Note

The Summer Technology Institute, sponsored by the Office of the Provost and the Center for Teaching, Learning and Scholarship, is an opportunity for faculty to participate in a learning community of faculty across disciplines and schools engaged in an exploration of the effective uses of technology in teaching, learning, collaboration, and scholarship.

Faculty who consider themselves basic users or do not currently use technology in their courses are especially encouraged to apply.

A $500 stipend accompanies participation in the summer institute.

The program features a weeklong institute in June, held at Washburn Lounge on the Brattle Campus. Here, faculty will engage in a rich mix of dialogue, hands-on practice, project-based learning, reflection, and application to explore innovative ways technology can be integrated into their teaching. Regular gatherings over the course of the academic year will extend conversations and deepen learning begun at the Summer Institute.

Major topics addressed at the Summer Institute include:

• Instructional Design
• Technology-Enhanced Course Design Strategies
• Use of Instructional Technology tools including myLesley (Blackboard, myLesley Voice Tools, Voicethread, Collaborate, and Blackboard Instant Messenger)

Expectations for Summer Technology Institute Participants

Faculty are expected to:

• Participate in a 5-day training seminar: June 9-13, 2014
• Develop a technology-enhanced learning activity for a 2014-2015 course
• Attend at least 2 “brown bag” discussion workshops during the 2014-15 school year
• Present a workshop or poster session at the 2015 eLearning Institute

Important Dates

Application

To apply for the Summer Technology Institute, please fill out the application form.

Send Email

Looking up email addresses and setting up contact groups for your students can take a lot of time. Stop doing it! Email your students directly from your myLesley course using the Send Email tool. Email the entire class, groups of students, or select individual students. A copy of the message will be sent to your email address for future reference.

Are you better at speaking than typing? Try Voice Email instead. 

Many faculty find they can provide more information in the same amount of time by recording their message.

Announcements

The Announcements tool is a great way to share time sensitive information to the entire class.

Use Announcements to kick off a new week, wrap up content and remind students about upcoming due dates. It’s a great way to summarize discussions and highlight key points for feedback to the whole class. Do you need to clarify information and clear up confusion that multiple students are having? Don’t send 15 emails. Send one announcement.

Announcements are visible on the home page of the myLesley course, but check ‘Send a copy of this announcement’ to also send an email to everyone. This will provide students two opportunities to receive important course information.

Create a Course Repository

Even if don’t teach online, having course content in myLesley can be incredibly helpful. Placing your syllabus, links to readings, and assignment information online allows students to easily find information when it’s needed, 24 hours a day/7 days a week. Clear organization and instructions translates to less frustration and confusion for students and fewer clarification emails for you.

Performance Dashboard

The Performance Dashboard provides a quick overall view of student activity in the course. The dashboard lists all the students and how long it has been since they last accessed the course. It is a quick way to identify students you may need to reach out to.

The dashboard also shows students’ discussion board activity. Click on the number in the ‘Discussion Board’ column to access details on an individual student’s posts.

These are just a few easy to apply tips for using myLesley as a time-saving tool. Check out our Faculty Instructional Technology Resources to learn more about myLesley’s features.

• Want a quick and easy way to record and embed a short video introduction of yourself in your course?
• Looking for a simple way to provide video feedback for your students?
• Thinking about a way to record and post a short video demo?
• Hoping to repurpose a video from your YouTube channel and add it right into your course in seconds?

You can do all of those things right in Blackboard with Video Everywhere!

Video Everywhere is a new feature in Blackboard that lets you record with your computer’s webcam, upload the video right to your YouTube account, and embed it into your course – all at the same time and all without leaving the Blackboard environment. If you already have a video in your YouTube channel that you’d like to quickly insert in your course, you can use Video Everywhere for that too!

Got a computer, a webcam, a Google account, and a YouTube Channel? You’re good to go!

Getting Started
When you choose to add an item to your course, you’ll find the “Video Everywhere” icon in the Content Editor. It looks like a small webcam:

You can find the icon located in the lower left-hand corner of the content editor:

When the “Record” window opens, just sign into your Google/YouTube account (you’ll need to create a Google account if you don’t have one already and you’ll need a YouTube channel if you don’t have one yet.).

Note that the default is the Record screen but you can choose the Browse tab to insert a video you already have in your YouTube channel.

Once you sign in, you’ll be walked through the process to easily Record, Upload and Insert your video right into your course. Just grant access when asked along the way.

Once it’s in your YouTube channel, the video will be available to insert in any of your other courses using Video Everywhere’s Browse option from within each course.

That’s all there is to it!

A word about privacy: Please be aware that any video recorded with Video Everywhere will go directly to your YouTube account and have a default privacy status of “unlisted”. This means that it can only be viewed by those who have the URL for the video, and it won’t come up in a search, but the status is NOT “private”.  More information about this is available on Blackboard’s Video Everywhere Support site (see link below).

For More Information
You can find a step-by-step guide to using Video Everywhere here: Blackboard’s Video Everywhere Support Page, including information about privacy issues and making videos accessible.

You can also view Blackboard’s quick video introduction.

For more help with this new feature, contact elis@lesley.edu.

New Profiles
You can now create a profile in myLesley to share with your classmates and instructors. Your profile will allow you to post a photo of yourself, and provide a little information about yourself, such as what you are studying. Profile photos can be viewed next to your posts on the discussion board, allowing you to better connect with your classmates and colleagues. You also will be allowed to choose how you want your name to display in your profile.

Learn how to create your profile at http://tinyurl.com/qjxhdjm.

Return of the Discussion Board Tree View
If you have missed the Tree View on the Discussion Board, the new “look and feel” of Blackboard allows us to get that back. You can once again choose to view discussion forums in list or tree view depending on your preference.

New Icons
The new “look and feel” of myLesley also includes a few new icons:

  The new Logout button looks like a power icon seen on many digital devices.

  View and edit your Profile.

 Posts from multiple courses.

  View the Calendar.

When editing content, the chevron menu icon   no longer exists. In the new, cleaner look, you will not see edit icons until you hover your mouse over the item of content you wish to edit. Once you move your cursor to the item you would like to edit, all the edit options will appear. The old chevron edit icon has been replaced with a simple down arrow.

Please remember that if you hover your mouse over any icon you don’t recognize, a text popup will identify it for you.

For more information on how to use myLesley, please refer to our Faculty Instructional Resources site.

To begin, you’ll need to log into your course using the Chrome browser. If you don’t already have Chrome installed on your computer you can download it here. Please note that Firefox is still the browser we recommend that you use for Blackboard activities but the Chrome browser appears to be the only program that allows us to create printable copies of Blackboard screens.

1. Once you’ve logged into your course via the Chrome browser make sure the Edit button is toggled to the “On” position.

2. On your sidebar locate the menu item where your course materials are housed. For example, you may have an item titled “Course Modules or Course Sessions.” Right click on this link. A menu will open. Select the “Open in New Tab” option.

3. At the top of your browser you’ll now see 2 separate tabs. Click on the item that is labeled with the same title as the menu item that houses your course materials. In this instance we’ll click on the tab called “Course Sessions.”

4. On the screen you’ll now see a list of the sessions or modules that appear in your course. Right click on the week you would like to make a printable for and once again click on the “Open in New Tab” option from the menu that appears.

5.  At the top of your browser you’ll now see 3 separate tabs. Click on the item that is labeled with the same title as the session or module that you’d like to create a printable version. In this instance we’ll click on the tab called “Week One: Getting Your….”

6. You’ll now see all of the content items for the week you selected in your browser window. At this point we recommend that you minimize any sidebar menus (located on the left hand side of the page) that appear in your course.

If you’re using Learning Modules with a Table of Contents you can minimize the table by clicking on the icon indicated below:

To minimize your main course menu (or sidebar) click on the arrow icon.

7. Now, at the top of your screen, locate the menu item called “File.” Click on this item. A menu will open. Select the “Print” option from the menu.

8. In the print menu window click on the “Change” button located in the Destination area.

9. In the new window that appears, locate the Local Destination section and click on the “Save as PDF” option.

10. A new menu will appear. A preview of your course session will be located on the right hand side of the page. Click on the Save button found on the upper left hand side of the window.

11. The Save As window will open. Here you can rename the file and select the location on your computer that you would like to house the document you’ve created. When you’ve made your edits and/or selections click the “Save” button.

 12. Now you can upload this printable version of your content to the class or email it directly to students. Please contact elis@lesley.edu if you need additional assistance. You can also print these instructions.

Cognitive Apprenticeship

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Collins, Brown and Newman (1989) suggested an extension of the traditional apprenticeship model of learning through what they termed the “Cognitive Apprenticeship”. They claimed that traditional apprenticeships have three elements cognitively important for a model of learning:

1. Leaners have access to models of expertise-in-use against which to refine their understanding of complex skills.
2. Apprentices often have several masters and have access to a variety of models of expertise leading to an understanding that there may be different ways to carry out a task, and that no one individual embodies all knowledge and expertise.
3. Learners have the opportunity to observe other learners with varying degrees of skill (p.456)

Authentic e-Learning

More recently, Herrington, Reeves, and Oliver (2010) have developed a framework based on the idea of cognitive apprenticeship. The elements of the framework can be used as a set of criteria for designing learning experiences:

1. Provide authentic contexts that reflect the way the knowledge will be used in real life
2. Provide authentic tasks
3. Provide access to expert performances and the modeling of processes
4. Provide multiple roles and perspectives
5. Support collaborative construction of knowledge
6. Promote reflection to enable abstractions to be formed
7. Promote articulation to enable tacit knowledge to be made explicit
8. Provide coaching and scaffolding by the teacher at critical times
9. Provide for authentic assessment of learning within the tasks

Authentic learning is very well suited to online learning, but while students may be familiar with technologies of participatory culture, they need guidance in working on collaborative online teams and coaching at critical times during problem-solving.

If you are interested in creating an authentic online or blended task for your online, hybrid or face-to-face teaching, please feel free to contact elis@lesley.edu. Our design staff has expertise in the creation of collaborative online learning and have presented at national conferences on the topic.

Are you able to develop a relationship with students?  Do you think this is important to their commitment to learning?

Joan Thormann: Building relationships with students is one of the more time consuming things that I do.  I schedule one-to-one Skype meetings with each student.  These meetings were originally supposed to be about 15 – 20 minutes.  As it turns out, the meetings usually last anywhere between 30 to 90 minutes.  I tell my students up-front that the purpose of these meetings is for us to get to know each other.

The Skype meetings allow students to get to know, trust, and feel comfortable with me. My hope is that video conferencing helps to build community because I attempt to communicate that the online environment will be a safe place to discuss content openly. I want students to know that I won’t allow anything bad to happen as they interact with classmates.  There are other subtexts.  It helps them to know that I am interested in their learning, how they learn, and what they are interested in learning.  I am conducting research on this type of video conferencing as part of my research about the effectiveness of incorporating UDL in online courses.

To continue the relationship building, we also have small group Skype meetings so students can get to know each other.   I try not to have more than four in a group.  The week that students participate in a group Skype meeting, they do not have to post on the weekly discussion forum.

I encourage students to email and Skype me whenever they have questions or want to discuss something.  I also email each student individually at least once a week in addition to group emails and being “present” on the weekly Discussion Board forum.

My relationship with most of my online students is generally stronger than in face-to-face courses because I am able to respond to each student individually.  There are no students who sit slouched in the back of the classroom.  My online course structure does not allow this.  Also Lesley’s commitment to small class size allows me the time to build relationships with students.

You highlight in your book the importance of listening in online courses.  Could you expand on this?

Thormann: It is a combination of listening in these one-to-one and group Skype meetings, and listening to who they are through the language they use online.  Some students write a tremendous amount and others are very succinct.  I listen to what is said in these discussions and read what each student posts very carefully.  Basically, through reading or viewing their posts, and conversations, I can quickly, as any good teacher can, get a sense of how they learn, who they are, and what their interests are.  Many times they keep coming back to the same topic which helps me understand what their concerns are.

This semester I am teaching a course about teaching online (ECOMP 6201 Online Teaching: Introduction to Design and Practice), and one of my interview questions for the one-to-one Skype meeting was “Why are you taking this course?”  Almost all of the students said, “to get my certification.”  One student shared with me that she was scared about teaching online, and now at the end of the course she wrote me that she feels she can teach online.   I have seen many teachers move from being resistant to online learning to a point where they are much more comfortable.  In my communications with students, they become aware that I am “listening” and open up and talk about the issues in greater depth.   Moreover, they learn to listen to each other in this online environment.

Online learning can provide the opportunity for all learners to become engaged.  In fact one of my students wrote about herself as being shy and not speaking out much in face-to-face classes.  She is the most verbose student in this online course!   While other students respond to each other in three to five sentences, she will write a half page.  Online learning gives everyone a chance to be heard because participation is no longer tied to a scheduled class time (and place).

What do you think is the future of learning technologies?

Thormann:  I am particularly interested in the use of mobile devices for learning.  I don’t really know where this is going, but my sense is that mobile devices are now being increasingly used for online learning.  Mobile phones are being used more widely in developing countries and, of course, most people in the U.S. have a mobile phone.  More and more people here have smart phones and tablets.  Logistics still have to be worked out in terms of screen size and input capabilities. But one of the things I love in online learning is figuring out how the pedagogy works best for a particular environment.

We don’t know what technological features will develop but for the future of online learning, the same questions will remain.  How can students engage with the material in a non-face-to-face environment so they can grasp the material, play with it, and reflect on it?  These are the questions I love to explore.

Your book indicates that building community is critical in online learning environments. How do you accomplish this?  

Joan Thormann: I develop assignments that result in idiosyncratic postings so students have the opportunity to learn from each other.  Students are required to post all assignments publicly in a designated weekly Blackboard Discussion Board forum.  This ensures that students’ assignments are not just for the teacher — they are for everyone in the class.  Sharing their work publicly helps to create authentic learning experiences.  It also improves the quality of the work.  Students do not want to be embarrassed in front of’ peers so they are less likely to submit poor work.  Knowing that classmates will read their assignments also helps to create a bond among students.

To deepen the connection among students, most assignments require students to post comments and questions to at least two classmates and respond to all comments and questions that are posted to them. Rubric-based points are earned separately for participation in each discussion. This requirement and grading system helps to insure that students read classmates’ assignments and get to know each other.

Another community building strategy is to assign what is called a ‘jigsaw’ once or twice during a course, where students focus on different aspects of one topic and then learn about the topic from each other. This type of assignment makes students dependent on one another to learn about the whole topic.

Using student moderation also makes students depend on each other since moderators can only be successful if classmates respond to each moderator’s effort to deepen understanding of the topic.  Students come to understand that it makes sense to participate since everyone will take on the role of moderator at some point and need full participation from peers to be a successful moderator.

Once a term students work with a partner or small group to complete an assignment.  I allow the students to select their own group members.  This encourages students to pay attention to others in the class.

In addition to the student moderators, required participation and jigsaw activities, do you have other strategies you use to build community within your online courses?

Thormann:   I feel that the Coffee Shop forum, where students can chit chat, is another community building tool.  When I know that a student has a special event coming up or a special interest, I urge the student to post pictures or share what’s happening in the Coffee Shop.  For example, one student won an award, another posted photos of a cruise she had been on and another posted pictures of herself with celebrities.  This gives the class the opportunity to congratulate each other and also learn about classmates’ interests.

The Coffee Shop is not the only place that interests are shared.  The very first assignment is an Introduction, which includes having students describe themselves and their interests.  This assignment is often the most robust of the course. As with the student moderators, I make sure to model the interaction by responding to each student’s introduction.

I also set up a Teachers’ Room forum.  Students are encouraged to discuss ideas not necessarily directly related to the week’s work but that align with their professional interests.

There are a number of different outlets for students to build community and make learning among students strong.  The result is that all of the postings in the weekly assignment forums on the Discussion Board are substantive and on task – they are never irrelevant. This pleases me, and I hope it pleases my students too.

These strategies, community building and student moderation, seem to suggest a paradigm shift, where students are empowered as leaders and help to generate knowledge within the class.  How do your students respond to this shift away from the traditional hierarchy?

Thormann: Judging from my research and that of others, most students see this shift as positive.  They like receiving feedback from their peers.  They feel empowered.  They learn new ways of interacting with each other.  Part of the student moderator’s assignment is that they do not have to post the weekly assignment, but they have to be familiar – maybe even more familiar – with the content.  Moderators often say they have learned much more about the topic for the week by moderating.  They learn the material in greater depth and also learn from their classmates.

It was interesting that one student wrote that she was going to use student moderators in her face-to-face classroom with her fifth grade students. She and others really seem to embrace the paradigm shift.

In implementing this paradigm shift it is important that I, as the instructor, do not abandon the class while working to empower students.  As I said earlier, I post feedback publicly.   I also send students personal feedback.  This may sound like an overwhelming task, but I use templates that help make the feedback process easier for me. The details of using templates are discussed in my book, The Complete Step-by-Step Guide to Designing and Teaching Online Courses.

Stay tuned next week for part IV of the series.

Please share more information about student moderation, why you decided to do this, and how it works.

Joan Thormann: When I first attempted to use student moderators to lead the class discussion, I asked for volunteers.  There are always passionate go-getters in every class and those were the students who volunteered.  It seemed to work well, so I started requiring that each person in my class take a turn moderating.

One of the reasons I thought student moderation would work stemmed from when I first started teaching online.   As the instructor, I was reading wonderful and informative assignments that students produced. Nonetheless, I felt like something was wrong with that picture.  Shouldn’t they be the one’s learning from one another?  This is when I began to encourage students to facilitate class discussions.  Student moderating requires students to read all of the weekly assignments.  This increases their interactions and ability to learn from each other.

I find that students who moderate early in the course often become involved in a way that goes beyond required participation. They ‘get it’ and want to learn from their classmates.  Both being a student moderator and responding to student moderators also helps to build community within a course.  All students must be prepared and actively participate.  It provides students with a stake in the process – the students have agency and a shared responsibility with classmates.

This is a leap in mindset for some people.  But once they take the leap they find this type of interaction to be very valuable.

What are some strategies to ensure success of the student moderator process?

Thormann: It is very important that the instructor model how to facilitate a discussion.  For the first two or three assignments, I moderate the online discussion in order to provide a model of moderating.  Students do not have to do it my way, but they do need to reflect on and think about how to help their classmates dig deeper and delve into the weekly topic.  I also post a summary of the weekly discussion when I am the moderator for the first few weeks in order to demonstrate how to do this as part of the student moderator assignment.

Even though student moderators lead the discussion, it is essential that I, as the instructor, continue to be present during the online discussion.   I send feedback to each student on their assignments a portion of which I post to the weekly forum.  However, I post comments and questions towards the end of the week so that students can take an authentic leadership role.

Delaying my feedback is an approach that I learned from students.  They told me, “Well, if you put your voice in early on, it undermines me as the moderator.”  I post questions and comments but not until students have had a chance to work with their classmates. I also try and cheer the moderators on so that they feel supported in this new online role.

A detailed description of how student moderation works can be found in my book The Complete Step-by-Step Guide to Designing and Teaching Online Courses.  I’ve also written two articles that address issues relating to the use of student moderators in online courses.   The ‘how to’ article is Student moderators in online courses published by Online Cl@ssroom and the scholarly article based on research conducted with colleagues at Lesley and the Instituto Piaget in Portugal is Interaction, critical thinking, and social network analysis (SNA) in online courses published by The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning.

Does the process of using student moderators create additional work for the instructor?

Thormann:  No, student moderators help save me time because I’m not the only one involved in facilitating discussions. Additionally, one of the side benefits is that students gain different perspectives from peers and appreciate the peer feedback and interaction.

Stay tuned next week for Part III of this series.

Faculty and academic staff at Lesley University are invited to submit a proposal to present at the eLearning Institute on Faculty Development Day in January.

Please join us as we enjoy a day of exploring best practices in online learning, mobile computing, social networking and more!

The eLearning Institute will occur on Thursday, January 16, 2014 at University Hall and is the result of a collaboration between the Faculty Life & Development Committee, eLearning & Instructional Support, the Center for Teaching, Learning, & Scholarship, and the Office of the Provost.

Examples of presentation topics include:

• Innovative uses of media in teaching and scholarship
• Examples of innovative pedagoggy in the classroom
• Teaching and learning with mobile devices
• Fostering engagement, collaboration, and communication with/through technology
• Multimedia/Video/Digital Storytelling
• Exploration of trends in social media
• Updates from Summer Technology Institute participantson classroom innovation
• Research or best practices related to the use of digital media in face-to-face, hybrid, and online environments

Presentations may be group or individual. Presenters will select one of the following presentation types to share:

• Traditional Concurrent Session: These are presentations or discussions of a topic or concept. (60 minutes)
• Bring Your Own Laptop (BYOL): These are presentations that encourage hands-on exploration of specific websites or tools. Participants will bring their own laptops to participate. (60 minutes)

The deadline to submit a proposal is Friday, November 22nd.