Pump up Your Online Discussions with VoiceThread

By: Mary Bart in Asynchronous Learning and Trends, Teaching with Technology

At its best, the discussion board can be the heart and soul of the online classroom. But it’s not always easy getting students to make the type of contributions you expect. The comments can be rather flat, not very insightful, and more often than not, it feels like some students just fill the minimum number of posts stipulated in your syllabus.

But a funny thing happened in John Orlando’s courses when he started using VoiceThread — students began posting more than what was required, and they were far more engaged. In addition, he says, students reported that they enjoyed sharing their thoughts on what they were learning.

A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos. It allows users to navigate slides and leave comments in five ways – using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video. Typically, the instructor loads his or her narrative slides and students can then add their comments at any point within the lecture.

In the recent online seminar How to Engage Students with Interactive Online Lectures, Orlando, instructional resource manager at the Norwich University School of Graduate Studies, provided examples of VoiceThreads, and explained how to create one for your course.

According to Orlando, the advantages of using VoiceThread for your online discussions include:

Student driven discussion: Discussion originates from the students themselves, and thus students tend to bring more of themselves into the conversation. Discussion is freer and more open, touching on a wider variety of issues. A growing lecture: Discussion in a traditional online forum never leaves the classroom.
The class is archived and discussion forums are wiped clean for the next group, meaning
that the insights are lost. But because discussion in VoiceThread is attached to the lecture itself, which can then be used for the next class, students are adding to the lecture, which grows from class to class. Students contribute to an ongoing conversation with future classes. Improved social presence: Students find that the ability to see and hear their instructor and classmates improves the sense of social presence of others in the classroom. Better understanding of nuance: Students are better able to understand the nuances of discussion when they can hear the tone in someone’s voice. Student projects: VoiceThread is a great way for students to deliver projects and solicit feedback from others.

The seminar also included a demonstration of VideoAnt, which allows users to make text-based annotations to online videos, and advice on how to use digital storytelling to help personalize the learning experience.

Tags: asynchronous discussions, Asynchronous Learning Tools, asynchronous trends, discussion board assignments, engaging online students, online discussions, teaching with technology

View the original article here

How Wikis Streamline Student Collaboration Projects

By: Mary Bart in Asynchronous Learning and Trends

Utter the words “group project” and you’re likely to hear at least a few groans from your students. The reasons for their dislike of group work are many, but logistical difficulties of getting everyone together and lazy group members who don’t pull their own weight are two of the biggest complaints.

With wikis, you’re able to remove these two obstacles because wiki sites not only make collaboration a breeze, but they contain tracking tools that let instructors see who’s contributing to the project, and when they’re making those contributions.

In the recent online seminar, Designing an Effective Collaborative Wiki Project, Rhonda Ficek, Ph.D., director of instructional technology services at Minnesota State University Moorhead, provided an overview of the different types of wikis, the benefits of using them for group activities, and how to use a rubric to evaluate wiki-based projects.

Characteristics of Wikis
Ease of editing – There’s nothing to download and wikis don’t require any special technical skills. Students edit the documents using their standard web browser. No more having to email documents back and forth.

Revision history – The wiki tracks and stores the date, time and author of any changes. It also stores the older versions of documents, which can be pulled up at any time.

Content management – Wikis allow you to “tag” content and cross-link between pages, as well as create a table of contents to simplify the navigation and presentation of materials.

In the second portion of the seminar, Ficek provided a step-by-step tutorial on how to set up a wiki using WetPaint, including tips on creating template pages, editing content, and monitoring changes or updates.

“Wikis are very effective environment for group collaboration, but you still need to clearly define what you want your students to do, the purpose of the wiki project, and the expected outcomes – just like you would any other project,” says Ficek. “You also want to make sure students understand how they will be assessed.”

Tags: Effective Group Work Strategies, group learning activities, group work, online group work, rubric, rubrics, student collaboration, student collaboration tools, wikis

View the original article here

Mobile Learning Objects Deployment and Utilization in Developing Countries

By Paul B. Muyinda, Jude T. Lubega, and Kathy Lynch, from the International Journal of Computing and ICT Research Special Issue. The increasing ability to access Internet via mobile devices means that learning objects can be deployed and utilized on those devices. Increasing research attention has been accorded to the design and development of reusable learning objects for tethered and mobile based learning management systems.

Download here

View the original article here

Tips for More Active Asynchronous Discussions All Semester Long

By: Rob Kelly in Asynchronous Learning and Trends

During a recent seminar, presenters Kay Dennis of Park University and Jeffery Alejandro of East Carolina University, offered the following tips on using online discussions to maintain student motivation:

Be explicit and optimistic about expectations for course participation. “I tell students upfront, — ‘I want you to sign in at last three times a week and your attendance in this course is being monitored.’ By doing this, I hope to create a little momentum, get them in the habit of coming to the course. If they’re more active in the course, I’ve found that they tend to become a little bit more motivated,” Alejandro said. Encourage students to talk to one another and question each other. Build this into your discussions by having students post a message and respond to others. This reduces the feeling of isolation and creates “a little bit of a cohort effect.” Students who get to know one another tend to want to take subsequent online courses together, which can improve motivation as well. Positive interactions among students can help motivate students who are not as comfortable in the online environment because they feel that they can rely on the faculty member and classmates, Alejandro said. Build in accountability by assigning students on a rotating basis to summarize the weekly discussion, Dennis said. Link discussion topics to learning outcomes. Dennis keeps a bank of questions and looks for new ways of asking them. She keeps the learning objectives in front of her and tries to match the questions to the learning objectives week by week. When she has trouble coming up with good questions, she’ll often go back to the readings. “I take responsibility for that. That’s much better in the long run than putting up questions that you know at the time are kind of so-so,” Dennis said. After students post a couple of things, she monitors the discussion to determine how to improve it and keep it lively. Have students contribute discussion questions. Alejandro suggests dividing assignments or chapters into sections and have students contribute the questions that are going to be asked in a given week. This gives students the opportunity to ask questions that are relevant to them. Excerpted from “Tips from the Pros – Maintaining Motivation in Online Discussions.” Online Classroom, November 2009, 1, 7.

Tags: asynchronous discussion forums, asynchronous discussions, discussion board assignments, discussion board rubrics, online discussion groups

View the original article here

Three Ways to Change up Your Online Discussion Board Prompts

By: Rob Kelly in Asynchronous Learning and Trends, Online Education

Are you having trouble getting students to participate in online discussions? Consider using other types of prompts in addition to the typical open-ended question. Maria Ammar, assistant English professor at Frederick Community College, uses the following prompts in her English as a second language course and recommends them for other types of courses:

Articles—Post an article in the discussion board and have students do an activity related to its content. This gives students more content on which to comment than a typical prompt that consists solely of a question. Audio—Post an audio prompt. Listening is an integral part of learning a language. It also is a medium that students are comfortable with and find interesting. Ammar has students post their notes on radio broadcasts in a threaded discussion. “Even though everybody is listening to the same [content], they may catch different things,” Ammar says. Video—Even more engaging is video. Simply post a link to a YouTube video (or one from another source), and ask students to comment or answer an open-ended questions about it.

In courses that are intended to develop students’ writing skills, the discussion board can be an excellent way to get students to write on a regular basis. However, one of the obstacles to students’ full participation in this type of learning is some students’ reluctance to share things that they consider too personal.

One way to address this is to have students write in personal online journals that only the individual student and instructor can access. Ammar does not give students the option of posting in the journal instead of posting to the discussion board. They are both required activities, but some students tend to participate more actively in one or the other.

In some cases the prompt can be the same for the threaded discussion and the journal entry. For example, she once asked students to view an ABC News video of an art project in New York City in which pianos were placed throughout the city for members of the public to play. The video showed interviews with people who played. In the threaded discussion, students summarized the comments of several interviewees, and she asked students write about their personal reflections about the project.

Ammar does not grade online discussion posts or journal entries for grammar or spelling “because I just want to see that they’re able to communicate. I check those things in their [formal] papers.”

Reprinted from Tips From the Pros: Creative Uses of Discussion Boards Online Classroom, (February 2012): 1.3.

Tags: asynchronous discussion forums, asynchronous discussions, discussion boards, online discussions

View the original article here

Questioning Styles for More Effective Discussion Boards

By: Rob Kelly in Asynchronous Learning and Trends

Meaningful online discussions that promote learning and build community usually do not happen spontaneously. They require planning, good use of questioning techniques, and incentives for student participation.

Before the course begins, the instructor should consider the purpose of each discussion, how it relates to the learning objectives, and how it can promote deeper thinking, says Elaine Bennington, director of instructional technology, distance education, and adjunct faculty development at Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana.

Here are two key questions to ask when planning a discussion:

What do I want students to be able to do?In what ways do I want students to understand this material?

Answering these questions can help determine the types of questions to ask, says Laurie Kirkner, Internet technician at Ivy Tech.

A course can include different types of online discussions. In addition to an introduction, discussions can be used for reflection, debate, or exploring case studies, among other things. And as a course progresses, the online discussions can help move students to the higher end of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognitive Domain (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation).

Types of questions
The asynchronous nature of the discussion board makes it more important to plan specific questions because it’s not as easy as in a face-to-face class to ask a follow-up question when your initial question fails to elicit the level of dialogue you had hoped for. This is not to say that all questions in online discussions need to be scripted. Another important role for the instructor is to participate in these discussions and help students explore relevant but unplanned discussion topics and to get them back on topic when they stray too far.

Initial questions in an online discussion might ask closed questions, which can help establish a set of principles to build upon. But for the most part, threaded discussions should feature open-ended questions that elicit divergent thinking from the students.

Too often, however, instructors simply ask students to state their independent thinking on a subject and perhaps comment on two classmates’ postings. Bennington and Kirkner recommend using the following six Socratic questioning techniques as delineated by Richard Paul (see reference below) to get students involved in discussions that go beyond simply their opinions:

Conceptual clarification questions—questions that get students to think about concepts behind their arguments, for example, Why are you saying that? What exactly does this mean? How does this relate to what we have been talking about? Can you give me an example?Probing assumptions—questions that get students to think about the beliefs that they base their arguments on, for example, What else could we assume? How did you choose those assumptions? How can you verify or disprove that assumption? What would happen if …?Probing rationale, reasons, and evidence—questions that get students to think about the support for their arguments, for example, Why is that happening? How do you know this? Can you give me an example? What do you think causes …? On what authority are you basing your argument?Questioning viewpoints and perspectives—questions that get students to consider other viewpoints, for example, What are some alternate ways of looking at this? Who benefits from this? How are x and y similar?Probe implications and consequences—questions that get students to think about the what follows from their arguments, for example, Then what would happen? What are the consequences of that assumption?Questions about the question—questions that turn the question in on itself, for example, What was the point of asking that question? Why do you think I asked this question?

Discussion board rubrics
Bennington and Kirkner recommend grading online discussions according to a rubric that instructors share with students at the outset of the course that considers the quality and quantity of students’ postings. “These discussion boards have to be a graded situation so that the students will take them seriously,” Bennington says.

There are many online-discussion-grading rubrics out there. Here are two examples:

Discussion board rubric example 1
Discussion board rubric example 2

Reference
Paul, Richard, Critical Thinking: How to Prepare Students for a Rapidly Changing World, 1993.

Adapted from A Plan for Effective Discussion Boards, Online Classroom, May 2007.

Tags: asynchronous discussion forums, asynchronous discussions, discussion board rubrics, online discussion groups, online discussions, rubrics, student participation, threaded discussions

View the original article here

Handshake – IFC’s quarterly journal on public-private partnerships

Featuring an article, ‘M is for Mobile,’ by Head of mLearning Lauren Dawes.

Download here

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

Five Resources for Estimating Development Time

Are you unsure of how to answer the big question: How long does it take to develop one hour of online learning?

As you might expect, there is no one answer to this complex question because there are multiple factors to consider. Fortunately, our community has several resources that can help you with an estimate.

But before you jump right to those estimates, analyze your situation, environment and project and consider all the factors. Some of the factors that will influence your time estimate are:

Organizational need/deadlineYour design and development modelComplexity of the contentNumber and complexity of interactionsGame-based, branching, linearTypes of mediaTypes of evaluations and assessmentsHardware/devicesDelivery system

Also, consider the learning model you will use. If you plan on straying from the typical approach, such as using Thiagi’s Four Door Model or incorporating existing content from YouTube, you will need to modify the design and development hours accordingly.

Below are some general resources you can use to do your estimating. You’ll find that using a standard measurement of developing one hour of training works well for making larger or smaller estimates. Keep in mind that most of the resources are several years old.

1. Time To Develop One Hour of Training

Although this article from ASTD is a few years old, it is still relevant. Not only does it provide the detail many are seeking, authors Karl Kapp and Robyn Defelice delve into several of the contributing factors that will affect your time estimate.

2. How Long Does it Take to Create Learning?

This survey provides data it has collected from 249 organizations, representing 3,947 learning development professionals. The “time to complete” numbers are represented as ratios. Don’t miss the accompanying SlideShare presentation, which has helpful visuals.

3. How Long Does It Take to Create an E-Learning Course?

This article by Desiree Pinder discusses a variety of factors you may not think to consider, such as priority, review cycles and availability.

4. Estimating Costs and Time in Instructional Design

Donald Clark provides budgets and cost guidelines here in addition to the time estimates, which he references from an older source.

5. Why eLearning Development Ratios Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

The Dashe & Thomson’s Social Learning Blog cautions against blindly using the development ratios. They provide their own list of considerations.

If you have other solid resources, please list them below in Comments.

View the original article here

Private Journal Replaces Discussion Forum in Blended Course

By: Rob Kelly in Asynchronous Learning and Trends, Teaching with Technology

The discussion board in Kathleen Lowney’s large blended (or hybrid) section of introduction to sociology at Valdosta State University wasn’t serving its intended purpose of engaging learners with the content and preparing them for face-to-face class sessions. She tried dividing the students into smaller discussion groups of 50 and then 20, and the results were the same: the weaker students waited until the last minute and essentially repeated what the better students had posted previously. When she replaced the public discussions with private journals, the quality of students’ posts improved, as did their grades.

Lowney’s course is a “supersection” hybrid that has an enrollment of 150 to 300 students and meets Tuesdays and Thursdays with a significant online component. She had one discussion per week that required students to read 50 percent of their classmates’ posts and contribute to the discussion to prepare them for the next class session.

“I began to notice that the academically stronger students would post early; the weaker students tended to post in the last 12 hours of a seven-day window, and many of their posts, while not quite taken word-for-word from the stronger students, were pretty close. It looked [as though] they were waiting for the stronger students to post in these open discussions to figure out what the answers were. Not everybody was engaging with the material in the way that I wanted them to engage with it,” Lowney says.

She also observed that students who posted earlier and engaged in original thinking did better on tests. Even in smaller groups the same “free rider” problem occurred, and Lowney had the additional problem of managing multiple discussions. (While Blackboard makes it easy to divide students into groups and present the same discussion prompt, knowing which comment she made in which group proved to be a challenge.)

Lowney now assigns a private prewrite, which asks students to apply concepts. Students do not see each other’s posts, and Lowney responds to each, offering comments that help prepare for the in-class discussion.

She also says that this format has improved students’ engagement with the material. “I wouldn’t say the weaker students are always a lot stronger than they were, but what I’m seeing is that my weaker students’ test scores have made a steady improvement from when I had the open, public discussion,” Lowney says.

In addition to improved test scores, Lowney has observed improved interaction in the face-to-face sessions. “Classes are much more engaging because I know that they’ve had to read the material before and engage with it,” Lowney says. “I’m getting more questions in class because I’m priming the pump with my comments.”

Of course, making these prewrites private eliminates the benefits of writing for and receiving feedback from peers. One way that Lowney addresses this issue is by sharing (anonymously) sample private prewrites in class, highlighting common mistakes and things done well. “I’ll build that into my PowerPoint and say, ‘This is something that cropped up a lot.’ Most students will see their work at some point in one of the PowerPoints, and I’ll share good examples as well, especially early in the semester so that I can model a successful answer and ask students to tear it apart and see what made it successful,” Lowney says.

These private prewrites are more work for the students and the instructor. Responding to each prewrite is quite time-intensive for Lowney, particularly in such high-enrollment courses. And one of the challenges is providing feedback to students before the in-class discussion. “If you’re not able to get them all graded, you can get a sample graded so you can use them in the lecture the next day. This makes it seem as though it’s not just busywork,” Lowney says.

To help motivate students to take these prewrites seriously, Lowney shares with them data that shows how grades have improved since she began using this approach.

Each module still has an open discussion where students can post messages or ask questions, but students rarely use it. While this is not really an issue in a hybrid course where students have opportunities for face-to-face interaction with peers, it would be an issue in a fully online course. That said, Lowney does see the potential for limited use of this technique in totally online courses. “If I were going to have two assignments a week, I’d have one private and one open, because I do think there needs to be some community in an online course that an open discussion allows for,” she says.

Lowney has not tried this approach in upper-division courses, but she speculates that she might take more of a backseat role in these discussions. She sees the merit of including open discussions in introductory courses, perhaps with more private interaction in upper-level courses. “It depends on what you’re teaching. What are your goals? What’s the rest of the course like? What are your other assignments?” Lowney says.

Reprinted from Private Journal Replaces Discussion Forum in Hybrid Course Online Classroom, 12.5 (2012): 7-8.

Tags: asynchronous discussions, designing blended courses, discussion board assignments, discussion boards, student participation techniques, teaching blended learning courses

View the original article here

Sample Tags

ravinder tulsiani corporate trainer
ravinder tulsiani trainer
ravinder tulsiani learning and development pro
ravinder tulsiani edge
ravinder tulsiani unleashtheedge
ravinder tulsiani instructional designer
ravinder tulsiani organizational development pro
ravinder tulsiani Training Consultant
ravinder tulsiani Performance Management Consultant
ravinder tulsiani Management Consultant
ravinder tulsiani Training and Development Pro
ravinder tulsiani Training Manager
ravinder tulsiani Leadership Development Consulting
ravinder tulsiani Design and Develop Training
ravinder tulsiani eLearning
ravinder tulsiani mLearning
ravinder tulsiani coach
ravinder tulsiani Talent Managment
ravinder tulsiani Senior Learning Specialist
ravinder tulsiani Learning and Development
ravinder tulsiani Change Management
ravinder tulsiani workforce development
ravinder tulsiani Learning and Performance professional
ravinder tulsiani adult training and development
ravinder tulsiani Professional development and training
ravinder tulsiani Training for Employee Development
ravinder tulsiani training edge