Online Course Lady

Vacation is over...

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 13:20:00 +0000

The lovely winter vacation is over... and today I go back to work. Sigh.............

Ben Yagoda's The Elements of Clunk

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 02:34:00 +0000

This little column by Ben Yagoda (professor of English at the University of Delaware), The Elements of Clunk, really rings true for me. Although Prof. Yagoda is more meticulous in his worries than I am (the difference between the spelling "gray" and "grey," for example, is not something I worry about), he identifies the basic problems that I find in my students' writing also. Consider this observation about punctuation:

Punctuation is a train wreck among my students. I have no doubt as to the root of the problem: Students haven't spent much time reading. Punctuation, including the use of apostrophes and hyphens, is governed by a fairly complicated series of rules and conventions, learned for the most part not in the classroom but by encountering and subliminally absorbing them again and again. Students have a lot of conversations and texting sessions, but that's no help. You need to read a lot of edited and published prose.

Here is the question I keep asking myself, and which Prof. Yagoda does not really deal with in his essay. Given this "train wreck" (great metaphor), what can we really expect to do about this? If students have not learned about punctuation by doing lots of reading in the past, and if they are probably not going to be doing lots of reading in the future, then what can we expect to accomplish by teaching the rules of writing directly, without the reinforcement of reading...? I worry that the answer to that question is: we cannot accomplish much.

By working with students on revising their writing, I can usually make sure that the final version of their writing for my classes is in decent shape, but with many (most?) students, I cannot really say that they are able to proofread their own writing effectively, even after 15 weeks of regular practice in my class. For quite a few of the students, the motivation to learn how to proofread their writing is zero; they just don't see it as important, except insofar as they are willing to make an effort in order to secure a good grade.

This is a question that I ponder semester after semester, and it is still something that really confuses and frustrates me as a teacher. In the next week, I'll be brainstorming some ideas to see what new strategies I might try this semester. Maybe I can come up with some good new ideas! :-)

New Year's Resolution: Reading Roman History

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 15:12:00 +0000

I am so excited about Dennis's proposal to read through Roman history in 2011! Here's his blog post setting out the idea. He figured that it would be possible to get through all of Mommsen AND Merivale AND Gibbon over the course of a year by reading 30 pages a day. Sure enough, it's right... on the one hand it sounds so daunting, but very do-able, too!

So, I started up a blog to keep track of my own reading notes and progress, along with a Google Calendar to help me keep track of what to read. I'm curious if we will end up with a group discussion space, too, but I really like the idea of having a blog for my own reading notes. And who knows what kind of reading log that might turn into next year and the year after, too! I sure have a hankering to read all of Augustine's City of God, and I bet I will feel even more strongly about that after immersing myself in Roman history over the coming year.

Here's the blog: Reading Roman History. Plus, I already had a fun Roman Emperors widget... now I will have a lot more personal knowledge to go along with that widget! :-)

I Need My Teachers to Learn

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 18:39:00 +0000

Fantastic video from the Fireside!

Here are the lyrics:

I Need My Teachers To Learn 2.1

In the 27th row of her college class
she was working real hard and tryin' to pass.
She studied all night for the test she took
but she couldn’t use the notes on her own Macbook.
He told 'em that notecards was all they needed
and he wouldn’t change his mind even though she pleaded.
The dark red F was no surprise
as the tears formed in her eyes.

She said kids are changing any fool can tell
and the way that ya teach 'em has to change as well.
You might not like it cuz we grow up fast
but prepare us for the future and not your past.
There’s not one minute to burn,
I need my teachers to learn.

In detention hall there’s a quiet young man,
head hung low, with a phone in hand,
time to tell his parents 'bout the school’s outrage
cuz he tried to post the essay on his Facebook page.
He was hoping more people could have read those words
cuz an audience of one, well it’s so absurd.
What ever happened to compromise
he said the school should realize.

Aww those kids are changin' any fool can tell
and the ways that you’re teachin' have to change as well.
You might not like it cuz we grow up fast
but prepare us for the future and not your past.
There’s not one minute to burn,
I need my teachers to learn.

In a third grade room in a tiny town
a little blue-eyed girl is feelin' down.
She tried to bring her daddy to her show and tell.
He was gonna Skype in just to wish them well.
She showed 'em the camera on her mom’s netbook
but they wouldn’t let her do it on a school network.
That man in camo never called,
they got him blocked by a firewall.

I said things are changin' any fool can tell
and the way that you’re teachin' has to change as well.
You might not like it cuz we grow up fast
prepare us for the future and not your past.
There’s not one minute to burn,
I need my teachers to learn.

The world is changin' like it’s always been
and you gotta update software every now and then.
If you want to keep your version, well that’s OK
but there’s too many kids who need the tools of today.
It’s not a problem, you can start real small
and a baby doesn’t walk until he learns to crawl.
If a teacher’s not a learner till the day they die
well then man I’m askin' this: why should students try?

They need their teachers to learn,
We want those teachers to learn,
So come on teachers and learn!

New Year's Resolution... really!

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 17:02:00 +0000

I love New Year's Resolutions, and I always make sure to pick at least one really easy one... just to keep my confidence up, ha ha. So, my easy resolution for this year is to finally do something with this blog. A New Year's Resolution of a few years ago led to my Latin blogging life taking shape (and it's still going strong)... so let's see if I can get my "online course lady" blogging life into shape, too!

In fact, I would guess this year it would be a really good idea to have this blog to tug me AWAY from Latin every once in a while... I am having so much fun with my latest Latin projects that I probably need to really remind myself to think about the other things I do, which are definitely deserving of attention.

One BIG task for sure this year is developing the E-Storybook Central website which I got up and running at the end of last semester, when it was rumored that Delicious would cease to exist. Now it is sounding more like Delicious will live on in some way, but I'm glad that the rumors of its demise prodded me to rethink the way I was using Delicious and to find a better way to do that. Here's the solution I came up with in a quick but intensive two-day project back in December:

E-Storybook Central

It now contains all the materials from my Delicious links library (both to online books and also to previous Storybook projects). Here are the other things I would like to do for this project:

keep adding more e-books, along with some good annotations about existing books
expand the links to include not just e-books, but also really good websites and other online resources
develop a new section of the site with writing tips and storytelling styles

If I can make progress on those three areas in the coming semester, I will be happy! Hopefully I can use this blog as a place to chart my progress and figure out other good ways to grow that site!

Happy New Year!

Twitter and teaching

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 17:00:00 +0000

Good article abstract here; I need to come back and look at this more carefully:
The effect of Twitter on college student engagement and grades

Facebook and Gmail: my separate lives

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 16:15:00 +0000

There's been a ton of press coverage about Facebook's new messaging service v. Google's Gmail and the idea of email in general. One article by Rob Reynolds (once a colleague of mine at OU years and years ago!) predicts that Facebook will become the new platform for education and business communication... to which I say: EEEK. Even though I might be the high priestess of online education at my school, proselytizing about teaching online to anyone who will listen, this raises an issue about which I feel strongly and which, perhaps, might separate from other folks who are passionate about online education, to wit: I believe in keeping professional and personal lives SEPARATE. Very separate.

Yes, I believe that education should be very relevant and personal and student-driven... but at the same time, I think education and business and other professional activities should be kept separate from our personal lives - for our own sanity! That is simply what has worked for me: when my professional life is in the dumps, my personal life is a very welcome refuge. If I am having personal woes, I can take refuge in my professional live. The few times in my life when they have been coextensive: recipe for disaster. From my life's experience, I know I need to keep that separation clear.

I would guess, in fact, that is why I have so gladly embraced the opportunity to conduct my professional life exclusively online. I teach online, and I am not even living in the state (Oklahoma) where I teach. My entire professional life is conducted online and in print, and I am very happy about that: I far prefer teaching online, blogging, and publishing books (print books and ebooks) to being in a physical classroom, going to department meetings, and attending conferences. That's a purely personal preference; I know others feel differently about their professional activities, of course.

So: my professional life is online, but my personal life is definitely offline. I don't use Facebook. My husband and I don't need online communication tools. I don't post pictures of my cat online (well, occasionally - but that was just to test the camera in my iPod, I swear!). My parents are barely able to manage their email; we talk on the phone and I go visit. That suits me just fine.

Now, admittedly, if I were really keen on keeping in touch with people in farflung places, I would not be averse to using online tools to do that - but I would certainly not be using the same tools to communicate personal matters as I do to conduct my professional life!

That's why I don't like Facebook - it practically invites you to blur those boundaries to the point of the boundaries becoming unrecognizable. We use a social network (Salesforce Chatter) where I work, and I think that is fantastic - exactly because it is about work, and it is how I can interact with colleagues at work. If we were using Facebook instead, I would not participate; I'm really not interested in straying over the boundaries into my colleagues' personal lives.

So too with my students. I am someone who gets to know my students well in an academic sense, but I am wary of getting caught up in their personal lives. In fact, I think one of the great tasks I face with them is trying to pry them free from their active social lives and personal identities to see themselves as future professionals, to see themselves as people having something to contribute to society and to culture beyond their circle of friends, real or virtual. If I were trying to conduct my class inside Facebook, I don't think I would ever manage to distract them enough from their friends in order to achieve that goal. By using a dedicated Ning as the social network for our class, I can at least hope that it is possible!

So the idea of having my personal and professional lives merged in Facebook doesn't appeal to me in any way shape or form - and that is totally aside from my personal distaste for Facebook as a corporate entity. When Google, a company I greatly admire, tried something similar with Buzz, I opted out within a minute: Google, thinking it was being helpful, wanted to automatically share my "Buzz" stream with the people I most emailed - which happened to be my very worst students, the ones to whom I had to send endless emails perhaps because of chronically late or incomplete assignments, plagiarism, whatever (ugh). So much for social metrics.

I will definitely watch the advent of this new Facebook attempt at hegemony with great caution and concern. There's nothing there that dampens my passion for online education, but if Facebook becomes the new Blackboard, as Rob Reynolds predicts, then that just means we are going from bad to worse, in my opinion.

Why we should teach tech skills - nice video!

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 22:45:00 +0000

Short and to the point - and even if the interaction between parents and kids consists of the kids sometimes teaching the parents rather than the other way around, getting some good parent wisdom into the mix is a good thing, no matter how it happens! :-)

notes from Project Information Literacy report

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 19:47:00 +0000

Since I don't teach research courses per se, my students do research in support of their creative writing project. My interest in the report is both in terms of how students use the Internet (since the sources they use for their creative writing are online sources) but also for what clues this report might provide regarding how students manage projects in general. For example, I feel affirmed in the three weeks of brainstorming and planning we do for their semester-long project starting right away in the first week of class: since students report that getting started on a project and managing its scope is the biggest challenge, providing that early support is definitely appropriate!

Project Information Literacy
How College Students Evaluate and Use Information in the Digital Age
by Alison Head and Michael Eisenberg

November 1 2010

THE FOLLOWING ARE MY CLIPPINGS FROM THE ARTICLE FOR FUTURE REFERENCE:

For over three-fourths (84%) of the students surveyed, the most difficult step of the course-related research process was getting started.

Even though many students may consider themselves adept at evaluating information and applying techniques for tackling one course-related research assignment to the next, the sheer act of just getting started on research assignments and defining a research inquiry was overwhelming for students—more so than any of the subsequent steps in the research process.

All in all, the findings suggest students in both large universities and small colleges use a riskaverse strategy based on efficiency and predictability in order to manage and control the information available to them on campuses.

Unsurprisingly, what mattered most to students while they were working on courserelated research assignments was passing the course (99%), finishing the assignment (97%), and getting a good grade (97%). Yet, three-quarters of the sample also reported they considered carrying out comprehensive research of a topic (78%) and learning something new (78%) of importance to them, too.

As a whole, students in the sample were not avid users of Web 2.0 applications for supporting course-related research tasks. The most frequently used Web applications were document sharing Web-based applications, such as Google Docs, available since 2006.

Only 1 in 10 students used social bookmarking (10%), such as delicious, for organizing and sharing Web content with others or alerting programs for automated content monitoring.

The finding suggests even though students may be heavy users of social networking sites, such as Facebook, Web 2.0 applications for course research have not yet found their way into studentsʼ research repertoire.

Over a third of the students in the sample reported difficulties with knowing how to cite (41%) and writing about research results (38%) were difficult steps in the course-related research process. And about a third of the respondents (35%) reported it was difficult to figure out if their use of a source constituted plagiarism, or not, when completing course-related research assignments.

Instead, for many students we interviewed, course-related research was difficult because it was more akin to gambling than completing college-level work. Yes, gambling. The beginning of research is when the first bets were placed. Choosing a topic is fraught with risk for many students. As one student acknowledged in interviews: either a topic worked well or it failed when it was too late to change it. Add in the constraints of timing, grades, and too much available information to scour—and the difficulties with beginning research are put into high relief. The odds of “winning” this bet are significantly compromised when these factors come into play. In fact, more than three-quarters of the students in the sample considered it important, if not very important, to conduct comprehensive research on a topic (78%) and to learn something new (78%). Nearly two-thirds of the sample found it important to improve their writing (64%) and research skills (63%). At the same time, over three-fourths of the students (76%) reported that it was also important to find answers to insert in their paper to prove to the instructor the research part of the assignment had been done.

This finding lends support to what we found in the student interviews: Many students see course-related research as being “answer-driven.” These results are striking—countering conventional wisdom among many educators and the public—we found students do approach information seeking and research in a consistent and thoughtful, albeit narrow manner. Scratch the surface and the rest of the results are even more revealing: Even though many students may consider themselves fairly adroit at finding information, especially culled from the Web, and evaluating it, they also reported being hobbled by having to frame a research inquiry for course-related research—before they even begin. That is, studentsʼ biggest difficulties were in determining the nature and scope of a research assignment and what it required of them.

RECOMMENDATION: Integrating research rubrics into assignment guidelines: In our survey sample, students struggled the most with initiating course-related research assignments. Defining a research inquiry is the fundamental research competency for completing college course assignments—yet it stymied over two-thirds of the students in our sample. Despite our concerns with this result, we also see it as offering an interesting opportunity, especially for helping students learn about what information seeking and research require as a knowledge-producing process and for giving students a way for assessing their own performance when conducting course-related research.

RECOMMENDATION: Assessing how students are being prepared for the 21st century workplace: Our work leads us to see a widening gap between the information-seeking systems todayʼs students use and the information-seeking systems the academy most readily supports (as communicated through assignments, support materials, and curriculum). In a study we released this year about handouts instructors use for course-related research assignments, we found six out of 10 handouts recommended that students consult library shelves—a place-based source—more than online library sources and the Web, even though most students use these sources more often.50 In this study, few students had used Web 2.0 applications within the last six months for collaboratively creating and sharing knowledge for course work (beyond Google Docs). Yet, 70% of this yearʼs sample of students frequently turned to social networks, such as Facebook, for solutions to information problems in their daily lives.

The main point? Todayʼs students have systems for finding and using information the academy often disregards, or in some cases, even prohibits (e.g., Wikipedia). What concerns us is that the systems students are using are increasingly becoming the basis of what is being used for finding information and collaborating, sharing, and creating knowledge in many workplaces. Many institutions may be unwisely out of step with how information is manipulated and used in todayʼs world.

A Technology Manifesto of Sorts

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 15:53:00 +0000

Some encounters with other faculty in the past week have prompted me to try to do an inventory of the assumptions and goals that guide me in my use of technology in teaching and learning - which is to say, my assumptions and goals about teaching and learning in general. I figured this would be a good thing to do to organize my own thoughts, while also giving me a handy reference to share with people who seem to be operating with quite different assumptions and goals and who might misinterpret my work as a result. (That happens to me in minor ways all the time and in one MAJOR way this past week; you can read the gory details here.)

I'll adopt a kind of outline form here, which will also be a good way to keep in mind some prompts for topics that I might want to write about in detail later/elsewhere, too! Sunday morning is a good time to think big thoughts that there just is not room for during the regular days of the week...

TEACHING AND LEARNING ASSUMPTIONS

1. Change is not inherently good or inherently bad - but it is inevitable. As the Latin saying goes, Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis - "The times are changing and we too are changing with them." (For any closet Latinists out there, that line is a dactylic hexameter - pretty nifty, yes?) Just looking at the evolution of my teaching over the past ten years, I am amazed (and, overall, pleased) by the changes that have taken place, especially with regard to technology.

2. Communication takes many forms. Watching, speaking, listening, touching - reading, writing - in person, at a distance - analog, digital... Our modern lives are a blend of ALL these forms of communication. The more forms of communication we master, the better able we will be to choose the forms of communication that best suit our needs. Each person has their own communication preferences; it's important (and not always easy) to be aware of our personal strengths and weaknesses in how we communicate. Technology offers us new ways to communicate that were not even imaginable ten years ago.

3. Sharing is good. This is one of my most deeply held assumptions, but I recognize that this is probably more of a personality disposition than a conscious choice. I personally find it easier to give things away than to take them - that's just how I feel. Yes, I understand that others feel differently, of course! The university is a very odd place that way with regard to sharing: it is in some ways a place of sharing, but far less so than you might expect... that's a topic definitely worth reflecting on at length in a future post. One of my favorite things about Web2.0 technology is the way that it is founded on and promotes the practice of sharing.

4. Time is precious. I guess I am just getting OLD, ha ha. But seriously, time is a commodity that I value highly, and there are so many things I would like to be able to do for which there is just not enough time. To me, being able to save time for important tasks is of great personal importance. Wasting time on trivial tasks is something that makes me extremely unhappy. Being able to save time is one of my main goals in using technology in my teaching - if I can save time on mindless tasks, that gives me more time for things that really require my full attention.

5. Ignorance is opportunity. I positively rejoice when I realize that there is something I do not know or something I do not know how to do, because it gives me an opportunity to decide if I want to go find the information or learn the skill. Because of the limits of time (see above), it's not possible to know and do everything - but until you realize your ignorance, you don't even have the choice. So, I am quick to embrace my own ignorance and very grateful for the way the Internet helps me find the answers I seek. I am someone who pursues a few subjects in real depth (ask me anything about Aesop's fables!) and I have a lot of respect for others' scholarship, but I also put a high value on breadth of knowledge and purely random knowledge, too.

TEACHING AND LEARNING GOALS

1. Help my students become more confident in their writing. This goal has come as kind of a surprise to me personally, but I have no hesitation in listing it as my number one goal. When I taught in the classroom, writing just did not seem that important or practical as a teaching goal. Now that I teach fully online, it is natural that written communication has assumed a new importance, and I love the way that new technologies make it possible to students to share their writing online with others in ways that just could not happen with printed paper in the traditional classroom. An added benefit is that my own writing has improved dramatically and I now think of myself as a writer - something that definitely was not true ten years ago.

2. Help my students become more confident in using technology. While I doubt anyone at my school could object to the goal of teaching writing, I can imagine that teaching technology is a goal which is not widely shared, and might even be repudiated. Yet I would rank the teaching of technology more highly than, say, the teaching of the subject matter of my courses. This is because I teach Gen. Ed. courses, courses which are outside of my students' majors and, understandably, often perceived by the students to be irrelevant fluff. Yet by including a strong focus on technology in my classes, I am confident that I can make the classes relevant and useful to any student at the university, even if they are not likely to embark on a lifelong study of fables and folklore as I have.

3. Help my students with time management. It seems to me that the single biggest problem my students face is lack of time combined with not-the-best time management skills. I've worked hard to organize my courses in a way that is both highly structured but also flexible and customizable, so that students get the benefit of the reinforcing structure while also exercising lots of individual choice. That is something I was never able to do in the classroom, but online technology has made it a realistic goal.

4. Promote student-to-student learning and interaction. In the classroom, I was invariably the center of attention, being a pretty outgoing person with lots to say, standing up there at the front of the classroom. Still, it is not my goal to be the center of attention! Instead, I am so glad for the way that by teaching online I can shift the focus away from me and let the students interact with each other and learn from each other. Practically speaking, I was not able to manage this in the classroom very easily, but it is very easy to do in online classes!

5. Explore the world of stories and storytelling. Although I am not confident that all the students in my classes would share my specifically academic interests in storytelling (for example, my intense curiosity about just where on earth Ioachim Camerarius found all the fables he included in his Fabulae Aesopiae of 1579), I do think that storytelling is one of those universal human endeavors that has something to offer to everybody. I would like for the students in my classes to become self-aware and eager consumers of stories that they can find online, both in the form of printed books as well as stories told using new digital media. In this way, I hope that they can both discover old stories and create new stories that they will want to then share with others.

~ ~ ~

... well, that was not so hard to write after all! I was worried I would find it difficult, but since I spend a lot of time pondering these questions, it was easy to come up with five main assumptions and five main goals. I'm sure I could go on and on, but that feels quite satisfactory for now!

In later posts, I will look at the specific learning activities in my classes and the technology tools I am using to see how they fit in with these goals and assumptions. I may discover as a result that some of my class activities and tools should be reshaped in order to accord with these goals and assumptions, or I may be provoked into reformulating these goals and assumptions based on an examination of my practices. Either way, I think this will be something good to have in place when I look back and evaluate the Fall semester over the winter break and start getting ready for Spring.

Based on the goals and assumptions I've listed here, you can guess that I would be very interested in reading about other people's goals and assumptions if they would like to share them! In the hope of that happening, I'll go replicate this post over at Fireside Learning, too. :-)

Yes, I "cater" to students...

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 15:49:00 +0000

I love this type of cartoon because it's "in the eye of the beholder." To me, the message of this cartoon is that this teacher is clueless: she has a room of students eager to learn, but because she makes a point not just of ignoring their interests but actively dismissing them, the students leave the room. Of course, I can imagine that some people might instead read their through the lens of their own prejudice against video games and student culture and think that this teacher has cleverly sussed out the people who should not be in her classroom.

Math Humor :-)

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 15:45:00 +0000

Ah, the ambiguity of graphic symbols! :-)

MySpace cartoon (but holds true for Facebook too...)

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 21:50:00 +0000

Yeah, it's a little dated - but just substitute Facebook for MySpace and the message still holds true.

Students and Information Literacy

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 17:56:00 +0000

I don't have time to write about it today but for sure I want to come back and read this Project Information Literacy report, and also review the very useful comments by Barbara Fister (which is where I read about the report). This looks like good stuff and trying to help my students do better job of exploring online resources is a BIG part of what I want to do in my classes. I could use some new ideas to help me move forward! :-)

good proofreading article in NYTimes

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 14:42:00 +0000

Very nice article in NYTimes full of ideas for how to teach proofreading, strategies, etc. This is a hugely important thing to teach in school and it does not seem to get taught very well at all! Even our student newspaper, which presumably has a real proofreader, is full of errors.

So, I will be harvesting ideas and tips from this article to add to my class next semester!

Going Into Detail: Developing Proofreading Skills
By SHANNON DOYNE AND HOLLY EPSTEIN OJALVO

Twitter humor :-)

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:44:00 +0000

Okay, yes, this cartoon is making fun of me - I don't Twitter about my cat (I do have enough self-restraint to manage that)... but if I didn't know better, I WOULD Twitter about my cat - because he's so cute! :-)

Widget: Aesop's Fable of the Day in English

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 01:23:00 +0000

This weekend I reworked my old Aesop's Fables Illustrated widget so that it is now an Aesop's Fable of the Day Illustrated, with 366 items, one for every day of the year, including leap years.

For each day, there is the complete text of the fable in English (before it was just a partial text), along with an illustration, 200 pixels in width. Links are provided both for the text source and the image source. I've tried to pick short fables so that the text does not make the widget too large.

It fits nicely in a Blogger.com sidebar that is set at 200 pixels, or you can insert the script into your own table set at 200 pixels in width, which is what I have done below (although that will only be visible at the blog itself; for those of you reading this post via email, you'll need to visit the blog to see the scripts in action). As with all the date-based widgets, you can also get a randomized version if you prefer!

For those of you who were already using this widget, you will see that it is automatically displaying with the new content, since the name of the script file remains unchanged from before. :-)

Here is the table of raw data if you are curious to see all the fables set out together on one page!

Date-Based Version

Here is the date-based avascript:

Here is the date-based script in action:

Random Version

Here is the random javascript:

Here is the random script in action:

(more widgets at SchoolhouseWidgets.com)

What is it with the NYTimes and online education?

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 14:24:00 +0000

What is it with the NYTimes and online education? I read the NYTimes as my primary news source and pretty much every day I learn something substantial from reading an article in the NYTimes, something that adds to my knowledge and provokes me to ask more questions. Yet when it comes to education coverage, and coverage of educational technology in particular, the NYTimes is really bad. I mean REALLY bad. For online education, they seem to have the same article that they rehash over and over and over again, all about how online education is some dire threat, a ticking time bomb in the heart of our higher ed enterprise that is going to explode in our faces and bring an end to learning in this country. UGH.

The latest version of this rehashed article appeared in the NYTimes on November 4 2010, this time written by Trip Gabriel, with the title: Learning in Dorm, Because Class Is on the Web.

Here are the absurd things it states outright or insinuates about online courses:

*online courses cater to lazy students and money-grubbing administrators ("The University of Florida broadcasts and archives Dr. Rush’s lectures less for the convenience of sleepy students like Mr. Patel than for a simple principle of economics: 1,500 undergraduates are enrolled and no lecture hall could possibly hold them") - AS IF all online courses are mass production models, and as if all classroom-based courses were charming little seminars with the professor and adoring students seated comfortably around a table together.

*students are isolated from one another in online courses ("Students on this scenic campus of stately oaks rarely meet classmates in these courses") - WHEREAS my online course students have remarked in course evaluations that they interact with each other more online than in a regular classroom; how are you supposed to interact in a regular classroom after all, when the professor is talking and you are all supposed to sit there and be quiet and listen? (Lecturing is still a dominant model in university classrooms - something the NYTimes seems to find not problematic at all.) Students share all their writing online with each other in my courses: how often does that happen in a classroom course where the students are crammed into a room together for 150 minutes per week...?

*online education is inherently a failure because it is not face to face ("This may delight undergraduates who do not have to change out of pajamas to “attend” class. But it also raises questions that go to the core of a college’s mission: Is it possible to learn as much when your professor is a mass of pixels whom you never meet? How much of a student’s education and growth — academic and personal — depends on face-to-face contact with instructors and fellow students?") - POPPYCOCK. Imagine if the rest of the world were supposed to conduct all its business on a strictly face to face basis, without technology mediation. Just to take one example, if we are going to get rid of "pixels," uh, then I guess we will have to get rid of the entire television industry and only go to live theater! And let's get rid of radio and recorded music and only attend live performances! And, oh yeah, NEWSPAPERS, which I read pixel by pixel online, or dot by dot via drops of ink: let's get rid of newspapers, too, and only talk to reporters face to face to learn about the world's events! Reporter Trip Gabriel will need to make a little trip down to North Carolina where I live and talk to me face to face about the evils of online education I guess. Or I will have to make a pilgrimage to New York. Yeah, right.

*online education offers no interaction with faculty ("In a conventional class, “I’m someone who sits toward the front and shares my thoughts with the teacher,” she said. In the 10 or so online courses she has taken in her four years, “it’s all the same,” she said. “No comments. No feedback. And the grades are always late.” As her attention wandered, she got up to microwave some leftover rice.") - WRONG: Not only does this imply, groundlessly, that classroom classes inherently provide timely grades and feedback, it leaves the completely misleading impression that all online classes fail to do so - but practically speaking, what about that classroom? In particular, what about all the students who do NOT fit into the front row? My experience in the classroom was that I could interact with a small number of students - in my online classes, I interact with every single student, meaningfully, every week, all semester; that could never happen in a classroom-based class, which is exactly why I prefer to teach online.

Luckily, quite a few people who teach online added comments to the article pointing out how one-sided it was, and how poorly informed. Here is the comment along those lines which I posted... similar to the literally dozens of such comments I have posted over the years whenever I see that the NYTimes has published a poorly informed and narrow-minded article about educational technology. I wonder when I will ever read an article about educational technology in the NYTimes that actually merits being published in that otherwise well-informed and informative newspaper!

My comment:

I feel very sad when I hear that students have had bad experiences with online courses, just as I do when I hear they have had bad experiences in the classroom. The student who remarked about "No comments. No feedback. And the grades are always late" could be speaking just as easily of a badly taught classroom class as a badly taught online class.

As someone who teaches fully online classes and has done so for eight years, I find it FAR MORE PRODUCTIVE - both for the students and for me - than any class I could ever teach in the classroom. I am able to interact with each and every student every week, one-on-one, helping them to improve their writing, do research online, and learn to publish their work on the Internet. Lots of feedback, lots of work - and lots to be proud of, since they publish their work online at their own websites (you can see all the materials at mythfolklore.net). I never had a way to work so intensively with each and every student in the classroom - and there was never a way in the classroom for all the students to be interacting with each other. For me, online classes are definitely superior to what I can teach in the classroom.

I wish more online teachers knew how to take advantage of the web tools and services that make it possible to build really exciting and educational online courses. Web publishing tools like GoogleSites and PBWorks, social learning sites like Ning, content tools like GoogleDocs and Flickr, all this great technology really can work to our benefit in learning and teaching online. Alas, I know that many of my online colleagues do not know how to use these tools - universities are very slow to embrace change, but the world of online learning is changing all the time. It's something that I love as a teacher; I wish that all online instructors felt the same and really harnessed the power of the online environment in their teaching.

Great week with OU Chatter

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 14:45:00 +0000

It's been a while since I have blogged as the Online Course Lady (mostly I just blog at the Bestiaria Latina), but after a great week at work connecting with colleagues via our new OU Chatter (thanks Salesforce!), I decided to start blogging again about my online courses and the different kinds of web-based tools I'm using.

Big accomplishment this week: with help from Michelle Davis, who administers the Desire2Learn course management system at my school, I set up a demo course with a few different kinds of gadgets and widgets to introduce people to some of the amazing dynamic content that is available for us inside D2L or inside any other web environment that allows for embedded content, javascripts, etc. You can take a look at that demo course by going to learn.ou.edu and logging in with the username oudemo and the password oudemo. There are all kinds of widgets and gadgets on display there!

Meanwhile, starting next week I'll be blogging about them here!

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Demo Course Screenshot

TEST

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 23:30:00 +0000

Insider Tips for Online Courses

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Gibbs) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:25:00 +0000

For those of you who were in one of the online courses this semester, please share here your tips and suggestions for the students next semester! You can leave ANONYMOUS comments; no Blogger.com account is needed.

So, think about what you wish you had known in starting out the semester, so that the students next semester can benefit from your experience!

To leave a comment, see the comment box at the very bottom of this post - or CLICK THIS LINK TO ADD A COMMENT.

THANKS!