by Bethanie Hansen | Best practices, Higher Education, Podcast, Students, Teaching Online
Enhancing Online Discussion Forums to Improve Student Learning
This content first appeared at APUEdge.Com.
Discussion forums are where most interactions happen in the online classroom, so it’s critical that educators use this area strategically. In this episode, APU’s Dr. Bethanie Hansen provides insight into enhancing discussion forums to encourage student engagement, foster connections, exercise critical thinking skills, and offer further learning into the topic at hand. Learn how to improve discussion forums by writing open-ended questions, clearly setting expectations with students about when and how often they should participate, and more.
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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 today’s podcast. We’re going to talk about forum discussions. Discussions, discussion forums, they’re called a lot of things, but these are the places in the online classroom where students and faculty, peer-to-peer, peer-to-self, peer-to-content, peer-to-faculty, this is where everyone is going to speak about the content and interact. This is the main conversation space.
Forum discussions can be used as a place for pure discussion, basically it’s about the academic content. It could be a place where you have students place their graded work or they’re going to put it there and have something like a peer review. Or they’re going to post a blog and it’s got to be graded. They could be assignments posted to share and discuss before their due date, to be a draft for peer review.
They could be assignments shared after the fact just to share, say, it’s a PowerPoint presentation. And talk about concepts together. It could be a space where students teach each other. Whatever it is, forum discussions in my opinion are an optimal thing to really engage formative assessment strategies. Help students through learning and get them really engaged in the class.
Franklin D. Roosevelt said that “If a civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships.” This is a great place to do it. There are different places in the typical online classroom for these other elements. There’s usually, in a learning management system, there is an assignment space to submit essays and blogs and things like that.
There are also other tools in certain learning management systems where you can have students write a journal and submit it privately. For that reason, today I’m going to discuss only conversational elements of discussion forums. I’m going to give you a few strategies, some tips you can use, some best practices, some based on research, some based on experience and observation.
Why Should You Care About the Discussion Area?
First, every learning management system comes with a space for conversations. Many of them, and some of the older models especially, called them a forum. And a forum is a space where conversations can occur. If you change that name to discussions, it makes it even more specific to what you’re hoping to achieve in that space. A discussion is back and forth, it isn’t one person setting everyone else straight, and it is an opportunity for varying levels of engagement and participation in that discussion.
This is a great space where students can have some formative practice with learning the material that you’re teaching. It is also a place where they can have guided practice, which anyone new to the subject area is going to need, to develop their thinking, to develop their descriptive abilities for terms that are going to be used, to develop their analytical abilities, and so forth. They’re the best locations where students can try on new ideas. Try on new terms and concepts and write about them to further develop and adjust their thinking.
You should care about discussion forums not only because there’s a space to do them in an online class, but more because when you have students learning from you and from the content, you want to see the results of the learning. One of the best things we can do as educators is see the result and determine if our strategies are working. The discussion is a space where we can help nudge people in the right direction, help them explore those ideas more fully and learn from each other and us as the teacher so that we can get them to a place where they’re ready to do more.
The discussion could be excellent preparation for an assignment. For example, if you had an essay you wanted a student to do, to write about their understanding on a particular subject, that discussion the previous week could’ve been focused on the topic to explore ideas. Test them out. Apply them in a soft way. Then, in the following week, if the student writes the essay, they can be prepared because they had a chance to talk through their ideas.
General purposes of a discussion space are to foster this connection between people and give people a space to check in, converse. Most online classes are asynchronous in many universities, which means that a student goes in, participates, does their work, and leaves, and then you as the faculty member might be in that classroom at a different time.
If your courses are synchronous–meaning that they’re taking place in real time–then maybe a discussion is just a space where you might have a little follow-up conversation to whatever happens in that live space. And in that kind of situation, it makes sense that maybe the faculty member is checking on the discussion and facilitating it, but less active.
When there’s an asynchronous situation where students are to guide themselves through the learning material, through the lesson content, a more active role for the faculty member or teacher is super helpful to help the students stay on track.
In an online class, forum discussions can serve as the space where students have a voice for initial comments. Every single student has a voice. Now, if you think about your typical university lecture class, you might have one faculty member at the front of the room, lots and lots of students especially if it’s a general education class, you might have 300 students in there. Unless you give the students time to talk to each other during part of that class to discuss the ideas, many times students really don’t have a voice at all during the class. There’s this learning cycle where we take in information, we think about it, we talk about it, we write about it, and eventually we’ve formed our understanding of the content. Simply hearing it doesn’t really help us to change our ideas, be transformed by them or deeply learn things.
In the forum discussion unlike the live lecture class, you’ve got this opportunity for students to really have their own voice, have a choice about what they contribute to the dialogue. It’s a super huge benefit of online education and something that makes online learning unique and very special when you compare it to the live class with very little participation.
Now, if you’re a more active instructor and in your live classes you tend to engage people a lot, that’s normal and usual for you. I tend to do that as a strategy because of my background, but not everyone sees teaching that way, so this is the opportunity for a totally different experience that student’s going to have.
On the flip side, there are students who don’t want to participate in the discussion. They want to show up, they want to get the very minimum of what they need to do in that online class or that live class–whatever kind it is–they want to get a grade and move on. For these students that class is not a subject they particularly like, they don’t really want to learn it, they’re busy working and this is a part-time thing going to school, for whatever reason there are many students who just want to move as quickly through as possible.
But I want everyone out there to know there are also people who deeply want to learn the content. Many, in fact. It might surprise you how many students really do care and want to really understand what you’re teaching. So, this is the chance that they can contribute their ideas and they can engage with other people and they can get new insights and have a lot of different experiences. Caring about this matters because whatever attitude or perception or belief that you bring to the experience as the faculty member or the teacher, that predisposed disposition–that’s a little redundant–by your disposition about forum discussions, this is going to greatly influence the students’ experience.
It doesn’t really matter how the discussion is set up, what it’s prepared to do; if you are against doing discussions online, it’s going to be very difficult to utilize these to their full potential. Now if you really like to engage with students, love to hear what they have to say, love to challenge them and prompt them to think more deeply and share your insights, experience, and questions with them, then a forum discussion might come more naturally.
One of the ways to be most successful setting these up in your own attitude and thinking is to consider what you view the value of education, the core philosophy of what you’re doing. What you hope to accomplish by being a teacher. The big picture. Do you hope to change people’s assumptions? Do you hope to open doors for them so they can move in new directions? Do you hope to help them transform themselves as individuals? Are you trying to promote social change?
There are a lot of different roles that education can serve. Whatever your belief is about it, chances are, you’re going to find something you can really bring into that discussion in a way that’s going to be uniquely you and make a difference and really have somewhere to go with it.
The problem of online education is the lack of face-to-face, especially in asynchronous classes that don’t meet all at one time. In a synchronous class you’re still held back by this digital interface, but even then, you’re seeing people and you’re hearing them in real time. So, the problem of teaching online is partially overcome through that discussion, where we start to get to know each other, we start to dive into ideas.
Now why does that matter? If you have a disengaged student or have a lack of connection, it’s very difficult to feel like moving forward with the content. Many times, people need that connection to feel like they’re part of a school, part of a class, engaged in learning, moving forward on something. It’s going to matter to you long-term to learn how to develop discussions because these can serve you incredibly well and very soon in the online teaching side of things your interest in online teaching will increase if you will engage more fully in those discussions.
You can derive your own purpose and meaning of education and why you are a teacher from the way you participate and the way you approach your students’ participation. It can matter to your students deeply in the future because they need to connect to the concept to learn it and to move through whatever the purpose of your class is.
I have had a variety of discussions. Some of them are teacher-led forum discussions. Some of them are student-led. There have been some I’ve engaged in with courses I’ve taught online that have been group discussions, where maybe there were five or six people in the group and they were discussing or planning a project or something like that. There are a lot of different ways to set this up. I don’t propose that there is only one “right” way, but there are some guidelines that will help you be successful establishing solid discussion forums in your online teaching.
Considerations for Setting up an Online Discussion Forum
First, determine how many discussions you want to have and what is going to overload the student. There is no real perfect answer to how many discussions are optimal during an online class. If you consider how long the class is, for example, if it is a 14-, 15- or 16-week class, it would make sense to have one discussion per week. That keeps it manageable and helps students to stay focused on the topic during the week it’s happening.
If you have a shorter class, maybe you have a four-, five-, or eight-week class, this could be a little bit more difficult. It might cause you to think that you must cover a lot of topics in those discussions, and it might lead you to have many discussions going on at one time. You can either have two separate conversation spaces, two entirely different forum discussions, if you need more than one. Or you can have one discussion with the option to choose from many topics that you offer.
Again, if you approach forum discussions as a space to practice the ideas and to really manipulate them to understand them, then it does not require every student to discuss every topic, every week. Options on those topics can be very helpful.
Also, you’re going to need participation requirements. So, telling your students how often or how many times they should engage at a minimum for whatever you’re going to expect and, again, think about the topic. Will it require them to come back many times? Will it require them to give each other feedback? Will they need to come back a different day to do the feedback?
Whatever your desire is, be specific about how many times, how often during the week. And, should they have a day when their initial post is due and a different day when their peer replies are due? There’s often this idea that students are going to put an initial post in there of their ideas, and they are going to go back and respond to the ideas of their classmates.
During this whole process, of course, you can also put some initial posts to guide them. You can reply to the students just as the peers would reply, and converse just like you might in a live discussion. There are some other ideas like threaded forums, where you post that initial prompt and everyone responds along one single thread. They can be difficult to manage, they can also be interesting to see how the class unfolds along the idea. There are a lot of benefits to using what we call a threaded discussion.
There are also a lot of benefits to posting these separate discussions as individual posts students have. Whatever kind you want it to be, you want to tell students how it will unfold, how they should engage, how often.
As you design the form prompt that you put there telling students what they should write about or talk about, you want some different statements that will guide the content about what students are going to discuss. What qualities should the initial post include? How long should it be? How timely should it be? What are the directions you are going to include for sharing content and source materials? Will students need to refer to a source that they may have used in the form discussion? If so, can they give you a link? Can they simply mention it? Do they need to give you an actual formatted citation in MLA (Modern Languages Association), Chicago or Turabian or APA style?
Whatever those different details are, be specific with each forum that you post. And yes, I do advocate being repetitive on that part, including every week what the posting guidelines are. Keeping them fairly consistent can help students to engage better.
If you want your students to post in the normal font that appears, just remind them of that. You can also suggest that they use the spell check or grammar check. If you do use word counts for your forums, and if your learning management system does not give you a way to naturally do that, you can also suggest they type their forum in Microsoft Word, copy and paste it into the forum afterwards.
As you’re developing the prompt for the discussion, think about the qualities that students need to provide, whether they’re going to specifically give their take-away, their reflection, what they need to include in terms of the dialogue they’re sharing, and if they should ask each other questions. This can be a helpful way to get the discussion going. I have a little checklist that I’m going to share with you now that has six different elements and it comes from a book I wrote called “Teaching Music Appreciation Online,” (page 119), if you have a copy of that.
And this form prompt quality checklist is just to determine: Does the form prompt have the elements needed to help students know what to do and have the best chance of engaging well?
- The first question is, “does your forum prompt include a specific active verb indicating the action students will take developing their initial post in the discussion?” And some active verbs might be: define, describe, identify, compare, contrast, explain, summarize, apply, predict, classify, analyze, evaluate, critique, create, and design.
- Second question, “if guiding questions are included, are they written as open-ended questions that allow students to exercise critical thinking to create, to explore and otherwise apply their learning?” For example, does the question you have given students use the words “how” or “why,” and avoid closed ended yes/no questions, like did, do, where, or who? Closed ended questions make it very difficult to have a discussion, and most students will copy each other. There are only a few responses possible, so open-ended questions are much more useful, like “what,” “how,” and “why.”
- “Does the forum prompt specifically guide students to the content, concepts, topic and other elements to be included in their initial post?”
- “Does the form prompt state how many details or sources or what link is to be included in the student’s initial post?”
- “Does the forum prompt appear appropriate for the level of the course that you’re teaching?” For example, if you’re teaching a college level course at a 100 level, does the prompt address general elements and then draw students into deeper thinking. And at the 400 college-level does it identify complex ideas and analyses and different types of application you would want at that level?
- And lastly, “are clear posting instructions included, such as the due date for the initial post, the number of replies and the due date for those replies, and any other pertinent requirements?”
Think about these as you write forum prompts and examine the forum prompts that exist. If you’re teaching a standardized course. And as you’re looking at the forum prompt, if you’re teaching a course someone else has designed, it’s very easy to change the wording slightly to make it even more effective. And if you’re at a university where there’s some collaboration or the chance to improve the course, you can also suggest those changes to the course designer or the faculty member who has initially organized that class.
So open-ended questions can invite a lot more thought.
The last point I am going to share today is about how students should bring in their own ideas, reflections, opinions, and experiences. There are a lot of subjects where we’re working very hard to help students argue and analyze without opinion. In those subjects, I would suggest separating out the personal reflection, opinions, and experiences part to a second half of the forum post. Maybe you’re going to have them analyze and argue a point, and then come back and share their reflection about it or their opinion about it.
One reason I’m heavy on personal reflection, opinions and experiences is that these are the ways students personalize their learning, and this is what helps them to make something new out of it for themselves. It creates connections in the brain and soon the student’s going to care a lot about the subject, or at least have opinions on it and be able to think about it later. So those personal reflection elements are critical.
In future podcast episodes, I will discuss ways to apply critical thinking, interpretation, problem-solving, persuasion, and analysis, debates, and different topics so I hope you will join me again in the future for additional thoughts about discussion forums online.
Until then, I wish you all the best in starting your discussions, engaging with your students, and creating form prompts that really work for you. Best wishes teaching online 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.
by Bethanie Hansen | Best practices, Higher Education, Podcast, Teaching Online, Technology Tools
How to Use a Learning Management System to Put Your Class Online
This content first appeared at APUEdge.Com.
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.
Listen to the Episode:
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Read the Transcript:
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.
by Bethanie Hansen | Best practices, Higher Education, Podcast, Teaching Online, Technology Tools
Moving Your Course Online? Orientation to Online Education
This content first appeared at APUEdge.com.
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.
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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.
![#64: This Summer, Start Your 100 List to Lead a Rich and Thriving Life [Podcast]](https://i0.wp.com/bethaniehansen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/travel-blog-07.jpg?resize=1080%2C656&ssl=1)
by Bethanie Hansen | Life, Personal Growth, Podcast, Stress
This content first appeared at APUEdge.Com
What are some important things you want to accomplish that will help you lead a thriving and rich life? In this episode, Dr. Bethanie Hansen inspires online teachers to take some time this summer to start a “100 List.” Learn how to think about creating this list of inspiring experiences that will bring richness to your life, how to align these items with your values, and what items can help uplift others, too.
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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. In today’s episode, we’re going to brainstorm some fun summer plans for the online educator. Not all online educators have summer vacations. If you work for a K-12 school district, perhaps you do have a couple of months where you might have a break from teaching.
Perhaps you’re regrouping after a difficult school year, where there were a lot of stops and starts and interruptions. Whatever the case, summer is a time when many of us traditionally think of rejuvenation. Going on a trip, doing something to rekindle the flame.
The area we’d like to think about today is creating a longer list that is not just for this summer. At the time of this recording, we’re heading into the summer of 2021, but this recording could be valuable to you any time.
We’re going to talk about your list of 100. Earlier today, I was at a brief conference, where Dr. Taniguchi, a BYU professor, was teaching a concept that he began at age 16 in his young life. And that was called a 100 list.
What’s a 100 List?
This 100 list was basically created so that he could list all of the things that he’d like to do to have a thriving life. You might’ve heard of a bucket list. It’s the things you would like to do before you die. Well, this is the opposite. This is a list of 100 things he wanted to do to have a rich and thriving life. Think about that. If we explore all the different things that we would like to have as part of our life, to give us solid experiences, help us keep growing, learning, stretching the boundaries, there might be a whole different set of things that we put on that list. Not quite the same as a bucket list, but maybe there are some overlaps there.
In this situation, I want to introduce you to Dr. Taniguchi. And what I learned from him, you can also find widely on the internet. This man has been chased by Mussai warriors in Tanzania. He has slept in snow caves to survive, swum through New Zealand caves to see glowing worms, stopped a bear from dragging his friend away in his sleeping bag.
He was a professor of experience, design and management, and there are so many things shared about him. Some other accomplishments he has attained are that he’s climbed the front of Yosemite’s half dome. He has paddled the Nile River. He has climbed to the summit of six of the tallest mountains in the world, and coached cross country skiers that were in the last five Olympic Winter Games. He’s from Hawaii. And he has a really remarkable life.
So when this man was 16 years old, he saw a picture in Life magazine, and the picture was a man holding up a list of 100 things he wanted to do before he died. That photo was taken, apparently, because that man had just done the last thing on the list.
The idea was that he started his own list, and it took him a long time to complete writing the list, not to do all the things on the list, but just to decide which 100 things to include. And long since that time, he has in fact accomplished all 100 things on his list. And I have some links to these sources on the podcast notes today. So please check them out.
In another space, he does show the list. And he has some really fascinating things on there. For example, some of the items that he has done that were on his list were to climb to the tallest mountains. He wanted to dip his toe in the Atlantic Ocean, in the Pacific Ocean, and various other places in the world. He wanted to visit all 50 states, learn another language, and a lot of other things.
So if you were to think about creating your own list, there are some rules that Dr. Taniguchi has developed to help you create such a thing. And those rules will really help you get started in deciding what should go on that list.
The first thing he suggests is that it’s a choice to decide to thrive in our lives. And thriving means we’re not just hanging in there, we’re not just enduring, but we’re having a rich and rewarding life. And we have some peak moments that we can really draw on throughout our lives.
As online educators, we do a lot of similar and repetitive things throughout the year. And sometimes those things can be very draining for us. Sometimes they can also be refreshing. But when we create options to help ourselves thrive, then we actually have experiences that perforate that sameness and bring highlights to the year, and to the life as a whole.
So think about what it would take for you to thrive. What kind of experiences you want to have. And then you find opportunities to prioritize those experiences. For example, if you were driving through South Dakota, and you had on your list of 100 that you want to see Mount Rushmore, then you would make it a point to stop there. And if you don’t have that on your list, you might not even think about it or know that it’s located on your drive somewhere.
So by putting things on this list intentionally, you’re going to be more likely to actually do those things. And who knows? Perhaps this summer as an online educator, you’re going to fit a few of those things on your list of 100 into your life.
Choose Items that Bring You Closer to Living Your Values
The second thing besides just simply deciding or choosing to thrive is knowing the values that govern your life. So one of the things Taniguchi says is, don’t put things that you want to try on your list. Don’t just put everything on there that you’re interested in trying, but put things that will actually bring you closer to living your values. And don’t put anything on your list that conflicts with your values, whatever those might be.
So you have to choose carefully and choose wisely, what will make your list of 100. You might come up with 20 or 30 great ideas, and then find the spaces on your paper difficult to fill. I’m curious about how far you’ll get. I started my list of 100 earlier today, and I got to about 35. So now I’m going to have to think about it and come back to that list.
But definitely, when I come to a break between classes or a break in my teaching, and I find that I do have time to get off, and do a trip, or learn something new, or try something new, I would really love to have some great ideas. So building this list of 100 is going to give me some of those ideas I can just look at and make plans for those things.
I talked to someone earlier today that said they had been to Norway and saw the Northern Lights there. That’s something I would definitely want to put on my list. And I’m sure there are many other things that will come to mind when other people mention them, and that I probably wouldn’t think of on my own, but really do interest me. Think about, wisely, what will help you have a thriving life and align with your values, and put those things on your list.
Once It’s On the List, It Stays on the List
Once you put something on your list, Taniguchi has a rule that you cannot take anything off your list. He says, if it was important to you at one point, that meant something to you, and it needs to continue to be important to you.
So one of the stories that this man has told, is that he had a client that he led up Denali, which is, I guess, the highest peak in North America. And the man had been diagnosed with terminal cancer months before the trip. And he almost canceled the trip. And he didn’t say anything about the cancer before the trip, so Dr. Taniguchi did not know that was the situation.
But the experience of hiking up that mountain really changed the man’s life. He got re-engaged, he got married, he finished his last cases at work, and he continued living vibrantly. And before that, when he got his diagnosis of cancer, he felt like giving up completely and he was disengaging from his life. That experience meant the world to him. And he accomplished quite a bit, and had a lot of life left before the end came for him.
So your list of 100 can be inspiring things that give you a life worth living. And it will make your life fascinating to others as well, as you share some of those stories. And it will also help you inspire yourself to keep going.
Add Items that Help Better Yourself and Uplifts Others
Some other tips about creating your list of 100 is to better yourself and uplift others. Each time you accomplish something on your list, you could ask yourself, will this make me a better person? And will it help me to uplift and have a positive effect on others?
So every time you’re going to spend time enriching or bettering yourself, it’s going to make you a better educator and a happier person. And you’re, of course, going to be better at all that you do. And you’re going to be able to be more satisfied with your life, because you have variety, and intense and challenging experiences, and things that you’re really pleased about that you have accomplished.
Add Things that are Outside Your Comfort Zone
Now, some things on your list should be some risks, like a real stretch. I’m not a person who is interested in putting Mount Everest on my list of 100, but maybe you are. Maybe you want to try to do something new that really is far outside your comfort zone.
For me, if I were to write on my list that I want to run a marathon, that would definitely be one of those risks. And I don’t have a whole lot of experience running, but I do think that would be a super fun thing to do. And I would like to add it to my list. And if you’re a person who does routinely run marathons, you can appreciate the fact that for someone who’s never done that, it sounds daunting and challenging and really out of my comfort zone.
And maybe there’s something new that you’d like to do. When I was younger, I would have put learning to ski on that list. And, yes, you can put things that you’ve already achieved in the past that are inspiring to you, that you have already done, that you want to include on the list. That is one of the rules that you can do. So I would love to put that on my list. I did learn how to downhill ski at one point.
And interestingly enough, as I’m talking to a group of educators here on the podcast, I want to share that in my first professional teaching position, I worked in the Marsh Valley School District in eastern Idaho. And one of the things they did over there was, they took the entire junior high to the ski mountain several times during the year, and they taught the kids how to ski.
So I had an opportunity as a teacher to go up there and be a beginner, because I knew nothing about skiing. And I’m really glad I did, because I had some great experiences, and it developed into a lifelong joy of alpine skiing that I shared with my family. And my husband, when I married him, had been a ski patrol or ski instructor, I forget which, but he’s an excellent black diamond downhill skier. So it was kind of helpful that I had at least checked out skiing and had an interest. And then we were able to raise our boys as skiers as well.
So you never know how something you put on this list of 100 things you’d like to do to have a life of thriving is going to enrich your life in even more ways by connecting you to other people, or maybe even creating entire family hobbies that everyone can enjoy.
So this summer, as you’re thinking about what kinds of things might enrich you as an online educator or give you fulfillment or even professional and personal growth, I want to encourage you to get started on your list of 100. To create that list of things that you want to strive to do over the next year, or 20 or 30 years, to have a thriving life and really create peak moments that are worthwhile.
Thank you for being with me here today to consider developing ourselves as people and as educators, and creating rich and thriving lives. I wish you all the best in creating that list of 100, and 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.
by Bethanie Hansen | Career, Energy, Healthy Habits, Life, Personal Growth, Podcast, Stress, Teaching Online
This content initially appeared at APUEdge.com.
We all have an endless “to do” list that we can’t keep up with. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all our responsibilities and tasks, but that cumulative stress is incredibly harmful to our physical and mental wellbeing. In this episode, Dr. Bethanie Hansen talks to APU Chaplain Kyle Sorys about his role in offering emotional and spiritual support to students and faculty. Learn ways to skillfully cope with life’s inevitable stressors like dedicating a day each week “no work” where you just enjoy life, establishing “no screen time” each day, getting more sleep, eating better, and meditating. Also reduce stress by learning how to extend self-compassion and self-kindness to yourself in conscious acknowledgement that you’re doing the best you can. All these tips can improve your overall wellbeing and help you live a fuller, less stressful, life.
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Read the Transcript:
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.
Hello, everyone. And welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. We are so excited to have you today, because we have a special guest, Chaplain Kyle Sorys. He is going to share a lot of expertise with us today. And as you know, our podcast is geared toward online educators. So you’re living and working online and you have a lot on your plate, and we hope today you’ll find something that makes working online just a little bit easier to manage.
Your life online is something we have covered quite a bit in the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. We’ve talked about sleeping more, getting some better exercise and some activity going, there. And we’ve also talked about eating healthy and managing your time. So today we’re going to meet Chaplain Kyle Sorys and I’m really excited to have him here today. So, Kyle, welcome.
Kyle Sorys: Thank you.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Thanks for being here. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and your path to becoming an online chaplain at APU and AMU?
Kyle Sorys: To me it’s like two questions. It’s like, how did you get here? Where we all can resonate with, since we all work for this organization. And also, what was the path to becoming a chaplain?
And so I’ll just say the chaplaincy, the profession of chaplaincy, I stumbled into it. And I wonder how true that is for most people in their professions versus seeking it out? The truth is when I was in college, when I graduated undergrad and I was looking at master’s programs, I just wanted to take all the classes. I really wanted to be a professional student. I wish they paid me, instead of me paying the school.
But yeah, all the classes, I’m like, “Oh, yeah. I want to take that one. I want to take that one.” And it’s like, “This is training you to be a chaplain.” I’m like, “Okay.” I had no idea what a chaplain was, but I’m like, “Okay. I just want to take the classes. If these classes train me to become a chaplain, then I’ll be a chaplain.”
So yeah, graduate. And then learn what chaplaincy really is. And here’s a learning curve that first year when you’re new to something. So I cut my teeth in the hospital for a while. After that, I did church ministry, youth ministry, specifically. That’s where I met Chaplain Cynthia, who is our full-time primary chaplain at APUS.
[Read an article by Chaplain Cynthia: Embracing Change in This Era of Mass Confusion and Fear]
So it’s interesting how our paths course correct or flow. Just interesting to me. Like the whole purpose of that one year at the church, because I never saw myself working at a church, was I think just to meet Cynthia, just to connect with her.
And so after that, I still do it, too. Not as much because of the pandemic, but a hospice chaplaincy. And Cynthia asked to me to help her out and come on online university chaplaincy. There’s such things as university chaplains like on site, but I’m wondering if APUS, Cynthia, myself, and we have another one, Audrey, if we’re the only online university chaplains in the world, which boggles my mind.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Wow. That is interesting to think about. And I’m wondering what might be different, just to expand that a little bit, about being a chaplain online versus in the live space? What’s the change?
Kyle Sorys: So in hospice, I call it ministry of presence. Being one-on-one with another person, having the physical energy of another person. That gets removed on the online environment. Hence why I really, when I’m working with students or with staff or faculty, mainly it’s students I work with, I really try to talk with them over the phone, at least get the voice. That way I can have a feeling or an understanding. Get that body language, but in the voice. I don’t know how to describe that. It’s like voice language, but under the language, does that make sense?
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Yeah. It sounds like tone and inflection and mood.
Kyle Sorys: Yeah, exactly. Because I learned, a lot of emails, right? A lot of emails in the online university profession. The written word, it makes it a little challenging to try to really feel what the person’s going through. Really hear what they’re trying to say. And I find myself, well, I hear this in the writing. It’s like, well, I hear it in the word, but I don’t literally hear it in my ear. So that makes it challenging.
But the freedom it gives too, that you can be anywhere in the world and we can connect this whole now Zoom revolution in a way. Everyone’s on a screen. There’s a lot more flexibility versus, “Oh. You have to meet me in my office, or I have to come meet you. And how far, and where are you?” And more localized as well. I can’t go physically visit someone in the East coast when I’m living right in the middle of the country. So pros and cons.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Yes. And just before we jump into some of the things we might want to talk about today, can you give just a brief, “What is a chaplain?” for any of our listeners who are really just not familiar with that role?
Kyle Sorys: I’m still trying to figure it out myself. It’s funny. Was it last week or a couple of weeks ago? Quarterly, we do “Meet the Chaplains,” and that’s where I explain the profession of chaplaincy a little bit. And traditionally, it is clergy members, but in a secular environment, like a hospital, the military, prisons, fire departments, police departments, so secular organizations bring a traditionally religious person in, has a religious background. I think that’s evolving and changing that ritual religious ritual ministry is important, but that’s not the emphasis here on the online university. Maybe that’s one to five percent. I think I’ve prayed once or twice. I don’t know how many students I’ve worked with in the past year that really requested prayer. Most of it is emotional support. And underlying that is spiritual support.
So in brief, chaplaincy is offering spiritual and emotional support. Hence the importance of that ministry of presence, of just being with someone in their struggles and just listening to their story. So another definition I could say as me as a chaplain is someone who hears stories and just appreciates hearing stories.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Wonderful. It sounds like a really engaging profession and also one with a lot of variety.
Kyle Sorys: Yeah.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: On the idea of the emotional and the spiritual support, it seems that online faculty in particular are very heavily loaded nowadays. They’re doing a lot. It takes a lot of time. As you mentioned, a lot of emails. They experience that too. What would you like to share with listeners about stress management?
Kyle Sorys: First, it really is about an acceptance that stress exists. You can’t escape it. So there’s no need to resist the stress. Because stress can mean a whole lot of things to different people too. So when I contemplate, like what is stress? And for me, stress is whatever disturbs the mind, whatever disturbs the heart. It’s those winds and storms of life.
And sometimes it’s unavoidable, but most often we’re the ones creating that wind and those storms and those disturbances of the mind.
There’s an analogy that you could get hit with a dart or shot with a dart, a really sharp dart. It hurts. And what do you do with it? Well, most often what happens is we take more darts and stab ourselves, instead of just pulling that dart out and going about our life. So stress happens and what do we do? What is our reaction to the stress?
And so to manage stress, there’s skillful coping and unskillful coping. And it’s really cultivating these skillful coping mechanisms where we just pull that first dart out, instead of adding a second dart or a third dart or fourth dart and so on. And then adding more darts because we’re adding darts.
So that’s definitely where I’d say, start with stress management. Just accept and open to the fact that it is unavoidable.
And then investigating, what are we adding onto it? Is it in our benefit or is it making things worse? Because most often stress happens, we react and we don’t even realize how we’re reacting. It’s just so much habit patterns and conditioning. So really learning what’s under that and managing that, then the stress itself. Stress, you can think of it as more as a symptom of an underlying condition going on.
The stress is not personal. I have that, that sometimes we like to think it’s about us. It’s against us. That it’s a personal attack or life’s out to get us, like we did something wrong. All that we add on to it. No, stress is just stress. It’s not personal.
I think if we can really connect with that, at least for me, if I connect with that, that it’s just nature arising, nature unfolding, just stress happening. It’s not personal. There’s a letting go in that. There’s a release and that which helps the stress.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: As you’re describing this, I’m getting this idea. There’s this concept that thoughts just exist and they might float through your mind and float out of your mind. And if you have a negative thought, you could just imagine that and let it go in the same way. Your analogy to the darts makes me think of that same idea, passing through.
Kyle Sorys: Exactly. There’s two common analogies of the mind. One is the sky. Sometimes you get the nice, beautiful fluffy white clouds just slowly rolling by. Other times, there’s dark, stormy clouds filled with water, ready to burst. Sometimes there’s lightning and sometimes there’s tornadoes. But it’s just weather patterns of the mind. It all comes and goes. And exactly, do you want to get involved with the clouds? Are you even able to get involved with the clouds and the storm? Or you just watch it? Yeah, exactly, just take a step back and just watch the clouds pass by.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Beautiful. Thank you, Kyle. So what strategies might our listeners want to try to deal with their stress or manage it?
Kyle Sorys: This is a hard question to answer, honestly, because it’s so individual. Strategies that work for me may not work for another person and vice versa. But when we were talking before, when you invited me and we talked about what this podcast would entail, I remember mentioning a story that popped up called “what’s done is finished.” So for this question, I’m going to read that story. It’s really short, but I just want to share that to hopefully plant this seed. You can come to keep in mind the importance of this phrase, “what’s done is finished.” And this comes out of my probably favorite book, “Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung?“
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Sounds great.
Kyle Sorys: Oh, it’s awesome. Yes. So what’s done is finished.
“The monsoon in Thailand is from July to October. During this period, the monastics stopped traveling, put aside all work projects and devote themselves to study and meditation. The period is called the Vassa, the rain’s retreat.
“In the South of Thailand some years ago, a famous abbot was building a new hall for his forest monastery. When the rains retreat came, he stopped all work and sent the builders home. This was the time for quiet in his monastery.
“A few days later, a visitor came, saw the half-constructed building and asked the abbot when his hall would be finished? Without hesitation, the old monk said, ‘The hall is finished.’
“‘What do you mean the hall is finished?’ the visitor replied, taken aback. ‘It hasn’t got a roof. There are no doors or windows. There are pieces of wood and cement bags all over the place. Are you going to leave it like this? Are you mad? What do you mean, the hall is finished?’
The old abbot smiled and gently replied, ‘What’s done is finished.’ And then he went away to meditate.” That is the only way to have a retreat or take a break. Otherwise, our work is never finished.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: What a way to frame that idea.
Kyle Sorys: Yeah. That to-do list. We all have a to-do list. It’s just part of our adult life and it never ends. I know I get stuck on what’s left. Oh, it just keeps accumulating and I can’t keep up. Versus just set it down and looking at it. Nope. I checked that box off. I checked that box off and having it, it’s good enough. What’s done is finished. And there is a letting go in that.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Kyle, thank you for sharing that story and the great example of how to re-conceptualize or view it differently when we’re feeling like the tasks just never stop. They never go away. And in our online teaching world, it does often feel that way, because we might have classes overlapping. There might be an endless pile of forum discussions to reply to, or essays to grade and more to do. So very nice concept to think about just being finished. I like that.
Kyle Sorys: There’s another philosophy I personally stick to, and I understand I don’t have family. I don’t have children. So it’s really easy for me to implement this into my life. But one day a week, I truly commit to no work-related tasks. Even thoughts about work. I’m like, “Nope. Setting those aside. Today’s not the day.” One day a week to live life as I feel it’s meant to be lived, whatever nourishes me spiritually, emotionally. Because come to this understanding that I guess it’s a bigger view. Again when I was in college, it was in Boulder and we called it the Boulder bubble.
Around Boulder, there’s just these majestic mountains and all this natural, just uncivilized greatness and wonderfulness. But you get so bogged down in the Boulder bubble, the assignments due, the busy-ness of traffic, this where to go, those daily tasks of life that we forget the big picture that these mountains exist. And then the big picture of space and time. When we really contemplate our lifespan in the grand scheme of things, a space in time. We’re a blip, or a blip of a blip. And life is precious.
Our time is precious. And in hospice work, I joke, but I’m serious when I say this, that I have heard nobody, not one person on their death bed ever say, “I wish I worked more.” So what’s really important in life? So at least commit one day to embracing that, what life is really about for you.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Wonderful guidance. Thank you for that piece as well, Kyle. Now I hear you are a bit of a connoisseur of meditation.
Kyle Sorys: Yes.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Maybe have some strategies you could suggest for a beginner. How might we try meditation?
Kyle Sorys: You start where you are. That’s first. You just start where you are. It’s funny. Because the instruction to meditate is really simple. But in actual practice, it can be quite challenging. And that’s why we call it practice. But if anyone is interested in meditation I might say, “If you’re really serious, call me, contact me, email me, and I’d love to talk one-on-one more about it.” That way it can be more of a personal and individualized approach, because not everyone is at the same starting point.
No one has the same causes and conditions happening in their life. So that helps. But basically, really you just commit to a practice, and you start very small, and the practice is stopping and resting. You just sit and be. And breathe.
The image that was given is it’s like sitting on a park bench. What do you do? You just sit. You just be, when you sit on a park bench, and you just take in the sensory experience, be it the birds singing or the people around, or if there’s children playing or the firmness of the bench seat. The warmth of the sun, you’re just in that moment. Whatever’s happening, arising, you’re just being with it. Again, another joke, but serious, we’re called human beings, but we’re conditioned as human doings. So really it’s tapping in what does that mean to be a human being? To just be, to learn to set things down? That’s meditation, the essence.
What really helps is when you do sit, you’ll see that the mind just carries these bags of past and future. And if you’ve ever carried heavy luggage, maybe that’s a thing of the past, because everything’s on wheels now. But if you carry these heavy bags, how wonderful it feels to let them go and set them down, right?
So that’s what we’re doing is just not giving into the lure of the nostalgia of the past, or reminiscing about the past. Or planning and worrying and creating an anxiety about the future, which is uncertain. Whatever you think is going to happen, probably rarely ever happens that way.
So, that’s the practice, just at least five minutes a day. Start small. Going to stop. This five minutes in the morning and this five minutes in the afternoon or this five minutes in the evening, this is my time to just stop. Put a force field around me that keeps everything out. Just for these five minutes, I’m taking a mini-vacation and relax to the max.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Oh, I liked the sound of that. In fact, as you were describing it, I was starting to think about the birds chirping and just getting really present in the now, and not worried about the next hour or the next day or when those assignments are coming due and all the grading we’re going to be facing, needing to manage that time. But just thinking about the moment you’re in and letting go of anxiety. Really appreciate you sharing that suggestion and a little bit of a process with us as well. Thank you, Kyle.
Kyle Sorys: You’re welcome.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: What else, if anything, might you suggest or share with us that could really help online educators with their stress management or maybe anything else that has to do with their overall wellbeing? What do you think?
Kyle Sorys: You mentioned it in the beginning. You I guess talked about it in the past. That the body and the mind are not separate. So to take care of the mind, as in meditation, you also need to take care of the body. Meditation is rest, but rest is also physical rest. So we are a very sleep-deprived society.
And I had one student. She was going mad. She was really stressing out and that was the one question like, “How’s your sleep?” That’s all I asked and she said, “I don’t sleep. I kind of this and this.” And I checked in with her and she just asked like, “Did you get sleep last night?” And she goes, “Oh.” Like her mind was just reset and how everything just smoothed out for her, just because she got one good night of sleep. I think we forget that. Maybe we forget that because that to-do list, right? Like, “Oh. I got to wake up. I got to do this.”
Move the body. Working with elderly people, that’s their advice. I ask them like, “What’s your nugget of wisdom?” And some of them will say, “Make sure you move that body every day.” Be it stretching, walking. Because just reflect what’s the percentage of your daily time committed to sitting or lying down? It’s too much for me. I’ll admit that’s way too much. And to be conscious of standing more, just even standing and walking, moving, and stretching and being mindful when I’m bending over. And I guess this body communicates that to me. It’s like, “Take care of me. If you don’t, I’m going to make you.”
And then, yeah, the nutrition also. I guess you’ve talked about that in the past. What fuel are you putting in the body? That affects the mind as well. Other well-being tips… Like committing to not having work, but having periods in the day where, “This time, no screens allowed,” because we are definitely becoming a civilization of screens and can get really caught in the screens. And I just know it tires my eyes. It tires my mind just looking at the light. I don’t know. It does funny things to me. Maybe that’s just me, but I have a sense others might experience that as well. But be aware to take time out from the screen. I actually had a friend, that’s a slogan. He goes, “Put yourself in timeout at least once a day.”
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: And someone said to me, “Be your own parent.” It sounds a lot like that.
Kyle Sorys: It’s hard. Right?
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Exactly.
Kyle Sorys: As adults, we struggle the most feeding ourselves and putting ourselves to bed.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: It’s true.
Kyle Sorys: Yeah. I think of, with stress, another way to think of stress, I like this. That the mind is like a garden. And so everything in life that we consider good or bad, it really is neither. It just is. But it can all be used as fertilizer for the mind. And so when we step in the crap of life, our reaction is to get away from it, to scrape it off the shoe, to be repulsed and disgusted by it. It’s so nasty. But we could just leave it on our shoe and take it home and then scrape it off in our garden and it’ll grow some beautiful flowers.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: That is a great, great visualization there.
Kyle Sorys: And the importance of self-kindness and self-compassion. “You are doing the best you can. You have to remember that.” Pretty much everybody is doing the best they can. And if you’re not, if you ask yourself, “Am I doing the best I can?” You say, “No,” then you know like, “Oh, okay. I need to be striving a little bit.”
Most often, you’re going to say, and “Yes, of course I am.” And just, well, have some kindness there. Have some gentleness there. Another slogan or motto that I use often is, “You make peace. You be kind and you be gentle. To yourself, to others, to this moment. Just make peace, be kind and be gentle.”
And I think that can go a long way in helping with the stress and wellbeing. Cultivating lightheartedness, having a sense of humor, the importance of humor and playfulness. This adult mind forgets that skill and its so vital to childhood development. But I do believe it’s still that aspect of play and humor is vital to our adult development as well. And to just cope with the inevitable stressors of life.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Wonderful. Kyle, thank you for all that you’ve shared today. I can tell that you draw on your expertise from your various background experiences you shared with us earlier. And also, even though this is just online, you and I are looking at each other on video while we’re recording this. And I really feel like I have a sense for your presence. I don’t think that virtual totally prevents that from coming through. It’s just nice to be here with you, and thanks again for all you’ve shared with our listeners today.
Kyle Sorys: Likewise, Bethanie. Thank you very much.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Yes. So as we wrap it up, this is the Online Teaching Lounge podcast and we’ve been here with Chaplain Kyle Sorys and talking about your wellbeing as an online educator. We wish you all the best this coming week in being the best version of you 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.
by Dr. Bethanie Hansen | Best practices, Podcast, Teaching Online
This content first appeared on APUEDGE.COM.
Teaching online classes requires a substantial amount of advanced preparation. In this episode, Dr. Bethanie Hansen shares ways teachers can prepare before a class so they can focus on teaching, engaging with students, and meeting their own teaching goals. Learn tips on writing the syllabus, outlining weekly assignments in advance, preparing for forum discussions, and assessing grading tools all before the class starts to make sure online educators have time and energy to dedicate to students.
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Read the Transcript:
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 very happy that you’re with us today, this 57th episode, we’re just slightly into our second year here. We’ve just finished a three-episode series on Work-Life Balance:
And in those three episodes, we discussed a few strategies to help you manage your workload, set boundaries and try some efficiency strategies to help you out.
Now with episode number 57 here, we are jumping into the preparation of your online classroom. As you know, managing your time and setting boundaries while you’re teaching online are absolutely essential for job satisfaction and effective teaching. This is going to free you up to meet your students’ needs while you’re teaching your online course.
If you are actually preparing things while you’re teaching them, you’re going to spend an awful lot of time getting things ready while you should be spending that time interacting with students and grading things.
And if you do all of those things at once, that time’s really going to add up and it’s going to be exhausting for you. So I’m here because I’d like to protect your time and your energy and help you really enjoy your online teaching. Online education can be fun, satisfying, rewarding, and a rich experience for both you and your students. So let’s get started talking about how to prepare your online classroom for teaching.
Ensure Syllabus Includes Course Objectives, Policies
Beginning with step one, let’s look at your course objectives. You’ve probably have some kind of course description and some course objectives. If you don’t have these and you actually have to create them, that’s a great place to start.
Think about what your students should be able to demonstrate. They should be able to know at the end of the course. As you look at these kinds of objectives that you set for your students, this can also frame how you approach your teaching. You’ll be able to look at the big picture of really what should be accomplished in this class. What your priorities are, subject matter wise.
As you prepare your classroom, the first place to begin looking at these course objectives and communicating this out to students is in your course syllabus. Your course syllabus is the final word on everything happening in the course. Generally you’ll have your course description and course objectives in that syllabus. You’ll also have some general policies about whether or not you accept late work, how long students have to submit something, whether they can revise and resubmit assignments, and other types of communication policies.
I highly recommend setting up your communication policies in advance so that students know exactly what to expect from you. You can also set up a friendly and welcoming course announcement for the first week of class and to welcome students to the entire course. And another course announcement to introduce them to the first week of the class and let them know what to expect as they move forward.
In these announcements, I encourage you to be as positive as you possibly can be while also being clear and direct. Students appreciate knowing what your policies are and how you operate in the classroom. This is especially important if students are taking classes from more than one instructor at a time. If you’re in a university setting and they have many classes with many instructors, chances are each one of you has different policies that vary slightly on accepting late work, revising assignments, and how to communicate with the instructor.
If you can make your policies, especially clear and plain, and easy to locate in the classroom, as well as in the syllabus, students will benefit. This will help you out as the instructor, because it will prevent future problems when students are frustrated and they’re not sure who to turn to. Likewise, it can prevent student complaints because students know exactly who to contact and when.
If you’re also responsive once the course begins by replying quickly and with clear and helpful information, your students will learn to trust you. And they will be able to have a positive learning experience with you and ask questions along the way.
Prepare Weekly Announcements with Timely Updates
After you have a clear and established syllabus, I do recommend going to the announcement section and generally preparing announcements for each week of the class you’re going to teach. If you have these prepared in advance and saved in some kind of draft area, then you can finalize them each week by adding timely reminders and specific information for the group of students you’re working with this time around.
As you add the information and the guidance, you can publish them on demand, or you can schedule them ahead of time to just roll out one at a time each week. Whatever your preference, planning your approach will help you also manage your time throughout the teaching of the course.
The next area I suggest thinking about while you’re preparing your online classroom is which parts of the course should be visible and accessible to your students immediately from the first day of class and which parts of the course you would like to be hidden and reveal themselves over time.
In some institutions, there are policies in place that govern the rollout of different weeks’ worth of materials. For example, at the university I work with and teach with, we prefer to have information available to students early in the course, so they can look ahead and plan their work. If your institution has a policy where you can roll these out, then you may wish to go through the lessons, the assignments, and the forums, and any other areas you have in the course, and set those to automatically release a little bit before the week will begin so students can see them and know exactly what they’re aiming for.
Create Guidance Assets for Assignments in Advance
Any kind of guidance assets that you would like to create to help students with tricky parts of an assignment, difficult concepts in a lesson or other helpful tips, it’s nice if you can spend the time ahead of the course starting to create those assets. If you are spending time during the course teaching to create the assets, you can find yourself, spinning your wheels and getting stuck and really feeling a lot of pressure when you’re trying to develop things and teach at the same time.
I suggest going through your assignment section and reading the description for the assignments that you have as if you are a student with little experience in the subject matter. Take a look at the instructions and ask yourself if they are clear and describe the content that should be included in the assignment, the tasks that students are to do, what format they should submit it with. For example, whether it’s a PowerPoint, a Word document, a video or something else.
And also how they can ask questions if they are unsure of what’s due. You might also consider creating and attaching sample assignments and any grading rubrics that you have before the course begins. Whenever you can provide this kind of information upfront before the course starts, then your classroom itself is prepared and ready to go. And students can navigate throughout that classroom and see what they should prepare for and where they’re going to need to spend their time.
Assess Your Own Strengths, Weaknesses and Priorities as an Educator
As you think about preparing your course before the first day of the session, ask yourself: What are your personal challenges teaching online? Each of us has our own strengths as an educator and likewise, we each have our weaknesses. What are your weaker areas that you can anticipate? How would you like to plan ahead to try to strengthen some of those weaker areas?
For example, if you’re a very fast grader, but you tend to grade with minimal comments and not a lot of content related feedback, maybe this session you want to focus on adding more content-related feedback and setting aside the time to do that. If you like to be really explaining a lot of information in your responses to students and you find that you’re spending too much time explaining these things, maybe in this coming session, you’d like to be a little more precise and brief so you’re not spending as much time writing those responses.
Whatever your strengths are, you can plan ahead to emphasize those strengths and also to bolster at least one weak area in the coming course start. What takes most of your time and effort when you’re teaching an online course? And does the area you’re spending the most time, reflect your personal priorities and teaching?
Several times in this Online Teaching Lounge podcast, we have discussed your values and your priorities as an educator. We each come at teaching with our own perspectives and our own approach. If you’re unsure of your perspective, you can consult the teaching perspectives inventory for some idea about the agenda you personally have when you’re teaching other people.
As you think about your agenda and where you’re really spending all of your time in teaching, you might decide to shift your priorities or change the way you spend your time slightly to meet more of your teaching priorities and ensure that you’re able to suit your own values and the reason you’re in this teaching profession in the first place. So think about where you really want to focus your efforts this time when you’re teaching this class.
And also what strategies do you already use to manage your online teaching tasks? Are there any strategies or tools that could support your work and improve your efficiency for teaching while you’re going through the weeks of the course that’s about to start? And how will you know if you are achieving a satisfying level of work-life balance while you’re teaching online this session that suits your own needs and your teaching and learning priorities?
Incorporate Your Teaching Goals into Your Planning
Think about some of these areas before the course begins so that you can set at least one goal to focus on. Many times if you have a goal for your own teaching, it can help you focus the entire experience for yourself as an educator. And you’ll find a lot more satisfaction in connecting with your students as you think about that one area.
Again, as we think about preparing your classroom, remember what your own priority is as an educator. For example, if you really want to mentor students in the subject matter, you’ll want to find ways to plan ahead before the course begins to provide that kind of mentoring experience. Maybe you’d like to offer some live office hours and record them to share with students later who could not attend. Or maybe you’d really like to promote students being self-starters and self-reliant. Perhaps there are some things you’d like to share in course announcements about those topics.
Plan for Course Extensions
Also plan ahead for course extensions. It’s very possible that you might have one or more students that have interruptions while they’re taking your course. If your institution or a university or school have an extension policy in place, you might have one or more students ask for the extra time when the session has completely ended.
How will you handle course extensions? Do you have an approval policy that helps you decide when to accept an extension and when to deny it. Think about what you might say to students in the middle of the course and continue encouraging them to help them stay the course and be resilient as they get through the class and submit the work as timely as possible. The more you can support your students along the way, the more you can help them end on time. And the fewer extension requests you’re likely have.
If you reach out to students who are falling behind, likely you can provide some encouragement needed. I’ve had more than one student tell me that when I’ve reached out to them, they were considering dropping the class, or they felt like they were too far behind to ever catch up. But my encouragement helped them to keep going and made them realize that they really could succeed in the class.
If you don’t hear back from a student within a few days, you might consider reaching out to support from whatever advising department or student services department your institution has. And these people may be able to help you during the course when you have a missing student or a non-responsive student.
Prepare Plans for Forum Discussions
As you’re preparing to teach on the first day, and you’re thinking about how you will engage in discussions with your students, especially if you’re teaching an online asynchronous class, think about those discussion forums as if they are the live conversation you might have in a face-to-face traditional class. I’d like to suggest that you consider what you can share with students about the subject matter, that they cannot learn from any other instructor.
For example, you yourself have your own knowledge, expertise, guiding questions, and illustrative examples throughout anything you might share that can build understanding and promote critical thinking in your students.
These things are unique to you, even if you and I were teaching the same exact subject matter and had expertise in the same area, we certainly wouldn’t share the exact same kinds of comments in the discussion. We’re each different people. So think about what you uniquely can share and what you have to offer and be sure to plan ahead so you have the time that you need to write those kinds of discussion posts, and really engage with students once the class begins.
When you’re managing your teaching throughout the course, always set aside time for those forum discussions. One strategy I like to suggest when we’re thinking about planning ahead, how to engage in the forum discussions as the faculty member or the instructor. I like to suggest posting something very early in the week so there’s sort of a greeting to the discussion. It’s almost like shaking your students’ hands as they enter the room, the virtual room, you might say. And you might consider this a way of leading, moderating, or facilitating that discussion and dialogue.
And then throughout the discussion, engage with many of your students, respond to what they’ve said, refer to other students’ comments, bring in current events, links, YouTube videos, anything that seems to help that discussion become more rich. And then at the end of the week, it’s also a great practice to plan ahead to have some kind of summary that culminates the week’s discussion and ties together some of the things that came out in that dialogue.
I also like to call this a wrap-up post. So this approach to a beginning, middle and end of your discussion each week helps to frame that discussion. It also established a really good teaching presence that students can rely on throughout the course. They really get a sense of who you are and also the guiding hand that you have in teaching them that subject matter.
It’s very difficult in asynchronous, online education for students to get a sense of who you are. So the more you can plan ahead before the class even begins to share those parts of you with your students over each week, the more you’re going to build relationships, build rapport, and also create the trusting environment that they need to feel like succeeding, and really keep working through the content with you.
The last area I want to suggest thinking about as you prepare your online classroom before the session begins is how you will grade students’ work once it starts coming in. If you can plan ahead for your grading activities, you can schedule time on your calendar to keep your grading under control. And you can give information students need before the assignments are even due, to help coach them on those assignments and improve their performance ahead of time.
When you don’t have a plan for your grading, it can easily take over your online teaching job. It can also start to take almost all of your time and pretty soon you’ll be behind with your grading before you even realize it. Think about how you could use rubrics to make your students aware of what you’re going to be grading. You can also use the rubrics while you’re doing the grading and mark them and return them to your students.
Think about some other efficiency tools that could help you provide detailed grading feedback in a short period of time. You might want to take a little bit of time exploring these tools before the class begins. For example, you can download an essay in Microsoft Word and use track changes and reviewers comment bubbles to put comments right on the essay. And then you can upload it back in the classroom to the student.
If you do this, I often recommend using a PDF file as the upload. So instead of the Word version, save it as a PDF. So students can see the in-text comments and the reviewers comments exactly where they are, and you don’t have any problem with them viewing them.
If your institution has something like turnitin.com as an originality checking service, there’s a Grade Mark feature in there where you can actually grade student’s written work through that interface. You can type comments directly on the assignment, and you can also put either a recorded voice comment or a summary text comment. All you need to do if you’re using Turnitin is to direct your students to that location so they can find your feedback.
One more tool I love to share with people is called Grade Assist and Grade Assist is a toolbar that you can purchase an add into your Microsoft Word. And then as you’re looking at an essay, you can just click on the different comments to add them appropriately to different places.
And you can also create your own comments. It’s definitely worth your time to think about what kinds of tools you’ll use to do your grading in advance, because once you’re in the heat of the moment and you need to turn around a lot of grading pretty fast, it’s difficult to explore the tools and figure out how to use them. So explore them, check them out and see if you find something that really works for you.
Today, we’ve gone through a lot of tips and strategies to help you prepare for your next session, teaching online. And I hope this will give you some foundation for success and a lot of confidence moving forward, especially in the preventative areas where you can meet your students’ needs ahead of time and give yourself a lot more time and space to enjoy teaching the class successfully.
Thank you again for being here and the Online Teaching Lounge and joining me for the tips and strategies today. Best wishes to you 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.
by Dr. Bethanie Hansen | Podcast, Students, Video
When teaching an online class, instructors must work hard to connect with students and set expectations for the course. In this episode, Dr. Bethanie Hansen talks to APU Faculty Director Dr. Craig Bogar about effectively communicating with students. Learn the benefits of publishing a welcome video so instructors can virtually introduce themselves to students in the beginning of the course. Also learn tips on conveying netiquette practices to students and why it’s so important for instructors to ask Socratic questions to enhance critical thinking and promote engagement of online students.
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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.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge. This is the first episode of our second year of this podcast, and you’re in for a real treat today. We’re going to be interviewing Dr. Craig Bogar from American Public University, and I’m really excited to have Craig with us today. Craig, welcome to the podcast. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, so listeners can get to know you and your connection to online education?
Dr. Craig Bogar: I sure can, Bethanie, and thanks for inviting me today. I’m super happy to be here. And I was a college athletic director at two universities some years ago, and I also coached swimming and track at those institutions, and I also worked as a college recreation and intramural director at one point. And after doing those things for a number of years, I decided to go back to school and get my doctorate, and at that time, I lived in Alabama, near the United States Sports Academy, and I was accepted into their hybrid program, which was on-ground and online.
And once I completed my doctorate, opportunities started to arise and I began teaching online. And I also was serving as the Dean of Student Services at the Sports Academy for a few years, and had the opportunity to teach on-ground courses in both Thailand and the Kingdom of Bahrain while I was there.
I’ve been with American Public University , for the past nine years. I taught part-time online for three years, and then I got the position as Faculty Director for the School of Health Sciences, and that’s what I currently do for the institution. I still live in Alabama, but I live now on the Gulf Coast, right here in Gulf Shores. So it’s good to be with you.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: It’s wonderful to have you as well, Craig. Thank you for giving us a little bit of your background. Sounds like you’ve had some pretty well-rounded exciting experiences there. I’m curious, how would you have thought of being online long ago before this was really a mainstream thing to do, early in your career?
Dr. Craig Bogar: Wow. That is a great question, and the world as we know it, has changed exponentially in the past couple of decades, and it’s just so hard to conceive of the type of traditional education that we used to have and a number of us went through to get our bachelor’s degrees and onward.
But I think that the key for me, as I said, was being in a hybrid program for my doctoral program, where I got a taste of online instruction and online teaching, and just fell in love with it. And it offers so many different opportunities that one doesn’t necessarily get in the on-ground format, not the least of which is that it’s so much more convenient for students, especially the non-traditional student who may be in the workforce, and might have a family and children, and so forth.
Where years ago, as you recall, if people wanted to either finish a degree or maybe get an advanced degree, they were gone X number of nights a week after they left their job, and they rarely got to see their families, or have dinner with their families, and so forth.
Now with an asynchronous type of online program, as we know, people can do their coursework really anytime, any day. And with us having so many military students, especially in my program where close to 70% of them are with American Military University, they can be students overseas. So it’s really, as I said, it’s a new culture and a new world for many things, not the least of which is higher education.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Yeah. Fantastic. Thanks for that. A lot of our listeners have found themselves teaching online for the first time, and of course, we also have a lot of listeners who have taught online for quite a lengthy time, many in higher ed, and in also what you might consider public school ages, primary and secondary, so just to fill you in a little bit about our listeners.
And I know that you have a lot of best practices that you use in working online, but also in working with your faculty. So what is a best practice that you’d like to share with us today to help our listeners be even more effective in their online teaching?
Dr. Craig Bogar: Okay, well, I’ve got a few things in mind, but one thing I wanted to talk about was that we now require our instructors to post a welcome video that students see when they enter a given course. And one of the reasons we’re doing this, is because the welcome video is a great opportunity to provide a personal welcome to students, and of course, meet the university requirement now, but also to acquaint students with the essentials of a course.
And what I have found over the years that I try to communicate to my faculty, is that by the nature of online education, it is remote by nature, and we have to do our very best at what I call “touching” students in every possible way. It’s by greeting students by name when we see them in the course, when they respond in the course and such, and one of the ways, as I said, is this welcome video.
And in the welcome video, there are some things that I suggest, and I’ll just go through a few of them, is one is obviously to introduce yourself to your students and to welcome them, and if there’s a number of a course or description of the course name, to tell them that, and tell the students why the course is relevant to the program. What will this course do for you? I always refer my students to the syllabus, and to make sure they read that, because it includes course materials and learning objectives, and gives students a good blueprint for what they need to do each week in a given course.
I always explain my expectations for student participation. In other words, by what date do they have to make their initial post in the discussion forum each week? How many responses to their peers do I look for? I give them that information.
I tell the students what they can expect from me, and one of the key things in the online format is timely feedback from instructors. Here at APUS, we have a deadline for faculty grading, which is five days after a given week has ended, but I tell my students that, “Hey, this is the deadline, but I’m going to do better than that. You can get your feedback from me, you can get your grades from me before that deadline each week.” So I try to set the tone that I’m going to be doing my best to exceed expectations.
Also in this welcome video, I tell them what I expect as far as plagiarism, or not to commit plagiarism, and I expect them to follow the rules of netiquette. In other words, being courteous to their peers and also being courteous to me. Again, setting the tone, and I want a professional environment in the course, and I try to communicate that to students.
Also in the welcome video, I suggest that faculty mention the degrees they’ve earned, and give a concise description of their teaching experience or their relevant professional experience, because we want our students to know that, “Hey, we are qualified to teach these courses.” Students are very interested in knowing this, for obvious reasons. They want to make sure that the people who are teaching know their stuff. So in the welcome video, this is a great way in which we can give that information to students.
There’s some optional elements. You can tell the students in your welcome video where you’re from, where you live, the institutions that granted your degrees, maybe your hobbies, what do you like to do in your spare time, and any other personal information that you’d like to share.
But knowing that and hearing that, I also suggest that faculty stick to about three minutes for their welcome video. I know that for all those things that I mentioned, it may be a challenge, but after three minutes, I personally believe that we start to lose people’s focus and attention. So that’s just a ballpark estimate of how much time they should use.
I encourage faculty to write a script, and if you’re using a built-in camera, what I do is I position my script right at the top of that window or that monitor, so it doesn’t appear that I’m looking down and reading the whole time from a script.
It’s also good to be mindful of the setting and the background, and to look professional, and wear a solid color shirt or a blouse to make sure you contrast the background that students are seeing. You want to be about an arm’s length away from your camera. You want to not be overbearing in both your physical presence and your volume, so an arm’s length is good to know. And your lighting should be really in front of you, not behind you, so you don’t have shadowy recordings. Last of all, smile when you speak. That’s always something good to do.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Wow, Craig, you have given us so much detail and so much great information about these instructor welcome videos, everything from your own practice, to what you’re sharing with your faculty. And I can imagine that not all online faculty are super excited about creating a video to share with their students. So I’m curious, what do you do to help your faculty get in there and actually do this welcome video creation? What works for you?
Dr. Craig Bogar: Well, actually, I really have not had any problems or any complaints from faculty. I think the people that get into the teaching profession are already pretty versed in speaking to groups. I always am available to help folks, but I try to give our faculty as many resources as possible in my weekly communications with faculty, to let them know I’m here to assist them if they need any assistance. But, fortunately, just in our new learning management system, it’s very easy to make a recording. So knock on wood, we really haven’t had that kind of problem, per se.
I did want to go back, Bethanie, and talk a little bit about netiquette as well, and just something that I have experienced or observed over the years. And I go back to my statement before about setting the tone in the course is so important, and for people to be professional, both the instructor and the students towards each other. And I have had some faculty who have had students who have used improper or foul language in a discussion forum, and they’ve come to me and said, “Hey, what do I do about this?”
And where I’ve had an occasional problem in the past, I’ve told students that when I’ve observed that, I say, “Hey, that kind of language, number one, we want to be professional in the classroom,” but that kind of language, especially if it’s a guy to guy thing, I say, “Hey, that’s more appropriate for the locker room, but this is a public forum.
This is a place where we need to be professional. And what I’m going to do,” fill in the blank, “John, is I’m going to give you another chance to repost, to delete your post, and to post again and see if you can do a little better job in meeting my expectations.” And that has worked 100% of the time for me, and that’s the advice that I’ve given to faculty that have come to me for assistance, saying that, “Hey, we can handle these kinds of situations,” and especially for first-time online students, they may not realize that what they say, and they should, but not everybody realizes that this is an academic setting, and we can’t have improper language.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: That’s fantastic help, Craig, and I appreciate you mentioning netiquette as part of this setting the tone that you also would be doing with your instructor videos. We’re going to take a quick break for a message from our sponsor. Craig, thank you for sharing all that you’ve given us so far, your best practice of the instructor welcome video, and also you mentioned a few things about netiquette. I’m wondering, what do you really want listeners to take away from those kinds of practices?
Dr. Craig Bogar: Well, I think that what I’d like them to take away is that it’s so important to set a tone in an online course as to what you expect from students, and what students can expect from you. And one of the ways to do that is through one’s welcome video that, as I said, we post in the very first week of an online course, it’s what we call the discussion module.
And I use the term “to touch” students in the online format is so important because of the nature of remote learning, that we need to use students’ names, and to be as personable as possible with students.
I think about Dale Carnegie, going back many, many years ago, who was one of the top speakers in the country, motivational speakers, and he used to say that, “The sweetest and most important sound in our language is to hear your own name,” and I think that is still true today. And by using students’ names whenever we communicate them or interact with them in the online classroom, is something that we need to do as online instructors.
One thing that I do is when I meet students, quote, unquote, in the “first week discussion/introduction forum,” if a student has a nickname, I write that down in my little log book, and I want to make sure that I refer to that student by his or her nickname throughout the course. And I’ve even had, on occasion, students in their end of course surveys that we do at our institution say that, “Dr. Bogar referred to, fill in the blank, Mary, by her nickname the whole course, and I thought that was so cool!”
And little things like that can help build relationships with the students that we have in our classrooms. There have been studies about brain activation and how when one hears their own name, how that really stimulates a person’s interest in what they’re doing, and I think the more, as I said, the more we can do that, the better in the online course to facilitate relationships and engagement with students in our courses.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Wow, that’s really fantastic, Craig, and I couldn’t agree more. I always notice a person who calls me by my name, and I’m sure students really benefit from feeling connected, as if their instructor knows them personally, especially online. There’s such a divide there, such a disconnect when we don’t do those things. Thanks for all you shared with us so far.
I’m just wondering, are there any other tips or strategies you’d really like to share with listeners today that can help them be even more effective in their online teaching?
Dr. Craig Bogar: Sure. There’s one more area that I’d like to talk about briefly, and that is importance of asking Socratic questions of our students, which really promote engagement in a discussion, but maybe more importantly, Socratic questions enhance critical thinking, by asking these questions of students. As opposed to getting one word answers from students when we ask questions.
Socratic questions, of course, begin with words such as “why,” or “how,” or “what,” so the response tends to be more in-depth and critical. Socrates, I think it was about 2,000 or more years ago, thought that being a lecturer was not that effective, and came up with this method of questioning students. And it’s really, in my opinion, very effective in the online classroom, especially in the discussion formats that we have.
You may recall that years ago when Bethanie, you and I maybe were in on-ground classrooms, you always had students who were a little maybe intimidated by instructors asking questions, or for whatever reason, they were fairly shy in the classroom.
Well, in the online environment that is somewhat anonymous, those students who maybe were reticent about asking questions or responding to questions to instructors in an on-ground environment, they’re probably more likely to be more engaged in the online environment. And especially when instructors are asking these open-ended questions that really deserve students to think critically about a particular topic that may be discussed at one time.
Somebody came up with a quote one time, it wasn’t me, but “Our role as online instructors is really not to be the sage on the stage, but instead, the guide on the side.” And I think that when we are being guides and asking open-ended questions of our students, we’re sort of coaching them along, and we’re mentoring them to think differently about topics and think more critically about a topic at hand. So I just wanted to say that to those online instructors, consider asking these types of questions at every opportunity that presents itself.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Craig, thanks so much. That is fantastic advice, and what I really love about everything you’ve shared with our listeners today is that you’ve placed the instructor in a clear spot of forging relationships, building that academic environment, and really focusing there, instead of what we might call the checkbox behaviors of teaching online, when we’re just thinking about what must we do, what should we do? That’s really beautiful, and a place I think we want to encourage everybody to be.
Craig, thank you so much for being our speaker today, our special guest, as we kick off this second year of the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. Any closing thoughts before we wrap things up today?
Dr. Craig Bogar: Well Bethanie, thank you for inviting me. I’ve really enjoyed being here and speaking with you, and I hope the things that I spoke about are going to be helpful to any of our folks online, and this type of podcast I think is extremely valuable for people who are teaching in the online environment. Thank you again, Bethanie, and best of luck with your podcast as you continue your role here.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Thank you again, Craig, and to all of you who are listening today, we wish you all the best 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.
by Dr. Bethanie Hansen | Best practices, Higher Education, Podcast, Students, Teaching Online
This content originally appeared on APUEdge.com
Strong classroom management is especially important in the online environment. In this episode, Dr. Bethanie Hansen talks about the need for advanced planning in online classes to keep students informed about what to expect in the class and aid students in managing their own. Strong classroom management can also help teachers build relationships with students while helping them meet their learning objectives, whether it is professional advancement or personal growth.
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Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge, the show that helps you teach online with confidence and impact, while living a healthy, balanced life. I’m Dr. Bethanie Hansen, your host for the Online Teaching Lounge.
I used to be a very busy online educator, student, mother, wife, and overwhelmed person. It’s easy to struggle with balance when working in teaching online, and I’ve definitely been there. Over time I’ve learned best practices, strategies to manage time and online work, and I’ve gained tools to help with life-work balance.
As a full-time professor and faculty director at an entirely online university, I help faculty teach with excellence and keep learning new ways to make online education a great opportunity for faculty and for students. Through this podcast today, I’m helping educators become more effective, healthy, and balanced so they can love what they do and impact their students positively. And today we’re going to do that by looking at the objectives, needs, and challenges of our online students, and how we can help them. And let’s get started.
What Motivates Online Students?
In the first area, let’s talk about online students’ motivations, their objective when they chose online education. Adult learners who choose online education really have two main objectives. They want to advance their professional careers, and to develop personally. Of course, there are many other motivations for taking courses online, but we find that these are the highest number of motivations.
Motivated by Career Advancement
When students are learning something to advance their careers, it really means they expect to get something tangible in the future, a reward for the learning they’re doing right now. That long-term reward might be a career change. It might be a salary increase. More opportunities. Or even the chance to get a promotion. This kind of vision for the future is going to help your online students to be intrinsically motivated so that they will be able to achieve the future reward that they really want.
Motivated by Personal Growth
When students are learning something for personal growth, there might be a need to develop personally, benefit from the continuous learning that takes place in a structured program or class, and have something to look forward to.
In a Wiley education survey published in 2020, 76% of those online students surveyed said that they wanted career advancement. Seventy percent of them were also looking for personal growth as well. It was said, while career advancement is the number one motivator for Wiley supported students when starting a program, personal growth keeps them going. That was reported in the Wiley study, and 59% stated that their desire to achieve personal growth motivated them to continue with their program after getting started.
We can help the students maintain their motivation by providing them with regular feedback throughout the course. It’s also particularly motivating when students feel like they’re learning things that matter to them.
Sometimes all it takes is telling them how a particular skill, or new information, is applicable to them now or in the future. But making clear connections between what students are learning and how they can use it really helps them meet their objectives and stay committed.
While online students have a high level of intrinsic motivation to learn so they can develop professionally and personally, they also need support throughout the entire experience. Let’s move on to the second area, which is what students online need, what they must get from you, their instructor, in an online learning experience.
What Do Students Need from Online Teachers?
Particularly, what are the needs of non-traditional students and adult learners? First, it might surprise you, but one thing they really need is good classroom management. This comes from Daniel P. Stewart, an adjunct history and humanities professor at Fayetteville Technical Community College. He said that advanced planning, interesting and relevant lessons, and effective teaching are critical.
Now why do adult learners need these things? In my first teaching position, I attended a middle school educators conference during which Fred Jones taught us about using the physical classroom space for classroom management. His idea was that moving through the room regularly and being physically near each student often during the class, behavior concerns would be dramatically reduced, and engagement would increase.
While that was 25 years ago, a similar idea is still helpful today in online classrooms, and even with adult learners. Classroom management is about planning ahead to communicate and help things go right. In the example I shared about the middle school classes 25 years ago, this took an early arrival by the teacher. It also took setting up chairs in a particular manner, and a plan to move during the session. And to do that, the lesson had to be thoroughly planned and prepared. This meant the teacher would be able to walk around without having to look at the textbook or teaching materials very much during class.
Tips for Effective Online Classroom Management
Online, advanced planning is even more critical, because the course elements need to be placed into the online classroom so that everything is available to learners when they need it. Much of the time the entire course must be ready before the semester even starts.
Some of this advanced planning could take the form of a screencast walkthrough, to help your students know where to find things, and example assignments to illustrate formatting. Perhaps an example assignment might also illustrate the approximate length, or the depth that a student should explore, and grading approaches that you will use.
Another advanced planning element might include a thoughtful course announcement leading into each week. Maybe you want to provide a netiquette guide that tells students how to communicate with each other, and with their instructor throughout the class. A netiquette guide can help a lot, especially for students new to online learning who just don’t know yet that communicating in a discussion space really is different from text messaging. This is a great way to help your students know how to communicate in the online space and comfortably make connections with you and other class members throughout the experience.
Effective classroom management is probably one of the most important responsibilities we educators face in any number of learning environments, whether you’re live or online. Classroom management may be defined as the act of supervising relationships, behaviors, and instructional settings and lessons for communities of learners.
And classroom management really is a preventative activity that results in decreased discipline problems. Basically, preventative management means that many classroom problems can be solved through good planning, interesting and relevant lessons, and effective teaching.
Now when you plan ahead for what you’ll teach and how you’ll teach it, and when you will learn what your students will find most valuable and relevant, you can give your students what they really need. They need relevant, prepared lessons. And they need to learn in ways that support their goals for advancing in their professional career areas, and in their personal development.
And of course, they need connections with you, and with each other, to feel like they belong and stay connected when online education might otherwise become an isolating experience.
How Can Online Educators Help Students with Time Management?
Now let’s move into our third area, online students’ challenges: time management. Online students have challenges with time management and juggling the balance between studying and their work commitments. What does this mean for you as an online educator?
Well first, communicating what to expect from the very first day of class can help your students to plan ahead. In a previous part time faculty position I held online several years ago, I provided students with a sample schedule each week on which I suggested which tasks to complete in the online course every day.
These included suggestions like reading the textbook assignment on Monday, posting in the discussion on Tuesday and taking the first quiz. On Wednesday beginning a draft of their assignment, completing another piece of the curriculum on Thursday, and responding to classmates and their instructor in the discussion on Fridays and Saturdays.
In this way, they would be touching a few pieces of the class every day during the week. This would keep the workloads small every day, and actually give them a lot more reinforcement in their learning, spreading the work out. While not everyone will need this, or use this suggested schedule, providing that kind of help can really assist online students to see what the workload is like. Then they can plan how to manage it.
Second, providing some flexibility when students need it is also helpful with time management challenges. Flexibility does not mean that you go easy on the rigor of the course, or that you’re less accurate with your grading.
Why It’s Important to Show Students that You Care About their Learning
And of course, students need to feel that their instructor really cares that they learn. In a study of 609 online learners, caring was the number one predictor of online instructor ratings. “It turns out that caring is very important, even for adult learners.”
Thinking about what students need in order to be successful in their online experience helps you to get on their side of the challenge. Our students want to feel seen, known, and loved in their learning. And when we give them the tools and strategies that help them along, they experienced a great partnership with us.
It’s also helpful to check in with our students to see how they’re doing throughout the class, and to ask where they could use the most support and guidance. In a survey of online learners in 2020, 63% of students surveyed said that they had problems with time management, and 59% of the students cited that they had jobs that were conflicting and that work commitments were a challenge. “Allowing for flexibility while maintaining the right level of accountability at the program and course level is essential for students to be successful” (Wiley, 2020).
Learn about What Motivates Your Students
Students have a variety of specific objectives, needs, and challenges when they take courses online. We can see their objectives by asking them what they hope to achieve by completing our class. And we know that generally online students start off with the goal of professional advancement, and then they are sustained throughout their learning by continuing personal growth.
Remembering these two motivators can help us assume the best of intentions when we struggle to understand what’s going on with one of our students, or when we think about what would be most helpful in teaching them. With clear objectives, our students need us to plan. They need us to plan ahead and to practice is a high level of classroom management.
Classroom management online is a preventative approach to preparing the classroom itself, and keeping students informed about what to expect every step of the way. Classroom management also means that we build relationships with our students and help them learn how to engage with each other and with us during their experience.
And while we focus on meeting online students’ needs, it’s helpful to remember that the specific challenges they face, like time management and professional work commitments. Knowing about their challenges just might prompt us to reach out when we see students drop off in their engagement, and to be somewhat flexible when students hit unexpected time management snags.
Closing out the podcast this week, I encourage you to get to know your online students better. Learn about what motivates them to take your class, and learn about what their objectives really are. Explore what they need in order to hit their goals. Is there something more you can do in the way you prepare for the next week that will make it even clearer how your students can satisfy their own objectives during the class?
And find out how you might gain additional insight into their challenges. What do they struggle with most in your online course? What is challenging about studying online? What challenges might prevent them from completing the course, but which could be reduced if you were to try a particular strategy, or a particular approach? Once you see your students’ objectives, needs, and challenges, what might you try or do in your online teaching this coming week?
Thank you for joining me today for the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. We’ve taken a look at the objectives needs and challenges of online students, generally, and how we can help them. I hope you will try one new approach this week to help keep your teaching fresh, and help you see your students even more clearly. Best wishes to you 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.
by Dr. Bethanie Hansen | Best practices, Higher Education, Online Education Trends, Podcast, Teaching Online, Technology Tools, Video
This content first appeared on
APUSEdge.ComIt can be challenging to keep online courses engaging and interesting. In this episode, Dr. Bethanie Hansen shares five methods and strategies to help online educators enhance their classroom. Learn how to increase student engagement through asynchronous discussions, online group work, gamification, guided exploration, and leveraging the full power of your school’s learning management system.
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Read the Transcript:
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.
I thank you for joining me. It’s wonderful to be with you here today, to talk about methods and strategies teaching online. There are so many ways you can engage with your students in the online classroom, many of which involve special tools, interfaces, apps, or other items that might be considered bright and shiny objects.
Just to help you avoid getting overwhelmed, I’m going to introduce you to five specific methods and strategies you might consider using in your upcoming courses to help you keep the overwhelm at a minimum and get excited about trying something new and creative.
You might already know this, but choosing methods and strategies that work for your online environment and also guide your students appropriately through the topic, it’s challenging but it’s also necessary.
Creative strategies are so needed because students otherwise will disengage. Online education can be very isolating. If we always use an essay and discussion board approach, it can also be very dry and boring. Engaging your students and getting them excited about what they’re going to learn and how they’re going to learn is only part of the battle. We’re going to talk about that: how to learn it.
Think about the typical online class that focuses mainly on a lecture and some kind of assignment the student will give back to you. This is somewhat an imitation of a live class, and most of us would see this as the typical way a college class occurs. Online students need way more opportunities to interact with each other, with the content, and with you.
Online learners are a bit different than the residential students you might have at a traditional face-to-face university. Many of them have busy lives and need to be able to look at smaller bits of information, like a little video clip or something engaging they can click through or several of these things.
If you take the time to chunk information and use special strategies to create engagement, these strategies will really help your students be interested in your online course and help them throughout their learning and help them enjoy the process.
The tools that give your students the opportunity to work through the content that they need to learn, compete with their own performance, and manage the overall learning process can really help your online courses become more exciting and motivating.
As I’ve already mentioned, this could quickly lead to overwhelm for you. So choose one thing to try in your upcoming course, keep it small and simple, and you will be very pleased with the way this leads to a better result for you and your students.
Five Strategies for Improving Student Engagement
So here are the five methods and strategies I’d like to share with you today to help you get something more interesting going on in a small and simple piece.
Asynchronous Discussions
The first is asynchronous discussions. Asynchronous discussions are the hallmark component of online courses. Most people expect to see a discussion forum at some point in an online class. Some people use discussion forums throughout the entire course. Discussion forums give students the opportunity to teach and learn from each other. They can try on ideas, analyze, explore, debate, discuss. They can really get into the content through a discussion. They can also engage in dialogue with you, the instructor.
The discussion can include text. It could be based on images, audio, video, or multimedia, or you could include some combination of those things. In a previous episode of the Online Teaching Lounge, I explored a lot of different ways to manage your online discussions and creative a forum prompts you might consider trying. I hope you will take a look at those previous episodes. They’ll give you a lot of ideas in the asynchronous discussion area.
Online Group Work
The second method and strategy I would like to suggest is online group work. Learning can be a collaborative endeavor and group work can promote dialogue while refining understandings. This can be done in a way that fits the subject matter that you are teaching.
Group discussions, group projects, and peer-to-peer activities can also make online learning much more enjoyable for your students. This will reduce the tendency to have just lecture and discussion-based courses, and it will also make it more interesting when they’re forming connections with their classmates.
One of the drawbacks of online learning is that students do not really get to know each other deeply. When they work in a group, they have a better chance of getting to know each other, connecting and maybe even knowing a familiar name when they go to the next course in their program.
Group work can be very difficult to manage. I used to do an online project in the music appreciation class that I am teaching most. In that course when the group work came up, sometimes I would specifically assign students groups of people that were in the same time zone. My students tend to be all over the world at any given point, so I like to creatively manage that.
I had also chosen groups based on similar demographics. Maybe they’re in the same military branch or maybe some knew the subject of music a little bit and some didn’t, and I would combine those to give everybody a better chance of engaging about the content.
Group work needs clear instructions, creative activities to explore where each group member can contribute something. And, of course, some kind of criteria for grading that makes it worth the student’s time.
When I say worth their time, I mean that they’re going to actually be graded on their own contribution and not solely on the group grade. Students get very discouraged when they’re graded on the work that classmates have not done.
It’s also very helpful in group work assignments to let students choose some component of the assignment themselves. Maybe there are some creative elements they can put in there. Maybe there are several choices of what could be created or discussed in the assignment, and maybe there is also the opportunity to choose what the output format is going to look like whether it’s an essay, a PowerPoint, or some multimedia presentation.
Considering group work as the opportunity to really engage in a real-world fashion, this is an opportunity for you to also coach your students on how to work as teams, especially online.
Games and Simulations
The third method and strategy I’d like to introduce, this is the area of games and simulations. Games and simulations are opportunities for your students to apply new learning in real life scenarios. These can be supplemented through hypothetical situations, maybe they’re even role-playing or through specific apps and platforms built for some kind of educational gaming.
You might consider badging. Sometimes students get very excited about earning these little badges that appear as tokens of their achievement. There might be something built into your LMS that allows badging or up-voting or some kind of other engagement about the game or simulation itself.
Sometimes a little bit of competition actually makes the learning process even more fun. Games and simulations are becoming increasingly popular. I was at the Online Learning Consortium Conference a couple of years ago where a faculty member actually introduced the idea of using a Dungeons and Dragons scenario in a class, for gaming options.
If you explore the possibilities of gaming and simulations that are available, you just might find one that works fabulously in your subject matter. Simulations are a little bit different than games. They’re a little bit more applied and real-world oriented and might revolve around a case study or a role-play.
A simulation is something that might have a decision tree. For example, maybe the student enters a crime scene and they’re in a class where this is the area of focus. In the simulation, they might need to examine evidence and make a choice. With a decision tree, when they click on one choice, it will go to one avenue, and when they click on a different choice, it will take them someplace else. It’s a little bit like the 1980s example of choose your own adventure books. You get to choose the different options and the program takes you in different directions.
There are a lot of apps and things available that allow for decision trees. Even a simple PowerPoint presentation could be rigged so that you have a decision tree option available. You can create a slide where a student clicks on one or the other item on the slide, and depending on what they click on, it moves them to another slide entirely, skipping over a whole bunch of slides in between.
If you’re not sure what to use for a simulation and you’d like to try, I recommend starting with a simple PowerPoint. You might also consider reaching out to your classroom management team, whoever is working on your LMS at your institution, to see what’s available. Some apps can even be integrated into the learning management system to make this a lot easier for your students and for you.
Going back to the idea of gaming, I will go back into an app that I’d like to recommend today. There is one called Quizlet, which is well known for flashcard studying. Quizlet hosts flashcard-style tools to create simple interactive and game-like components that are easily embedded into any LMS.
A lot of students search for subject matter content online, maybe they do a Google search for items related to your class that you’re teaching. And many of them actually find Quizlets already available that help them study the terms that are taught in your class.
If you decide to create a Quizlet, it can be very simple to just create a list of terms or ideas, concepts, scenarios, and you can set up various options in the Quizlet program, making it fit your subject matter and your strategy the best.
Keep in mind that any new technology you may be learning as the instructor might be equally challenging for your students. There is a learning curve to everything, so when you’re trying a new interface, a new app, or a new program, keep yourself limited to one. This is going to help you avoid the overwhelm that comes with bright and shiny object syndrome. And when you get overwhelmed with a lot of new options, it can be paralyzing, making it difficult for you to integrate that into your classroom.
If you’re able to develop simulations, role-playing games, or other gamification that might go into your courses, this could be really engaging and fun. It will generate interest in your class and in the content of your course. And also guide your students to learn at a deeper level, and the results will definitely be worthwhile.
Guided Exploration
A fourth area I recommend is called guided exploration. Guided exploration helps your students quite a bit. It can be delivered as an instructor-made video. Perhaps you are doing a screencast that walks through the entire classroom, showing your students around. Maybe it’s a narrated screencast. It could be a classroom tour, a list of steps for investigating a topic, a guided exercise in the subject matter. Maybe it’s an analysis presentation of some kind of case study or other issue, or other teacher-led tools.
When we think about guided exploration, this is often the idea of lecturing on a content matter. If you use guided exploration, really what you’re doing is giving an overview of a subject or the topic, walking students through it, and describing, discussing, and analyzing it as you go.
As the instructor, you’re giving a little bit more information about the thinking for this kind of subject, maybe what we might notice. One example I’d like to share is from the music appreciation class, because of course, that’s my subject area. Guided exploration in this case might be a recording of a performance where I’m going to pause it, point out a few things in that video, discuss it and record myself doing this, and then continue recording a little segment and talk through which musical devices are showing up.
As I do that kind of guided exploration video, my students are going to have a lot more hands-on guidance so that when they listen to their musical example and have to analyze it, they feel a little bit more prepared.
Leveraging Your Learning Management System
The last method or strategy that I would like to share with you today is your LMS. Your LMS, of course, isn’t a strategy itself, but it comes with a lot of different components to help you track student progress and create creative assignments. You can communicate with everyone through your LMS, usually. You can also reach individuals privately. There might be some kind of messaging feature. There might be something also that enables interaction or even live video. Leveraging your LMS and all of its different components could allow you to create things that are new and different.
Some learning management systems have a group setting. You can take a forum discussion and randomly assign students into different groups so that they’re just discussing the topic in smaller groups than they normally would. Sometimes this alone is a very engaging method for students to get connected and a strategy for helping them dive to a deeper level.
Just in review, we’ve talked today about asynchronous discussions, group work, games and simulations, guided exploration, and learning management system components. Methods and strategies in your online class are a little bit different than deciding what to teach, it’s more about deciding how you will teach it.
As you spend the time creatively deciding your methods and strategies, you’re going to be able to be creating something that is more interesting for your students and more engaging overall. It will also give you that feeling of trying something fresh every so often. So that you don’t get stuck in patterns that you teach every single semester, but that you keep trying something new.
I hope you will try at least one of these methods and strategies today to freshen up your online teaching. And I wish you all the best this 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.
by Dr. Bethanie Hansen | Best practices, Higher Education, Music Appreciation, Podcast, Students, Teaching Online
This podcast content initially appeared on OnlineLearningTips.com.
Transcript:
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. We’re going to discuss online discussion forums and specifically, creative ideas to make those discussions more educationally valuable, help your students connect more, and help them to learn as well.
The typical discussion practices that we find in online, higher education across the board are to respond to a question reply to two peers. Well, when you reply to two classmates, often a student can post their answer, go back the very same day, respond to two others, and never enter that discussion again. Unless there’s a really compelling reason for them to do so, that often is the case.
When we create interesting and creative discussions that further their learning, as well as tapping into their creativity and apply to their real lives, the future, and their higher thinking, there’s a better tendency for students to engage in return and talk some more.
We want to be creative as much as we can to really engage the students in their learning. We also want to use a variety of instructional practices, as well as those active verbs from the taxonomies about thinking. These might range anywhere from factual level, all the way up to analysis and synthesis and creation.
The way we write the discussion forum has everything to do with what we get out of the end, where the students are writing and answering that discussion.
Today, I have five creative ideas for you that I think you’re going to enjoy, and I hope they liven up your discussion forums now and in the future, and that you will also enjoy creating more.
In a short piece called Generating Lively Online Discussion by John Orlando of North Central University, John tells us about how students are more likely to get involved in a discussion that is already active. If we have a discussion that really promotes activity early in the week, or instructions that ask students to engage early in the week, this is going to provide that kind of high level of interactivity.
In addition to that, we want the instructor to set a schedule for engaging and also responding to all the students that are there. This is going to give students a reason to check-in, return, see the latest posts, and engage further in that discussion. John’s tip about the activity level really comes from two things.
One is part of the instructions for a discussion forum, and the other is the way the instructor responds to students throughout the course and engages in that discussion.
Now, in my role, I have observed a lot of faculty over the course of the last several years, and I’ve noticed there are people who believe that the students should talk privately in that discussion with little intervention from the instructor, and then the instructor comes in later in the week and just adds a little bit or steers it. Then there are other people who post early in the week and are an integral part of that discussion. There are benefits to both of these approaches.
As you write the discussion questions, you want to consider your own involvement. How much will you be there? What kind of responses do you anticipate getting from your students, and will this really foster higher thinking? Will it help them dig into their learning a little bit more and apply the skills that you want them to have? Will it liven up that classroom?
Another thing John Orlando mentions is that students are more comfortable participating when they feel some kind of emotional bond of trust and comfort with others. That’s what he says actually makes the difference between productive discussions and those where there might be flaming comments or inappropriate types of interaction, like you might find on social media.
Be Creative with Week One Forum to Encourage Interaction and Create Psychological Safety for Students
Now, this kind of emotional bonding can occur when you have a bio at the beginning of the course. We’re talking about the week one forum discussion.
Idea number one this week is about your week one introductory forum. The idea is that you would post your bio as a model for students of what you expect, and also have a forum discussion where they introduce themselves, and they share something about their experience in the subject matter, and maybe even answer a creative question in that first week to help everyone get to know them.
You might further consider having a webcam that you use, or using some kind of digital storytelling John recommends, and narration over imagery, or a video where they just introduce themselves, and also type up a little bit.
In that week one discussion, I’ve tried this in my own online teaching, and I find that there’s an interesting thing that happens when you add questions about the subject matter. I’ll tell you about this. The example prompt I’m going to share with you today comes from a music appreciation class, which is the subject I spend a lot of time in, and this is a personal introduction for week one.
Students are asked to answer all the questions, consider numbering them, so they’re easy to find as you read, and pacing the questions into the post just to type in between the questions. Here are the questions that are asked:
- Introduce yourself: Where you are from, your profession, your family, your major, where are living now generally, and so forth.
- Have you had had any experiences in other cultures or countries? Have you experienced music in your native land, in another country, or in another culture?
- If you have experienced the music of any other culture or historical era prior to our course, please share your perception of one or more significant experiences you had with other cultures or eras.
- What are your learning goals or expectations for this class, and what do you hope to gain from obtaining your degree?
- How might learning about music benefit you?
- What kind of music do you connect with most and why? Feel free to share a sound, or video link to a sample of this kind of music to share with classmates.
- Tell us about your music or non-musical background, whether you have read music, sung in choir, played an instrument or more. Tell us about you and your feelings or experiences with music. If you have no musical background, don’t be afraid to say so.
Now by asking all these different questions for the first week forum, I’m pretty certain when I have a student truly engaging in the class and when I have one that’s just copying and pasting their initial post from some other course they’re also taking. I also get to know their background in the subject matter, and these are fairly non-threatening questions. They don’t have to study in order to answer these questions. They don’t have to know anything from the class, and they can fully engage in that very first week.
The week one introduction is a creative way to get to know your students, help them get to know each other, but also create that idea of psychological safety. That way, they’re going to be comfortable trying new concepts and doing the more difficult discussions, where they have to think more deeply in the future weeks.
The more you engage throughout that first week and provide encouraging feedback, and give your students your encouragement, positivity, and inspiration, as well as your acceptance of what they bring to the situation, the more they’re going to be comfortable and ready to go in the following weeks. That week one discussion idea is to tap into their existing knowledge and experience, and really bring it into the class from the very beginning.
Scaffold Complexity to Foster Critical Thinking and Increase Psychological Safety
A second idea you might really enjoy for creative discussions is more a strategy that starts in the beginning weeks of the course, and it increases throughout the class. Now this one I think is clever because it also creates a level of psychological safety. It helps students move from a very basic level of their understanding and their engagement in the discussion, and it takes them to higher levels throughout the course. This one is from Rob Kelly in a called How to Foster Critical Thinking and Student Engagement in Online Discussions.
Rob has a suggestion here that he got from an interview with Marcus Tanner, Jillian Yarbrough, and Andrea McCourt in an interview about online classes at Texas Tech University. Now, these instructors were talking about principles of designing and managing threaded discussions typical of most online classes.
One of the more interesting takeaways from this article is about crafting the discussion questions, and this part is about how lower-level questions early in the course that really don’t tap into the analysis synthesis, or higher thinking too soon help students become comfortable with the content. It also helps them participate while they’re learning their way around the course for those first few weeks, understanding the new topics, the content they’re learning, and really starting to build confidence in the way they engage in the discussion.
Even though a question might be a lower level question for your forums, you would still want them to be open-ended questions. Definitely don’t want closed-ended questions that ask a yes or no question. And if you can have it open-ended that invites a little bit of creativity, students can share in a way that is not threatening, and also enables them to have uniqueness from one student to the next.
I can’t tell you how many times I have taught a class where students read each other’s posts, and then they wanted to reply with their initial post on the exact same topic, instead of reaching outside the box, or being creative.
The more you craft your discussion posts, you want to encourage them to choose a topic not covered yet, an angle not covered yet, something like that that’s going to help them not reproduce the person right before them.
Another idea that has to do with this scaffolding is that in later weeks, you’re going to want to vary that and add more in-depth analysis, synthesis, and higher-thinking activities. You’re really getting to see what students truly understand, and they’re also increasing in complexity, so students are learning at a deeper level throughout the course.
You could, for example, have multi-part questions where in the first part, they’re answering a lower-level thing, and then the second part is going to be more mid-level thinking. Even in the same discussion question, they suggest here that you use more than one level of Bloom’s taxonomy, so that you’re challenging students to think higher and higher and higher as they go through.
If all of your discussion forums are graduated from the very basic level and scaffolded up to the more complex level that you want them to get at during the class, you’re setting them up for a high level of success, and you’re helping them build their confidence where they’re going to be able to engage better and better.
That idea supports three different example forum prompts that I’m going to share with you. Early in the class of, again, I’m going to refer to music appreciation here because that’s my example subject today, there are three different types of discussion prompts that illustrate this scaffolding idea.
The first one would be describing music. You might not know this, but students who are new to thinking about music from any viewpoint other than hearing it need a lots of opportunities to slow down, actively listen, and describe what they’re hearing. It just doesn’t come naturally for most people. In fact, many people remark that they’re used to hearing music in the background, and they’re not really focused on what the music parts sound like.
Active listening can be a challenge, and we discuss it a lot in the forums throughout the music classes. It requires that active listening and some picking apart what they’re hearing, identifying, and then writing about it, discussing it. Then later in the course, we want to move up to more than just descriptions.
That first discussion where they’re using what I call level one skills, they might be identifying the instrument sounds and the basic musical aspects, and maybe they could use some level two skills as well, like describing the music elements they’re hearing.
Then later, we can add level three skills like applying terms to what has been heard, predicting what might happen next in the music, and analyzing the overall musical arc of what has been played, or what has been listened to.
Prompt 1: Select one music selection included in a list provided here (and then the instructor would list six to eight different choices that are applicable to the weekly content), develop an initial forum post that describes the music you selected. Be sure to include the following:
- Write the name of your chosen music selection in the title of your initial forum response, so that everyone can tell which piece you chose before reading your post.
- In the body of the post, describe the following music aspects within the piece as you heard them: instrumentation, overall mood, tempo, dynamics or loudness and any changes you noticed, tone quality or timbre, melody, harmony, and any other aspects you would like to describe. In your answer, keep in mind that others are reading your initial post, who have not listened to this musical selection. Your description of the music might be the only way they can connect to it. Provide as much description as possible and give details and examples from your listening experience. Be sure to use music terminology.
This idea of using the academic terms and just starting with descriptions is a great way to dive into content the first week of any class. The second idea would be to compare and contrast some concepts. Again, taking from the music appreciation idea, we can compare and contrast two different musical styles to different historical periods, to different performances of a single song.
You could, for example, take a performance that is in front of a live audience of rock music and a performance in front of a live audience of what we call Western art music, and students could compare those.
Those kinds of posts and forum engagement, that kind forum topic, really does require a little guidance from the instructor to ensure that the examples they choose are really what you’re looking for, so be sure to explain fully.
Here’s an example prompt from that idea:
Read chapter four of your textbook about the classical period. Listen to the linked examples while completing your reading assignment. After listening to two examples of Mozart’s music as listed in the book, and also listening to two examples of Haydn’s, compare the styles of these two composers.
In your post share, which four pieces you sampled and by which composers. Tell about your initial impressions of the pieces. What musical similarities and differences did you note between the two composers? Use at least four specific key musical terms, like instrumentation, tempo, mood, texture dynamics, and so forth to discuss. After comparing and contrasting the two composers, which one do you prefer and why.
Then we could take this up another level and in another forum week, we could do the analysis.
This example is about commercials on television. Consider commercials you have watched on television and think about the music that accompanied them. As noted in your textbook, music powerfully affects the conscious and subconscious emotions of listeners. Select a television commercial that has music in it. Post a description of your selection using as much detail as possible about the music used. Provide the YouTube link if possible. Explain the qualities you heard in the commercial and tell about the music’s attractive traits if any. Then answer the following questions:
- What makes music effective for its advertising purpose?
- How do you respond to music and advertising, like the example you chose?
- What role did music seem to play in the commercial?
- Was the music in the background or more prominently in the focus of the commercial and why?
- What kind of image or mood did the music seem to convey?
As you think about writing your forum discussion prompts early in the course at a more simple level and later in the course at a more complex level, and scaffolding your students through, this second strategy to writing forum discussion prompts will really help you increase the student’s confidence, continue to build psychological safety, and more effectively guide them to discussing and writing about things in greater depth.
Now, these next three examples come from a presentation that I witnessed that was sponsored by Quality Matters, and it was called Alternative Discussion Structures by Lisa Kidder and Mark Cooper from Idaho State University. It was just this past year, and it was really full of great discussion ideas.
The three I’m going to share with you as part of my five ideas today are case studies, alternate histories, and debates.
Using Case Studies in Discussion Forums
We’ll start out here with the case study idea. And in their suggestion of a case study, it was suggested that the learners will read a real-life case, then answer, discuss, or argue open-ended questions. A question might be something like: What would you do in this situation? Or you might come up with other questions to apply that pertain more to your subject matter. Or they could develop solutions with accompanying data to analyze. Case assignments can be done individually, or in teams so your learners can brainstorm solutions or ideas and share the workload.
A major advantage to teaching with case studies is that the learners actively engage in figuring things from the examples. This develop skills in problem-solving, analytical skills, quantitative or qualitative analysis, decision-making and coping with ambiguity.
Another thing we know students love about case studies is that they’re connected to real life. They’re storytelling. They’re informative. The examples help them to apply the concepts they would otherwise be reading about in the class. A case study can be particularly useful if you want students to be able to apply this knowledge later on outside of class. If your subject matter is particularly applied, that’s a great way to go.
Case studies could involve more than one example, or students could have to come up with their own example, and then share it with classmates who then discuss their case study. Either way, you want to be very clear about what they should discuss, what should they bring in, how they should apply it, how they should approach it, so that you don’t end up with students who are all discussing the exact same example in the exact same way.
You would evaluate the forum posts, basically using your criteria that you establish and advance. Now, the presenters here who shared this example discussed connecting the assignment to previous posts, also drawing insightful links between the case study and professional practice, and application to the real world. Some explanation of their own personal lives, or practice as they apply and also connecting ideas with classmates. Case studies are a fantastic way to bring in all kinds of new ideas, especially if they’re not specifically illustrated in the course content. Good stretch opportunities as well.
Using Alternative History in Forum Discussion
Next, we have the idea of alternate history and in this forum kind of prompt, you would ask students to discuss the way something might have unfolded if something in history had been done differently. The overview of this one is that in an alternative history, that you’re going to pose questions to your learners, like “what might’ve happened different if,” or simply “what if?”
This is going to help your students gained some understanding of the significance of a historical event and also the cause and effect relationship, the chain reaction of the way history unfolded afterwards, and also help your students discuss past and current conflicts. An even better way to write the alternate history is to then say, “After you’ve suggested all of this, how does that connect to things that are happening now?”
The idea is that an alternative history discussion works really well in a discipline that studies and analyzes historical events that already occurred. It can be really difficult to determine what you want to do with some historical topic if you’re not a history teacher. This one is a great way to get your students involved and be really creative about your approach.
Setting up a Debate for Discussion
Lastly, we have the example of a debate. Now the debate can be online. It can be synchronous in real time, or it could be done in your threaded discussions that are asynchronous.
A debate online can be set up between two or more groups or teams, or it could be between students who have been assigned one side of the topic and everyone can be discussing at once. Debates work really well to practice critical thinking skills, argumentation, support for ideas, details, and critical thinking, and it also, of course, actively engages your students.
Some suggestions about when this might work for you are leadership, when students have had limited exposure to different kinds of forums and need some kind of leadership themselves to lead out with ideas. Not everyone’s going to be saying the same thing, so this is an opportunity for them to take a leadership role.
It could also work really well when students need to interpret some kind of literature. It’s a great way to pull out some different interpretations of the texts. This is appropriate for not only texts that have clearly defined opposing views, but also something that could be situated that way. And you might have to provide some context in doing that.
Another time this works well is in theory. The forum discussion might have differing schools of thoughts. Maybe there are several theories within a discipline, or maybe we’re talking about different philosophers and their theories of how things are. This could be exciting for them to engage in the challenge of a typical wisdom exchange or Socratic discussion, or full-on debate within the structure of the formal discussion forum.
Another time it might work well to have a debate would be when you want students to consider ethics. Maybe the best way to explore this idea without controversy would be the devil’s advocate approach. This could be for sensitive subjects. May be difficult for students to remain objective when topics are emotionally charged. You have to be really involved as the instructor and help navigate that debate as it’s occurring.
And another one would be current events. If there’s a current event happening, we might want to debate the implications of it, or how it could be organized differently, or how things might unfold in the future. There are a lot of different angles you could take for relevant topics, and also ways to help students engage in an academic way, supporting their thinking without just throwing personal opinions around and accusing each other.
When you set up debates, you want to give clear instructions about the guidelines. It can be very difficult to get students to argue things from an academic perspective, especially if they have heated emotional feelings on the matter.
You want to choose something fairly simple at first and move up to the more complex, but also I suggest using a debate after they’ve already written a few discussion forums and engaged with each other, where they have practice supporting their ideas in a non-debate situation.
A lot of practice, a lot of context, and you can have great success with debates, where your students will be able to overcome limiting thinking, expand the way they see something, take on different perspectives, and see things from a number of points of view. Debates are a good thing.
Share Your Own Creative Forum Discussion Experience
Today we’ve looked at five different ideas for creative ways to use your discussions, creative discussion prompts. I hope you will try one or more of these and definitely stop by the feedback area at bethaniehansen.com/request. Share your ideas about whether these work for you and if you have suggestions about topics we could cover about discussion forums for the future.
The goal here is that we all know discussions are a great way to connect students to each other and to their faculty member who is teaching the class, but we really want to get out of that rut of having things being repetitive and using the same prompts all the time, where students are likely to just repeat their own ideas, or worse, use the ideas of someone from a previous course. Maybe it’s their friend, or something they found online. Changing your prompts is also a great thing.
If you continue to use the same discussion approaches over time and never try a creative approach, that might work for you just fine. But if you continue to work for the more creative and applied ideas, thinking about the way students move from factual recall up to synthesis and analysis, and scaffolding that process in your discussions, you’re going to have a lot more success with your students.
You’re going to be giving them a little bit more nurturing and mentoring along the way, and students are going to walk away from your class with some real insights and a lot more learning. Creative discussions can really win for your students and for you. I hope you’ll try it this 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.
Resources:
Hansen, Bethanie. Teaching Music Appreciation Online, Oxford University Press, New York: NY, 2020.
Kelly, Rob. How to Foster Critical Thinking and Student Engagement in Online Discussions, in Teaching Strategies for the Online College Classroom: A Collection of Articles for Faculty, Magna Publications, p. 108-111, 2016.
Kidder, Lisa C., and Mark Cooper. Alternative Discussion Structures. Quality Matters Webinar. 2020.
Orlando, John. Generating Lively Online Discussion, in Teaching Strategies for the Online College Classroom: A Collection of Articles for Faculty, Magna Publications, p. 150-152, 2016.
This podcast content initially appeared on OnlineLearningTips.com.
