John Sowash teaches online like no other. He's cracked it and is forever improving, sharing best practice and getting others through the basic hoops. Once up and running we can all teach online.
Here's his latest podcast : https://smarterqueue.com/video/18935767
Professor Bart Rienties of the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University
January 2018 > https://youtu.be/GIWrygqmOIs
Creative Commons Attribution licence (reuse allowed)
45 minutes? This is how long 'Take Your Teaching Online' gives to undertake the activity. It is far, far too little time to do justice to it.
That's 35 minutes viewing to begin with add taking notes and 10 minutes to construct a reply. I gave it two hours.
This is worth this amount of effort and more; I will be going back to it.
There are two reasons why is essential viewing for anyone venturing into teachign online:
1) This is an excellent lesson in how to deliver a lecture
2) The conclusions that Prof. Bart Rienties draws are profound
The data blows away past perceptions and methods while reinforcing what had been an indicator of excellence vs failure all along.
The best approach all along, and an indicator of excellence, is to get ahead of the curve.
Not least it gives you breathing space to go back to something when you've had time to think about it, or to hunt down and check through alternative insights. As well as engaging on the subject if you wish outside the class.
I ask myself, 'these are adults, they are academics, they are Profs and PHDs, and yet some use their phones to give quiz answers answer before they've been given the question. What does this say about us humans? Is it the gambler's gambit?'
Prof. Bart Rienties was using PollEV.com
Bart gets our immediate attention with a puppy. We are introduced to Tabatha from Canine Partners > https://caninepartners.org.uk/
By way of engaging metaphors data is first provided on three assistant dogs
and then from the speakers competitive cycling.
These metaphors are used to indicate different kinds of data, the kind that is useful, and the kind that is not. And the need to be measuring something in the first place
The truth will out with the data
QQ: Can we use this data to give students what they want?
Ask them at the end of every module.
Big data set
QQ: What makes the course 'good' ? (As in getting results) is it:
Great reachers?
Links well to professional practice?
Links well to their career intentions?
Quality of the teaching materials?
Quality of the teaching?
This is what 40 people from the audience concluded. (40 was the limit of the licence bought from PollEV).
What makes an excellent course?
Really good teaching materials
Student approval of the assessment method.
There has been a subtle change over the last few years
Perspectives changing to students expecting modules link to the qualification.
NOTE >
There was NO correlation between student satisfaction and student performance
Students like constructivist learning designs
This is where there is lots of stuff, we take them by the hand … providing lots of content for them to explore.
They did not like when they had to work together with a group, or talk to the teacher.
The number predictors of passing and continuing is how teachers design the learning and how they communicate during the course.
Starting to unpack the recipe what helps our students progress so using the social constructivist model.
Should we give students what they want?
Students are different!
Most will benefit from knowing what is coming up.
What are students doing on a week by week basis.
Is there a link between how teachers design and how students engage?
Unpack what is really happening?
Why despite expectations of a lot of student engagement in week 20 was there not?
Start to map out what students are doing.
Week 4 time off to prepare … and becomes one of the highest peaks.
69% of what students do is determined by what teachers have designed for them to do.
Excellent students study more in advance.
Pass students start to get in the ‘catch up’ phase > they are going ‘off piste
Fail group > starting to catch up, or never catch up. So how do we give them a chance? A pause to catch up.
What are our take home messages?
Not all data we collect is meaningful.
What matters is actual behaviour. Big data without context is meaningless.
NOTE > Listening to student feedback is not linked to what they are doing or how they are performing.
Our students are following the learning design, but many are not. Some diligently stick to the road, others take different routes.
NOTE > We need to provide alternative effective pathways.
End with Canine partners and foster parents.
Organ donation
I'm finding this Free online course from Open Learn reall handy. I feel under pressure to take a few classes online myself and will do this via Google Meet, but as we are told all the time, and I know - teaching online cannot be the same. The content is so different. Rather than winning over a captive audience with our charms we must hold their attention through lots of activities, good ommunication, doing just a little at a time, taking breaks and getting them to do stuff.
This is an old concept but it is worth revisiting.
We understand that it makes sense to deliver education in small chunks with clear learning outcomes. The BBC understood this with BBC Bitesize.
In "Taking Your Teaching Online' Open Learn shows that a learning object is not a list of ingredients, or a recipe but all of this and instructions on how to do something.
A learning object online used only to be text, then we could add graphics.
The we advanced to adding video, with audio or animation
All of this made even better with interactivity where a quiz can be added, students can choose learning paths and connect with others.
I'm over at Open Learn clicking through the free course 'Taking Your Teaching Online'. I am spurred on by the need to be taking a class this Friday, and then five next week, entlirely online with a group of 17 and 18 year olds.
I have run workshops online with adults (staff, colleagues) so this will be different. I must not see the students as 'the enemy' but I must also be forewarned and forarmed. It looks like this course will give me some of the insights and amunition that I need.
Set aside some time to play and familiarise yourself with the tools you expect to use.
Engaging and motivating students online > https://youtu.be/DvJuzE-g7OM
In a tour de force example of the value of face to face teaching in a class over learning online our PGCE tutor took us through the power of reflection. Look at the title of this blog 'Reflection on e-learning'. 10 years and eight months ago I was keenly filling these pages (on an ever so slightly different platform) as I took the first module in the Masters in Open and Distance Education (MAODE). Search 'Reflection'.
Ten years on, while being invited to dig around in my head for an understand of the what it means to 'reflect', and while listening to my fellow students express their views and share their insights, we collectively construct and shape a meaning.
The beauty of this blog and its value ten years on and 5,000 entries later, is that I can search 'reflection' or seek out the tag 'reflection' and immediately be shown what I was reading, what I was being invited to read and what I was writing about it all. The beauty of this blog and it simplicity is that I can post and keep private, or post and share; it is as much as a private, even intimate scrapbook, mind dump and learning journal, as it is a potential resource for others.
Reflecting on 'reflecting on teaching' and the profound differences between learning online (as it has so far been able to manifest itself) I see that one cannot replace the other, that certain elements are different to the point of being incompatible, that trying to recreate the class experience online is foolish and bringing the online way of doing things into the class just as wrong.
We have a long way to go yet to distinguish these differences and play to their strengths, rather than thinking one is superior to the other; neither is going away. The class I attended last night in which seven of us where there in person with the tutor and four were online is one I will return to again, and again for two reasons: first of all, to pick through what I was exposed to, what I was taught, the learning journey I experienced and the voices and words of others - everyone, in equal measure, was given the time and chance and encouragement to talk. And second of all, to contemplate the difference between the classroom and the online experience. What worked and what did not? What needs fixing to make it work better?
I do all the course, so I need to do this one. Something else I need to give 3 hours a week.
Along with:
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