The Beginning 3.0
“I’d like you to teach an on-line course for RMC next year on Canadian defence and foreign policy. What do you think?” my department chair said to me last summer.
I was shocked, to say the least.
I’ve been teaching at the Canadian Forces College – a graduate level institution offering professional and academic masters level degrees to intermediate and senior level military personnel and select public servants – for five years. My official titles are associate professor of defence studies (I have a PhD in history, and an MA in international affairs) and deputy director of education. Even though I work for the military, and as a result for the Government of Canada, I have complete academic freedom, and I exercise it regularly.
I am the first to admit that, although I expected to end up at a traditional, civilian university, I lucked out here. I love what I teach and I enjoy my service responsibilities as they relate to faculty development.
I can’t say that I initially responded positively to my chair’s request, but he is a team player, and I knew that he wouldn’t have asked me – someone who genuinely enjoys just about every minute in the classroom – to teach on-line if it wasn’t necessary. It also made sense for the College’s general advisor on pedagogy to have some experience in the on-line environment.
As for the subject matter, although I’m somewhat less strong on defence issues, I’ve been studying and teaching Canadian foreign policy for years. And I very much enjoy teaching at the graduate level.
So I said yes, and I approached University Affairs about blogging about my experience. As I will explain in my next post, after I agreed to teach Defence Management 529: Canadian Defence and Foreign Policy, I realized that what I really needed was for someone to walk me through their first experience, to help me anticipate problems before they arose, and to prepare me for issues that in-class instructors would never think of. This blog is meant to provide for future instructors what I didn’t have: a candid description of how I managed, or attempted to manage, to adjust my teaching methods and style to accommodate the on-line environment.
I will cover issues like how I prepared to teach on-line, the logistics of course planning in the on-line context, my first interactions with my 19 students, some of my many unexpected teaching challenges, and how I dealt with them. I will offer what I hope are some answers, discovered through my successes and failures, and I will also ask questions.
I look forward to your reactions to my posts and the conversations that we might have together.
Adam Chapnick
I was shocked, to say the least.
I’ve been teaching at the Canadian Forces College – a graduate level institution offering professional and academic masters level degrees to intermediate and senior level military personnel and select public servants – for five years. My official titles are associate professor of defence studies (I have a PhD in history, and an MA in international affairs) and deputy director of education. Even though I work for the military, and as a result for the Government of Canada, I have complete academic freedom, and I exercise it regularly.
I am the first to admit that, although I expected to end up at a traditional, civilian university, I lucked out here. I love what I teach and I enjoy my service responsibilities as they relate to faculty development.
I can’t say that I initially responded positively to my chair’s request, but he is a team player, and I knew that he wouldn’t have asked me – someone who genuinely enjoys just about every minute in the classroom – to teach on-line if it wasn’t necessary. It also made sense for the College’s general advisor on pedagogy to have some experience in the on-line environment.
As for the subject matter, although I’m somewhat less strong on defence issues, I’ve been studying and teaching Canadian foreign policy for years. And I very much enjoy teaching at the graduate level.
So I said yes, and I approached University Affairs about blogging about my experience. As I will explain in my next post, after I agreed to teach Defence Management 529: Canadian Defence and Foreign Policy, I realized that what I really needed was for someone to walk me through their first experience, to help me anticipate problems before they arose, and to prepare me for issues that in-class instructors would never think of. This blog is meant to provide for future instructors what I didn’t have: a candid description of how I managed, or attempted to manage, to adjust my teaching methods and style to accommodate the on-line environment.
I will cover issues like how I prepared to teach on-line, the logistics of course planning in the on-line context, my first interactions with my 19 students, some of my many unexpected teaching challenges, and how I dealt with them. I will offer what I hope are some answers, discovered through my successes and failures, and I will also ask questions.
I look forward to your reactions to my posts and the conversations that we might have together.
Adam Chapnick
Advice from the Experts
As a full-time faculty member who is also involved in faculty development, I have a love-hate relationship with the scholarship of teaching and learning. I love that it exists – we need to apply scholarly rigour to our understanding of how students learn if we hope to help them become more informed members of society – but I hate the jargon that all too often creeps its way into ‘scholarly’ writing.
So when I started thinking about what I knew and didn’t know about teaching on-line, and realized that there was much more of the latter than there was the former, I sought out some of the sources of scholarship that are designed for people like me: teachers who want to get a sense of the research, but don’t have the patience to read an excessive number of scholarly articles.
The most rewarding source by far in preparing to teach DM 529 was a free publication called Faculty Focus (www.facultyfocus.com). Faculty Focus includes highlights from a variety of Magna publications dedicated to summarizing major research findings in teaching and learning. The Teaching Professor is probably the best-known newsletter, but what I needed came from Online Cl@ssroom.
Two special reports were particularly helpful. The first, “10 Principles of Effective Online Teaching: Best Practices in Distance Education,” included a number of revelations:
(1) It’s much easier for students to ‘hide’ on-line, and instructors therefore must be especially proactive in monitoring student engagement. That meant that I had to get in touch with each student personally before the course started. So I had the students not only post their self-introductions to the group via the website but also email them to me to initiate that contact.;
(2) Establishing patterns is critical for everyone. It’s much easier for the student, and especially for the instructor, to benefit from and facilitate the learning experience if there is a consistent rhythm to the course. In DM 529, first posts are due on Wednesdays; follow-up posts appear between Thursday and Sunday; I provide personal feedback to individual students Thursdays and group feedback on Mondays. I typically review the readings on Tuesdays.
(3) “Netiquette” matters, a lot. I therefore developed a list of guidelines for on-line communication that I included in my course outline. Typical rules include things like no writing ALL CAPS because it comes across as shouting, etc.
The other Faculty Focus publication worth reading is “11 Strategies for Managing Your Online Courses.” Finally, the California State University Center for Distributed Learning (http://www.humboldt.edu/aof/aof.htm) has created an excellent checklist to help instructors prepare to teach online. The checklist is far too comprehensive to be followed to the letter by a new instructor, but it does provide a great sense of best practices.
So when I started thinking about what I knew and didn’t know about teaching on-line, and realized that there was much more of the latter than there was the former, I sought out some of the sources of scholarship that are designed for people like me: teachers who want to get a sense of the research, but don’t have the patience to read an excessive number of scholarly articles.
The most rewarding source by far in preparing to teach DM 529 was a free publication called Faculty Focus (www.facultyfocus.com). Faculty Focus includes highlights from a variety of Magna publications dedicated to summarizing major research findings in teaching and learning. The Teaching Professor is probably the best-known newsletter, but what I needed came from Online Cl@ssroom.
Two special reports were particularly helpful. The first, “10 Principles of Effective Online Teaching: Best Practices in Distance Education,” included a number of revelations:
(1) It’s much easier for students to ‘hide’ on-line, and instructors therefore must be especially proactive in monitoring student engagement. That meant that I had to get in touch with each student personally before the course started. So I had the students not only post their self-introductions to the group via the website but also email them to me to initiate that contact.;
(2) Establishing patterns is critical for everyone. It’s much easier for the student, and especially for the instructor, to benefit from and facilitate the learning experience if there is a consistent rhythm to the course. In DM 529, first posts are due on Wednesdays; follow-up posts appear between Thursday and Sunday; I provide personal feedback to individual students Thursdays and group feedback on Mondays. I typically review the readings on Tuesdays.
(3) “Netiquette” matters, a lot. I therefore developed a list of guidelines for on-line communication that I included in my course outline. Typical rules include things like no writing ALL CAPS because it comes across as shouting, etc.
The other Faculty Focus publication worth reading is “11 Strategies for Managing Your Online Courses.” Finally, the California State University Center for Distributed Learning (http://www.humboldt.edu/aof/aof.htm) has created an excellent checklist to help instructors prepare to teach online. The checklist is far too comprehensive to be followed to the letter by a new instructor, but it does provide a great sense of best practices.
Planning an on-line Course almost from Scratch
When I agree to teach DM 529, I had no idea that it had not been revised significantly since 2000. This is a problem in any field, but a particularly big one when the focus is on contemporary foreign and defence policy. Put simply, 9/11 changed a lot, and the old course outline I saw – the one that I had originally planned to use as a basis for my course – did not reflect that.
So I started over. As I would with any course, I devised learning objectives, I created assignments and grading rubrics that would allow me to measure whether those objectives had been achieved, and I produced – with the help of an industrious research assistant – a reading list that broke the course into two themes: fundamentals and case studies.
Although it took over a month of near constant effort to put everything together, creating my first distance learning syllabus wasn’t as challenging as it might have been because my syllabi have always been lengthy and detailed. For instructors who are used to adjusting course content on the fly, or who tend to be only a couple of weeks ahead of their students the first time they teach a class, course design in the distance learning environment will be a much, much more demanding task. Personally, I can’t imagine how I would pull off either of these things effectively in the on-line environment.
Once I finished my draft outline, I liaised with the instructional designer who was assigned to my course. He was friendly and helpful, and I realized immediately that I should have been in closer touch with him earlier in the planning process.
It turns out that RMC has a standard format for online course syllabi that breaks things down into a manual (basic guidelines), notes (more like a syllabus that includes detailed objectives for each session), and an assignment file. So I spent more time than I should have revising my materials to meet the institutional standard.
I also decided to create a video introduction. One of the lessons I took from reading about distance learning was how important it was to make the course feel real. To me, allowing the students to see who I was and hear my voice were critical steps towards meeting that aim.
So I developed a three-minute welcome message that summarized the main points of a longer introductory email that I planned to send the students when the course began. (That email was based on the rough text of what I typically say to students on the first day of class). I worked with the tech people here at the CFC to have my message recorded and saved in flash format. My liaison at RMC then uploaded what I produced.
With that done, I waited for the course to begin…
So I started over. As I would with any course, I devised learning objectives, I created assignments and grading rubrics that would allow me to measure whether those objectives had been achieved, and I produced – with the help of an industrious research assistant – a reading list that broke the course into two themes: fundamentals and case studies.
Although it took over a month of near constant effort to put everything together, creating my first distance learning syllabus wasn’t as challenging as it might have been because my syllabi have always been lengthy and detailed. For instructors who are used to adjusting course content on the fly, or who tend to be only a couple of weeks ahead of their students the first time they teach a class, course design in the distance learning environment will be a much, much more demanding task. Personally, I can’t imagine how I would pull off either of these things effectively in the on-line environment.
Once I finished my draft outline, I liaised with the instructional designer who was assigned to my course. He was friendly and helpful, and I realized immediately that I should have been in closer touch with him earlier in the planning process.
It turns out that RMC has a standard format for online course syllabi that breaks things down into a manual (basic guidelines), notes (more like a syllabus that includes detailed objectives for each session), and an assignment file. So I spent more time than I should have revising my materials to meet the institutional standard.
I also decided to create a video introduction. One of the lessons I took from reading about distance learning was how important it was to make the course feel real. To me, allowing the students to see who I was and hear my voice were critical steps towards meeting that aim.
So I developed a three-minute welcome message that summarized the main points of a longer introductory email that I planned to send the students when the course began. (That email was based on the rough text of what I typically say to students on the first day of class). I worked with the tech people here at the CFC to have my message recorded and saved in flash format. My liaison at RMC then uploaded what I produced.
With that done, I waited for the course to begin…
Assessing on-line Discussions
Before I discuss my initial impressions of teaching on-line, it’s worth going over how I decided to evaluate the ‘class discussions.’
I must admit that I was initially pessimistic about any on-line instructor’s ability to create the same, dynamic environment that I treasure in face-to-face interactions with students.
In retrospect, my pessimism was reasonable. In what’s called ‘asynchronous discussions,’ – when the students are not necessarily on-line at the same time – you simply do not have the same feel that you do when students jump into the dialogue with a sudden flash of brilliance. But you also don’t have nearly as many shallow, if not empty, comments made by individuals who have not read carefully (if they have at all).
The key is to find a system that encourages thoughtful refection, and intellectual rigour. This, of course, is much easier said than done.
Because I lacked personal experience to draw on, I spoke with my wife, who happens to be enrolled in a distance-based masters degree in counselling psychology. After we discussed some of the different approaches that her instructors had taken to seminar participation, I developed one that seems to meet my aims:
My students are obligated to post preliminary responses to the assigned readings every Wednesday. I do not provide overwhelming detail about what should be in those responses (whether, for example, the students should focus on one reading or deal with all of them – there are typically 6 readings per session), but I do note that their comments should (1) help the class meet the learning objectives of the week and (2) be written in a manner that encourages a response from their peers.
These preliminary posts must be at least 200 words long (guidelines such as these give the students a more realistic sense of what is expected of them) and must cite explicitly (authors and page numbers) from the readings. This latter requirement prevents the empty comments that take place in face-to-face discussions when students at times try to ‘wing it.’
Between Thursday and Sunday, each student must make at least three 100+ word comments on some of the original posts, at least one of which must respond to another student’s response, thereby creating a ‘thread.’ Again, citations are required.
The students are provided with a rubric describing how their interventions will be assessed. And I provide two sets of feedback: after emailing every student personal feedback during the first week, I am in touch with at least 1/3 of the 19-person class during each subsequent week to maintain the personal interaction. On the Monday of each week, I review all of the comments on the session and write a mini-essay to the students in response. These essays are typically about 2000 words long, and the process on Monday typically takes me about 3 hours.
In my next post, I’ll discuss my first impressions of the course, and my initial challenges with grading the seminar discussions.
I must admit that I was initially pessimistic about any on-line instructor’s ability to create the same, dynamic environment that I treasure in face-to-face interactions with students.
In retrospect, my pessimism was reasonable. In what’s called ‘asynchronous discussions,’ – when the students are not necessarily on-line at the same time – you simply do not have the same feel that you do when students jump into the dialogue with a sudden flash of brilliance. But you also don’t have nearly as many shallow, if not empty, comments made by individuals who have not read carefully (if they have at all).
The key is to find a system that encourages thoughtful refection, and intellectual rigour. This, of course, is much easier said than done.
Because I lacked personal experience to draw on, I spoke with my wife, who happens to be enrolled in a distance-based masters degree in counselling psychology. After we discussed some of the different approaches that her instructors had taken to seminar participation, I developed one that seems to meet my aims:
My students are obligated to post preliminary responses to the assigned readings every Wednesday. I do not provide overwhelming detail about what should be in those responses (whether, for example, the students should focus on one reading or deal with all of them – there are typically 6 readings per session), but I do note that their comments should (1) help the class meet the learning objectives of the week and (2) be written in a manner that encourages a response from their peers.
These preliminary posts must be at least 200 words long (guidelines such as these give the students a more realistic sense of what is expected of them) and must cite explicitly (authors and page numbers) from the readings. This latter requirement prevents the empty comments that take place in face-to-face discussions when students at times try to ‘wing it.’
Between Thursday and Sunday, each student must make at least three 100+ word comments on some of the original posts, at least one of which must respond to another student’s response, thereby creating a ‘thread.’ Again, citations are required.
The students are provided with a rubric describing how their interventions will be assessed. And I provide two sets of feedback: after emailing every student personal feedback during the first week, I am in touch with at least 1/3 of the 19-person class during each subsequent week to maintain the personal interaction. On the Monday of each week, I review all of the comments on the session and write a mini-essay to the students in response. These essays are typically about 2000 words long, and the process on Monday typically takes me about 3 hours.
In my next post, I’ll discuss my first impressions of the course, and my initial challenges with grading the seminar discussions.
The Real Beginning
DM 529 came alive once students started to respond to my introductory email.
I was delighted by their enthusiasm and made sure that I had plenty of time that first week to react promptly to their concerns and keep the momentum going.
There were challenges – the book store unexpectedly ran out of coursepacks and some students received their copies significantly late – but we worked through most of them.
What I should have expected – but didn’t – was that I’d need a system to track and organize all of my course activities.
Without the benefit of learning from best practices, here’s what I’m doing:
I keep copies of the emails that I send to the class in a dedicated folder.
I have created electronic folders for each student and I have saved each of their personal introductions as Word documents.
When I want to comment on a student’s post, I cut and paste it into Word and use the ‘track changes’ format to make suggestions. I email students copies of the marked-up documents, and save a copy to their folder.
I’ve created a spreadsheet in Excel to track student performance in the on-line discussions. In it are two lists of the students’ names, along with space to provide preliminary and final grades for each seminar.
I enter a numerical grade for their first posts (due on the Wednesday) in the lower (preliminary) spreadsheet. That grade is based on the criteria outlined in my seminar participation rubric. I add brief notes on every subsequent comment (they are asked to make three) made between Thursday and Sunday and then input the final grade in the upper spreadsheet.
I’ve explained to the students that since they’ve been asked to produce 500 words per week (200 initially and then 3x100), the first post is worth approximately 40% of the overall grade, and each additional post about 20%.
I don’t love this system – I take a more holistic approach in my face-to-face teaching – but I’m finding that the added transparency is particularly important in the on-line environment.
I was delighted by their enthusiasm and made sure that I had plenty of time that first week to react promptly to their concerns and keep the momentum going.
There were challenges – the book store unexpectedly ran out of coursepacks and some students received their copies significantly late – but we worked through most of them.
What I should have expected – but didn’t – was that I’d need a system to track and organize all of my course activities.
Without the benefit of learning from best practices, here’s what I’m doing:
I keep copies of the emails that I send to the class in a dedicated folder.
I have created electronic folders for each student and I have saved each of their personal introductions as Word documents.
When I want to comment on a student’s post, I cut and paste it into Word and use the ‘track changes’ format to make suggestions. I email students copies of the marked-up documents, and save a copy to their folder.
I’ve created a spreadsheet in Excel to track student performance in the on-line discussions. In it are two lists of the students’ names, along with space to provide preliminary and final grades for each seminar.
I enter a numerical grade for their first posts (due on the Wednesday) in the lower (preliminary) spreadsheet. That grade is based on the criteria outlined in my seminar participation rubric. I add brief notes on every subsequent comment (they are asked to make three) made between Thursday and Sunday and then input the final grade in the upper spreadsheet.
I’ve explained to the students that since they’ve been asked to produce 500 words per week (200 initially and then 3x100), the first post is worth approximately 40% of the overall grade, and each additional post about 20%.
I don’t love this system – I take a more holistic approach in my face-to-face teaching – but I’m finding that the added transparency is particularly important in the on-line environment.
Lessons Learned Take 1
Now that I’ve been teaching DM 529 for about a month, and before I get swamped with the first batch of essays, it’s worth looking back on some lessons that I have already learned.
Because I’ve learned so much, this reflection is going to take two posts.
Lesson #1: As much as I’d like to, I cannot respond to 19 posts (individually) each week.
I did this in week 1 to make sure that everyone was on track, but it’s both exhausting and also not necessarily the most efficient way to promote student learning.
For one, students provide feedback to one another through our discussions, and they can only take in so much. Providing individualized feedback each time could also serve as a disincentive for students to reflect on their own comments critically.
My solution is to comment on at least 1/3 of the posts (6 or 7 out of 19 students) each week. This means that everyone will receive feedback at least 5 times (in a 13 week course), and I should avoid complete burn-out.
Lesson #2: Nineteen student posts is too many if you wish to encourage dynamic, yet focused discussions.
My original plan was to let the students respond to any of the initial 19 posts each week. But just days before we started, I realized that (1) 19 threads would be too many for anyone to follow; (2) 19 threads would work against real depth; and (3) some students’ posts would be completely ignored.
My solution, which is not perfect, is as follows: the preliminary posts from all 19 students are still due on Wednesday. The students then have until Thursday at 3pm (Eastern) to vote for up to 3 posts that they’d like to serve as the basis of our discussion.
At 3pm I add up the votes and use them as a guide to select 3-5 posts that we use for the rest of the week. I email the results to the students by 5pm.
I diverge from the student poll when the choices are too similar in terms of content, when the same student’s submissions are nominated in consecutive weeks, or when I see something in an unselected post that I think is critical to the discussion going forward.
We have a focused discussion on the smaller number of posts until Sunday evening.
Lesson #3: I must post the text of all of my group emails to the website’s news page.
In the first couple of weeks, I did my best to ensure that everyone was receiving my personal and group emails, but I eventually learned that at least one student was not getting them.
By copying the same text to the news page of the website, I have increased the accessibility of my comments.
Because I’ve learned so much, this reflection is going to take two posts.
Lesson #1: As much as I’d like to, I cannot respond to 19 posts (individually) each week.
I did this in week 1 to make sure that everyone was on track, but it’s both exhausting and also not necessarily the most efficient way to promote student learning.
For one, students provide feedback to one another through our discussions, and they can only take in so much. Providing individualized feedback each time could also serve as a disincentive for students to reflect on their own comments critically.
My solution is to comment on at least 1/3 of the posts (6 or 7 out of 19 students) each week. This means that everyone will receive feedback at least 5 times (in a 13 week course), and I should avoid complete burn-out.
Lesson #2: Nineteen student posts is too many if you wish to encourage dynamic, yet focused discussions.
My original plan was to let the students respond to any of the initial 19 posts each week. But just days before we started, I realized that (1) 19 threads would be too many for anyone to follow; (2) 19 threads would work against real depth; and (3) some students’ posts would be completely ignored.
My solution, which is not perfect, is as follows: the preliminary posts from all 19 students are still due on Wednesday. The students then have until Thursday at 3pm (Eastern) to vote for up to 3 posts that they’d like to serve as the basis of our discussion.
At 3pm I add up the votes and use them as a guide to select 3-5 posts that we use for the rest of the week. I email the results to the students by 5pm.
I diverge from the student poll when the choices are too similar in terms of content, when the same student’s submissions are nominated in consecutive weeks, or when I see something in an unselected post that I think is critical to the discussion going forward.
We have a focused discussion on the smaller number of posts until Sunday evening.
Lesson #3: I must post the text of all of my group emails to the website’s news page.
In the first couple of weeks, I did my best to ensure that everyone was receiving my personal and group emails, but I eventually learned that at least one student was not getting them.
By copying the same text to the news page of the website, I have increased the accessibility of my comments.
Lessons Learned Take 1 - Part 2
Lessons learned, continued…
Lesson#4: The faster you (at least) acknowledge emails, the better the rapport you have with your students.
Until I started to receive unsolicited positive feedback about my responsiveness, I didn’t realize how critical even the shortest acknowledgement of an email can be to establishing an open, dynamic instructor-student on-line relationship.
That said, I understand that spending too much time on email can sap a professor’s productivity.
In the DM 529 course outline, I tell my students that I can be reached, by email or by phone, between 8am and 4pm, Monday to Friday (and that I will check my email once per day on the weekend, but I cannot promise when).
My hours resemble business hours deliberately, and send a message to my younger students that I’m not on-line in the middle of the night. Because I am generally in the office between 7am and 5pm, I’ve also given myself buffer time.
Between 8am and 4pm, I try to acknowledge emails as I receive them. If I can deal with a concern quickly, I do so. Otherwise, I tell the student when I expect to respond in full, always leaving myself more time than I’ll need.
Lesson #5: It’s a good idea to log on to the course website daily.
Before DM 529, I had a rather skewed conception of how the website would work. I thought that students would go there to post and read posts, and that would be it.
And I’m sure that for some of my students, that’s exactly what happens.
But for others, the website is also a message board, where they can share suggestions about sources, or ask for help if a link to a reading seems to be broken.
As I will explain in my next post, while I provide ongoing feedback to individual students, I only engage in commentary with the whole class at the end of each week, so at first it didn’t cross my mind to visit the website except when I needed to.
A few weeks ago, however, after I posted a message to the news page, I checked in on the discussion and noticed that a student was struggling to access one the readings.
I quickly verified that the link was not broken (the problem is still a mystery), and then followed up by sending the student a copy of the reading myself.
The entire process hardly took me a minute, and it allowed me to developed a stronger relationship with one of the members of the class.
Lesson#4: The faster you (at least) acknowledge emails, the better the rapport you have with your students.
Until I started to receive unsolicited positive feedback about my responsiveness, I didn’t realize how critical even the shortest acknowledgement of an email can be to establishing an open, dynamic instructor-student on-line relationship.
That said, I understand that spending too much time on email can sap a professor’s productivity.
In the DM 529 course outline, I tell my students that I can be reached, by email or by phone, between 8am and 4pm, Monday to Friday (and that I will check my email once per day on the weekend, but I cannot promise when).
My hours resemble business hours deliberately, and send a message to my younger students that I’m not on-line in the middle of the night. Because I am generally in the office between 7am and 5pm, I’ve also given myself buffer time.
Between 8am and 4pm, I try to acknowledge emails as I receive them. If I can deal with a concern quickly, I do so. Otherwise, I tell the student when I expect to respond in full, always leaving myself more time than I’ll need.
Lesson #5: It’s a good idea to log on to the course website daily.
Before DM 529, I had a rather skewed conception of how the website would work. I thought that students would go there to post and read posts, and that would be it.
And I’m sure that for some of my students, that’s exactly what happens.
But for others, the website is also a message board, where they can share suggestions about sources, or ask for help if a link to a reading seems to be broken.
As I will explain in my next post, while I provide ongoing feedback to individual students, I only engage in commentary with the whole class at the end of each week, so at first it didn’t cross my mind to visit the website except when I needed to.
A few weeks ago, however, after I posted a message to the news page, I checked in on the discussion and noticed that a student was struggling to access one the readings.
I quickly verified that the link was not broken (the problem is still a mystery), and then followed up by sending the student a copy of the reading myself.
The entire process hardly took me a minute, and it allowed me to developed a stronger relationship with one of the members of the class.
A Typical Week
Now that I’m into a routine, I’m comfortable describing for potential on-line instructors the type of workload that you might encounter in a typical week.
RMC distance learning courses begin on Monday. For me, that’s my busiest ‘teaching’ day of the week. I probably spend three to four hours reading and assessing my students’ responses to the three to five selected posts for discussion and then organizing, typing, and distributing my (2500-3500 word) remarks.
In the midst of this process, I’ll likely receive three to five student emails (representing about 25% of the class) asking for help, advice, or comments on a draft of the next’s week’s preliminary posting. Most of these responses don’t take very long (maybe 30 minutes for all of them together), but it can be mentally taxing to work through a draft after having read and commented on course material all morning.
For those who wonder how to keep their own research going through all of this, I make sure to spend my first hour in the office on Mondays working for me, because there is no guarantee that I’ll have the energy and focus to do serious research towards the end of the day.
On Tuesday I do the weekly readings and respond to emails. Most weeks, this only takes between 90 minutes and two hours because I’m already familiar with the material.
Wednesdays are less intense. Thirty minutes of email is usually it, but as papers come due, I can see the time it takes me to respond to drafts increasing.
The other heavy teaching day for me is Thursday. The preliminary student posts must be in by Wednesday night, and since I’m committed to responding to at least six of them every week, I spend over an hour every Thursday morning drafting feedback. I typically pass another hour and a half grading the rest of the posts. And then there is the regular 30 minutes of email dialogue.
There’s more work in the afternoon, when I use the students’ vote to help me identify which posts will serve as the basis for our discussion for the rest of the week.
The key to this 30-45 minute job is making sure that I have a balance in terms of subject matter, individual perspectives, fresh and returning voices, and that I respect the students’ selections. It’s without question my least favourite weekly activity and one that I hope to find a way to avoid in future years.
Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays are typically no different from Wednesdays.
RMC distance learning courses begin on Monday. For me, that’s my busiest ‘teaching’ day of the week. I probably spend three to four hours reading and assessing my students’ responses to the three to five selected posts for discussion and then organizing, typing, and distributing my (2500-3500 word) remarks.
In the midst of this process, I’ll likely receive three to five student emails (representing about 25% of the class) asking for help, advice, or comments on a draft of the next’s week’s preliminary posting. Most of these responses don’t take very long (maybe 30 minutes for all of them together), but it can be mentally taxing to work through a draft after having read and commented on course material all morning.
For those who wonder how to keep their own research going through all of this, I make sure to spend my first hour in the office on Mondays working for me, because there is no guarantee that I’ll have the energy and focus to do serious research towards the end of the day.
On Tuesday I do the weekly readings and respond to emails. Most weeks, this only takes between 90 minutes and two hours because I’m already familiar with the material.
Wednesdays are less intense. Thirty minutes of email is usually it, but as papers come due, I can see the time it takes me to respond to drafts increasing.
The other heavy teaching day for me is Thursday. The preliminary student posts must be in by Wednesday night, and since I’m committed to responding to at least six of them every week, I spend over an hour every Thursday morning drafting feedback. I typically pass another hour and a half grading the rest of the posts. And then there is the regular 30 minutes of email dialogue.
There’s more work in the afternoon, when I use the students’ vote to help me identify which posts will serve as the basis for our discussion for the rest of the week.
The key to this 30-45 minute job is making sure that I have a balance in terms of subject matter, individual perspectives, fresh and returning voices, and that I respect the students’ selections. It’s without question my least favourite weekly activity and one that I hope to find a way to avoid in future years.
Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays are typically no different from Wednesdays.
A Question for my Readers
Ever since the first discussion in DM 529, I’ve struggled to find the ultimate way to convey positive feedback to individual students.
After well over ten years of teaching face-to-face, I seem to have developed a fairly good sense of when I can publicly acknowledge the work, or thoughts, of a particular student and when it might be more appropriate to just send someone a private note.
My judgment, I think, comes from my perception of body language, individual mannerisms, and from my sense of the classroom dynamics as a whole.
I feel much less confident about all of these things when I teach on-line. Perhaps this is because of inexperience, but I think it might be more than that. There are fewer cues on-line to indicate whether individual students would benefit from, or would be embarrassed by, public praise. It’s equally hard to judge whether such praise could breed resentment among those who are not acknowledged.
Thus far, I have sent positive messages to individual students via email, but I have not explicitly recognized individuals in my responses to the group.
The farthest I have gone in this direction is to occasionally make reference to a point brought up by only one student. Even in these instances, however, I don’t draw attention to the inventor of the idea, nor do I even suggest that the idea was particularly brilliant.
I’m not entirely satisfied with this approach because I know how helpful positive reinforcement can be and how much certain students benefit from even the smallest bit of recognition.
That said, I am very pleased with the group dynamic that has been established in DM 529, and do not want to risk it in order to try out a strategy that may or may not further the course objectives.
I’m curious about what others think of this dilemma…
After well over ten years of teaching face-to-face, I seem to have developed a fairly good sense of when I can publicly acknowledge the work, or thoughts, of a particular student and when it might be more appropriate to just send someone a private note.
My judgment, I think, comes from my perception of body language, individual mannerisms, and from my sense of the classroom dynamics as a whole.
I feel much less confident about all of these things when I teach on-line. Perhaps this is because of inexperience, but I think it might be more than that. There are fewer cues on-line to indicate whether individual students would benefit from, or would be embarrassed by, public praise. It’s equally hard to judge whether such praise could breed resentment among those who are not acknowledged.
Thus far, I have sent positive messages to individual students via email, but I have not explicitly recognized individuals in my responses to the group.
The farthest I have gone in this direction is to occasionally make reference to a point brought up by only one student. Even in these instances, however, I don’t draw attention to the inventor of the idea, nor do I even suggest that the idea was particularly brilliant.
I’m not entirely satisfied with this approach because I know how helpful positive reinforcement can be and how much certain students benefit from even the smallest bit of recognition.
That said, I am very pleased with the group dynamic that has been established in DM 529, and do not want to risk it in order to try out a strategy that may or may not further the course objectives.
I’m curious about what others think of this dilemma…
Welcome to Online Marketing
This week has been by far the most intense that I’ve had with the course. In addition to my regular responsibilities, I’ve marked seventeen 2000-3000 word papers.
I don’t think I know anyone who’s been teaching for more than a few years who genuinely loves to grade, and I’m no different.
I did, however, see these papers coming, and I know how critical it is to return assignments promptly so that my have time to apply the comments to their next assignment.
I provide a lot of feedback, but I read and type quickly, so marking with speed wasn’t the biggest challenge. I also learned that many of my standard grading strategies remain relevant on-line:
I don’t think I know anyone who’s been teaching for more than a few years who genuinely loves to grade, and I’m no different.
I did, however, see these papers coming, and I know how critical it is to return assignments promptly so that my have time to apply the comments to their next assignment.
I provide a lot of feedback, but I read and type quickly, so marking with speed wasn’t the biggest challenge. I also learned that many of my standard grading strategies remain relevant on-line:
- I still made a list of common problems and emailed them to the group;
- I still enforced a 24 hour rule, meaning that I asked students to wait at least 24 hours after they received their graded papers to email me about them.This provides time for them to digest the comments and deal with their emotional reactions before we talk;
- I still looked for (and in this case found) a particularly good paper and sought permission to use it as an example for other students in the future.
The unexpected problem, that in retrospect I should have seen coming, was the burn-out factor.
In a traditional class, I can break up the marking with (face-to-face) class time and discussions during office hours. In the on-line environment, a break from marking meant staying exactly where I was: alone, in front of the computer.
New instructors who want to avoid the feeling of being trapped at the screen might consider deliberately scheduling (shorter) meetings (with real people) during their busy on-line marking periods.
Sure, this will slow you down a bit, but it might also keep you fresh. I’ll certainly be doing this in my future heavy marking weeks.
Crisis Management
It finally happened. After more than 7 weeks without a significant technological glitch, DNDLearn – the learning management system for my course – went down this past weekend for about 24 hours.
What’s worse, because I’m only on-line once per day on the weekend, I was virtually oblivious to the problem, and non-responsive to many of the students who emailed me in a panic on Sunday afternoon.
Monday morning was not fun and, looking back, although I think I handled things well enough, I certainly could have done better.
My first priority was dealing with the fact that more than half of the students failed to post their contributions to our discussion on time: in short, I had to calm their anxieties and come up with a fair policy to handle the unexpected situation.
I quickly decided to (1) extend the deadline for posting until 7am the following morning and (2) offer any student who couldn’t post during that period the option of accepting their average grade for previous discussions as their grade for this one as well.
Although my response was not ideal – both for the students, who were already working towards our next session on Wednesday, and for me, who had set aside time to comment on the posts Monday morning and had to quickly rearrange things – it felt like a reasonable response to an awkward challenge.
I’m less pleased with how I communicated my initial reaction. I was overly defensive about my unresponsiveness on the Sunday (my communications policy in the course outline is clear that I only check email once per day on the weekend) and I was also unnecessarily critical of RMC, particularly when it turns out that the problem had nothing to do with the College.
After I emailed the class, I got in touch with my technology liaison at RMC who referred me to the trouble-shooters at DNDLearn. They explained that the server had gone down unexpectedly. In a follow up email I asked about how such situations were typically communicated to instructors and almost immediately received a satisfactory answer. I forwarded a record of this conversation to my students, and the crisis was over.
Hopefully, there won’t be a next time. If there is, a bit more caution about jumping to conclusions about my employer, not to mention a bit less defensiveness, and I should be fine.
What’s worse, because I’m only on-line once per day on the weekend, I was virtually oblivious to the problem, and non-responsive to many of the students who emailed me in a panic on Sunday afternoon.
Monday morning was not fun and, looking back, although I think I handled things well enough, I certainly could have done better.
My first priority was dealing with the fact that more than half of the students failed to post their contributions to our discussion on time: in short, I had to calm their anxieties and come up with a fair policy to handle the unexpected situation.
I quickly decided to (1) extend the deadline for posting until 7am the following morning and (2) offer any student who couldn’t post during that period the option of accepting their average grade for previous discussions as their grade for this one as well.
Although my response was not ideal – both for the students, who were already working towards our next session on Wednesday, and for me, who had set aside time to comment on the posts Monday morning and had to quickly rearrange things – it felt like a reasonable response to an awkward challenge.
I’m less pleased with how I communicated my initial reaction. I was overly defensive about my unresponsiveness on the Sunday (my communications policy in the course outline is clear that I only check email once per day on the weekend) and I was also unnecessarily critical of RMC, particularly when it turns out that the problem had nothing to do with the College.
After I emailed the class, I got in touch with my technology liaison at RMC who referred me to the trouble-shooters at DNDLearn. They explained that the server had gone down unexpectedly. In a follow up email I asked about how such situations were typically communicated to instructors and almost immediately received a satisfactory answer. I forwarded a record of this conversation to my students, and the crisis was over.
Hopefully, there won’t be a next time. If there is, a bit more caution about jumping to conclusions about my employer, not to mention a bit less defensiveness, and I should be fine.
Things You Need to Know as a First-time-On-line-Instructor
While I’ve covered what I initially thought would be the keys to on-line teaching for firs-time instructors in previous posts – get in touch with each student personally right away, establish a routine, consider a video introduction, develop a system to evaluate on-line discussions, etc – now that I’m almost through DM 529, I’d like to add three more:
- It’s critical to find out how much bandwidth you are working with.
I don’t actually understand how bandwidth is measured, so if I were inquiring about it, I would ask something along the lines of: can I post videos to the website? And if so, how long can they be and how easy will it be for students to download them?
Video, even a little bit of it, seems to make a difference to students’ distance learning experiences, and if I can create one (admittedly with help), anyone can.
Some instructors will be comfortable uploading their video comments to YouTube, making bandwidth less crucial, but if you plan to re-use a particular lesson in a future course, it might be helpful to find a way to keep the viewership of your videos limited.
- It’s worth learning about your institution’s emergency management policy.
In other words, what happens if the technology goes down? What’s missing from my syllabus this year is detailed directions for my students in the case that the RMC or DNDLearn websites become inaccessible for an extended period.
While most instructors will manage to ad-lib their way through the problem, peace of mind is critical to good teaching, and having an emergency management policy in place would certainly eliminate some unnecessary stressors.
- It’s important to understand whether you are allowed to schedule synchronous discussions.
My students come from all over the country, and it is not uncommon for RMC students to take on-line courses while posted in Europe or elsewhere.
As a result, the culture in the RMC distance learning program seems to discourage instructors from mandating that all students log on at a set time. And that is certainly understandable.
But not every distance learning program includes quite so many ‘distance learners.’ And real-time conversations can promote learning. To provide just two examples, they allow you to give advice on an assignment to the group as a whole and to take questions immediately, and they allow you to vary the structure of class discussions to keep students engaged.
If I were teaching on-line for the first time, I’d certainly want to ask about my institution’s policy on synchronous learning, as well as about the on-line cultural environment more generally.
Benefits of Teaching On-Line
I’d like to spend the next two posts discussing some of the key differences between my experiences teaching in person and on-line. I’ll cover the benefits of on-line teaching this week, and then follow up next time with the drawbacks.
If you write well yourself, and you are committed to helping your students improve their written communication skills, then the on-line environment creates great opportunities.
First, assuming that you have limited time (and perhaps bandwidth) for video communication, you will be doing a lot of writing when you teach on-line, which means that you can model effective writing on a regular basis.
Also, because of your likely emphasis on text-based assignments (there are typically fewer oral presentations on-line, although I’m sure there are ways around this), you will have more opportunities to provide feedback.
Students in DM 529 have received far more feedback on their writing than have typical students in my previous courses, regardless of whether they’ve taken advantage of my willingness to read drafts.
Second, I’ve also found it much easier to be firm in response to extension requests on-line.
When a student asks for an extension by email, I can express my reasons for the course’s late paper policy slowly, rationally, and at a time of my choosing. As a result, I’m less prone to make emotional decisions, and more comfortable letting the policy speak for itself.
I haven’t given a single extension in DM 529, and I’m confident that my students – on the whole – respect me more for that.
Finally, introverted instructors – and I don’t necessarily mean shy people, but rather instructors who prefer to process information on their own – will appreciate the on-line environment because of the opportunities it presents to ‘hide.’
After I lecture or participate in a live seminar, my instinct is to go to my office (or the washroom), shut the door, and say nothing to anyone until I’ve ‘come down.’ But because people can see me, and know where my office is, that isn’t always possible.
On the other hand, after sending out a 2000 word response to the weekly on-line seminar, I can shut down my email and walk away. For an introvert, this is a real treat.
If you write well yourself, and you are committed to helping your students improve their written communication skills, then the on-line environment creates great opportunities.
First, assuming that you have limited time (and perhaps bandwidth) for video communication, you will be doing a lot of writing when you teach on-line, which means that you can model effective writing on a regular basis.
Also, because of your likely emphasis on text-based assignments (there are typically fewer oral presentations on-line, although I’m sure there are ways around this), you will have more opportunities to provide feedback.
Students in DM 529 have received far more feedback on their writing than have typical students in my previous courses, regardless of whether they’ve taken advantage of my willingness to read drafts.
Second, I’ve also found it much easier to be firm in response to extension requests on-line.
When a student asks for an extension by email, I can express my reasons for the course’s late paper policy slowly, rationally, and at a time of my choosing. As a result, I’m less prone to make emotional decisions, and more comfortable letting the policy speak for itself.
I haven’t given a single extension in DM 529, and I’m confident that my students – on the whole – respect me more for that.
Finally, introverted instructors – and I don’t necessarily mean shy people, but rather instructors who prefer to process information on their own – will appreciate the on-line environment because of the opportunities it presents to ‘hide.’
After I lecture or participate in a live seminar, my instinct is to go to my office (or the washroom), shut the door, and say nothing to anyone until I’ve ‘come down.’ But because people can see me, and know where my office is, that isn’t always possible.
On the other hand, after sending out a 2000 word response to the weekly on-line seminar, I can shut down my email and walk away. For an introvert, this is a real treat.
Drawbacks of Teaching On-Line
In my last post, I wrote about some of the benefits of teaching on-line. I’ll spend this post on some of the drawbacks.
If you enjoy teaching because engages your interpersonal communication skills, you will likely find that the on-line environment does not provide the same sort of rush that you can get from the regular classroom.
I get excited in DM 529 when I read a series of good posts on the discussion board, or when I mark a particularly brilliant paper, but I never get that same feeling that I’d had following a great question and answer period in a lecture hall, or after a provocative face-to-face seminar discussion.
Ironically, given that the distance learning environment typically provides instructors with greater opportunities to read their students’ written work, I also think that it’s harder to detect learning disabilities on-line.
Between the fact that it takes longer to establish the relationship of trust that might allow students to open up, and because (at least in an asynchronous environment) students can spend infinite amounts of time editing their every post, instructors seem to have fewer tools, and access to fewer indicators, that might alert them that a student could be struggling for reasons that have nothing to do with lack of effort or time.
Finally, given that we tend to remember things better when we sense them in a variety of ways, and the vast majority of an instructor’s access to distance learning students is through text, I’m concerned that it will be harder for me to write strong letters of reference for my on-line students.
Certainly, because I’ve read so much of their work, I know them quite well as writers, but I don’t have a sense of their body language, I don’t have quite the same sense of their enthusiasm and passions, and in many cases I’ve never heard their voices.
In my experience, these things allow me to paint a longer-lasting picture of a student in my mind, and make it easier to write a letter that feels real.
It’s clear to me, then, that a student taking an on-line degree has to go the extra mile to ensure quality letters of reference.
If you enjoy teaching because engages your interpersonal communication skills, you will likely find that the on-line environment does not provide the same sort of rush that you can get from the regular classroom.
I get excited in DM 529 when I read a series of good posts on the discussion board, or when I mark a particularly brilliant paper, but I never get that same feeling that I’d had following a great question and answer period in a lecture hall, or after a provocative face-to-face seminar discussion.
Ironically, given that the distance learning environment typically provides instructors with greater opportunities to read their students’ written work, I also think that it’s harder to detect learning disabilities on-line.
Between the fact that it takes longer to establish the relationship of trust that might allow students to open up, and because (at least in an asynchronous environment) students can spend infinite amounts of time editing their every post, instructors seem to have fewer tools, and access to fewer indicators, that might alert them that a student could be struggling for reasons that have nothing to do with lack of effort or time.
Finally, given that we tend to remember things better when we sense them in a variety of ways, and the vast majority of an instructor’s access to distance learning students is through text, I’m concerned that it will be harder for me to write strong letters of reference for my on-line students.
Certainly, because I’ve read so much of their work, I know them quite well as writers, but I don’t have a sense of their body language, I don’t have quite the same sense of their enthusiasm and passions, and in many cases I’ve never heard their voices.
In my experience, these things allow me to paint a longer-lasting picture of a student in my mind, and make it easier to write a letter that feels real.
It’s clear to me, then, that a student taking an on-line degree has to go the extra mile to ensure quality letters of reference.
The End
I’ve finally reached the end of DM 529 and I’m left not knowing exactly what to think. I’m exhausted, and would be quite happy if I didn’t have to mark again for a very long time.
But I’m also already missing the provocative discussions, the different ways that members of the class thought about and understood Canadian defence and foreign policy, and the intellectual breakthroughs that took place for nearly every student at various times.
On line or in person, a positive learning experience creates a rush that is hard to match. And while I still prefer to teach students face to face, I’ve come to appreciate the opportunities presented by, at the very least, blended learning (a combination of on-line and in-person), and perhaps also by distance education.
Given that all of my posts to this point have come from the position of the instructor, I thought it would be worthwhile to finish with some comments from my students.
A couple of weeks ago, I invited those who were interested to provide some advice to future on-line instructors. Here are two of them:
“I cannot over-emphasize the importance of an instructor’s ability to write in an online course. I think that a well-organized course is [still] nonsense if the writing is incoherent and superfluous.”
“The real questions to ask are the ones we should ask in any course. Has the course been well-structured? Does it offer sufficient background material? Does it explore concepts and ideas that will challenge the student? Are the intellectual demands sufficiently rigorous? There’s a long list of such questions, all of which can be answered without regard to the method of delivery. At the heart of an on-line course, as for any course, is the professor. The classroom may well be the best vehicle to transmit a professor’s passion and discipline, and the student’s curiosity and enthusiasm, but if the supporting technology is capable enough to transmit those same qualities, then all else is in the detail.”
I thank you all for following this blog and for your comments. Hopefully, I will be able to meet some of you in late May at the Learn-Eds in New Brunswick where I’ll be speaking about my on-line teaching experience as part of Career Corner.
But I’m also already missing the provocative discussions, the different ways that members of the class thought about and understood Canadian defence and foreign policy, and the intellectual breakthroughs that took place for nearly every student at various times.
On line or in person, a positive learning experience creates a rush that is hard to match. And while I still prefer to teach students face to face, I’ve come to appreciate the opportunities presented by, at the very least, blended learning (a combination of on-line and in-person), and perhaps also by distance education.
Given that all of my posts to this point have come from the position of the instructor, I thought it would be worthwhile to finish with some comments from my students.
A couple of weeks ago, I invited those who were interested to provide some advice to future on-line instructors. Here are two of them:
“I cannot over-emphasize the importance of an instructor’s ability to write in an online course. I think that a well-organized course is [still] nonsense if the writing is incoherent and superfluous.”
“The real questions to ask are the ones we should ask in any course. Has the course been well-structured? Does it offer sufficient background material? Does it explore concepts and ideas that will challenge the student? Are the intellectual demands sufficiently rigorous? There’s a long list of such questions, all of which can be answered without regard to the method of delivery. At the heart of an on-line course, as for any course, is the professor. The classroom may well be the best vehicle to transmit a professor’s passion and discipline, and the student’s curiosity and enthusiasm, but if the supporting technology is capable enough to transmit those same qualities, then all else is in the detail.”
I thank you all for following this blog and for your comments. Hopefully, I will be able to meet some of you in late May at the Learn-Eds in New Brunswick where I’ll be speaking about my on-line teaching experience as part of Career Corner.