Monthly Archives: January 2013

Looking Back is Looking Forward

“Television, kinescopes, and in-service education.” How can you resist a chapter title like that?

As a latent historian, digging around among old library books is a favorite pastime of mine. (Remember: books, too, are a “technology!”)

A Guide to Instructional Television (1964), edited by Dr. Robert M. Diamond, McGraw-Hill, caught my eye not too long ago. Here’s what I learned:

Kinescopes work well for in-service teacher training, says William Hansen of the Union School District, Cambrian Park, California, because presentations on live TV made at great expense could be captured and distributed widely to be reshown at any time and the price was minimal. A Kinescope, by the way, was a movie camera set up to record a live television program (pre-videotape).

Dr. George E. Bair of the South Carolina Educational TV Center reports that rural students taught algebra and geometry via TV were tested using a nationally standardized test. Mean results for the rural-television-taught students were consistently equal to or greater than mean results for the non-television students in metropolitan systems.

Dr. Diamond, in his summary chapter on the potential for instructional television reports, “Often in the comparisons of televised instruction with standard teaching techniques the teacher has simply been moved into the television studio with a minimum of change. Unless the techniques that make television teaching more effective are used… and unless enough time is devoted to lesson preparation, the true effectiveness of the medium will remain unknown.” (p. 250).

Change a few words, and these findings could be as valid today as they were in 1964!

 

Kiinescope – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinescope

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Chicago Is Our Classroom

One of the rotating banner graphics on DePaul University’s homepage boldly proclaims, “Chicago is our classroom,” enticing prospective students into a world of experiential learning in a bustling city with rich cultural, scientific, and career resources.

DePaul takes its identity as an urban university very seriously, but after the excellent Chicago Quarter program freshman year, how many DePaul instructors utilize the amazing resources of the city to teach their classes? How many instructors have even thought about what the city offers to their discipline?

Why am I bringing this up in a blog about educational technology? Because the biggest trend in consumer technology in the past five years can enable instructors to create unprecedented student field experiences and connect those experience back to the classroom. The trend I’m talking about, of course, is the proliferation of smartphones and other mobile devices.

This video shows how one instructor utilized students’ own mobile devices last year to help them engage with the city.

This is just one example of what mobile learning can do. And though the specific activities in this video are unique to the educational outcomes for this course, there are numerous possibilities for using mobile devices to help students engage with the city across academic disciplines.

Check out the DePaul Teaching Commons Mobile Learning Page for more information.

Effects of Web Fonts in Online Learning

Google Web Fonts makes it easy to customize the typeface you use in your online documents. You just search or browse through Google’s offering of fonts (there are hundreds!), then select and add them to a collection. You place some code provided by Google in the head of your web page HTML, and presto: you (and your readers) now have shared access to fonts that were heretofore unavailable. It’s an easy and effective way to control the typefaces displayed on your online content. What’s not easy is determining whether this is a good thing for online learning.

Why? Because research has shown that font selection has a demonstrable and statistically significant effect on learning and the perceived truthfulness of a text. Some of the findings are surprising.

One of the normally unquestioned principles of usability in web design is to facilitate ease of reading, and font selection is a key factor in the achievement of that end. Some fonts like Verdana and Georgia were designed for the web and are easier to read than others, making reading faster and less fatiguing. This facilitates the scanning for information that typifies much online activity.

There are also affective or branding considerations. A serif font like Times might be selected for an article on Renaissance literature because of its associations with academia and the humanities, while a sans-serif font like Arial or Helvetica might be chosen for a scientific journal. Choices like these influence how a message is perceived and evaluated, and for skilled designers they are intentional decisions.

Where things get more complicated is in online learning. While it’s generally accepted that ease of reading is a highly desirable goal in most web based applications, it turns out that this is not necessarily so for online learning, where the goal is to comprehend and retain knowledge. Research in 2010 by Princeton University psychologist Daniel Oppenheimer and reported in The Economist demonstrated that learning retention was improved by making text harder to read. In other words, choosing fonts that slow down a reader should aid in their retention of difficult material.

There’s also research on the effect of typefaces on perceived truthfulness or authority of information. Errol Morris reported in a two-part New York Times series on the results of a study designed to test whether certain typefaces influence the credulity of information. He argues that the form of writing can’t be separated from its content, and that the selection of a typeface has a direct impact on the believability of information. His study demonstrates that this effect exists and is statistically significant.

The upshot is that while web font services like Google Web Fonts (and Adobe Edge Web Fonts) provide an easy way to manipulate the typefaces used on web pages, this ability comes with an increased responsibility of designers to carefully consider the context of their use. If your goal is to make it easier for your students to remember difficult material, you should consider making the information harder to read. And if you want them to believe what you write, don’t use Comic Sans.

Moving Online: What You Lose (and Gain)

Last month, I was lucky enough to be able to participate in the DePaul Online Teaching Series (DOTS) and talk with a number of faculty who are just starting to teach online. A common concern raised during our talks was what would be lost when translating face-to-face material into online or hybrid versions.

Faculty worried that they would no longer be able to recognize confusion on their students’ faces and might miss opportunities to clarify. They lamented that they would miss witnessing moments of discovery or realization when things finally clicked for students. They worried their students would have a difficult time forming connections amongst themselves, and that students wouldn’t feel like they had a real relationship with the instructor.

One instructor talked about how during one of the final meetings for a class he loves to teach, students rehearse and perform short sections of plays. This reminded me of a Shakespeare seminar I took in college where I stood before a group of awkward English majors and awkwardly delivered the memorable “ducket in her clack-dish” line from Measure for Measure while acting out the scene. I’ll remember that class—and that stretch of dialogue—for the rest of my life, because of the physicality of the experience and the way it truly brought the play to life.

I tried to find an image of a clack-dish, but the internet hasn’t expanded that far yet. So here’s Shakespeare.

How could we possibly create a similar experience in an online classroom?

These concerns are valid. While I would argue that there are ways to achieve high interaction between students online, and there are definitely ways to assess how your students are processing the material so you can provide appropriate feedback, modality does matter. There is no online counterpart that could capture the magic of theater in a classroom. Shakespeare was meant to be spoken aloud to a crowd hungry for entertainment. If an instructor feels too much would genuinely be lost if a course is moved online, maybe it shouldn’t be.  

Because the truth is, it’s different. Anyone claiming to be able to accomplish precisely the same outcomes online perhaps hasn’t thought everything all the way through.

More than once during DOTS, our wise facilitator (Daniel Stanford) advised faculty to take a moment to “mourn” something that would have to change when they taught a course online.

And once we soothe our anxieties and mourn our losses, let’s recognize that there are genuine advantages to an online course. There are worthy pedagogical outcomes that are actually easier to accomplish with an online course. So, have a moment of silence for the chemistry we’ll lose by not breathing the same air and think about the possibilities. Here’s a short list of stuff online course do better than face-to-face course.

In an online course,

  • … you can introduce your students to peers on the other side of the world and watch them work together.
  • … students can rewind your lecture and listen to it again (especially the tricky parts that you might have to repeat a few times in a face-to-face class before it made sense).
  • … you can see otherwise introverted students shine on discussion boards.
  • …students can determine the pace of materials. (Students won’t get bored if you’re moving too slowly, or frustrated if you move too quickly.)
  • … you can provide quick, private feedback if a correction needs to be made.
  • … you can often reuse content from quarter to quarter. (Once you get that introductory presentation done for your 101 course, you may never have to deliver it again. You can just transfer it to your next online class and spend your energy on interacting more with your students.)

Rubrics? Really?

Yes, really.

Use rubrics, and use them often.

Even you, Mr. Chips.

Whether you teach creative writing online, environmental science in a hybrid setting, or computer programming face-to-face, use rubrics.

Please.

For the students’ sake.

Everyone will tell you that grading will be easier and faster with a rubric. I don’t care about that, though it may be true.

Don’t get hung up on the rubric design (grid or checklist?) or the style (analytic or holistic?) or the point system (how many points does one deduct for misspelling Glasnost?) In fact, forget the point tally, even. Scrap all of that for now.

Students, especially online students, want more feedback. And you’re probably not giving them enough.

One of the highlights of DOTS is when a group of students joins us for Q&A with the faculty. Professors have the opportunity to ask real live students what it’s like, what it’s really like, to take college courses online. And they get (mostly) straight answers. This week, I listened to one student lament that none of her recent online instructors gave her feedback until the very end of term. None?

What?

Moral of the story: use rubrics in your online courses. Start now. Believe it or not, “A” students want to know what they can do to improve. “D” students want to know what they are doing well (did I get nothing right?). If you aren’t doing a good job at telling them what’s working and what’s not, let your rubric do the talking.

That said, rubrics aren’t meant to replace written and/or verbal feedback. On the contrary, if you are one of the instructors who already provides ample, personalized feedback to students, please use a rubric in addition to your written and verbal feedback. That will not only keep your “human element” intact but also fill in any gaps that the rubric might not address.

I’ve heard a few groans when talking about this stuff. One professor, who shall remain nameless, responded to my prompt about rubrics with “Yeah, I use a rubric alright. It looks like this: [expletive] or not [expletive].” Funny, yes, but exactly my point!

Among other things, rubrics help instructors get clear on:

  1. the learning objectives for each assignment;
  2. how to classify above average, average, and below average work;
  3. what each student’s strengths and weaknesses are;
  4. what an entire class’s strengths and weaknesses are; and
  5. whether an assignment’s given instructions are clear or not.

What professor, in what field, should not be concerned with all of the above?

Perhaps you can come up with a wily response to that question—some kind of probe into what learning environments could, should, and/or shouldn’t be. But you, the instructor, can be as creative as you want to be when constructing a rubric. Go completely off the grid if you so desire. Include your students in the creation of the rubric! (Talk about a great way to encourage them to take ownership of their learning goals.) But no matter the approach you choose, prepare to spend some time designing and writing a rubric. Count on at least a few drafts and test drives. Use your learning objectives as your guide. Run your rubric by your instructional technology liaison. Check it against the “Rubric for Rubrics.” Eventually you will have a solid vehicle for feedback, and you’ll be able to drive that baby into the virtual sunset. With Mr. Chips.

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