Adding Variety to Discussion Boards

Week 1 in the Human Element MOOC that I am currently taking focuses on Instructor Presence. One of the things that came up in the Module Overview video was a question about how to add variety to the typical Discussion Board question/response.
One of the things that I have found, while taking my Masters via distance ed as well as developing distance education courses, is that providing students with the opportunity to lead a discussion can be extremely beneficial and often surprising. This is obviously much easier for courses with smaller enrollment, but can be done effectively in larger courses given enough forethought, planning, and the use of facilitators.

Setting up the DB

Rather than creating a “discussion board question” each week. A topic is designated for certain weeks and students are asked to sign up to lead a discussion. The Instructor/Facilitator establishes the list after this initial sign up. If there are more students than weeks, you simply have them “team up” to lead a discussion. This is often more successful in advanced courses, after students have established an understanding of how a typical discussion board runs and the different ways that they can be used.

Scaffolding for Success

This can often be difficult, especially for those of us who design courses systematically, but this is essential for success and to encourage student engagement. Now that I have given you the courage, don’t just throw the students into the deep end! It is often a good idea to have one or two discussion boards that you lead the first 1-2 weeks to set an example of expectation. Even better, is to show some variety by including a case study or some other creative type of DB, not just the typically question. These initial experiences, as well as their previous online course experiences with DBs, will begin scaffolding them to successfully lead their own DB.
The second thing that I strongly encourage is to provide them with the rubric that you plan to use for grading their lofty assignment. When do you expect them to get things posted/rolling in the DB? Are you expecting them to reply to each students’ post, or simply to lead the conversation in the right direction? If there are two leaders, will they be on different sides of the topic to stimulate discussion, or will they be partners in crime fighting for what they deem is correct? All of this should be laid out in a nice rubric with points associated to each step. This will keep the “What do I have to do?” or “I didn’t realize I was supposed to comment AFTER the initial post!” down to a minimum… or at least provide you with a nice safe landing to say AHA!

Turning over the Reins

Now that they have some prior knowledge for success with this activity, they have their topic/group assignment, you should touch base with them. Once again try to bring in that human element by reaching out to them individually, or as a team, to get their ideas for what they plan on doing. You can build this into the assignment by having them contact you a week prior to their assigned DB, or if you are extremely on top of things, you can simply set up a Skype or Google Hangout at a convenient time for everyone to check in. However you do it, make sure to follow-up with feedback in some way. If they seem to be struggling, provide some resources for them to look at online, or even ideas of what they could do. This will show them that you not only want them to succeed, but that they will not be penalized for struggling with a little creativity.

Online Course Delivery: What platform should you use?

I have always been a proponent of the idea of using "technology as a means to an end, rather than the end itself." After a recent job change which prompted an LMS switch from Moodle to Blackboard (yes, I have gone over to the dark side), I found myself asking the question, "What platform should you use for online course delivery?" I began comparing the features and layout of Moodle to Blackboard. Should I have been asking this question at all? Well... let's not get ahead of ourselves too much. First, my musings from the question.

Moodle LMS

As many know, Moodle is a LMS that is open-sourced and created from the student perspective. By keeping this key philosophy in mind, Moodle has stamped out a place in the world of accessibility and ease of use for students. However, this can create a disadvantage for faculty members creating a course (f-2-f, hybrid, or online). Many improvements have been made with the recent release of Moodle 2.x that improves usability. Some notable improvements are: drag&drop, navigation block, activity chooser. The new file structure has thrown many veteran Moodle users for a loop, as it completely changes the way they approach building a course. I must say that I am a fan of the new file structure, as it increases security of files, reliability of course backups, and stays consistent with Moodle's student-centric philosophy. If a file is meant to be part of a course, put it in the course where it should be! The overall layout of a Moodle course is fairly straightforward. Moodle 2.x allows different middle sections (topics/weeks) to be displayed on separate pages is desired. These sections appear as navigation options in the navigation menu. That is the setup I took, which is shown in the screenshot below. Each of these sections or "weeks" as I name them, expand to display that week's work.

In my previous life, I was a Moodle Administrator. I was supported by another Network Administrator (who I swear had a magic wand!) who handled the majority of the back-end technical details such as server issues. My main responsibility was user support and heading off technical problems that arose. It took me at least three months to feel confident in my Moodle capabilities, which is a pretty steep learning curve for a tech person. Now granted, I had never been exposed to Moodle before that AND I was dabbling in learning from an administrator perspective rather than a faculty perspective. I could  probably cut the learning curve time down to one month for a typical faculty member to be well versed if I account for all of that. From the student perspective, I would have to say that it would only take 1 day to understand Moodle due to it's ideals of transparency.

Blackboard LMS

Blackboard... oh how you have already begun to warp my mind. Blackboard Learn is the platform that I have recently switched to. As many of you know, Blackboard is a tried and true LMS that has attempted to create a monopoly of the market. Many buy into the franchise, while many others throw up their hands in dismay. I'm fairly impartial, as I'm not writing the check for the LMS or responsible for the administration. Blackboard was created from a teacher-centric philosophy. The LMS is extremely intuitive for faculty members in the creation of their courses. I had dabbled in it for an internship during my undergrad, and have rarely looked at it since. After an afternoon of training, I feel pretty comfortable with my knowledge of course creation. For a first time user without any LMS background, I would put the learning curve at about 2 weeks for a faculty member. Student learning curve? Now that is a good question... The screenshot below is from coursesites.com where you can create a course using the newest version of Blackboard Learn. This one is fairly easy to navigate, but I don't see any one area that contains all the information needed by students. They are tasked with jumping from chapter material to discussion forums and so on.

There is the ability to have folders inside of folders that sometimes contain folders! The maze of things for students can quickly spiral out of control. Not to mention the navigation between different weeks is often not broken up into separate menu buttons. The one benefit for students is that once they successfully complete one online course (with likely much pain in figuring things out) all others will immediately make sense and be a breeze. I could quickly see how these layers both make sense from a faculty perspective but could cause confusion for students who are unfamiliar with the LMS.

 

Canvas? Google Sites? Blogs?

After musing about the differences between Moodle and Blackboard, I was lucky enough to have a sister who was considering using Google Sites to deliver her Summer online course for University of Southern Indiana (USI). I had previously worked with her on delivering the entire course through her Blog. USI currently uses Blackboard, and she is not a fan of the LMS, so we have continuously pushed the boundaries in thinking about how she could deliver the online course. This made me come full circle in realizing that the platform used to deliver the online course is relatively irrelevant. Whether you use Moodle, Blackboard, Canvas, Google Sites, Blog, or any other platform that you can think of, there will always be some type of learning curve for both the faculty member and the students. The important thing to consider is what you are wanting to accomplish.

Once you know how you would like the course to function and progress, then it is easy to figure out which tool will work best for you. I had forgotten my own mantra, "Technology as a means to an end, rather than the end itself." This made me realize how quickly we can get wrapped up in the differences in technology, rather than exploring and pushing boundaries on course delivery and course content. I would encourage you to keep pushing boundaries and exploring new ways of delivering information to your students. As long as you are transparent in how the course is set up and should progress, students will surprise you in how adaptable they are to technology.

I will be posting in the next few days about the way my sister and I went about using Google Sites to deliver her course.

Happy eLearning!

Google+ and Customizing Learning

The idea of customization has exploded since Web 2.0, and continues to catch on every today. An example that immediately comes to mind is Google+. Working at a campus that utilizes Google Apps for Education (DePauw University) and attending a university that also utilizes Google Apps for Education (IU), seeing this shift has been slightly amusing.

You mean I can have circles?! (Adaptive Customization based on Experience Economy)
Google Plus allows users to manage large quantities of interactions by arranging people (friends, coworkers, arch-nemesis) into circle. These circles immediately customize the user's experience gathering information. Just because someone puts you into a circle and shares (or spams) information and articles does not immediately place it into your stream. You have to place them into one of your circles to begin gaining this information.

You mean my Google search results will be customized? (Cosmetic Customization based on Experience Economy)
Google's search engine has integrated EE and customization as well. Google search plus your world allows search results from those in your circles to filter into your results. This organization of information by most relevant to you, occurs without any interceding on your part. Want to search for "photos", do so and you will see your photos and those of your friends before others (given that you are using Google+ and have circles).

How does it apply?
So my examples so far have dealt with the experiences and things that I am seeing in the world of Instructional Technology and how it is impacting my job as an Instructional Technologist (DePauw currently does not have the search plus your world activated for privacy reasons). How do these experiences relate to C-M-O and instructional design in theory? Customization of information and learning in these ways allow the method of delivery to change dramatically. Why not create a circle for a distance education classroom and provide relevant materials for them. When they conduct a Google search for an article, your will be sure to pop up first! The amount of relative information will increase the overall experience of the learning in this way.