EIDT-6511 Discussion: Strategies for Online Group Activity Success

Background: According to the constructivist and social learning theory, collaborative learning is one of the most effective ways to advance a learner’s understanding on a subject. However, many students, even some that excel individually, dislike group work or find it difficult.

Collaborating with groups to achieve project goals can be difficult for a number of reasons. The challenge increases even more when that group is communicating online and at a distance. The group can suffer from a lack of communication and coordination, or some groups, feeling a lack of leadership may feel that it is “the blind leading the blind.” Some members complain about the relative lack of participation of some of the learners within the group, and so on.

Prompt: Recall an experience you had with an online group activity, and consider the following questions:

• What was effective about the group and worked well?
• What tools and methods did you use to communicate, and how well did they work for the group?
• What were some of the challenges that you or the group encountered?
• What could the instructor or course designer have done to make improvements to the course or enhance the group experience?
• What could you or other members of your group have done to improve the group experience? What will you do differently in the future?

Post a response by Friday in response to the questions above, and cite one of the following resources below for your post. Return Saturday to see if anyone has responded to your comments.

The rubric for this discussion post is located here:

[Link Coming Soon—will have to upload via Google Drive as Blogger.com does not have a file manager].

References/Resources:

Laureate Education (Producer). (2011). Assessing interaction and collaboration in online environments [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

Oosterhof, A., Conrad, R.-M., & Ely, D. P. (2008). Assessing learners online. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Palloff, R., & Pratt, K. (2007). Building online communities: Effective strategies for the virtual classroom. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

When and Why Cheating is Cheating, and How to Deter It

I’m making a late post for my Online Strategies course about Plagiarism and Cheating in online environments. In order to create this post, I watched a video by Dr. Rena Palloff and Dr. Keith Pratt about Cheating and Plagiarism. In it, Palloff stated that the rate of cheating in online and traditional environments were about the same, and that from her experience, students did not set out to be cheaters, and intentional cheating and plagiarism is rare. Pratt then added that he created his assessments in such a way that he didn’t care whether or not students cheated, because the assessments and assignments were meant to reflect real-world environments. So, a student could talk to a neighbor, or look something up in a book, but there was more work to be done than that to complete the assessment. Palloff agreed, and said that when the assessment requires one to apply available information to problem-solving, it makes it more difficult to “cheat” in the traditional sense. Here, the assessment requires more than memorization, but synthesized application (Laureate Education, Inc., n.d.).

I think that is one of the most important points about cheating and plagiarism: Cheating isn’t cheating because a student has found an easy way to get the answers to a test. “Cheating” is cheating if and when it undermines the learning process and makes what should be an equal playing field unequal. If the assessment is measuring critical thinking and problem solving rather than memorization, then looking something up in a book isn’t “cheating.” It’s being resourceful, which is what we do in “the real world.” Therefore, the construction of the assessment towards critical thinking and problem solving can encourage intellectual and academic honesty. They can’t “Google” the right answer because there isn’t one right answer. The student has to find one in their own words…

Educating students early in the online environment and managing expectations at the onset is also important to prevent unintentional plagiarism. However, the research might not agree with Palloff that plagiarism and cheating is rare, or that expectation management alone with deter the vast majority of plagiarism and cheating. Cheating and plagiarism here, refers to lifting partial or whole passages of another person’s work and leading one to believe it is your own when it is not. A study at Penn State University using Turnitin detected plagiarism in about 13 percent of cases, whereas manual detection only caught plagiarism in the same set of assignments 3 percent of the time. Further, the research showed that expectation management and education regarding plagiarism may have made some impact, but the difference was not statistically significant. So, tools like Turnitin seem necessary if you want to prevent people from borrowing the words and thoughts of others without proper attribution (Jocoy, & DiBiase, 2006). Again, the key here is not using another’s work—that’s encouraged. It’s simply using another’s work without proper attribution, or using so much of the work that it undermines the learning process. Where it becomes clear that the student was trying to merely complete the assignment rather than think critically about a problem and use another’s work to support their own thought process. This may be painfully obvious, but it seems worth it to point out what makes “cheating” cheating, or wrong, or counterproductive to learning…

The best method to prevent dishonesty and cheating or “stealing” of another’s work would likely be the way that we prevent all other forms of stealing and dishonesty: Deterrence. You don’t have to make cheating impossible. You just have to make it harder than doing the honest thing. Once you reach that point, cheating loses its appeal. By making the assessment more about critical thinking than facts, it makes cheating harder. Plagiarism detection software makes it harder for students to find another person’s thoughts on the Internet and pass it off on their own without getting caught. Combine those two tools and methods and one of the only courses of action a student has left is to ask or pay someone else to complete the assessment for them. If the assignment is written, even in this case, a keen facilitator can recognize the change in tone from the students typical writing to another assignment they handed in. They would have to plagiarize nearly everything, or nothing. The idea of cheating starts to look ridiculous, and the probably of getting caught looks high. At this point, you’ve effectively deterred most forms of cheating. And I think that’s the goal. Deter 97% of cheating, and catch the other 3% that will be determined to cheat even when it doesn’t make sense to do so. That’s my best advice…

References:

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.

Laureate Education (Producer). (2010). Plagiarism and cheating [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

Assessing the Assessments

We see this pattern with learning technologies as well. Why aren’t online assessments keeping up with new technology? Because they can’t, and we can’t. The pace of technology growth is outstripping our ability to keep up with it. Furthermore, you are combining the field of technology (a fast-growing, fast-paced industry) with pedagogy and education, a field that is notorious for its love of tradition and reticence to change. You have new technologies that crop up constantly, and early adopters are saying, “Who-hoo! Digital glitter! Shiny! New! This will make learning fun, and show our stakeholders we’re culturally relevant and on the cutting edge!” Meanwhile, traditional pedagogues are saying, “Wait a minute. That hasn’t been tested! Who’s to say that actually WORKS in making the learning process more effective?” This is essentially the reason Whitelock and Watt (2008) gave for the current gap in assessments against the new tide of technology. It’s one thing to get creative with the lesson plan and throw in social media or some new technology, but when it comes to the assessment and metrics, people want tried and true methods for testing if the learning was effective.

So that’s one issue. Another issue is that some of the old multiple choice test questions, which get translated into e-Learning as simple multiple choice quiz slides, are woefully inadequate for testing most of the upper tiers of Bloom’s Taxonomy. It’s hard to know if a mechanic is learning how to do their job when you are asking them trivia about transmission parts or the history of a car instead of having him demonstrate how to take one apart and put it back together. So why do we stick with multiple choice and assessments? That’s what we’ve always done—again the tradition answer—and it’s also easy. Doing a demonstration assessment, especially online, presents certain technical challenges that require a lot of thought, effort, and time to come up with (Clare-Midura & Dede, 2010).

Daphne Koller addressed this problem on the TED stage, and discussed how anything other than multiple choice answers online was hard to pull off. How do you have a quiz auto-grade an essay or short answer, for example? One suggestion she gives is self-assessment coupled with peer review. This dovetails in with the suggestion of Midura & Dede, 2010 that mentoring and direct observation with feedback, etc., are more effective methods than paper tests or multiple choice. While peers are seen as being on “equal footing” to their other peers, this is not consistent across the board. Each peer has strengths and weaknesses in a variety of areas, and can mentor others in those areas where they are strongest. The cumulative interaction of peers creates a kind of mentor in an online space.

We have many cool opportunities for new ways of looking at assessments, whether through virtual worlds or a video conference call where people share their screens and demonstrate what they know, etc. Mini-games, as long as they are tied to the learning objective, can also be an effective and fun assessment. What needs to happen now is that these methods need to be tested. When you look at something like Lumosity.com, it boasts how their games are based on “brain-science,” and that they can boost your memory and other cognitive skills. However, the consensus at this point is that these games don’t work. What’s actually happening is that you are getting better at playing the games themselves, but there is no evidence as of yet to suggest that this translates to anything outside of playing these games. This should be a warning to us regarding adopting new methods of assessment too soon. However, one rule of thumb is to keep the assessment as close to the real world as possible. The more the assessment feels like the real thing, the better chance you have of making that assessment more effective. This is why flight simulations work and Luminosity.com doesn’t.

What are your thoughts for the future of assessment? Leave a comment if you’d like.

References:

Clarke-Midura, J., & Dede, C. (2010). Assessment, technology, and change. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 42(3), 309-328.
Retrieved from the Walden Library using the Education Research Complete database.

Koller, D. (Speaker). (2012, Jun.). What we’re learning from online education. Ted Talks, LLC. Retrieved from: http://www.ted.com/talks/daphne_koller_what_we_re_learning_from_online_education?language=en

Whitelock, D., & Watt, S. (2008). Reframing e-assessment: Adopting new media and adapting old frameworks. Learning, Media, and Technology, 33(3), 151-154.
Retrieved from the Walden Library using the Communication & Mass Media Complete database.

Useability, Accessibility, and Technology Tools

This post is in response to an assignment from my MS degree. A peer in my class uses a Q&A format for his blog post assignments, so I thought I would try that this time around as well.

Q: What impact does technology and multimedia have on online learning environments?

A: I think that technology and multimedia in online learning environments can be a double-edged sword. On the plus side, there is an unprecedented amount of new technologies that can connect us in new, exciting, and creative ways that weren’t possible even a few short years ago. Wikis, blogs, YouTube videos, Skype, discussion boards, cloud-based web tools like Google Drive, and so on make sharing and collaborating at a distance more robust than ever. On the other hand, the drawback is that there is an unprecedented amount of technology out there, and it’s nearly impossible to keep up with it all. Even for the technologically initiated, there just isn’t enough time to know about or learn how to use all of this digital technology. The danger here is that when learners are meeting online to reach certain learning objectives that they end up diverting a lot of their time to figuring out how to use the online tools instead.

Q: What are the most important considerations an online instructor should make before implementing technology?

A: The most important consideration of all is whether or not the technology is directly in service of the learning goals set forth for the course or online community; instructors should resist the urge to fall into the content seduction trap (Laureate Education, Inc., n.d.). Cooper, Colwell, and Jelfs (2007) refer to this as usability. The other important consideration for instructors is to facilitate peers connecting with each and feeling connected to their other students. Careful planning should be taken to make sure that the technology is helping rather than hinder participants.

Q: What implications do usability and accessibility of technology tools have for online teaching?

A: As Cooper, Colwell, and Jelfs (2007) point out, accessibility and usability affect one another. The more accessible, or able a course or tool is to adjust to all learners an online tool is, the more likely it is to be useable—or efficient in meeting learning objectives and goals. Many refer to accessibility in terms of catering to the disabled—things like using Closed Captioning for the deaf, for example. However, someone who is on the bus and doesn’t have headphones would be able to benefit from the same Closed Captioning due to the setting in which he’s viewing the training. That learner might not have a disability, but now the training has become for useable and efficient for him.  

Q: What technology tools are most appealing to you for online teaching as you move forward in your career in instructional design?

A: I think there’s a lot of promising technologies out there. I’m surprised how much YouTube has exploded over the years. A lot of times I will look for how-to videos on YouTube, and I have also been able to find courses from Stanford University on there for free as well. IM chats and wiki pages are also very helpful. Again, I don’t think the technology has to be fancy, but if it’s useful it passes the test for me. I think the push for mobile technology and training is interesting, but I have my reservations. I think there is a point at which a screen is just too small for effective training. The iPad seems like a good size, but mobile phone screens just seem to small… Anway, for what its worth, those are my two cents.

 

References:

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.

Laureate Education (Producer). (2010). Enhancing the online experience [Video file]. Retrieved

from https://class.waldenu.edu

Launching the Online Experience

In order for learner’s to have a positive learning experience, the instructor has to prepare a good amount before the course even begins. An instructor needs to know the layout of the course and course management system so that he or she is prepared to upload documents and pictures, set up groups and forums, grade assignments, and all of the other tasks necessary for running a course (Boettcher & Conrad, 2010). Also, there may be technology that the instructor has access to but is unaware if he or she doesn’t take the time to explore the course layout  and content, as well as some software that are freely available on the web. Wiki pages and other social media sites can help students communicate and collaborate with one another.

In addition, it’s important that the instructor be frequently present in the course in the first two weeks. This is a time to set clear expectations to students so they are aware of the standard of work that is required as well as what to do in the course. If these expectations are reinforced in the first couple weeks it makes the course go a lot more smoothly.

Finally, I think it’s important for an instructor to be a careful observer of the classroom. If a student drops off in participation or appears to be struggling, it’s often up to the instructor to find out why. Going the extra mile to show you care is important. Laureate Education, Inc., n.d. recommended showing ways you care and also opening up and showing your human side in the classroom. It helps to be personable and engaging in order to keep the students’ interest. Don’t simply post your CV when creating a bio, for example.

References:

Boettcher, J. V., & Conrad, R. (2010). The online teaching survival guide: Simple and practical pedagogical tips. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Conrad, R., & Donaldson, J. A. (2011). Engaging the online learner: Activities and resources for creative instruction (Updated ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

 

Laureate Education, Inc., n.d. Launching the online experience. Retrieved from: https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_6530133_1%26url%3D

Creating a Better Recipe for Online Training

This week I’m reflecting on a video by Laureate Education, Inc. (n.d.) featuring Pratt & Palloff as they discussed how to build an online learning community. If you are reading this and haven’t seen the video, don’t worry, as I’ll briefly summarize key points from the video throughout the post.

It would seem a good place to start by making the simple declarative statement that learning does not occur in a vacuum. Regardless of whether or not the learning is taking place in a classroom or in-person meeting, or online, certain key ingredients are needed to increase the odds of successful learning with the greatest number of students possible.

I think of traditional learning like a traditional recipe cookie, and online learning like a Gluten-Free cookie. In a traditional setting, the social interactions in a classroom is like the wheat flour, and is a key ingredient in the learning process. With a Gluten-Free cookie, the wheat flour is missing, and therefore, certain nutrients and textures and flavors might be missing, too. So what works great for a traditional cookie recipe (the classroom) won’t work for a GF cookie (online). For online training, a blend of other “GF flour” and key ingredients are needed to supplement what is missing from traditional training to keep students engaged and learning.

First, the people and purpose of online training could be virtually identical to that of traditional training, but the methods, process, and creation of social presence will be different. What follows are some good recipe tips for an online training course:

Methods. You cannot see your students in most cases, or at the very least you cannot address their issues immediately in an online setting. This means most needs should be anticipated. Considerations of “accessibility” should be accounted for—people with disabilities or technical issues should have more than one modality or method of introduction to the learning content at their disposal so they can navigate courses successfully. This might include closed captioning on videos and testing the accessibility of web links and forums. The layout of content on the Learning Management System (LMS) or web interface needs to be as easy to navigate as possible. This includes sound hierarchical design geared towards learners’ needs, sensible naming conventions, and an easy to find forum to have discussions with students and an easy way of contacting the instructor/facilitator. A discussion board is a good start, but other collaborative technologies should be considered, such as cell phones, email, web chats, video conferencing, wiki pages, blogs, etc. Ensure that all technology used is or can be well understood by participants as they progress through the course, and don’t use any technology unless it is helping to meet a specific learning objective.

Process. The learning process is everyone’s responsibility, from the facilitator to the students to the administration. The facilitator acts as an equal member in discussions and is also a learner and participant in addition to helping facilitate and guide discussions in a productive and supportive manner. A new student orientation and an icebreaker at the beginning of the course will help students figure out how to navigate the course and feel comfortable reaching out to their peers for help and learning. A key part of the online process, stemming from a social learning theory of learning, is to create collaborative interactions and projects where students engage with one another and co-construct meaning and value from the content together. This should be mixed with periods of reflection to reinforce the learning that taken place.

Social Presence. Social presence is key to avoiding high attrition rates in an online setting. Pratt (Laureate Education, Inc., n.d.) recommended watching students closely in the first two weeks and reaching out to them if they “fall away.” If you “hook them” early and get them engaged, they are very unlikely to fall away later in the course. Palloff (Laureate Education, Inc., n.d.) adds to check into the course multiple times a day especially in that critical first two weeks of class. The facilitator’s role is to create a warm and inviting atmosphere to help overcome the often seeming impersonal nature of online/technology mediated communication. Be creative and use the technology to your advantage in order to create social presence. If you have a younger audience that loves to use mobile technology, consider the use of texting or a mobile app in your course presentation to help keep students feeling connected and ensure that they have valuable information at their fingertips right when they need it most.

If you follow many of these general principles, the online course and training will improve exponentially, including the rates of success. The main takeaway is that an online course is not just about putting the content “out there,” but carefully considering how the content is presented, and making an effort to connect personally and professionally with participants to get them engaged in the learning.

Thanks for reading and comments are appreciated!

Welcome Walden U. Class, EIDT-6510!

Hello class,

I guess I'm posting this late because I forgot the blog assignments usually require posting earlier in the week. This is the same blog I've had since the Bachelor of Science in Instructional Design & Technology, so there are some older posts that are also relevant to instructional design and online training. Feel free to look around. I also look forward to reading your posts as well. See you around!

~Nathaniel