Online

For this discussion post, you are in the role of an online instructor who has assigned a website to be built by groups comprised of four students each in your course in Multimedia Web Design. This is a capstone project for the course and you have had the opportunity to observe each student’s level of cognitive attitude, technical ability and participation in the course through other collaborative projects, like the Discussion Board. You are entering the last two weeks of the course, and by now, peer to peer relationships have been established and your role now is to function as a learning guide.

Reflect on your role as a learning guide and how best to approach your students, now that they have become more independent. In your previous online courses, reflect upon an instructor who has handled this transitional role well and draw from it as you develop this week’s post.

Reflect on your role as a student and how it has been for you working in groups for academic projects in the past. What have you learned that you can take forward with this assignment?

For this week’s post:

Please describe how you would:

1. Form the groups for the Captstone Project
2. Communicate Best Practices for helping the group to manage the project
3. Establish roles for the project
4. Assess both individual and group performance
5. Design rubrics for this assessment

Here is the rubric that your post will be evaluated by the following rubric.  Click on this link, scroll to the very bottom of the page and locate the rubric for Discussion Posts.

 http://inside.waldenu.edu/c/Student_Faculty/StudentFaculty_15198.htm

Post by Wednesday: Please post your response to the class Discussion Board by Wednesday of this week.

Friday: Review the Discussion Board posts and enter in to any discussion to add and expand the discussion.

Sunday: Again, review all the responses to your initial post and follow up with any conversations that you have been participating in to date.

With the explosion of online learning in both K-12 and higher education, there too, has been an explosion in plagiarism and cheating.   While the motivation for cheating has not changed over the years, the realization that one has cheated, especially in the digital world, has, as it is much more visible in a cyber based classroom.  Most students do not realize that by cutting and pasting text from a website into their research paper without citation represents plagiarism and cheating.

In an interesting survey of approximately 50,000 students from more than 60 universities students believe: ‘cut & paste’ plagiarism – using a sentence or two (or more) from different sources on the Internet and weaving this information together into a paper without appropriate citation – is not a serious issue. While 10 percent of students admitted to engaging in such behavior in 1999, almost 40 percent admit to doing so in the Assessment Project surveys [2002-5]. A majority of students (77%) believe such cheating is not a very serious issue (CAI research, 2005) as cited in Jocoy & DiBiase (2006).  Why has cheating become ‘not a very serious issue’?  It appears both the expectations and enforcements of facilitators/educators has fallen off.

According to Jocoy & DiBiase (2006), it is much harder to detect manually as well.  With budget cuts, shorter teacher days, higher enrollments, it seems plausible that a lot of cheating is going unnoticed.  Thankfully, plagiarism software is now available to online instructors that can check for plagiarism.  Turnitin is a good case in point.  Other methods include Google which allows instructors to track down copied phrases and online services such as EVE actually compares student papers to Web documents and/or to essay databases to find and report instances of matching text.  In their study, Jocoy & DiBiase(2006) did notice a difference in detecting instances of cheating by using digital resources.

Our authors, Palloff & Pratt (2011), discuss the importance of creating an assessment that is highly individualized.  For instance, rather than creating a multiple choice test, design the assessment so that the student has to write a personal reflection paper that demonstrates how they would apply the knowledge gained in the course to their everyday lives.  There is an argument for preparing students for the work world in such a way that collaborative research, and fact finding becomes a norm.  Right now in my son’s 7^th grade class, the math teams occasionally take a group exam and each member of the team can contribute their knowledge to the exam.

As an instructor, there are several remedies than can be implemented to cut down on both plagiarism and cheating.

First of all, the instructor holds the expectation that students will not cheat and that there will be enforcements and consequences if students are caught.  The announcement of assignments being processed by Turnitin should be enough of disincentive for a student to go down that road.  More use of librarians can also be helpful, as many current students do not really understand the nature of plagiarism.

As an online instructor, examinations can be made of documents side-by-side, discussion posts can be compared to one another, unusual wording or lengthy wording that differs from the student’s ‘signature style’, and even a mix of fonts and type style in one paper are all ways that an instructor can possibly suspect cheating.  If it is suspected, it is best that the instructor addresses the issue with the student offline and explains the situation and asks for an explanation.

The online instructor has the responsibility to set the tone of this issue early on in Week Zero in the course policies of what the expectations and consequences are for cheating.

The student who cheats only cheats him or herself on really knowing the material that will benefit their life somehow in the future.  That is a real loss for that individual and needs to be prevented.

As I look to the future of online learning, I really like the idea of designing assessments that are as individualized as a student’s fingerprint.  Design the assessment so that the student is forced to engage higher level thinking skills and demonstrate metacognition.  Reflecting on one’s experiences in life or applying the content information to one’s life are excellent ways to measure learning and guarantee that the student has delivered original thinking and truly contributed something unique to the learning community of the course.

References

Cartoon courtesy of www. CartoonStock.com.  Extracted from:  Google Images. 04/07/11

Jocoy, C., & DiBiase, D. (2006). Plagiarism by adult learners online: A case study in detection and remediation. International Review of Research in Open & Distance Learning, 7(1), 1–15.

Palloff, R. & Pratt, K. (2011) Plagiarism and Cheating. Laureate Education Inc., Video Production.

For a new online instructor, the exposure to these tools can be overwhelming and daunting and may deter the instructor from moving to an online format.  The key is to try just the essentials the first time around.  Those essentials would be:  email communication, Discussion board forums and the grade book.  With each version of the course, learn another tool that will add another dimension to your course.  But always remember, the content is what is most important.  All the enticements of the technological tools are secondary to the content and the instructor’s responsibility to build a close-knit community of learners.

We have to keep in mind that online learning opens the door to students who may have disabilities of various kinds; so again, the technological tools increase accessibility and usability of information.  Tools like, Text to Speech, Close Captioning for videos, and font and design tools that can build and simplify the appearance of websites for these students.  Building online courses that are both usable and accessible increases the success for all learners.  In their article, Cooper, Colwell & Jelfs (2007) make a compelling argument that by making elearning both useable (effective, efficient and satisfactory in a specific context of use) and accessible, which allows the learning system and environment to adjust to the needs of all learners, everyone wins.

As I move forward with course design myself, I am particularly excited about Learning Management Systems that are modeled after Social Networking sites because they are intuitive, fun and excellent at building communities.  I also think blogging, webinars, online chatting and having classroom lectures in virtual worlds such as Second Life and other SIM environments are exciting possibilities.  From what I have learned, the more you learn about technology, the more you can learn.  Challenge yourself to try something new each day, and before long the courses you design will be amazing, educational and support your students in rediscovering their natural curiosity and love for learning.

For instance, this video shows a fascinating animated look at the role of antibodies in our body.  Media like this certainly engages the learner and tells a story that no words can!

Click here to view:

http://www.cteonline.org/portal/default/Resources/Viewer/ResourceViewer;jsessionid=qQe1JtsRQ+h8BltDfNlOPA**?action=2&discussion.ascdesc=ascending&discussion.listtype=threaded&resid=19623

References

Boettcher, J. & Conrad, R. (2010) The Online teaching Survival Guide. Josses-Bass.

Cooper, M., Colwell, C., & Jelfs, A. (2007). Embedding accessibility and usability: Considerations for e-learning research and development projects. ALT-J: Research in Learning Technology, 15(3), 231–245.

CTE Online (2010) Antibody Animation.  Extracted from:  http://www.cteonline.org/portal/default/Resources/Viewer/ResourceViewer;jsessionid=qQe1JtsRQ+h8BltDfNlOPA**?action=2&discussion.ascdesc=ascending&discussion.listtype=threaded&resid=19623

If you are one of the growing numbers of instructors who are curious about facilitating online learning or are actually being mandated by your institution to do so, this blog post can give you a few pointers to get you on your way.

The first thing to know about online learning is how very important building a learning community is for the success of the course itself and for what every learner will take into the future.  Because of the isolation factor for both student and facilitator, it is essential in Week Zero to make these connections happen and build on them throughout the entire learning course.

How to do this?

The first step is for you, as the facilitator to write a bio about yourself.  Your students will be much interested in you as the person rather than you as the academic, so concentrate on a photo, image or avatar that represents you, your hobbies, places you’ve traveled, your favorite professional organizations and journals, and other photos that can tell a story of you to your students.   Here are some personal photos I use:

Next, create an Icebreaker for your students.  There are a variety of options here, but the most common are to ask your students to create a bio of him or her with a photo, image or avatar to represent themselves and information about their hobbies, family life and the ‘view from their window’.    You might pose an interesting question like:  “Besides your real birthday, what is one other date on the calendar that you think would have been a great day to be born and why?” (ChatPack). This request will create social presence for your students.  You must also ask them to comment on their learning goals for the course, what they know about the current topic now and what they intend to do with the knowledge they hope to acquire.  This creates cognitive presence and will give you an idea of their zone of proximal development.

Become a Social Negotiator and a Structural Engineer

Within the first two weeks, your role as the facilitator is to be the ‘social negotiator’, connecting with each student via email, online postings on the discussion board or the Q & A chat room and mentoring these connections happening between the students themselves.

With online learning, you have a wealth of technological tools to assist you in this process…everything from discussion boards, to blogs, wikis, instant messaging and live chat rooms.  In the beginning, keep it simple, working with the technology you know and can learn easily. By the second or third iteration of your course, you’ll find yourself adding more interesting ways of using technology.  The use of these technological tools fosters good textual communication between you and your students.   This is essential for online success.

Along with the initial introductions in your virtual classroom, you will need to be sure to establish clear expectations for the learners.  Again, because of the isolation factor and the fact than many students have never done this type of learning before, having your expectations clear and unambiguous, reduces the stress of participating for the student.

In addition to these points, here are some additional considerations when establishing your course:

• Make sure you have clear contact information not only for yourself, but also for technical support, the library, and other student services.

• Be sure to include policies, procedures and the mechanics for communicating in a virtual classroom.  This would also include the topics of netiquette and plagiarism.

• The student needs to be advised before the course starts on all the technical requirements for the course including computer, browser and bandwidth considerations.

• Provide a brief orientation for students who have never been online learners before.  An orientation like this would cover such topics as:  time management, becoming an independent learner, navigating the Internet, accessing the online library resources, getting online to the university portal to the online course, and posting to a discussion site.

• Provide a textbook that a set of enriched materials online and one that offers several formats.  Currently, many textbooks have online links provided by the publisher that can add a rich array of media to enhance your course.

• Focus on creating engaging, challenging and thought-provoking discussion formats.  The threaded discussion is the centerpiece of your weekly lessons allowing the students to build knowledge together, connect with each other and further establish cognitive presence.  Your role is to facilitate this discussion and encourage the students to reach further themselves by bringing in additional resources, related viewpoints and personal experiences.

These abovementioned items represent some of the basics to help you begin your online teaching journey.  As you go along, of course you can experiment with adding in more media materials, links to compatible websites, video interviews you create yourself and so on.  It is really limitless.  Above all, though, make if fun for you and your students!

As I continue to read and learn about techniques of online course design, I get more and more enthusiastic about what the future of education holds for all learners.  Once you learn the basic steps, online course design is a very satisfying experience that can make learning accessible for students that otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to learn!  This field will continue to evolve as technology evolves and perspectives and attitudes change to accommodate the 21st Century student.

References

Boettcher, J. & Conrad, R. (2010) The Online Teaching Survival Guide.  Jossey-Bass.

Chat Pack.  (n.d.) Fun Questions to Spark Conversations.  Questmarc Publishing.  www.questmarc.com.



Learning communities have several components that make them work.

(1) Purpose of the course (2) People who are empowered to be responsbile in a socially constructivist manner to figure out meaning (3) Methods of Interaction (4) Process for course delivery and (5) Social Presence which is the ability to develop and online presence through the use of text.

As I develop new courses for the future and possibily facilitate them as well, I will certainly follow the guidelines below.  I have developed a prototype for an online orientation course that I want to develop further because I have learned how critical it is for online success.

The critical time for building online community takes place within the first two weeks of the course.  In fact, it is recommended that the new learner first take an orientation to online learning alsting about two weeks to orient the student to the philosophy of online learning, help the student think about time managment and support system and give him or her the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the technology and learning management system.  After this point, the facilitator needs to make a great effort to personally and frequently connect with each student within the first two weeks.  Specific tips for building the learning network include such things as:

(1) Having an optional ice breaker exercise that can introduce students to one another

(2)Making personal phone calls to students

(3)Email Contact

(4) Facilitator daily blogs and posting of a personal bio

(5) Creating a bio

(6) Convey a sense of warmth with humor, punctuation and emoticons

(7) Set the tone for Rules of Engagement creating a safe environment for every learner

(8) Construct a welcome letter that is both posted on the site and emailed to each student

these ideas help to increase student satisfaction, decrease the sense of social isolation and help the student develop their own unique online presence.

Sustaining online communities requires gradually transferring the learning responsibility from the learning guide to the student over time. As the course progresses, dyad work, peer-to-peer instruction and group collaboration on projects can occur which again solidifies and reinforces the social contact within the class.

The relationship between building a successful learning community and effective online instruction is a causative relationship.  to quote from the movie, “Field of Dreams”, “Build it and they will come.”  Not only will they come, they will stay and they will become transformed learners.



References

Palloff, R., & Pratt, K. (2011) “Online Learning Communities”.  Laureate Education, Inc. Video Production.

Animation in the classroom is becoming an increasingly popular trend in education with the advent of new software development that makes the process very easy for the educator and student alike.  Large software companies, like GoAnimate, through its educational division have provided 2.500 schools with its animation tools since December of 2010.  Xtranormal, claims that its registered users have jumped from 800,000 to 2.4 million in the last six months across disciplines and industries.  The average movie from this developer costs about $1 to make.

In addition to Twitter, blogs and YouTube videos, do-it yourself animation has emerged as the latest form of self-expression and can assist in conveying complex topics in the classroom.

Do Animations Assist Learning?

Educational research evidence about the effectiveness of classroom animation is mixed.  Different investigations have compared static and animated displays across a number of different content areas.  Generally speaking, it has been found that using animations in the classroom are not intrinsically more effective than static graphics.  What is relevant here, are the particular characteristics of individual animations and how they are used in a specific learning lesson.  For some students, the display of animation of a complex topic may be overwhelming exceeding the limit of one’s learning capacity.  Pausing the video and adding a written or f2f explanation can circumvent this issue.  Having the learner in control of how quickly they view a video can also help the learner gain maximum advantage of this technique.

For example, in the article “Biology in Film:  Using Animations to Study Cell Structure”, we have an excellent example of a website that provides an overview of a Cell Structure Lesson, complete with lesson plan, needed materials, a warm up exercise (showing the animated video “The Inner Life of the Cell”), and questions for discussion and reading comprehension.   It is clear that the use of the animated video, brings the subject to life for the student and fully engages the learner.

Would you like to try animation?

Sites such as Xtranormal.com, GoAnimate.com and Animasher.com let users build their own cartoons. The steps on all three sites are fairly similar:

•                Pick a character. GoAnimate lets users customize their characters with features like a potbelly, cat-eye glasses, a bouffant hairdo or gorilla hands.

•                Pick a background. Animasher’s options include a lecture hall, a swimming pool and an exploding atom bomb.

•                Add dialogue. On Xtranormal, users type in their own dialogue and select from a range of available voices. Animasher offers sound effects like fireworks and screams.

•                Direct. On Xtranormal, users can add pauses, motions and camera angles. GoAnimate’s editing features include cuts and zooms

Challenge yourself to add some animated features to your learning plans and post to this blog with your results.  Your discoveries and experience are important to our learning community.

References

Cutraro, J. and Ojalvo, H. (2010)  Biology in Film:  Using Animation to Study Cell Structure. The New York Times.  The Learning Network.  November 17, 2010, 3:06PM.  Extracted from:  http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/biology-in-film-using-animation-to-study-cell-structure/ (February 14, 2011, 1:04PM)

“Educational Animation” (2010)  Wikipedia.  Extracted from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_animation.  (Feb. 14, 2011. 1:07 PM).

Gamerman, E. (2011)  Animation Nation.  Wall Street Journal. February 11, 2011.  Extracted from:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704858404576134203647487090.html

(February 14, 2011, 12:57PM).

Currently, on our web research project I have two responsibilities.  One is beginning to edit our BETA website with some new .jpgs to prepare it for viewing at the University of Connecticut, by January 4, 2010.  We will also be making some small revisions to some of the video tutorials that I will also need to re-embed before that date.  I have the .jpg stored and ready to go.  Once I got to the back-end of the website today and proceeded to upload the .jpg, a dialogue box popped up stating that my username and password didn’t match.  This is puzzling as I am  a Super Administrator for this site and can already reach the back-end of the site when I log on.  I now have to contact our IT person who is already very busy with a multitude of projects for the University about why this is happening.  Valuable time is lost this morning.

Secondly, I am also responsible for archiving all of our materials and data that we have collected on the SOAR/SAIL grant since its inception.  In trying to transfer the folder (which is 91.86 GB) to our large University server, I received an error message stating the file is too big to save on the server….so another email goes out to our IT fellow asking if it would be best to compress the file before it can be saved on the large server.  Again, more time lost.

My only recourse is to contact our resident IT person as much of what needs to be done to correct these issues lies in his domain.  I do not have the skill level.  Generally, this person has been very pleasant to deal with and responsive, so I do not expect any unduly time delays.  I will tell my boss (who is one of the Primary Stakeholders) about the issues and time delays.

If I were the PM on this project it goes back  to the beginning.  I would have had a launch meeting in which all parties expected to take part on the project are present (including IT), the full scope of the project is laid out, expectations for the final product, time frames, team member responsibilities, resources available and communication expectations are also clearly communicated.  I would have also set up a project monitoring system to get weekly status reports from all team members and check the project process flow daily.

I am a resource on this team and I dislike it when I am in the situation I am in today.  My time is not being fully utilized for the project and I do not have enough to do to justify my hours.  What I can do, is perhaps ask another team member if they need help with one of their projects.  That way the resource that I am can be repurposed.

Reference

Portny, S, Mantel, S.,Meredith, J, Shafer, S, Sutton, M. (2008)  Project Management.  Wiley Pathways.

I am interested in creating online courses, so I searched for cost estimation tools that might be useful in creating an online course.  The Center for Learning Technologies at Old Dominion University has created the Asychronous Pricing Model (APM) which is an interactive costing model that provides the answer to the question:  How much will it cost to put my course online?  What I like about this model is that it allows the designer to input raw and loaded labor figures, separate pages for every type of multimedia and major production processes used to create online courses, and finally, summary pages for the total hours and final costs associated with the project.  The model allows for quality control costs to be built into each development section.  It is an interactive spreadsheet, which includes categories for the producer, designer, and technician.  This University developed this model to help them be more accurate in assessing costs.  It is a step-by-step guide to enable instructors to quickly build cost estimates.  They can enter raw numbers in categories and subcategories, based on preferences, needs and requirements.  I like this model because it is simple to use, straightforward and user-friendly for the instructor.  Because of this, it might help to reduce the reluctance to move toward more online models for instruction.

The link for this model is found at:

http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/fall123/gordon123.html

Another challenging part of planning a project is estimating the time it will take to use specific resources.  There is a difference between the time used on a task and the duration of that task.  I located a website sponsored by TT Systems  (a project management consulting firm) that provides Project Management training for the software, “Microsoft Project.”  Their website offers a variety of topics regarding project management.  I especially liked the article “Using Work (effort) to Calculate Duration”.

The authors state, “Many project managers have been taught to estimate the effort that a task requires instead of estimating the duration as is promoted by the views in Microsoft Project. As you recall work (which is the name used for effort in Project), along with duration and units are the components of the work equation that Project applies to resource assignments:

Duration * Units = Work

If the manager has estimated work and has decided not only which resources to assign but also how many units of each will be assigned, then Project can calculate the duration using this version of the formula:

Duration = Work / Units

The authors, assuming that one is using “Microsoft Project” offer the following tips for using the software:  “Traditional project management training often teaches managers to estimate effort (work) for tasks and to decide what resources will be assigned. The presumption is that the software will calculate the duration and distribute the work in proportion to the assigned units. You can do that in Project, but you need to use this method:

1. Enter the work at the task level (using the Work field in a task table).
2. Make sure that the task is Effort Driven (it’s the default anyway) and that it is not Fixed Duration.
3. Assign just one of the resources, being sure to enter the units. Project will assign all the work to that resource and calculate a new duration.
4. Add the other resources, being sure to enter their units also. Project will invoke the Effort Driven calculations and distribute work in proportion to the assigned units.
5. If you later want to change the units for one of the resources, delete the resource and than add it back with the new units.

I like this system because it makes clear the definition of duration.  The system seems to simplify the calculations one might manually do to make these numerical estimates of time worked and the actual duration of time that has elapsed on the project.

The link for this specific article can be found at:

http://www.ttsystemsinc.com/PM/using_work_effortToCalcDuration.htm

References

Gordon, S., Wu, H., M’hammed Abdous, (2009)”Using a Web-based System to Estimate the Cost of Online Course Production”, Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, Volume XII, Number III, Fall 2009.  University of West Georgia, Distance Education Center.  Extracted from:  http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/fall123/gordon123.html

T2TT Systems: “Project Management”.  Extracted from:  http://www.ttsystemsinc.com/PM/PM.htm

These days, we all have so many options for how to relay a message to one another.  We can employ email, text messages, Instant Messages; voice mail and good old f2f visits.  Each person has a preference of how they prefer to receive information, especially at the work place.   In working on a project that involves team collaboration, it is especially important to learn the preferences of your teammates and key stakeholders of your project.

This blog assignment was interesting as we heard the same essential message delivered in three different styles:  email, voice mail and an f2f visit (filmed as a video).  As I went through the exercise, it was interesting to note the various reactions I had based on the venue of the communication.  Overall, I interpreted the message to mean that a colleague needs some important information from me that appears to be late, missing and if obtained, could help her meet a work deadline of her own.

I preferred the email text format the best and I felt it relayed the essential meaning of the message the best of the three choices.  I experienced a level of respect for what my time demands might be in light of the request of the message sender.  The email option made it easy for me to get the missing data to her in a separate email.  I felt the email was friendly, respectful and to the point.  I like email as I can access it when I have the time in a focused way and I can keep a digital paper trail of the conversation.  I can also re-read the email if I have questions or need to review directions or a special request.

The voice mail simulation gave the impression that the communication was more direct and less friendly than the email.  The sender struck me as a very direct person, with little to no humor and a lack of ‘human touch’.  Her tone of voice made it seem that her needs were more important than what I have been facing in my own work life.

The f2f meeting as simulated by a video seemed most negative to me.  I noticed the gal pointing her finger at times.  There was little attempt to engage me in a friendly manner and her Cheshire style grin at the very end felt insincere and ill timed.  Why didn’t she start with a smile and a friendly, ‘Hello? Is this a good time to talk with you?”

Clearly, content and tone are very important in communication.  The flat tone of the voice on the voice mail was a turn off.  I felt degrees of judgment and blame in the voice mail and f2f communication.

The implications of my personal learning in this exercise has led me to understand the value of understanding what kind of communication my teammates and stakeholders prefer, and to communicate my preferences as well.  Everyone will have his or her own preferences.  With voice mail and f2f visits, you get the added benefit of seeing body language and hearing tone of voice, which may or may not be pleasant!

References

Stolovitch, H. (2010), “Communicating with Stakeholders”.  Laureate Education, Inc. Video production.

Stolotvitch, H. (2010). “Project Management Concerns:  Communication Strategies and Organizational Culture”.  Laureate Education, Inc. Video Production.