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EDTEC 650
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Giving the Virtual Classroom a Familiar Face
Chris Hofeditz
San Diego State University
EDTEC 650 – Distance Education
May 16, 2008
Farhad Saba, Ph.D.
Professor of Distance Education
Giving the Virtual Classroom a Familiar Face
By Chris Hofeditz
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this paper is to provide a list of virtual classroom enhancements that may help define what has been referred to as instant traditions. This term has been coined by Wilson, Ludwig-Hardman, Thornam and Dunlap (2004) and is intended to characterize ways of quickly establishing more effective online, web-based classrooms. Instant traditions can further be described as a way of presenting familiar or recognizable elements within the virtual environment to students who attend online classes. The intent is to creatively incorporate experiences into classes that are being held at a distance and that will put students at ease and extend their interest in learning. This paper will group together various methods that give the virtual classroom continuity and comfort by consolidating the approaches that have been developed by online instructors, discuss them, and make some new suggestions on how to create instant traditions.
INTRODUCTION
A virtual classroom consists of an instructor, the students and the technological infrastructure that has been used to bring them together for the purpose of exchanging ideas and adding to their knowledge. This effectively creates a learning environment that may have some distinct differences from the traditional environment of the physical classroom. Because all participants are at a distance, are unfamiliar with each other and may be unsure of the procedures, new methods should be followed when interacting with other attendees. Many new teachers who are entering the profession of education may need to prepare for teaching online. Teachers who are new to online course delivery may not be familiar with the many aspects of instructing courses at a distance. Those that are new to teaching online typically try to emulate their on-campus courses in the new environment by simply uploading and using already developed lecture notes and graphic materials. This approach may lead to individualistic assignments with limited interaction, which primarily takes place between the instructor and students on an individual basis. The limited one-on-one learning environment may promote feelings of isolation in the students and inhibit a sense of shared values within the community or discipline under study (Ouzts, 2006). Under these circumstances interactions may be limited among all members of the group and the usual way of relating to one another may be hampered by not being able to experience communication as when positioned face-to-face in the traditional classroom. These conditions may alter the visual aspects of communication and require a way to bridge to different levels of self-expression. In the results of a study (Ouzts, 2006), the author’s interpretation suggested that learning assignments designed to facilitate student discussions of different values and points of view may help students become socialized into their disciplines. One way in which an instructor can provide assistance when teaching to students at a distance is by creating a comfortable, more familiar environment that may help promote completion of coursework, support better student outcomes and improve retention. Instant traditions can be described as a way of presenting familiar or recognizable elements within the virtual environment to students who attend online classes. The intent is to creatively incorporate experiences into classes that are being held at a distance and that put students at ease and extend their interest in learning. This paper will group together various methods that give the virtual classroom continuity and comfort by consolidating the approaches that have been developed by online instructors, discuss them, and make some new suggestions on how to create instant traditions. The topic of designing and implementing activities for online courses can best be discussed by putting it within the context of two over arching issues regarding distance education: Defining the characteristics of a learning community and describing the role of teaching presence for both the instructor and student. These two important theoretical topics along with a third component of effective online teaching, creation of opportunities for students to interact, are important considerations for new and practicing online instructors. Specific activities have been developed to promote interaction and several will be presented here with an emphasis toward those activities that quickly allow students to gain familiarity (instant traditions) to a new distance education class.
LEARNING COMMUNITIES
Rovai (2002) has provided evidence suggesting a strong sense of community is essential in higher education learning environments. Shea, Li, Saran & Pickett (2005) and Ouzts (2006) have also used quantitative methods to show validation for the importance of developing learning communities in distance education and have also shown the importance of establishing a teaching presence. These two aspects of online courses coupled with the level of interaction between participants stand among the most important factors to consider in online courses and have implications for student satisfaction for online course work and is a benefit to the providers of distance education courses. According to Wilson, Ludwig-Hardman, Thornam & Dunlap (2004):
An online learning community is a group of people, connected via technology-mediated communication, who actively engage one another in collaborative learner-centered activities to intentionally foster the creation of knowledge, while sharing a number of values and practice.
Rovai (2002) has distilled four elements that he feels characterize those qualities of a learning community that will apply to any group that may assemble together and who may have one or more common intentions.
1) The first characteristic is spirit and it is defined by the qualities of friendship and cohesion. These feelings lead members to enjoy one another and want to spend time together. Community spirit allows learners to nurture and to, conversely, challenge each other.
2) Trust is the second characteristic and it is the feeling that community members can be relied upon. Being able to depend on other members of the group is important for developing credibility. Another related facet of trust is benevolence and this suggests that members of the group are interested in the well being of each other. Benevolence also suggests the members of the group will assist others in their learning. Trust and benevolence allow a community of learners to be candid with one another, feel safe and responds in supportive ways with the process of learning.
3) A third characteristic is interaction between members of a community. This characteristic is not necessarily dependent upon quantity but more to the point, the quality of the interactions. Some interactions are under the control of the instructor and should provide guidance toward specific objectives of the course. Other interactions will involve student responses to other students that provide support information or feedback.
4) The fourth characteristic relates to members of the group possessing common expectations. In this case, expectations are represented by a common educational purpose. The members of the community should grow to value learning and, in time, feel that their educational needs are being satisfied through active participation in the community. All members of the learning community should be graded equally on quantity, quality, and timeliness of their contributions.
It is the third characteristic of a learning community that this paper addresses and most closely relates to the topic undertaken here. Interaction between participants in online instruction is found again and again as one of the main determinants when holding successful online courses that are evidenced by measured levels of student satisfaction with their online experiences. Among the main factors that students cite as contributing to their positive outlook are structure and a sense that they were able to contribute to the course through interactions with other students and to some degree with their instructor. It is the role of the instructor to maintain direction for the class by modeling an appropriate behavior and by directing class activities. This viewpoint is supported by studies of online conditions that reinforce interaction between participants (Shea, 2006) and (Dixson, Kuhlhorst, and Reiff, 2006). Although too much structure can weaken a sense of community, some structure is needed and small group activities can promote an online course by helping students make connections with each other. Along with increases in the level of online interaction, there is a concomitant improvement in the level of student-satisfaction with their online experience (Rovai, 2002).
TEACHING PRESENCE
Because of the lack of traditional communication cues in the virtual classroom, just a cursory examination of the literature shows that many researchers are interested in examining ways to enhance online instruction. One such example indicates that there is a strong association between the development of learning communities in online courses and teaching behaviors (Rovai, 2002). In support of this finding, Shea, Li, Saran and Pickett (2005), whose study looked at the various contributions to learning communities report that their respondents felt a stronger sense of learning community when they also reported that their instructors exhibited stronger “teaching presence” behaviors.
Wilson, Ludwig-Hardman, Thornam & Dunlap (2004) define teaching presence as:
An inter-subjective experience during which a teacher and a student willingly move together toward valued learning. By being there with the student, the teacher reduces the student’s educational vulnerability and by knowing the student, feelings of helplessness or abandonment are allayed. Both submit to the power of the other to influence, penetrate and engage, and are equally willing to be changed by the experience.
Anderson, Rourke, Garrison and Archer (2001) define teaching presence as
The design, facilitation and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realizing personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes.
An empirical study by this last set of authors revealed that “a strong and active presence on the part of the instructor – one in which she or he actively guides the discourse – is related to students’ sense of both connectedness and learning”. Other contributing elements of teaching presence have been shown to be; whether an instructor is drawing in participants, creating an accepting climate for learning, keeping students on track and diagnosing misperceptions. Further, when students report that the instructor is reinforcing student contributions, injecting their own knowledge and confirming student understanding, they are also more likely to report a better sense of learning community. Course designs that feature many opportunities for discussion that are actively and publicly facilitated by an instructor seem to be warranted. Shea, Li, Saran and Pickett (2005) share the opinion that if facilitation of discourse is the factor most strongly associated with students’ sense of learning and community, then this is an indication that this skill should be emphasized and fostered through faculty development.
INTERACTION
Interaction in online courses has been a noted feature of distance education for nearly two decades and has been classically defined by Moore (1989) to fall into three categories: learner-content interaction, learner-learner interaction and learner-instructor interaction. The two studies cited below have been among the many investigations that have attempted to evaluate the elements of distance education courses that are important to students. Butler and Pinto-Zipp (2005-2006) have investigated the opinions of graduate students to determine if there are dominant learning styles in online courses. The respondents to their questionnaires demonstrated strong preferences for asynchronous log-ons (99%), a high degree of interaction within a course, and noted a high degree of satisfaction with their online programs (95%). While convenience was the prime motivating factor for enrolling in an online course, the preferred instructional methods that emerged agreed with previously mentioned research: student satisfaction with online courses was directly related to the amount of interaction. Therefore it is important to keep the course as interactive as possible without sacrificing the quality of the instruction or the educational objectives of the course. A limited definition for interactivity in online courses would include the communication styles that teachers and students may use with each other and the activities that are used to engage one another. Limitations in interactivity can result because of the delayed nature of responses in asynchronous courses. A list of guidelines for positive interaction may promote a positive sense of social presence for both student and instructor. Below are presented the variables discovered in their qualitative data for online interactivity (Tu and McIsaac, 2002).
1) Timely response to computer mediated communication messages 2) Use of stylistic communication styles 3) Appropriate message length 4) Causal conversations, communication strategies 5) Types of tasks (planning, creativity, social tasks, decision-making) 6) Appropriate sizes for communication groups
Sahn (2007) performed a study that explored the relationship between student satisfaction and the following variables: Instructor support, student interaction and collaboration, personal relevance, authentic relevance, authentic learning, active learning, and student autonomy. His results show that personal relevance was the strongest predictor of student satisfaction. The second significant predictor of improved student satisfaction is instructor support. This finding confirms that instructor support, such as timely help, useful feedback and easy communication are still a key factors for earning student satisfaction in online courses. Those students who possess strong feelings of community are more likely to continue in an online course than those students who feel alienated and alone (Tinto, 1993). Therefore, one strategy to help increase retention is to provide students with increased effective support by promoting a strong sense of community. Such a strategy has the potential to reverse feelings of isolation, allow students to make connections with other learners and to provide students with a larger base of academic support. A review of literature suggests instructors teaching at a distance promote a sense of community by being familiar with seven factors: (a) transactional distance, (b) social presence, (c) social equality, (d) small group activities, (e) group facilitation, (f) teaching style and learning stage, and (g) community size (Rovai, 2002).
EXAMPLES OF INTERACTIVITY
The main goal, so far in this paper, has been to point toward the importance of creating an interactive environment in online courses. Next are presented some examples of online interactivity that help to increase familiarity among student and teacher. Lists of social tactics which increase interactivity and that have been practiced in online courses are provided by Bonk and Dennen (2007). They are arranged in a general outline and mentioned below:
Categories of social tactics intended to foster interaction among students and teacher(s).
1) Motivational and Ice Breaking Activities 2) Critical Thinking Activities 3) Creative Thinking Activities 4) Collaborative Learning Activities
Here are some interesting social tactics to use in online courses that come from category 4- Collaborative Learning Activities.
1) Jigsaw:
Blocher (2005) describes an activity based on collaborative learning techniques that draw a community of learners together in a way that allows each participant to gather useful information and share with others. Below is his description of this activity.
“To get started, students were instructed to use the group’s chat room and discussion board to meet their members and designate task roles. Once students had researched their topics they became experts who, in turn, taught their peers. They were required to develop and teach an online lesson, which required students to utilize the online learning environment tools to teach. Students were provided lesson plan guidelines to scaffold the process, which included specific criteria to support their experience. The lesson plan and online resources were made available to all students for the remainder of the semester, thus creating a community constructed resource. In summary, during the jigsaw grouping students were required to individually (1) Research their subtopics (2) Develop an online lesson (3) Teach their subtopic to the jigsaw group However, knowing that they would be expected to be the topic expert in their next group provided for group interdependence, supporting the co-construction of knowledge. “
2) Group webpage designs:
Crisp, Jensen and Moore (2006) offer an activity that works well for any size class in a science course.
“Two instructional goals in the computer laboratory are cooperative learning and familiarity with technology; although not typical goals for anatomy and physiology courses, they are a good fit within a developmental education science course. The disease webpage project was developed over several years to help achieve these goals. Prior to the webpage project, students were placed randomly into groups of three to five students and assigned to complete a short introductory exercise that involved the construction of a webpage that included interests and information about individual group members. The intent of this first exercise was to both introduce group members to each other and to teach basic webpage construction skills (5). Students were taught the basic steps required to build a webpage using Netscape Communicator 4.0 (Netscape Communication, Mountain View, CA), e.g., inserting images, creating links, and using the tools found within an internet browser. The disease webpage project involved both individual and group work. Each group was assigned a specific disease of historic significance (e.g., smallpox), and each student was assigned a specific aspect of the disease. For example, one student created a page about the symptoms of smallpox, another student created a page concerning the treatments currently available for smallpox, etc. Each individual webpage was required to contain at least one picture (accompanied by a proper reference), one link to an external webpage, appropriate references, five facts that were germane to their aspect, and a three question quiz pertaining to information on their page. After 3 weeks of working on the individual aspects during laboratory meeting times, groups had to combine their individual pages into a single larger project. Because of negative past experiences with groups submitting completed projects on time, we had students submit copies of the individual components prior to combining them into the group project. The goal here was to ensure that each individual had completed their portion of the projects. [Individual accountability is a key feature of group learning.] Groups were given 1 additional week to combine the individual components into a functional webpage. The final project was graded in reference to the requirements (e.g., accuracy and relevance of the content, missing links or links that did not function, presence of the 3-question quiz, etc.), and a grade was returned to the students 1 weeks later.”
EXAMPLES OF INSTANT TRADITIONS
Next are presented those tactics that are founded on establishing instant traditions in a course that will be renewed each term.
I. Class Memoir:
Watkins (2005) presents an activity that allows other student s to view current, ongoing work in progress and allows future students to share in those experiences.
“Activity Summary Developing a class memoir can be an effective activity both for encouraging learners to reflect on their learning experiences and for developing community within an online course. As an activity that continues throughout a course, the Class Memoir activity gives all learners the opportunity to participate in creating a record (or journal) of the course experience.
Goals · Learners will reflect on their learning experiences · Learners will create a record (or journal) of the online course experience · Learners will build skills for Interacting online with their peers Collaborative Learning · Large groups (all learners in a course) Recommended e-Learning Experience · Learner-Novice · Faciltator-Novice Mode · Asynchronous Time Required · Ongoing task throughout the course Materials · Facilitator and learner access to an asynchronous discussion board Preparation · Create two forums in the course’s asynchronous discussion board for the activity: one for the Class Memoir and one for participants’ reflections at the end of the course after reviewing the memoir. Process 1. Encourage learners to contribute to the first forum, the Class Memoir, throughout the course. The memoir contributions should include descriptions of course activities, assignments, discussions, readings, and other events. Unlike a group blog the Class Memoir is an historical document that records the learners’ experiences. Contributions can include:
· Summaries of learning experiences (activities, assignments) · Journal or log entries · Weekly reviews · Reflections on course discussions · Current events that have impacted course learners
2. Have learners review the Class Memoirs in the discussion forum at the end of the course.
3. Require learners to post two- to three-paragraph reflections in the second forum after reviewing the Class Memoir. In their reflections learners should include descriptions of how their perspectives on course topics were changed through the course experiences.”
II. Distance Education Wiki:
Another interesting online activity that establishes a tradition for students past, present and future is a Wiki whereby students contribute to an ongoing collection of information associated with the topic of Distance Education. Such offerings can include definitions, web links, newsletters and literature sources. (Saba, 2008, personal communication).
III. Student Bequests:
A final offering is “Student Bequests”. In this activity students develop ideas, insights and tips to pass on to the next online class of students. The comments would be listed according to the term and year of entry. This provides new students with the sense that others have been there before, providing a sense of continuity, and a familiarity with the comments and opinions of past students.
SUMMARY
Gathering together the strands of information presented so far, instant traditions have been put into the perspective of learning communities, teaching presence and the importance of interaction in distance education courses. By incorporating concepts such as building trust online, providing “hand-holding” technical support, and promoting informal relationships, instructors can help provide greater interactivity within an online community of learners (Tu and McIsaac, 2002). Anderson and Kuskis (2007) have expanded upon Moore’s (1985) 3 types of interactions that are potentially important to the design and delivery of education at a distance. They further suggest that “rigorous theoretical and empirical research” need to continue in this as well as other areas all to insure that the practice of education is “evidence-based” and represents our best solutions to instruction when conducted at a distance. Additional research is needed to understand how the most highly rated instructors are developing and structuring online interactions within their online courses. The strategies that are applied across different disciplines of study will vary, and understanding and sharing effective mechanisms through faculty training efforts would assist the development of the online enterprise (Shea, Li, Saran and Pickett, 2005). It is intended that the concept of instant traditions will add another element to the tools that instructors may use to promote a sense of continuity to their online courses by promoting a more familiar virtual classroom environment. Students may gain a feeling of comfort from knowing that others have been in their position before, succeeded and progressed to the next level of educational growth.
REFERENCES
Anderson, T. and Kuskis, A. (2007). Modes of interaction. In Moore, M.G. (Ed.), Handbook of Distance Education, (2nd ed., 295-309). Mahwah, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
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