In winter 2015, I was given the opportunity to design and teach my department’s first fully online course, in calculus. Some design challenges emerged in the process, not least of which was the question of assessing homework. In a face-to-face class, students either turn in
This year’s Online Education Year-In-Review comes to us via Ray Schroeder, associate vice chancellor for online learning at the University of Illinois Springfield and long-time thought leader on distance education. I recently spoke with Ray about emerging areas in distance education over the past year,
Class discussions are valuable for pushing participants to think more deeply about ideas and defend their thoughts. However, poorly designed online discussions can turn into mundane and tedious renderings of testimonials, folk wisdom, and repetitious speculations. To avoid this, instructors need to provide the right
There are many ways to make engaging and highly effective videos for education, including live action, voice-over imagery, animation, stop action, and others. The newest entry to the list is the Lightboard, invented by Michael Peshkin at Northwestern University. This format uses a studio shot
Online learning environments offer exciting opportunities for expanding the types of instructional materials that teachers can use. Because interaction is mediated digitally, teachers can tap into simulations, videos, case studies, and so much more to support student learning.
A faculty member once told me that experience does not teach; only reflection on experience teaches. We become better teachers by reflecting on what went right or wrong after each class to learn what we should change in the future. This is why I try
Guest speakers were always one of my favorite parts of teaching Principles of Public Relations in a traditional classroom. They invigorated my class with their real-world stories and advice that complemented the textbook and lesson plans. Every semester students would tell me how guests had
A number of video types that work well in an online environment, each with its own strengths that make it appropriate for teaching certain types of content. One of the most powerful types is whiteboard videos.
Context is everything in learning. The events leading to the Civil War make sense only within the wider context of debates over states’ rights and federal power. Understanding these broader principles also improves retention of the events themselves because our minds are built to remember
Sami Lange Last year, I decided to restructure my Introduction to Information Literacy course with a “build your grade” structure that would provide freedom to choose assignments while ensuring that students learned the core concepts. The results were very positive, and the format can be
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Students were given flexibility in how they presented their solutions, but were required to have their face, voice, and handwriting in the video at all times. The default method, which most students used most of the time, was to find (or purchase) a whiteboard and simply write out their solutions like a teacher would write out an example while using a video camera (often the webcam on their laptops or phones) to record the action. Although the course was online, many students lived on or near campus and went to the library or an empty classroom to make their videos. Other students bought inexpensive whiteboards and filmed themselves in their houses or apartments. Variations on this basic theme soon emerged. One student, for example, couldn't afford a whiteboard, so she taped a grid of blank sheets of paper to her wall and used a magic marker. Another student used software on his tablet that captured his handwriting while simultaneously capturing a video of him writing.
The requirement of having one's face, voice, and handwriting in the frame addressed two issues. One was academic integrity; without all three elements present, the video could be faked. The other, more important reason was to give a human face and voice to the students in the class who otherwise would only know each other as names on a discussion board. As the course unfolded and the videos rolled in, we got to know each other through verbal styles, organizational tendencies, the decor of one person's living room, or the shape of another person's handwriting. The class began to be a learning community rather than a list of names. The video assignments in the course were an effective play on the structure around which the course was built. We used a flipped learning model in which students watched videos before class activities, and with these video assignments, students also contributed their own video material to the class, becoming producers rather than just consumers. This repository of video examples was available at any time, including during exams, so there was a social and academic incentive to make the video quality as high as possible. This assignment was so successful that it has been also implemented in some of our face-to-face classes. My colleague Shelly Smith has been using video assignments in her Calculus 2 classes with similarly positive effects. As we have continued to use video homework, we have surveyed students on their experiences with this assignment, and we've learned some surprising things:Whatever the reasons, we see much more advancement in self-regulated learning behaviors in a handful of video assignments than we do in reams and reams of written assignments.
The concept of a video homework assignment like this is nothing new to many disciplines, such as languages and the fine arts. And there's no reason to believe that this form of assessment, in which the vital human relationship between student and their professors and students with each other is center stage, can't be successful in any discipline. It's an idea well worth pursuing.
Robert Talbert is an associate professor of mathematics at Grand Valley State University.