Teaching online effectively takes time and energy, and to manage this well, educators must learn how to say “No.” This kind of focus helps with decision-making, time management, committing to extra projects, and everything else. In this episode, APU professor Dr. Bethanie Hansen discusses the “Power of a Positive No,” by William Ury, to help online educators prioritize and thrive. Learn how to simplify online teaching, get better results, and feel a greater sense of satisfaction from your work.
Moving your class online can be intimidating and take some creativity. In this episode, APU professor Dr. Bethanie Hansen gives you a tour of the main spaces in a learning management system and some basic ideas for the types of content you might use and how it can improve the course delivery as well as enhance student learning.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: This podcast is for educators, academics and parents who know that online teaching can be challenging, but it can also be rewarding, engaging, and fun. Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge. I’m your host, Dr. Bethanie Hansen, and I’ll be your guide for online teaching tips, topics and strategies. Walk with me into the Online Teaching Lounge.
If you’ve taught classes before, but they were live face-to-face classes, moving your class online might seem like a heavy lift. But it doesn’t have to be. In the previous episode of the Online Teaching Lounge podcast, I shared a basic overview about online education to give you a foundation. And today, I’ll walk you through the concept of a learning management system.
If you use one, it will give you an organized space to put different kinds of materials and activities that will build out your class. And in today’s world with widely available internet, teaching online is becoming so much more common. There are many learning management systems you can choose from.
Throughout the podcast, I’ll just call these learning management systems the LMS for short. You might hear terms like learning management system (LMS), course delivery system (CDS), and course management system (CMS) used interchangeably by people in the online education industry, but these all refer to the same kinds of systems.
As of today when I’m recording this podcast, there are more than 200 different free, subscription-based, and sales-based LMS’s currently available to host online courses in business, training, and education. Can you believe that?
Here are some common brand names you might have heard of, of educational LMS’s: Blackboard, Moodle, Schoology, Canvas, D2L Brightspace, Sakai. If you are an independent educator not teaching for a school system or college, you might be using a commercial LMS like Kajabi, Teachable, Thinkific, Adobe Captivate Prime, or Learndash. There are so many, that we can’t talk about all of them right now or get very specific about just one LMS, I’m going to be general but I will go through their basic parts.
Whatever your LMS, the system will function as the main program or software application where you will deliver your class. You’ll keep the lessons there, assignments, and other documentation, and administer the session in terms of attendance, tracking performance of your students, and submitting grades. To accomplish all of these teaching and course design tasks, there are several different spaces in the LMS.
Understanding Each Space of a LMS
There is usually a home page for the course, where you can welcome students and identify the name of the class. You might also have a few other items available on the course home page, like an assignment calendar, an introduction to you as the teacher, and course announcements. And somewhere in the online classroom space, there will be a menu or tabs to click, leading to designated areas that deliver lesson curriculum, host the interaction—like a chat, instant message tools, discussions, and things like that—and accept and retrieve assessments.
The spaces within an LMS each serve a purpose and they help keep things organized for you as the instructor and for your students. These spaces typically include labels like lessons or content, assignments, discussions, blogs, wikis, journals, announcements, tests, quizzes, exams, grade book, progress or statistics, and other editing or reporting features.
As technology continues to develop every day, many LMS’s are now including mobile apps for smart phones and other portable devices, diverse content options, creation tools, customizable learning paths, adaptive learning, badging, assessment variety—like polls, surveys, and traditional quizzes—discussion forums, and new types of reports or dashboards.
Each space, or page, in the LMS has a purpose. And that depends on what it is intended to do. Although each LMS might be a little bit different, these spaces have the same general purpose from one LMS to the next. As I talk about them in with you today, think about the potential uses of these spaces for your own class.
I’ll give you just one example right here. Discussion spaces are designed to allow students and their instructors to post their own responses, reply to others, view entire threaded conversations, and also share linked or embedded content. The discussion forum would be a great place for students to practice using terminology that they are being taught in the class for the subject matter. And they can also apply concepts to their real lives and share ideas, respond to others about their thoughts and ideas, and feel out their general understandings as conversations unfold.
Discussion areas can be particularly useful spaces to give your students the opportunity to practice using new terms and share their formative ideas while they’re being guided and assisted by others, and to expect that these ideas might become more refined through the process of discussion, as they keep talking and posting about these ideas with other people during the class.
I’m going to dive into each of these spaces one at a time and give you a general idea of what you can do with them. I hope this will help you design your class, as you move your live class into the online format. Let’s start with the lessons area.
Using the Lessons Section
The Lessons area is one of the main sections of the classroom and one where students will spend a lot of time. It might also be the space that takes the most time and consideration to build. Most people would consider this a replacement of the live lecture. And that can be one way to use it, if you want to record a video of yourself teaching your students as if they are sitting in the same room with you. And then, you can post that video in the classroom.
While you can do that, and it would be the easiest way to convert your live class into an online version, the lessons section of your LMS can contain all kinds of content like videos, interactive media, links, typed content, images, and other items.
Your goal in the lessons area might be to introduce the subject for the week, give background information on various topics, provide reading selections or links to the online textbook for your students, engage their interest through media and interaction, and wrap up your lesson with a closing summary of the key points.
The lessons section can be vibrant, engaging, interactive, and full of information. Or, the lessons section can be brief and simply include a list of readings and other activities the student should complete and your video.
Whatever you choose to include, remember that when you’re using an LMS and teaching online, you can load up lots of engaging content that actually provides the instruction for the week, as well as opportunities for self-directed learning and exploration. This kind of choice and autonomy is especially important if you have adult learners.
The lessons section does not have to be a substitute for the weekly readings if you are also using a textbook and other materials for the class. Instead, think of it like the guidance and interpretation an instructor would normally provide to help students truly understand the topics.
In my area, teaching music appreciation courses, many students come to the class with little or no background knowledge in music. Other students, particularly those who participated in music during high school or other public schooling years, may have some cursory knowledge of music and music terms.
Because there are so many people with low to no background knowledge in music today, the lessons area is a great place to introduce new terms every week, and give interpretation of the lesson topics within the frame of music concepts. There is a lot we have to include there, to guide students effectively.
Announcements Section
The announcements section in any online course is also a place of importance, because it presents instructor information about the ongoing class to students, an overview of weekly goals, and a summary of items to be submitted. This area can be updated once per week or more frequently.
Announcements might contain information such as a brief overview of the topic, a list of items due at the end of the week, and reminders. This section is for all of the messages that are to be publicly provided to everyone in the class. Announcement posts may have the option of sending a copy out to participants’ email addresses, which ensures that students receive updated information promptly.
Assignments Section
The assignment section is another space common to most online LMS’s. Here, the actual work to be submitted for grading is described, with some kind of dropbox available to collect the completed work. This section can usually be set with open and closing dates so that assignments appear to students, accept submissions, and lock at the end of a given period.
If the LMS offers the option of linking assignments to the calendar, students can receive reminders about upcoming or missed due dates. In the assignment section, it is common for course designers or instructors to provide model assignments to students, documents that provide sample formatting like APA or MLA style, and other assets that may guide the student in how the work should be completed.
Anything you can do to give them an idea of what it’s going to look like when it’s done, that is going to reassure them. Because the course is entirely online and students do not have the option of asking multiple questions about the assignments in real time, the assignment section typically needs a lot of description and detail, so students can complete the work in a satisfactory manner.
Believe me, I’ve been there where students have misunderstood the assignment. And I’ll get 25 essays where students have all missed the mark. That takes a lot of time to fix.
In the assignment area, if the option is available, instructors may choose to have work scanned through a plagiarism or originality checker such as Bibme, Turnitin, or SafeAssign. Using plagiarism detecting tools or programs enables the instructor to address writing concerns quickly, and it reminds students to write in their own words as much as possible, potentially improving the originality of submitted work.
Discussions
Discussions are another space common to online course LMS’s, and this area is typically where most of the interaction between participants occurs. Discussions begin with a description of what is to be discussed, requirements of when initial posts and replies to others are to be posted, and some indication of how participation will be evaluated.
In the discussions area, most participants begin their involvement in the discussion by posting an initial thread to the forum. Once a thread is posted, those who reply to that post are linked underneath the initial post. In this way, Posts that are all about the same subject or to the same initial post are linked together in a threaded chain. Everyone who visits the discussion may be able to see the conversation that has unfolded, and separate conversations that are also occurring.
Often, because there isn’t a central location to discuss course related questions or other matters, instructors post a “questions” thread within a discussion area so students can separately ask questions about course deadlines, content, and other matters aside from the actual discussion topic for the week. Discussion forum areas within a learning management system typically have private spaces for grading comments and scoring, and these can be linked to a gradebook to reflect ongoing course grades.
Many people consider the discussion forum area of an online course the equivalent of the live, face to face interaction, that might otherwise occur in a live class in a traditional Setting. An asynchronous conversation, of course, is not exactly the same as a live conversation that would take place in a traditional classroom setting.
Asynchronous discussions are like many conversations taking place at the same time. Some conversations may be missed, and no one could possibly hear every conversation taking place in a live classroom, if group dialogs were simultaneously occurring in this manner. However, in the online classroom, most instructors are expected to read the entire conversation under every single thread that has taken place, especially prior to grading the work.
Within a live classroom, an instructor might not hear or respond to every single comment a student provides. In fact, many conversations occur, especially during group work, that an instructor does not hear and is not part of.
One other difference about discussion forums online is that students and instructors both can post interactive or multimedia content, which might not otherwise be used in a live setting. For example, form discussions have the advantage of being able to host YouTube links, presentations, and virtually anything that is available online or in a presentation format. This can enhance discussions in ways that typical live exchanges may not be enhanced in a normal classroom setting.
Gradebook
The gradebook is one section of the online learning classroom not always considered but vitally important to the management of the course. Many online LMS’s have gradebook sections that can be set up either by points or by weighted percentages. Here, the forum discussions are linked into the gradebook, the assignments are linked into the gradebook, and other categories may also be added. Scores and evaluative comments are published to students as soon as grades are available, so that students are aware at all times of how they are performing in the class. Most LMS’s still require some vigilance on the part of the instructor to double check categories, assignments, and the student view, to ensure that assignments not submitted on time receive a zero, and that the student’s grade book is kept up-to-date at any given point during the class.
Other Sections in the LMS
The lessons section, announcements, assignments, discussion forums, and gradebook are the basic structure available in most LMS’s today. Some LMS provide the option of additional tools, such as blogs, wikis, journals, and other text environment areas. Some LMS’s may also provide a space for listing multimedia content, posting web links within the course itself, or other features.
As an instructor moves to the online format, getting to know the online classroom space is vitally important in order to use it effectively. Although one can reach out to technical support at most colleges and universities for assistance in resolving conflicts within the online classroom, being able to diagnose problems within the course is critical before the course begins.
In contrast to a live class, where lessons can be fleshed out more fully as the course unfolds, an online course is typically expected to be completely set up prior to day one of the class.
Things to Know About Observers
In addition to all the areas described here that exist in most LMS’s, one interesting factor is that all actions to take place within the class are observable and “on the record.” Reports can be drawn based on these activities, such as attendance by the student and the instructor, comments made, assignments submitted, and so forth.
Students are able to see when others are actually in the online course, and so can the instructor or other observers.
In contrast to live courses, where the instructor is generally the only university employee in the room with students during a class, in the online setting, there may be many other observers stopping by the class at any given point.
Observers might include technical support teams, supervisors, faculty coaches, academic appeals departments, and other team members at the institution. Some institutions treat the online course environment similarly to the live setting, giving the instructor complete autonomy and intervening little.
Other universities are quite hands-on, and may be in the space with the instructor much more, observing often, and also producing standardized courses with little to be changed by individual instructors. These differences come from a variety of factors, but it can be helpful to be aware that they exist.
Keep it Simple When Just Starting Out
As you work to move a class into an LMS and take your teaching online, I hope you will fully explore each of these spaces available. Get creative, and let the LMS support the new and interesting things you can do which were not available in a live face to face class. And when you’re finished planning out where you will conduct each activity, and what you need to add in each section of the LMS for a strong learning experience, look for a setting that allows you to see the class in student mode—so that you know whether everything is working and can be seen by your students.
And of course, once you launch the class and you’re teaching it, be as prompt as possible to fix any errors or misalignment in the class, so that your students have a good experience and can accomplish what you expect from them.
Above all, if you’re completely new at this, take it one step at a time. Don’t expect yourself to build an amazing course with lots of bells and whistles from the very first day. Keep it simple, and add more as you feel comfortable doing it, until you’ve developed your class online in the way you would like. Over time, you’ll get better and better at using the LMS.
Thank you for joining me today to walk through the main spaces of an online classroom and think about your own course online. Best wishes this coming week in your online teaching!
This is Dr. Bethanie Hansen, your host for the Online Teaching Lounge Podcast. To share comments and requests for future episodes, please visit bethaniehansen.com/request. Best wishes this coming week in your online teaching journey.
Online education is a bit different from live teaching and learning. In today’s podcast, Dr. Bethanie Hansen gives a brief orientation to similarities and differences between live and online education, to help educators prepare to move a class online. Learn how online education is an opportunity to expand your teaching and learning possibilities in new ways, and it is not a strict copy of the live class.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: This podcast is for educators, academics, and parents who know that online teaching can be challenging, but it can also be rewarding, engaging, and fun. Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge. I’m your host, Dr. Bethanie Hansen, and I’ll be your guide for online teaching tips, topics, and strategies. Walk with me into the Online Teaching Lounge.
Thank you for joining me today for the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. Our audience includes educators all over the world, and in varying stages of teaching online. If you’re listening to this particular episode, chances are that you want a general overview of online education, to know if you’ve approached it effectively. Or maybe you just want to get started and have not taught online before.
Today, we’re going to take a look at different kinds of online education and walk through what makes online learning unique. This orientation is a description of what online education is, and what it is not, with some tips to help you think about moving your course online.
Today, we’ll look at a background on live courses, which I like to call “face-to-face,” of “live, traditional classes,” and we’ll briefly explore ideas to help you think about similarities and differences between live and online courses. In the future, we will refer back to this foundation when we talk about how you might move your live class to an entirely online format.
In today’s episode, we’re laying a foundation that will springboard into several topics for future episodes to come even beyond merely moving your course online. So plan now to subscribe to this podcast [Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Pandora.] Share it with your friends and colleagues who are teaching online. And help others you know grow in their own online teaching skills and philosophy. After all, you are not alone teaching online. There are thousands of us teaching online all around the world, and when you share this podcast, you help others feel part of this bigger professional community. And, you might even decide that this is a fun and rewarding career direction.
What is Online Education?
The term “online education” is widely used today to refer to any learning experience that includes part of the experience online over the Internet. Online education is becoming more common today, particularly due to the world pandemic. By now, most schools, universities, colleges, and organizations have some kind of online education or online training. Online education generally includes various approaches and options for course delivery, such as entirely online classes, blended and hybrid courses, massive open online courses (MOOCs), independent study, and various adaptations of these approaches. Today we are focusing on courses that are taught 100% online. However, many of the tools, concepts, and strategies presented can easily be applied to blended or hybrid and face-to-face environments.
Entirely Online Education
The 100% online class is now a common form of online education. Perhaps you are teaching this kind of class. In this type of educational experience, courses are offered completely online with students and instructors participating asynchronously within a learning management system (LMS). The LMS is a program or computerized platform that gives structure to the experience, including distinct spaces for document storage, lessons, assignments, discussions, a grade book, and other components.
When participants engage in the course asynchronously, this means that each person is involved in learning activities and dialogue at a time of their own choosing during the day or night and throughout the week. In addition to time gaps between connecting to other people and course content, students and faculty are geographically separated. Everyone may be able to use a variety of technology tools from smartphones to laptops and PCs for access.
Just as a wide variety of internet-accessible devices can be used to engage in online education, the pacing and scheduling of your time in an entirely online course is generally flexible, to some extent. And just like you, students can decide when they would like to participate each week. A minor variation of this model could be that you provide a live lecture, where students are expected to log in at a day and time that has been pre-arranged, to meet with you live through the online course. And with the pandemic, there might even be the option for some to attend live, in the face-to-face classroom, while others view the course live at home using the online platform.
There are some perks to teaching and learning online. First, entirely online courses are considered a versatile option for students who want flexibility. Most of us think that an entirely online course means students can complete their coursework “anytime, anywhere.” Just like them, we as the instructors appreciate the opportunity to teach online courses because they give us flexible scheduling and can be accommodated around our other commitments.
The greatest benefit to courses taught entirely online is the flexibility this learning modality gives us all to engage at our own convenience, and the greatest challenge is the perception of isolation participants may feel due to physical and temporal separation from others in the class. As a faculty member teaching online, it can also seem as though the work follows us everywhere and never ends. Work-life boundaries become much more important. Participating in online education requires a significant degree of self-discipline, time management, commitment, independence, and technology proficiency for both student and faculty.
Blended (Hybrid) Courses
Blended classes, also commonly called hybrid courses, are increasingly common and involve live, face-to-face meetings as well as online components. In this type of educational arrangement, courses include some live, face-to-face meetings at a pre-determined time and location and some online components such as document storage, assignment submissions, an online grade book, and online resources and lesson content.
Blended courses now come in a variety of combinations, and some universities are referring to these adaptations as “HyFlex” courses. They include aspects of both live and online learning, and while it can be challenging to determine what will be accomplished face-to-face and what belongs in the online component, it’s also possible that this type of online learning is the best of both worlds. You can get the synergy from live discussions during the face-to-face class meetings, which can be a catalyst for deep learning. And, the technology aspects from online components can direct students to more individualized, rich learning content and additional enrichment options.
Instructors must decide how much content will be presented in each of the two course environments, and how to structure the overall experience for learners to avoid doubling the student workload. Benefits of blended courses include a routine to support learners through live meetings where you can clarify things, guide students through the LMS and how to access it, and answer questions. And, the structured flexibility and richness of online components. When you compare blended classes to live, traditional courses, blended classes meet less often to give students time to also complete online work. Fewer live class meetings can present challenges keeping students on track if they miss class.
Face-to-Face Classes
Face-to-face classes supported by online components are courses provided in traditional, live formats with resources, assignments, or other components organized in a learning management system (LMS). Learning management systems can be effectively used to allow students to submit work outside the classroom environment, send assignments to plagiarism verification services, and enable instructors to grade and return work conveniently online.
The online support used in traditional, live courses may be as basic as using an assignment and grading interface and as elaborate as providing interactive readings, assessments, and multimedia content for homework, and even taking attendance in the LMS. Although classes supported by online components are similar to blended or hybrid offerings, they typically use the online framework only to support the live class, rather than instead of meeting for live classes. One benefit of including online components is the instant nature of submitting work and returning grading feedback. It’s also nice to have the possibility of using interactive textbooks, which add to students’ exploration and learning.
Adaptability in Teaching
If you think about the many kinds of online options available in education today, it may seem that many approaches and strategies are needed for each institution’s circumstances. This is true, and fortunately, anyone can customize their approach to teaching online to use all or only a little of the structure available. But even when we are customizing our approach to online education, there are many strategies and tools that can be easily used both in live face-to-face classes and when teaching entirely online.
And this brings us to our comparison between live classes and online classes.
Live versus Online Courses
If you’re thinking about moving you class online and you are worried that things will have to be very different, that could be true. Or, you can consider a few modifications to help move your activities online in ways that maintain a lot of what you would have done with the live class. Just in case you’re a bit nervous about teaching your courses online, I want to reassure you that students can still learn well and have good experiences online.
In a study of students who had taken both live, traditional and entirely online courses, those surveyed overwhelmingly reported that their online experiences were at least as good or better than their on-campus experiences (Clinefelter & Aslanian, 2017).
And to give them those positive experiences, we need to decide what essentials to include in the online course design. To decide what you’ll need to modify and what you can keep in this transition of taking an existing live class to teaching your course online, I’ll take a moment to highlight a few things about live classes.
What are the Standard Features of a Live, Traditional Course?
In saying “live, traditional course,” I’m referring to classes that meet face-to-face, at a set time and in a specific physical location. A live, traditional course is very common and has been the main method of delivering higher education courses over the past several hundred years throughout the world.
In higher education history, enrolling in college meant attending live, traditional classes. Individuals who worked full-time with families and established adult lives found it difficult or impossible to pursue degree programs due to scheduling conflicts, and those who lived too far from campus lacked access to this opportunity. You had to move closer to campus to get a college degree.
Here are some of the features of live, traditional courses:
Classes are held live, with the instructor and all participants attending at the same time, in the same location.
Students can see each other, interact informally before and after class, and have conversations in real time that include body language, live voices, and the inferences and impressions that accompany face-to-face conversations.
If students appear to misunderstand peers or the instructor, they can ask questions in real time.
The instructor can immediately introduce new ideas, examples, and resources to provide additional background on a given topic if they seem relevant in the moment.
Students who have peers in more than one class can see them in each of these places, and they begin to recognize classmates. Make friends. Build peer relationships that may support and sustain them during the class or throughout their entire adult lives afterward.
There is some disconnect between the individual reading, homework, and outside-of-class activities in which students engage as part of the course, when compared to the group dialogue and instruction that occurs during the class itself.
When a student misses class, it is difficult to find out all that they missed, because some of the content is social interaction.
And of course, my favorite, being physically present in the classroom gives students a sense of formality about the fact that they are attending a class and participating in an educational activity. There’s something about this that triggers the brain to get into learning mode and the physical boundaries of live, traditional classes help cut down the outside distractions and make the class time easier to see as the focus for that hour or so.
What are the Standard Features of an Online Course?
“Online course” is general, and this could be the 100% online version, the hybrid or HyFlex, or an adaptation of online parts. There are many variations to online education, and online courses have developed into a new educational norm most students experience at some point while completing a degree in one variation or another.
What I’ll outline here are the standard features that can become part of an online course.
Classes are held asynchronously, with the instructor and all participants entering the course at different times and at any location where internet access is available.
Students’ interaction with each other occurs in discussion forums, chat spaces, or question and answer threads located somewhere within the course, unless they arrange to communicate further by phone or other means away from the online classroom.
Students cannot see each other or their instructor unless photos or videos are posted to provide identity and engagement.
Online course conversations do not happen in real time and might consist only of text, unless audio or video clips are added.
There is time to think about what you will write and post in the class, and students can think about this too, rather than speaking in the moment. And things posted online can also be edited and revised after they are posted.
And when students struggle with concepts or misunderstand, they might be able to look up the answer on the internet immediately or have to wait patiently for others to enter the course and answer their questions, or hear back from their instructor.
Because most or all of the learning is happening online and in the online classroom space, the learning experience has the potential to be comprehensive and focused. Everything is in one location. There can be a seamless integration between individual work, readings, and course activities, and the teaching and collaborative dialogue that occur in discussion areas.
Each part of the course has a specific location and resources, organized in some type of learning management system (LMS). For example, discussions occur in a specific area and can be accessed by clicking a tab or link in the LMS. Assignments and assignment descriptions are available in a different area, also accessible through a link or tab. With course components each in specific, labeled areas of the LMS, a course has structure and some degree of organization. To be present in the online classroom, all you need to do is log in and click links or activities. When a student misses class, the missed content is still part of the course and they can review what was missed.
Although the structured online course environment might seem a bit formal, boundaries are challenging to maintain when you are learning or teaching entirely online. You might experience interruptions with your internet connection, or interruptions from your email and social media accounts. And, of course, there are non-technological interruptions, like having someone knock at your door, call you on the telephone, or walk into the room while you’re working to start a conversation. Flexibility in working anytime, anywhere gives individual students and you, as their instructor, the need to set boundaries and also the opportunity to schedule the work at times that fit your own circumstances.
What are the Similarities and Differences of Live and Online Courses?
In both your live, face-to-face course, and an online course, you will teach or present subject-matter content, allow students to interact, and include some kind of method to give and collect assignments and grading feedback. In both cases, you must be aware of how much work you’re expecting and meet contact hour requirements for the credit hours of the class. And you can get to know your students and interact with them in both types of courses.
Your relationships with students might be different when teaching them entirely online. Some instructors seem to feel more connection with students online, because they can slow down and review what students have said, see their photograph, and get a sense of every student in the class. And some feel that students are harder to get to know when teaching them online. The nature of relationships between students and their instructor or peers is going to be different when you move your course online because there isn’t the single time and space connection, where you experience and get to know them in real time.
The way you present your content also varies. In live traditional courses, you might give a spoken or guided lecture or demonstration. But in online courses, students determine which resources they access, whether they see the lesson, click on a video, or read the online written materials, and how deeply they explore the content, and to some degree, the pace of their learning activities.
A Discussion of What Online Education Is and Is Not
Although you might want to design your online class to be a duplicate of your live class, it’s a great idea to explore the special strategies and tools available online that could transform your teaching. Online education is an opportunity to expand teaching and learning possibilities in new ways, and it is not a strict copy of the live class.
You can include rich resources, interactivity, and engaging things like videos, apps, multimedia presentations, and other tools, through which your students are free to explore and navigate. For example, students can create an Animoto presentation with photos of themselves and post it in the first week’s discussion forum to introduce themselves to the rest of the class. This type of presentation does not require sophisticated writing or a speech, because it consists mainly of just photographs. Tools like this one can be used creatively to help students produce assignments and discussions, as well as by you, their instructor, to provide engaging lesson content and guidance students need throughout the course.
The engaging aspects of online education continue to grow over time as new apps, programs, and tools are developed. It might be tempting to think online education is a duplicate of the live classroom to ensure important parts of the course are included, but trying to imitate the live course can be difficult. Imitating a live course could mean that an instructor feels compelled to create lecture videos that would simulate what might be provided in a live class, as an example. This is a great idea, but it is not always necessary as part of the lesson content. Although the content itself might be similar between live and online versions of a course, the methods, strategies, and delivery vehicles can be different.
Online education is a unique modality. It is a specific way to deliver the college or university experience to those who need special scheduling, prefer to work over the computer or internet rather than participate in a live setting, or who have other needs that are met through this modality. And of course, online education is incredibly helpful in unexpected times, like during a pandemic. Online education is not perfect, but it is flexible, enriching, and unique.
Join me next time, on the Online Teaching Lounge podcast, when we dive into the details of your online classroom structure. This will be your orientation about the spaces like lessons, discussions, quizzes, assignments, announcements, and more. With this orientation to the different parts of your online classroom, you’ll be prepared to think in more detail when you move your live class to the online format, and you’ll find it a much easier task.
And if you’re already an experience online educator, you’ll get a few new ideas you can try out in your existing online courses, too! Remember, tell a friend, tell a colleague, and let’s help all of us enjoy teaching online much more, and have fun while we’re doing that. Thanks for being here, and best wishes in your online teaching this coming week.
This is Dr. Bethanie Hansen, your host for the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. To share comments and requests for future episodes, please visit bethaniehansen.com/request. Best wishes this coming week in your online teaching journey.
Teachers can vary their management of online discussions by using small group discussions. In this episode, Dr. Bethanie Hansen shares research that measured students’ and faculty engagement in both large and small group discussions in online classes and she shares ideas for consideration when varying the approach.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: This podcast is for educators, academics, and parents who know that online teaching can be challenging, but it can also be rewarding, engaging, and fun. Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge. I’m your host, Dr. Bethanie Hansen, and I’ll be your guide for online teaching tips, topics, and strategies. Walk with me into the Online Teaching Lounge.
Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. Today, I want to talk to you about the discussion boards in your online class. I know there’s a lot of talk about what’s better, large group or small group discussions. You might have a learning management system that allows you to set up the smaller groups automatically, and some of you do that manually.
It’s possible to decide, for a variety of reasons, which one you prefer. Which you will use in your class, and what you expect the outcomes to be. Today, I will share with you a little bit of research that I’ve come across that talks about the online discussion forums. I want to compare the large group and the small group.
You’ll find some very interesting information there. I also want to share some interesting details from a survey in 2019 which was well before so many institutions also moved online, adding to those who already were there. Now, this study shows that the soft skills like critical thinking and problem-solving are the skills that students are learning when they are working online. But less likely are the teamwork and oral communication skills. So there’s improvement in these skills by taking classes online, but not as much in those teamwork and oral communication categories.
If you teach online asynchronously, it’s possible that oral communication may still lag behind. But teamwork can definitely be a focus in the smaller group setting, and it might be something to think about during today’s podcast. Another thing to think about is what students are getting out of that experience, if they are going to engage online. Is it so that they can be socially connected? Connect with their peers and their faculty member? Is it so they can have a sense of identity that they’re part of a group or part of a class? Is it to demonstrate their knowledge, like completing an assignment? Or, is that discussion space a place to explore the topics, try them out, and have some formative assessment?
Whatever your preference, it’s good to have intentional reasons for choosing them. The other problem about discussions online that we’re never clear about is how to measure whether they’re working.
We can grade individual students, sure. Evaluate whether they demonstrate something in the discussion. But it’s really hard to know if one approach is better than another. For example, this idea of having a large class discussion or having the smaller group discussions. I’m going to make some suggestions today based on the research. I hope you’ll try them out and then share them back with us in the request form on my website, BethanieHansen.com. You can go there and add your comment, and send it my way.
Does it Matter Whether Students Meet in Large or Small Groups Online?
The question is: Why should we care about whether a discussion is large group or small group? How’s it going to help students, either way? And what’s going to hurt us if we don’t care about this? What are we losing by not entertaining this idea, and how does it really impact our students or our faculty?
Well, the answers are not going to come from a single research study, of course. But entertaining these ideas is the game we’re playing. It’s important to be intentional, as I mentioned, and also be thinking about why you might choose one thing over another.
Measuring Students’ Online Discussion Engagement Includes Several Metrics
The first idea is that it’s difficult to measure the types of participation students do an online discussion. We might read their post and evaluate it using some kind of rubric about whether they demonstrated certain skills or certain knowledge, but it’s really difficult to know if they are engaging in ways that do actually lead to transformative learning.
After all, when we’re online, we want to ensure that our students are getting some transformation from that learning. That their thinking is expanding. That they are grappling with the topics.
There’s an idea introduced early on in the background section of this article that I particularly liked, as the difference between cooperative learning and collaborative learning. Cooperative learning is where we’re splitting the tasks out, and different team members might be learning or doing different things, and then putting it together in a group project or some kind of group output. And collaborative learning, in contrast, is the process of mutual and shared concept building through the socially mediated processes. And basically, that means we’re going to get somewhere and think more deeply and more fully about the topic by doing this discussion together, or by having this discussion together.
This latter one, this idea of collaborative learning is what most of us are expecting to come out of an online discussion, and the question that we keep asking is: How do we know if that is happening; how do we know if a student is truly transforming through that discussion or if they’re just posting a response and leaving and never getting anything more out of it?
While there’s a lot of theory shared in this research article about what we believe to be true, there’s also a lot of down-to-earth practice. For example, the authors tell us that intuitively, it seems like the asynchronous discussion would enhance the small group interaction. And then in practice, it’s really hard to get this to happen. And one of the reasons is that we have students who may choose not to participate in the discussion.
We might have students who choose not to finish the class, or maybe their participation is minimal, and not really coming back to engage further. We might see some off-topic posts or negative attitudes towards the group discussion. It can be very difficult to get all of the students to really write educationally valuable content.
That takes some coaching, some good feedback, some guidance in your expectations up front, and even some modeling. I’ve seen some faculty praise their students who do it well and even share model posts with the rest of the group for the following week, just to help students come along and gain more skills in interacting in the discussion.
So think about what it is really going to do, to try this experiment of small group discussions versus large group discussions. You could either have a few in one class of each type, or you could teach your next class session with small groups, and then come back with the following session of a similar course and have large group discussions, and kind of look at that and see what comes out of it.
How to Gauge if a Course Format is Successful
The authors of this study created a wonderfully interesting rubric to evaluate all of this kind of participation, and I find it really thought-provoking, about how we might gauge whether a course is successful.
Define student participation
One of the things they measured is student participation, and they’re calling student participation the number of students who decide to participate in a particular discussion week compared to the number enrolled. For example, you might have 20 students in the class and 16 of them post in that discussion, so the participation would be 16 of the 20.
Notice the average quantity of students’ posts
The next area that they are evaluating is the quantity of student postings; take the total number of student responses for one particular discussion and compare that to the number of active participating students in that discussion.
If everybody’s posting twice, and you’ve got your 20 students all participating, you probably have 40 posts and that’s going to give you a quantity of about two posts per student.
Simplify your assessment of discussion quality.
The third area is the quality of student postings. Because this is so difficult to evaluate, for research purposes, [the authors] came up with a very nice two-place checkbox.
Either it’s “educationally valuable talk” or it’s “educationally less-valuable talk.” And basically, educationally valuable talk is the kind of interaction that has exchanges where they are constructing information, engaging with the ideas or key concepts of the class, and building knowledge. They’re using some reasoning skills, they’re articulating ideas, they’re showing creativity, and they’re reflecting. And, you can see this in the content.
Just reading through a post as a faculty member, you can see whether a student is doing these kinds of things. They might be mistaken, they might have incorrect information or come to a wrong conclusion where you hope they go in a different direction, but when it’s focused on the topic and those higher-thinking skills, we’re categorizing that as educationally valuable talk.
Then there’s the other side of the coin, which is educationally less-valuable talk. We find this a lot when we see students who do what I call “high-five” posts. High-five posts could be something like acknowledging what someone has written without adding anything more. High-fiving them could be saying, “Yes, I agree.” It could be saying something about what they posted and just summarizing it back. There’s nothing new added when you’re high-fiving with your educationally less-valuable talk. And in the research study I’m sharing with you today it also could be things like posts about dividing up the group work, business type tasks like getting things kicked off so that everyone’s engaging, but it’s not necessarily about the academic subjects.
Check the extent of conversational threading
There’s also another area to measure, and that is the extent of threading. You see this pattern where you or a student posts an initial post in the discussion, and no one ever responds to it. That’s just speaking out, and no one is engaging in that conversation. And then you could have two-way exchanges, like there is the initial post, and someone replies. And were going to call that acknowledged posts. Someone has responded but there’s nothing further after that.
Now, if there’s a post, a reply, and something more, this is where we get into actual discussion. And we’re going to call these third level threading, which is discussions with two or more levels of replies. Not just two or more people who responded to the initial post. So looking at the extent of threading is where we’re seeing more cognitive depth, more exploration of the topic, and this is the kind of thing we really want to see all of our discussions, whether they’re small group or large group.
Consider a strong instructor presence
The other thing noticed and measured in this discussion-oriented study is instructor presence. Instructor presence, you might think it needs to be different in small group discussions, but what they noticed was that the instructors in all the courses they observed engaged about the same in the small groups and in the large groups.
I would suggest as one who manages faculty at my university, I look for faculty to be engaged at a high level and with quality, but I too don’t think that it needs to change when they are in small groups. You don’t necessarily need to engage more or less. You just still need to engage within those groups like you would in the large group.
Thinking about this, I’m going to share some of the takeaways that I learned from this research study, and I’d like you to consider them when you’re teaching your next class and see what comes up for you if you decide to try either of these methods and really think about them.
Of course most of us are doing the large group discussion method already, so noticing some of these attributes that I mentioned here like how many students are participating compared to how many are enrolled, how many posts are the typical students putting in the discussion, and what’s the quality of their posts, and how much threading seems to be happening.
Small Group Discussions can Lead to More Engagement Overall, Including Less Relevant Content
This study produced a few significant results, and one of those was that in small groups they noticed that students participated at a higher rate. When I suggested before that maybe you have 20 students in a class and maybe you have 14 or 16 [engaging], well in small group discussions, they got a greater number of those enrolled 20 students participating in the small groups when compared to the large groups.
Think about it. If you’re in a large group, sometimes you feel like you get lost in a sea of people. And if you’re in a small group, there might be a greater sense that people will know you. That you’ll be able to connect with them, and maybe be seen and heard. That makes a lot of sense, psychologically speaking.
The second thing was the quantity of students’ posts in these small groups versus large groups. In the study, they found that students posted a lot more in the small groups than they did the large groups. Again, it makes a lot of sense, because in a small group we feel seen and heard a little bit more. There’s a chance we might even get to know those people.
The quality of student posting was also interesting. They got a lot more of those educationally valuable posts that I mentioned, which were on topic and about the content, and manipulating the subject matter, in small groups.
In the large groups, they had fewer of those overall. But an interesting byproduct of this whole process and studying this was that they also noticed there were a lot of less educationally valuable topics [in large group discussions]. So a lot more on-topic depth in small groups, but a lot more of the other kinds of posts as well. Like the figuring out how to do the group project together and the high-fiving posts, and the interchanges that are not academic in nature.
Now a lot of faculty might see posts like that and think they shouldn’t be there or that there should only be posts about the academic topics. But if you’ve seen a lot of that happening and a lot of the off-topic stuff, it’s not a bad thing. In fact, those off-topic posts just might be the thing that help your students feel like they’re really part of a group. Like they’re connecting with other humans, and they’re starting to get their identity as a learner. It’s not all bad.
Instructors can Engage about the Same in Both Large and Small Group Discussions
They also noticed in this discussion study that there wasn’t a lot of difference in the levels of threaded posts in small groups versus large groups, so if you’d like to see a lot more reply, reply, reply to the same thread, you’re not going to necessarily see that.
And another thing is that instructors don’t have to change their approach. So, they [the researchers] didn’t notice a change in instructor presence or participation in small groups compared to large groups.
How can you Explore the Small Group Discussion Strategy?
Think about all of this and your own practice. Have you been interested in trying small group discussions, and are you getting tired of that large group discussion where students post once, reply twice, and just disappear?
This is a great way to vary that or change it up completely throughout the whole class. You can divide your students into groups at the beginning of the course, say have a large group discussion in week one so people can get to know each other and get acclimated, and then you can break them into the groups for the following weeks. They’re going to have increased participation themselves, more peer interactions, and deeper socially constructed knowledge, which means they’re bouncing the ideas off of each other and learning together in a truly collaborative way. This is going to help further the course content and the focus on learning.
Interesting to notice that students were so much more vocal in the small groups. I think sometimes we resist new ideas like this one, because we’re afraid students are really just talking about the assignment, how to quickly get through it, or somehow being off-topic, which may happen. But that connection with each other and pushing through the knowledge that they’re trying to master together can be such a positive experience. This is well worth the time and worth trying, and there’s also a lot of reflection happening in these smaller groups, and potentially more analysis and argumentation as well.
I might sound like I’m trying to persuade you today to try small groups, and I’m really not. I’m just trying to shed light on the possibility that these could be very beneficial for students and yield some results that we don’t anticipate.
It could help our students by helping them to engage more deeply in the content by being in the small groups and helping them feel seen and heard. Students need that online now more than ever, so we should care about how we approach those things and those needs that our students have.
Will we suffer if we don’t try it? Probably not. If you’re using large group discussions now, you can probably continue to do that and continue in the same way you have; but you might find different results when you try small group discussions.
How does it impact our students? Students are coming away with increased connections and much more involvement in the class. That sounds like a positive impact.
Now if you decide to try it, how are you going to measure it and decide if it’s working? You can look at the student persistence and retention in your courses from course to course and throughout the weeks of the course you’re teaching.
You can also look at your end-of-course surveys when you try this method to see how they compare with those of the courses in which you use the large group discussions.
In closing, I want to share my own experience with this. I just recently tried in one week of my course, and my course is eight weeks long. I broke my classes into two groups instead of the large group discussion and there were about 25 students in the class. So there were, say 12 and 13 in each group. I broke them into these smaller groups and I didn’t tell students. I didn’t say anything. They all had the same forum prompt, they just didn’t have as many people to engage with in that discussion week.
When I look at the statistics, I did notice students engaged much more. So between week four and week six, where the large group discussions happened, and week five where we tried out the group breakup, week five was much more engaged. Many more posts by my students. And that seems to definitely support the research study that I was sharing with you today—if nothing more but to give students a chance to be seen and heard. That does benefit them, and it helps us, because we can’t possibly reach every single student all at once effectively. This could be a tool for building the rapport that we need in our classroom while also giving them the space to practice the content that we really hope they’ll be learning.
Take a look, and if you’re interested in the research study I mentioned today, I’ve got a link to it in the podcast notes, so take a look on APUEdge.com for those notes or my companion website BethanieHansen.com. In both places, you’ll be able to find the transcript and the link to the research I mentioned.
Thank you for being with me today and for entertaining these topics, like discussion forums and how we can best meet students’ needs. The more we can see our students and help them to feel like they are heard, and help them walk through the content that we’re trying to teach them and apply it, the more our students will leave truly transformed by their educational experience. That makes the whole world a better place. Best wishes to you in your online teaching this week.
This is Dr. Bethanie Hansen, your host for the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. To share comments and requests for future episodes, please visit bethaniehansen.com/request. Best wishes this coming week in your online teaching journey.
Dedicating time to reflect can help educators assess their teaching strategy and find ways to improve and become more effective. In this episode, Dr. Bethanie Hansen shares what reflective practice means, how to get started, and tips for making the most of reflective writing.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: This podcast is for educators, academics, and parents who know that online teaching can be challenging, but it can also be rewarding, engaging, and fun. Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge. I’m your host, Dr. Bethanie Hansen, and I’ll be your guide for online teaching tips, topics, and strategies. Walk with me into the Online Teaching Lounge.
Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. I’m Bethanie Hansen, and I’m very happy to talk with you today about reflective writing. That’s right, reflective writing is one practice that will improve your online teaching quickly.
When you reflect about what you’re doing and think about the habits you’re creating in your online teaching journey, you can then make small adjustments and improve things over time, to save yourself time. Reflective teaching means that you’re going to look at what you do when you’re teaching. Think about why you do it, and think about whether it works.
What is Reflective Practice?
This is an overall process of observing yourself, or self-observation. And, it’s also self-evaluation. When you’re evaluating your own teaching, you won’t be surprised if someone else comes along and evaluates you and sees something similar.
John Dewey said, “We do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience.” That’s absolutely right. I keep a journal; I’ve been keeping a journal since I was 12 years old. That’s a lot of journaling! I’ve written about many experiences I’ve had, and I’ve also written about thoughts I had, and day-to-day experiences that are pretty mundane. And, I have gone through some of those journals from my earlier life, and I find fascinating things that I wrote. I also remember things afresh because I don’t remember them for real, but I remember them by reading about my experiences as I wrote them. This is been really insight-producing for me, but it’s also helpful as an educator.
Early in my career, when I was a public school music teacher, we were encouraged to write down some reflective thoughts at the end of our teaching day. I found that a helpful way to consider what was going well, as well as what I wanted to fix. I hope you will find this a positive practice to quickly improve your online teaching as well. Here are some things that reflective educators do.
Planning Ahead Makes Reflective Practice Possible
First, dedicate time to reflect. If you don’t plan ahead to set this time aside in your day, you won’t do it. There’s no common time for reflecting, except perhaps when one’s preparing to go to bed. You might have a reading habit, or a journaling habit, at that time, in which case you could add reflective journaling to that routine.
I prefer to do reflective writing about my professional life at the end of the workday, and not at the end of the day. Earlier in the evening is better, because it’s fresh, and I can think about what I did during my workday, and kind of close that part of my day. Dedicate time to reflect by selecting whether this will be a daily habit, a weekly habit, or a monthly habit. Or if you prefer, you might reflect after certain lessons that you’re giving that you’re especially concerned about or excited about.
Reflective Practice Can Help Us Be Intentional
Number two, reflect to make specific teaching decisions. As you reflect on your practice, you’ll be able to see things a little bit more objectively. Some of us are hard on ourselves. We judge our teaching very harshly. Others, we give ourselves a lot of latitude, and we like to acknowledge everything that’s going right.
As you’re reflecting on your teaching, notice where you find patterns. As you notice these patterns, for example, your own teaching is difficult in certain lessons that you’re giving, or you find certain assignments very boring or very difficult to grade, as you notice those kinds of patterns you can make new decisions about the way design your course and about the way you teach the course.
Reflection is very helpful to make specific teaching decisions that improve your teaching and also improve student learning.
Reflective Practice Improves Our Time Management
Number three, reflect about how to approach tasks and challenges. One of the things I do occasionally is note how I spent my time throughout the day.
I will write down how much of my time was spent grading work, how much of my time was spent reading e-mails, how much of my time was spent creating videos to put in my class, and all of those other tasks I do as an online professor. Have you ever done that?
Have you ever written down how you spend your day? When you do that, and you write down the time log, you can think about how to approach the tasks and challenges you face as an online educator and find new approaches.
In fact, as you reflect on the tasks that you do as an online educator, it might even occur to you to research those tasks and find out how other people approach them. The more you think about the way you approach your tasks and challenges, the more you can plug holes in time. Such as where time just slips away from you, or feels kind of wasted. You can pull that in, tighten it up, and make your teaching even more effective.
Reflective Practice Helps Us Consider Our Strategies
Fourth, reflect to consider strategies and andragogy. As you are teaching your course from week to week, or month to month, as you reflect on your teaching, you can consider whether you’re using strategies the way you had hoped and if they went the way you hoped they would. You can also consider what adult learners truly need in the online classroom.
Good principles of andragogy, or andragogy theory, includes ideas like adults having choice in their learning process, adults being able to bring their life experiences into their learning, and many other good principles.
As you think about the principles of andragogy or theory of andragogy and reflect on whether you’re using them in your teaching, or in the design of your course, you might consider new approaches for the future.
Reflective Practice Helps Us Analyze How We Teach
And lastly, number five, reflect to analyze your teaching. Many of the things that I would do to analyze my teaching in a live class would be to notice how I was talking to my students, how I was pacing the lesson, how it was structuring the content, whether we needed a different kind of warm-up activity or closure activity, and that was easy to do, when it was about real time.
When you’re doing it in an asynchronous course, analyzing your teaching in that setting can be a little different. You might need to read through some of the things you’ve written in the class and some of the answers you’ve given your students, or forum replies you’ve posted.
As you look over these things, then you can take out a notebook or a Word document on your computer, and you can type some thoughts about your teaching in those different parts of the classroom.
One of the questions I would respond to when analyzing my teaching was: How did the approach I used land with my students?
How did students appear to respond to the approach I used in this particular week?
How did students format their assignments for the goals that I put forth for that assignment? Did it land?
Does it look like students understood the content enough to answer those questions, or do I need to take some other approach?
Whenever I write about my teaching, it takes some time to think it through. To notice what is really happening in the classroom and how I’m feeling about my teaching. And the more I do it, the better I am as an educator.
How to Make Reflective Practice Work for You
Now that I’ve talked with you a little bit about what reflective teachers do, let’s consider how we do it. This would be the logistical “nuts and bolts” of journaling.
You might use a coaching journal or a teaching journal of sorts, and you can answer these three questions when you think about your teaching.
How did I think like an educator?
How did I act like an educator?
How did I exercise curiosity with my students and a beginner’s mind like an educator? Like a lifelong learner?
You might use a journal if you like the hardcopy version. I personally do, and I’ve read some research out there about how writing by hand has a much bigger impact than just typing or just dictating. But if you don’t like to write by hand, it’s definitely still worth your time to use one of those other methods.
You might consider getting a spiral notebook. These are cheap. You can find them at just about any store that sells pens and paper. You might consider using Post-it notes, scraps of paper, a three-ring binder with some paper in there, or you could use an actual bound journal, where you’re going to write regularly.
If you’re going to use electronic methods, you might use Microsoft Word, Penzu or another journaling software, a Rocket Book or another kind of e-notebook, pen to computer, or you can dictate to an electronic notepad, such as on your iPad, your iPhone, or your Samsung device.
Technical Reflection
If you’re going to make a technical reflection as you’re journaling or reflecting on your online teaching, consider reflecting about your general instruction and management behaviors that you use, based on educational theory and research. Those things you learned as you are preparing to become an educator.
You can also reflect on the various best practices of online teaching and consider how they might or might not be working for you. And then in the quality of your reflection, think about how you can get into some depth there, and think about really what is and is not working.
A management behavior you might reflect about would be whether or not your netiquette policy is helpful or if you need a netiquette policy. What kind of things you notice about the way students respond in forum discussions? And, how have you tried to help them show up even more academically there?
Reflection In-Action and On-Action
If you’re going to do a reflection in-action and on-action, that would be reflecting while you’re in the online classroom and doing the teaching. Or afterwards, when you’re reflecting about the actions you’ve already performed.
This would be you reflecting on your own personal teaching performance. And you might base your decisions on your own situation. There are certainly some circumstances in which our online teaching may be less than stellar for various reasons; maybe we’re in an emergency situation. Maybe we have a crisis in our family, and we are just trying to get through the course and there might not be back up. So we do the best that we can, but whatever’s going on might be part of your reflection.
Deliberative Reflection
You might also consider a deliberative reflection, and this could be on a range of teaching concerns. You might reflect on how you’ve seen other online educators do things or whether you’d like to observe others.
You could also think about teaching methods, strategies, and management that you’d like to try and intentionally write about those. You can weigh different viewpoints or research findings you read about. You might even reflect on what you learn from this podcast right here.
Personalistic Reflection
And then of course, there’s the personalistic reflection, and this might be about your emotional response or your analysis of the entire teaching experience:
How are you experiencing being an online educator right now?
What’s tough for you?
What’s refreshing and new and wonderful for you?
That kind of personal insight that you look at from day to day or week to week can really help you see how far you’ve come. As you look over it near the end of the course, or end of the session or semester, you might see some growth in your confidence as well as the quality of your reflections.
You can of course do it weekly, daily, or monthly, whatever works for you. But I do also can suggest using at least some kind of beginning and end of the course reflection, so you can think about what’s coming up and also reflect on what has been.
Smaller Reflections Get You Started
And lastly, if you’re not really sure you’re interested in a reflection habit, start small and use a timer. Giving yourself five or 10 minutes to reflect, and focusing on just one thing at a time can help you keep it tightly controlled so it doesn’t end up taking more of your time than you’d like to spend.
Over time, reflection can help you grow as an educator. This is particularly important when you’re teaching online, and you might have fewer peers than you do in a live situation. I hope you’ll try starting a reflective practice about your online teaching this coming week, and I wish you all the best in your online teaching.
This is Dr. Bethanie Hansen, your host for the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. To share comments and requests for future episodes, please visit bethaniehansen.com/request. Best wishes this coming week in your online teaching journey.
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