MARIA ERB

Blog

  • Take it Personally

    Take it Personally

    One of the most important but often most neglected aspects of teaching online is being able to create a strong presence of yourself for students.  Especially if students aren’t ever going to meet an instructor face to face, it’s critical for them to get a sense of who is teaching the course they’re taking.  Course facilitators need to take every opportunity to inject a little bit of who they are into what they do online and especially into what they create for an online course.

    Using short videos to introduce a course is common practice.  Typically, this is a low quality effort, usually a faculty member sitting in front of his/her web cam flanked by bookshelves, papers, books, and other miscellaneous clutter.  While it’s always nice to see someone’s face, this doesn’t communicate much to the student beyond “Yep, there’s a professor out there….somewhere.  Even looks like a professor.”

    But communicating who you are matters even more in the online space when your students haven’t passed you in the hallway, heard you speak at a campus event, or read about you in the campus paper.  What matters is that students feel connected to you and to their classmates in some way.  If you’re not communicating anything more than “garden variety professor” it will be much more difficult for them to make that connection.

    Fortunately, there is a lot you can do to give students a sense of what you’re about.

    If you are kind of kooky, a little “out there” or just plain fun, you can show that as this instructor at Pittsburgh Technical Institute does in the video below.  Because I worked closely with her, I knew she was a very fun person who had a good rapport with her F2F students so I encouraged her to be as outlandish as she wanted to be and prodded her bit to see how zany she wanted to get.  She ended up with something that really gave students a good look at her personality while also giving them something to talk about.

    Even if a faculty member is particularly reserved, that doesn’t mean he or she can’t create an online video that is engaging to watch.  The script doesn’t have to be particularly revealing or personal, but what is said should be unique and descriptive.   People who choose to study medical coding and work in that field aren’t usually flamboyant, but this instructor in the following clip shared something very humorous with her online students that went a long way towards making them feel warmly welcomed and comfortable in her online course.

    In addition to showing students a little bit of who you are, intro videos should also show students the connection you have to your work.  Why are you teaching this course? What do you like about teaching it? What do you hope students get out of it? Why is it a valuable learning experience?

    So next time you need to create an intro video for an online course, strive to make it personal.

    To recap:

    Show Yourself – Let students see a little bit of who is on the other end of the course they’re taking

    Break the Ice – Tell a story, use an anecdote, put a smile on someone’s face

    Be Welcoming – Everyone likes to be noticed and recognized even in cyberspace.  Find ways to let students know you are there.

  • Why Can’t Everything Be like Duolingo?

    Why Can’t Everything Be like Duolingo?

    I just need to rave a little bit more about how awesome Duolingo is from a learning design point of view.  It just works!  It’s easy, fun, convenient, and you can learn from it.  It’s everything I ask of my instructional materials.  Why should we settle for anything less?

    There have been many times that I’ve thought about learning Italian, but I’ve never taken actual steps towards learning the language.  Signing up for a course might have been an option if my local library branch had offered free ones on evenings I could attend, but I never found any of those (didn’t really look that hard either).  Paying for a course at a community college seemed both expensive and inconvenient.  Buying an audio course or something like that wasn’t something I was sure I’d stick with.

    But Duolingo overcame every hurdle at once.  It’s free. It’s convenient.  It’s fun.  The only thing it lacks is pasta night with actual classmates.  And that’s something I never thought I’d be willing to give up.  I love being in a class with other students and a teacher.  I like the group work, the relationships that form, and the dynamic.  But I’m noticing that free, easy, and fun go a long way towards balancing out the equation.

    I doubt I would have ever completed an online course in learning Italian.  That’s not to say a very engaging, fun, effective course couldn’t be developed and maybe after I’ve chewed on everything served up by Duolingo, I’ll go searching for a MOOC version of Italian 101.  But I’m all about exploring this idea of micro-learning.  What other types of instruction would fit into this 10-minute format?

    The list of subjects I’d like to learn is long.  My reasons for not tackling a lot of them are similar.   But I bet I’d tackle a lot of them if they could be served up to me Duolingo style on my phone.

    Right now, in addition to learning Italian, I’m also taking a crack at Python programming and learning CSS.  I wouldn’t learn either of these topics from a book (too dry for me).  I need a very interactive environment much like Code School offers but without the monthly subscription fees.   I would never sit through video tutorials on these subjects either.  Way too tedious.

    What I need is something in my pocket.  A 10-minute lesson, one or two per day.  It would be a little more challenging to type code on my phone (but that’s what an iPad is for).  Yet I would still like to have the coding lessons delivered to me in the 10 minute format mainly because I know I will actually do them.  And that’s better than not doing them at all which is where I am now.

    As we move forward toward learning design that allows for the personalization of learning, the Duolingo option for instructional materials needs to be a choice on the menu.  Throw it out there with MOOC, blended, face to face, and everything else.  Allowing learners to pick the style of learning that suits them best, in format and approach, is a much needed step towards creating the types of independent, empowered learners we’d all like to become.

  • BEHIND THE HYPE: Networked Connected Learning

    BEHIND THE HYPE: Networked Connected Learning

    You’ve probably heard the buzzwords bandied about — Networked Learning, Connected Learning — and wondered what these terms really mean. Take a look at this video

    or this chart for an idea of how these terms are being defined.  Again, the subtext is all about the “new breed” of learner who is able to sift through infinite amounts of information easily, connect with kindly (and available) scholars and experts from around the world in a snap, pull together a plethora of rich media content on his/her topic of choice, and readily create compelling, unique digital masterpieces reflecting his/her understanding of a topic.  And this new learner doesn’t need a teacher either.  A Learning Architect, maybe.  A Connected Learning Incubator, perhaps. But an actual teacher? Nah.

    If you’ve ever had to wade through mounds of less-than-stellar videos on YouTube when you’re trying to find out how to fix a flat tire or use a flat iron on your hair, you know that there’s quite a gap out there between the ideal learner we assume should exist given the incredible amount of resources available and the learners that actually do exist.  There are plenty of people out there who still want and need our help to learn.

    Sure, we all know about the wiz kids, the tech stars, and the uber geeks.  But they’ve always been out there and I’m betting they exist in the same proportion of the population that they’ve always inhabited.  It just seems like there are so many more of them, in epidemic numbers even, because we don’t just hear about the ones in our own neighborhoods, churches, or schools any more.  We hear about the ones in everybody’s neighborhoods, churches, and schools.

    I’m sure lots of people thought there would be a learning explosion fueled by public libraries, which made mountains of information free to all, available for anyone who had the willingness to put forth the effort to learn on his/her own.  But how many people became self-taught experts on the topics of their own choosing because they had access to a library?

    Access to information is no longer a barrier to learning for a lot of people (that’s a good thing), but information overload presents a new kind of barrier.  One that requires a pathway through the chaos to dissolve.

    Connected Learners are supposedly a new type of learner who likes to learn in groups, from peers, in a social context.  I’ve always been this type of learner. I’ve always liked to learn in groups, on teams, and to work on projects with a partner.  But I’ve also needed to do a certain amount of learning on my own. So do a lot of people.  Facebook isn’t suddenly going to enable us to read someone else’s mind instead of reading an article or book for ourselves.  And it won’t make us want to connect to our friends, families, and other people any more than we already do.  It makes some things much easier. And it makes other things (like maintaining privacy) much more difficult.

    Didn’t we used to learn everything in social settings anyway? Didn’t we used to learn from our families, our communities, our tribes, and each other? Learning was intergenerational by its nature.  We are connected learners by our nature.  We have a few more tools at our disposal to make connections around learning easier and more efficient.

  • Top 5 Reasons to Use Moodle for Course Management

    Top 5 Reasons to Use Moodle for Course Management

    While there are plusses and minuses for using any tech tool, there are some very strong reasons for using Moodle to supplement a face-to-face class.  Here are the top five:

    1) Say “So Long” to popular excuses for late assignments – By requiring students to submit assignments through Moodle, there is an indisputable record of the date and time that assignment was submitted.  No more searching through email records to find an assignment that was supposedly emailed to you on time.

    2) Let students check their grades online – One thing that students universally like about any LMS system their professors use is the ability to check their course grades at any time.  Moodle’s Gradebook can be used to maintain both for in-class and online assignments.  If you currently maintain grades in Excel, an import tool makes it easy to transfer gradebook data into Moodle so that students can find out what their grades are without emailing you.  Moodle’s Gradebook has a simple interface but offers powerful functionality including weighted grades, feedback to students, and assignment categories.

    3) Communicate with your class easily – Moodle’s built-in communication tools make it easy to get timely messages and announcements out to students.  With the News forum, you can post updates and news about your class.  If you need to cancel class due to bad weather, change a due date for an assignment, switch classrooms, or inform your students about other changes,  the News forum provides a space to do that and automatically notifies your students via email.  You can also email students and groups privately or en masse with the Quick Email feature.

    4) Manage, change and update course documents on the fly –  Post a syllabus online and your students can download it multiple times, print it out if they want to, or move it onto a mobile device.  All course documents can be accessed 24/7, revised easily, and augmented with digital resources like graphics and multimedia.

    5) Answer frequently asked questions once, not multiple times – In addition to reducing or eliminating all of the calls, emails, and visits from students asking when an assignment is due, when a test is coming up, or what a grade is, you can also post and clarify other important information about your course in Moodle.  In addition, you can provide a forum for students to ask questions to each other.  Often, questions about assignments or projects can be cleared up by a classmate.  If you notice that students are struggling with a particular assignment, you can post helpful information in a central forum where all students will see it instead of having to respond to lots of email asking about the same thing.

    Contact information,  office hours, and other relevant information can be posted also.

    The idea behind learning management systems and course management systems such as Moodle is to make it easier to manage and run a class.  Why not take advantage of some of the built-in tools to help you do that.

  • A New Breed of Learner?

    A New Breed of Learner?

    There certainly is a lot of buzz and panic rippling throughout the Higher Ed community about how institutions can best prepare for this “new breed” of learner poised to enter the upper echelons of education in the next few years.  This new style of student reportedly doesn’t like to read, wants to play video games most of the time, has a short attention span, is used to Googling everything, is super tech savvy, and expects to “connect” with his/her friends all the time.

    Sounds like a typical student to me.

    With the exception of having Google to look up information, today’s trailblazing teens remind me an awful lot of the same types of learners we’ve been seeing for at least the past generation now.  Why we suddenly think we have to turn everything inside out to accommodate them has very little to do with their learning preferences and a lot more to do with the economics of higher education.  The difference between a Gen-Xer toting Cliff notes, watching MTV, and playing Tetris for hours and today’s techie teen is basically Google.  Google and Kickstarter. Students like to play video games, connect with their friends, and find a way to escape reading assignments just like they’ve been doing for at least the past 25 years.  Did Higher Ed scramble to reinvent itself over the revolutionary batch of learners that invaded the 1990’s? Nope.  Did faculty fear being displaced and replaced by the Brave New World of Gameboy wielding pre-teens?  No, they did not.  Do students really learn differently now that they can tweet and gram about daily life? For one thing, they have more pathways to learning available to them.  

    Humans are highly adaptable.  Until very recently, we learned everything we needed to know to survive by watching and interacting with our tribe.  

    Add in a few more shockwaves to the collective psyche from the journalism business and a few other industries and you finally get to Higher Ed.  So let’s not give too much credit to the firebreathing fourth graders out there.  There’s been plenty of fear going around for a long time now and it’s finally roosting in the vines of our ivy covered lecture halls.   Should we be afraid?  Probably.  But not of them.  They may have a few more apps and a way to access information, but they aren’t the problem.  We need to be coming together as a thoughtful reflective community to chart a new direction, not out of fear, but out of a desire to lead and move forward towards something beneficial.  Without this contemplative piece, we will continue to create a place that doesn’t have space for all of the people in it.  We’ve been very good at doing this so far.  We will continue to alienate, degrade, and disregard the most vulnerable and cast aside everyone but the fastest, strongest, and smartest.  We need to produce a generation of thinkers who cares about this issue.  The formation of morals, values, ethics, and compassion is probably the most important issue of our time.

  • Connecting Online Learners to Campus Culture and Community

    One of the most common challenges online educators face is how to connect online students to the campus culture and community that F2F students enjoy.  It’s definitely a difficult but important dilemma and one that deserves our best efforts to tackle.  Especially in places where there is a strong campus culture that nurtures, supports, and encourages students, it makes the effort to translate that beneficial atmosphere to the online realm very worthwhile so that all students can benefit from it.

    Easier said than done for sure.  There are so many elements that go into creating a campus culture that it would be impossible to translate each one directly into an online space.  Here at the University of Portland where there is a stunningly beautiful campus, a warm and welcoming staff/faculty presence and multitudes of symbolic reminders throughout the buildings and on the campus reinforcing the values of the school, it’s almost inconceivable to imagine how online students could feel the same comforting reach that the F2F students do.

    But that is the challenge at hand for those of us wanting to make the online experience more rewarding and richer for students.  In cases where traditional F2F students are merely electing to take a small number of course offerings online, this issue is pretty much bypassed altogether since students can easily arrange in person office visits with their professors and visits to campus frequently.  But when entire programs move online to include students who aren’t in geographical proximity to campus, that’s when everyone needs to be thinking about how to solve this problem.

    Thinking about what it is that makes your institution unique, what it has to offer students in particular, and why being a student at your school is still a good choice and a wise investment, is thinking that is beneficial to do upfront before starting to craft course materials for online courses.  And using those answers to develop a tone and culture for your course is something that sets your course apart from another course on the same subject and makes it unique among other offerings.  Being larger than life online is more important than in a F2F situation.  Everything needs to be bolder, bigger, and more pronounced.  And that includes the special aspects of teaching your course at your particular institution.   As we move forward with online learning at the University of Portland, I’ll be inviting everyone I work with to address this issue so that we can create learning experiences that embrace all of our students with the values and appreciation that are such a strong part of being part of the wonderful community of learners that is here.