still having two lectures, except that one would be videotaped before a live class and the other conducted through Centra. Both are recorded. The videotaped lecture will be a presentation of ideas in a more or less traditional format. The Centra session on the other hand, will be dealing with specific techniques and operations. Also, through the use of surveys and spot quizzes (one question), I can check to see if the students are on track and, if not, make incremental corrections.
Of course, I will continue to use the self checked exercises. One thing I can do during the Centra session is refer to those exercises that were assigned. This may give me a better read on how well these work and inspire the students to actually do them.
The modeling exercises worked fairly well, but in teaching a small class I discovered something interesting. While industrial engineers spend about 25% of their undergraduate program modeling existing systems, mechanical and electrical engineers focus mainly on designing new ones. Thus, many MEs and EEs have very little experience modeling systems. I had not realized this earlier because there were enough students in the class that I could put an industrial engineer on every team. I am considering a long-term solution to this problem, but in the short run my plan is to introduce modeling concepts from the very start, rather than waiting until halfway through the course. I feel if I introduce these early, check in the Centra sessions, and have early modeling assignments, all students will have some understanding of the problem by the time I give them the first group modeling exercise.
Adobe Acrobat forms work very well for collecting information at the start of the course. They work even better, in version 8 of Acrobat. In that version, students can save a partially filled out form and complete it later. This worked well to check what kind of computers and software students had, individual's relevant experience, and those time blocks in which they were able to attend a synchronous session, as well as their preferred time block for group interactions. In all, the students entered about a hundred separate pieces of data, usually in less than five minutes. Assembling the data and analyzing it is quite simple, so I had useful information I could use for planning groups and Centra sessions. However, students indicated they did not think it's appropriate to use these forms for assignments, because many times they have to enter graphical or computational information.
Almost all students have Microsoft Word, so I plan to continue to use MS Word doc format for assignments. If needed, I can also use the rtf formats. Even though some students have MS Word 2007, I'm sticking with the doc, rather than docx, format, because most of my students are still using earlier versions of Microsoft Word.
HTML files have their uses, but I think in most cases other formats are better. HTML is good for making documents that will have links in them, such is in the self checked exercises. However, it is more difficult to control formatting. In other formats, I can make sure that a figure appears on the same page as the associated text. Also, other formats are easier to work with and are self-contained. Because some available browsers do not implement the full HTML character set, I cannot be sure that all characters will display properly. Finally, I have found that sometimes when an HTML page is printed, the top part of a line of text can be printed on one page and the bottom part on another.
For the most part, I plan to use Adobe Acrobat. Documents produced by this software are highly compatible with screen readers. Also, if you put a set of PDF files in the same directory, you can conduct a search of all those files from any file. Finally, it's relatively easy to convert almost any type of file into a PDF file, or append PDF pages to a document. This gives me a good mix of accessibility and ease of use.
On my webpages, I've adopted a multiple access scheme. On the home page, I have five organizer pages: "Key IExxx Info", "Communications", "IExxx Course Work", "References", adn "How can I ...". Each of these pages opens into another organizer page containing all the information, links, etc. relevant to the topic. These main topic pages are also major headings in the course menu. In addition, links to the items on those pages are shown as subtopics in the course menu. This dual arrangement means that students can access items directly through the course menu, or by clicking on the icons. Because each organizer page represents a collection of related subfunctions, entering into the page puts a student into a focused work environment. This can save time and effort. For example, if a student wants to check if there has been any e-mail or discussion posts before leaving the course WebCT site, he need only click on the communications icon or heading and see a glance if there is anything new.
The How can I ... resource is working very well. If a student has a question that can be answered in a How can I ... document, I give a brief answer and a link to the resource. Students catch on pretty quickly. They may have to wait hours for a reply to an email, but can often find an answer very quickly by going to the How can I page.
Well, those are the main things and I do have to get back to grading. Bye for now,
John Mullen
Friday, May 9, 2008
Thursday, December 13, 2007
To be Online or Not to be Oline
When using computers, there is a temptation to try to do everything on the computer. I am as susceptible to this as anyone. Computer programmers call this PAT (programming at the terminal). It has an insidious effect on effectiveness, productivity, and quality.
Computers are wondrous devices. I can find a paper on a hard drive in a blink, but it may take days to find on in my office. Keeping material on line can make it easier to find and accessible when you are away from your office. However, using material that is on line is another matter.
In one of my courses, I have a 200-page student guide. For many years, I had made this guide available to students in paper form. Last spring, however, I made it available online. The results were not so good. By tracking student accesses, I determined that many students were not downloading the reference. Instead, they accessed it every time they needed it, which was often. This introduced a time delay that certainly slowed their process and probably tended to break their concentration.
I suspect others downloaded the guide, but did not print it out. This leads to what I call the knothole effect. Imagine watching a baseball game through a knothole in a fence. You can see parts of what is going on, but can't see the whole picture. When accessing a 200-page PDF file on a computer, it is difficult to move from section to section. In paper form, it is flip-flip. At any rate, I've decided to go back to paper.
I've discovered a similar thing when managing an online course. All the pieces are there, but they may be slow to access and it is difficult to keep all the parts in sight. I just finished grading an exercise which requires me to keep six different files in view. I have dual monitors, but six files at once is just too much. I finally decided to have print copies of some of the files.
For example, I have a two-page grading sheet. The first part is a narrative. The second part is a grading rubric. For this, I had printed copies of the assignment and the problem. On my computer, I had LINGO (a mathematical programming application) to check each team's program file, a copy of the grading sheet from the previous phase, renamed as the new sheet, and the document I was grading. On line, I had the student team's presentation site, in case I needed to check supporting files.
After I did the narrative for a student report, copying phrases from the report as needed, I then looked at the previous narrative and commented on signs of progress. I did the same thing with the Rubric. After evaluating the report and determining the grade, I looked for and commented on signs of progress. Editing a copy of the previous grading document saved me a window and quite a bit of time.
Then, I printed out the grading sheets. These I will file away. However, another benefit is that when I entered the grades, I could look up the numbers quickly, rather than opening multiple files and scrolling down.
I've thought for quite a while that asynchronous education requires one to organize differently than for synchronous courses. I'm now thinking that another part of managing online courses is figuring out what to download and what to leave on the server, as well as what to keep as a file only and what to print out.
Computers are wondrous devices. I can find a paper on a hard drive in a blink, but it may take days to find on in my office. Keeping material on line can make it easier to find and accessible when you are away from your office. However, using material that is on line is another matter.
In one of my courses, I have a 200-page student guide. For many years, I had made this guide available to students in paper form. Last spring, however, I made it available online. The results were not so good. By tracking student accesses, I determined that many students were not downloading the reference. Instead, they accessed it every time they needed it, which was often. This introduced a time delay that certainly slowed their process and probably tended to break their concentration.
I suspect others downloaded the guide, but did not print it out. This leads to what I call the knothole effect. Imagine watching a baseball game through a knothole in a fence. You can see parts of what is going on, but can't see the whole picture. When accessing a 200-page PDF file on a computer, it is difficult to move from section to section. In paper form, it is flip-flip. At any rate, I've decided to go back to paper.
I've discovered a similar thing when managing an online course. All the pieces are there, but they may be slow to access and it is difficult to keep all the parts in sight. I just finished grading an exercise which requires me to keep six different files in view. I have dual monitors, but six files at once is just too much. I finally decided to have print copies of some of the files.
For example, I have a two-page grading sheet. The first part is a narrative. The second part is a grading rubric. For this, I had printed copies of the assignment and the problem. On my computer, I had LINGO (a mathematical programming application) to check each team's program file, a copy of the grading sheet from the previous phase, renamed as the new sheet, and the document I was grading. On line, I had the student team's presentation site, in case I needed to check supporting files.
After I did the narrative for a student report, copying phrases from the report as needed, I then looked at the previous narrative and commented on signs of progress. I did the same thing with the Rubric. After evaluating the report and determining the grade, I looked for and commented on signs of progress. Editing a copy of the previous grading document saved me a window and quite a bit of time.
Then, I printed out the grading sheets. These I will file away. However, another benefit is that when I entered the grades, I could look up the numbers quickly, rather than opening multiple files and scrolling down.
I've thought for quite a while that asynchronous education requires one to organize differently than for synchronous courses. I'm now thinking that another part of managing online courses is figuring out what to download and what to leave on the server, as well as what to keep as a file only and what to print out.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
A quick Survey of Online Learning & Teaching Sites
A quick Survey of Online Learning & Teaching Sites
Quick Look
First, I did a quick survey of each of the sites.
In-Depth Review of MERLOT
I decided to go back to MERLOT because it is organized in a way that I can quickly focus on post-secondary education in engineering, which is what I do. It also is indexed on other specific items that I use.
Within engineering, there are five groupings:
- teaching,
- people,
- learning materials,
- beyond MERLOT and
- showcase.
The first and last links were broken, so I started with “Using MERLOT …” This consisted of six different examples, some of which used Java applets and others of which were primarily HTML. None seem particularly innovative, but they would definitely be useful, for someone interested in the specific topic.
This is certainly broad enough.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
For Next Time #4: How can I do this?
Many years ago, I "read" How Do I Do This When I Can't See What I'm Doing?: Information Processing for the Visually Disabled, by Gerald Jahoda. (Actually, I listened to it on tape.) Although merely dyslexic, I found this to be extremely useful. Gerald's main idea was to explain to people, who have been doing things in a certain way all their lives, how to continue to do them, now that they could no longer depend on their vision.
Thinking about the kinds of difficulties that my students are having with different aspects of online technology, it has occurred to me that I should set up a sort of FAQ based on the same principle. That is, a single place students can go to find out how to do specific things, such as check due dates, straightforward ways to transmit images, and how to get the feedback on assignments. These are things almost all know how to do in f2f classes, but many seem to have unusual difficulty managing them online. Right now, I have all sorts of information, but it is distributed in the syllabus, general instructions, and so on. Having a single place to check might help.
Technically, though the full FAQ is planned for the next class, there is no reason not to start it up now. I'll just reorganize the current material and viola! the FAQ. However, I have another reason for starting it up now. I want my current students to tell me what they are having trouble with. After all, if I plan to produce something useful for students, who would know better what should be in it, or at the least, what I left out. Also, if items in the FAQ are not quite as clear, concise, and brilliant as I think when I write them, students with a bit of experience under their belts will be better able to let me know.
Bye for now,
John Mullen
Thinking about the kinds of difficulties that my students are having with different aspects of online technology, it has occurred to me that I should set up a sort of FAQ based on the same principle. That is, a single place students can go to find out how to do specific things, such as check due dates, straightforward ways to transmit images, and how to get the feedback on assignments. These are things almost all know how to do in f2f classes, but many seem to have unusual difficulty managing them online. Right now, I have all sorts of information, but it is distributed in the syllabus, general instructions, and so on. Having a single place to check might help.
Technically, though the full FAQ is planned for the next class, there is no reason not to start it up now. I'll just reorganize the current material and viola! the FAQ. However, I have another reason for starting it up now. I want my current students to tell me what they are having trouble with. After all, if I plan to produce something useful for students, who would know better what should be in it, or at the least, what I left out. Also, if items in the FAQ are not quite as clear, concise, and brilliant as I think when I write them, students with a bit of experience under their belts will be better able to let me know.
Bye for now,
John Mullen
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
For Next Time 3: Computer Programming
It appears that over the years, the concept of computer programming has evolved and that my current students do not have a clear idea of what it entails. They confuse data entry with programming and have difficulty with MatLab, which uses a procedural language. They think of writing spreadsheets or constructing databases as programming. While these activities are important and do involve telling a computer what to do, they use applications languages. The most serious problem is that they do not execute a sequence of commands in an order that is evident to the users.
Next time, I need to be clearer on the role the student plays and avoid buzzwords, such as "programming." In addition, I need to check in preliminary exercises that students are sufficiently computer literate and, if necessary, provide additional guidance on such basics as what a directory is, data specifications vs. writing code, how to respond to certain errors, and finally, that they will, in fact, need access to MatLab. We are in our eighth week and I have a couple of students who finally decided to order the package. Now, they are waiting for it to arrive by snail mail. An earlier assignment, no matter how simple, would have sent the message sooner.
Happily, most of the class is on track. Because I don't ask them to do anything more complicated, with respect to MatLab, than they have already done, they have the skill now to rise above small examples and tons of tedious calculations. However, there are still stragglers and it is their situation I would like to avoid in the future.
Next time, I need to be clearer on the role the student plays and avoid buzzwords, such as "programming." In addition, I need to check in preliminary exercises that students are sufficiently computer literate and, if necessary, provide additional guidance on such basics as what a directory is, data specifications vs. writing code, how to respond to certain errors, and finally, that they will, in fact, need access to MatLab. We are in our eighth week and I have a couple of students who finally decided to order the package. Now, they are waiting for it to arrive by snail mail. An earlier assignment, no matter how simple, would have sent the message sooner.
Happily, most of the class is on track. Because I don't ask them to do anything more complicated, with respect to MatLab, than they have already done, they have the skill now to rise above small examples and tons of tedious calculations. However, there are still stragglers and it is their situation I would like to avoid in the future.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Next Course 2
Well it looks like I have to do these one at a time. This time, I'm interacting with students primarily through e-mail and occasionally by telephone. I'm considering also opening a chat room at the same time. The advantages are that students become more familiar with WebCT chat, and can share in the discussion of common issues. The disadvantage is some students don't want to admit that they don't know something in front of others. Of course, they can always lurk.
I can start doing that this semester, but I noticed that students have already started using the chat rooms, so getting them online sooner is not so much an issue. The second thing I need to think about is when to start this. I should do it sometime before the first team assignment, but should probably wait a week or two into the semester when I'm sure that students have the basic WebCT items under control.
The related item is Skype. I have students that are pretty far away and might call me, except for the expense of the call. Being available on Skype could help them. However, if they don't have a connection with a high enough data rate, this could be no help. For those using employers' resources, company policy and firewalls could be barriers.
Another problem is that this requires synchronous communication, which may be difficult because of the time zone problem or individual work schedules. Many students may prefer e-mail and the discussion board. I need to include these is options, too.
I think what I will do this semester is put together a survey, asking about capabilities and preferences. I can use that to decide which way to go in the next few weeks. Also, the class I have the semester seems to be quite diverse, so I should be able to get a good read on what will work in general. Then, next semester I'll do a similar survey at the beginning, just to be sure that class is similar to this one.
In doing all of this, I need to be careful of overwhelming the students with too much technology. Also, I need to bear in mind that different students will have different preferences. My objective here is to facilitate interaction with me and eventually interaction among the students. The specific way in which students do this is not a course objective. As long as it happens, how it happens is secondary. If I provide options, then the students become familiar with the technology. Then, it's up to them to decide what to use.
Also, I need to consider three different scenarios. One is when the student wants to communicate directly with me. The second is when students on a small team want to communicate with each other. The third would be a general interaction involving the whole class. The different scenarios might be best dealt with using different choices. At this time, I do the whole class interaction asynchronously. I should probably continue to do that until such time as I have more options in the first two.
Finally, I need to point out from the beginning the use of Matlab as a way of communicating mathematical ideas using text. I think this is a lot faster than the equation editor, and in many cases more to the point. This has occurred to me recently and I am doing this now, but next time I will do this from the start.
I can start doing that this semester, but I noticed that students have already started using the chat rooms, so getting them online sooner is not so much an issue. The second thing I need to think about is when to start this. I should do it sometime before the first team assignment, but should probably wait a week or two into the semester when I'm sure that students have the basic WebCT items under control.
The related item is Skype. I have students that are pretty far away and might call me, except for the expense of the call. Being available on Skype could help them. However, if they don't have a connection with a high enough data rate, this could be no help. For those using employers' resources, company policy and firewalls could be barriers.
Another problem is that this requires synchronous communication, which may be difficult because of the time zone problem or individual work schedules. Many students may prefer e-mail and the discussion board. I need to include these is options, too.
I think what I will do this semester is put together a survey, asking about capabilities and preferences. I can use that to decide which way to go in the next few weeks. Also, the class I have the semester seems to be quite diverse, so I should be able to get a good read on what will work in general. Then, next semester I'll do a similar survey at the beginning, just to be sure that class is similar to this one.
In doing all of this, I need to be careful of overwhelming the students with too much technology. Also, I need to bear in mind that different students will have different preferences. My objective here is to facilitate interaction with me and eventually interaction among the students. The specific way in which students do this is not a course objective. As long as it happens, how it happens is secondary. If I provide options, then the students become familiar with the technology. Then, it's up to them to decide what to use.
Also, I need to consider three different scenarios. One is when the student wants to communicate directly with me. The second is when students on a small team want to communicate with each other. The third would be a general interaction involving the whole class. The different scenarios might be best dealt with using different choices. At this time, I do the whole class interaction asynchronously. I should probably continue to do that until such time as I have more options in the first two.
Finally, I need to point out from the beginning the use of Matlab as a way of communicating mathematical ideas using text. I think this is a lot faster than the equation editor, and in many cases more to the point. This has occurred to me recently and I am doing this now, but next time I will do this from the start.
Towards the Next Course
Each semester, I keep a journal entitled "For Next Time," into which I put items that occurred to me during this semester about things I would like to do differently next semester. Of course, these would only be things that I cannot change this semester.
While many of the items are specific to a particular course, some are applicable to common elements of different courses. What I'm going to post here are elements that are specific to online elements of almost any course I might teach.
This semester I had a wide range of student capabilities with respect to WebCT, computer use, and familiarity with the whole idea of distance education. Focusing on WebCT, next time I plan to monitor the situation more closely than I did this time. Specifically,
This time I started by making sure that each student could send me an e-mail via WebCT, download and submit an assignment, and completing a quiz. There were a few stragglers, but by the end of the second week pretty much everybody could do this. However, I missed a few items:
While many of the items are specific to a particular course, some are applicable to common elements of different courses. What I'm going to post here are elements that are specific to online elements of almost any course I might teach.
This semester I had a wide range of student capabilities with respect to WebCT, computer use, and familiarity with the whole idea of distance education. Focusing on WebCT, next time I plan to monitor the situation more closely than I did this time. Specifically,
This time I started by making sure that each student could send me an e-mail via WebCT, download and submit an assignment, and completing a quiz. There were a few stragglers, but by the end of the second week pretty much everybody could do this. However, I missed a few items:
- At this point, after taking five quizzes, some people are still taking an hour to complete a five minute quiz. I need to check this sooner next time. Also, I think the people that are taking an hour may be taking the quiz before reading the material. Next time, I think I'll make the quiz available a few days later then the associated assignment and emphasize the fact that the student should complete the assignment first. (I can do this now, but next time I should do it from the start.)
- This time, I had a unit zero covering some WebCT basics, but I did not cover this in the assignment or quiz for week one. Next time, I will ask specific questions in the first assignment about such things as where to find class notes, how to find feedback, where the self check exercises are, and how to properly respond to e-mail and discussion board posts. ( use quote for e-mail and reply for posts).
- Then, in problem set 2, ask for specifics from the feedback and notes from problem set one. Also, have at least one exercise that refers specifically to a particular self checked exercise. This should expose any uncertainty early. This time, too many students were not aware of these elements in spite of several announcements about them.
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