Lisa Neal Gualtieri – The eLearn Blog

Big Changes at eLearn Magazine

Lisa Neal Gualtieri — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 00:41:36 +0000

What’s new and different at eLearn Magazine? I am very excited to announce that we have a new site. Not only is it more modern and attractive, we believe, but it provides many new features including article tags, the ability to see which articles are most popular, a more robust search capability, and more video.

What hasn’t changed is our high-quality content. Actually, it has—it is even better because we have added regular editors in recent months, the newest of whom is Sue Landay. We hope you enjoy her columns as well as those of our other regular columnists, Michelle Everson, Bob Little, and Roger Schank, and our guest columnists.

I am delighted to welcome Jane Bozarth, as new co-Editor-in-Chief of eLearn Magazine. Read about Jane in this eLearn Magazine interview. After 10 years at eLearn Magazine—we launched in June 2001! I will be turning over my responsibilities to Jane over the next few months.

Finally, I want to officially welcome Denise Doig as eLearn Magazine’s new Senior Editor. Denise was previously the Managing Editor of interactions Magazine. She has provided editorial management for eLearn as well. Her academic background is in Civil Engineering, but has spent the majority of her professional career in trade publishing. After attending the Columbia University Publishing Course, she began as an editorial assistant at Outsourcing Today, providing editorial and production support. She has experience in technical writing and marketing. Denise is a graduate of Princeton University. Her interests include social media, digital learning, and user experience design.

Please join me in welcoming our new look, Sue, Jane, and Denise.

The Efficacy of Online Instruction

Lisa Neal Gualtieri — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 02:37:01 +0000

Kevin Kvalvik, a graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, posted responses to a question seeking recent findings on the efficacy of online instruction from student and faculty points of view. There are seven sites mentioned, including articles from eLearn Magazine, and the post includes useful descriptions of the results.

What Were eLearn Magazine Readers Reading in 2010?

Lisa Neal Gualtieri — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 12:01:45 +0000

It is always fascinating to see what our readers read and the end of year is a particularly good time to observe and reflect.

Homepage
Best Practices
Stephen Downes’ ever-popular E-learning 2.0
Research and Case Studies
Tutorials (This category no longer exists as of 2011)
Keri Bjorklund’s eLearning Tools for English Composition: 30 New Media Tools and Web Sites for Writing Teachers
Michelle Everson’s 10 Things I’ve Learned About Teaching Online
eLearn Magazine’s Full Achive
Predictions for 2010

This list is only through December 27, and the rest of the year may bring surprises. Certainly the new year will bring surprises when we launch our redesigned site!

What Does Michelle Everson Learn from her Online Students and other Insights

Lisa Neal Gualtieri — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 16:13:43 +0000

Michelle Everson joined eLearn Magazine as a monthly columnist after writing some of our most popular articles. Her first column is Why Should Educators Blog? She joins our regular columnists Roger Schank and Bob Little as well as those who write less frequently.

I interviewed Michelle about her new role and about her role as an online teacher:

Lisa: What are some topics you are considering for upcoming columns?

Michelle: I feel there is so much that is always on my mind that I could write about. Just off the top of my head now, I’d like to write more about time management issues for the online instructor, fostering active learning in the online course, and coming up with ways to create effective online assignments. I’m also very interested in how online teaching can inform teaching in the classroom, and vice versa, and I’m interest in how to best prepare faculty for teaching online.

Lisa: As one of eLearn Magazine’s most popular writers, what do you thinks makes your articles resonate with eLearn Magazine readers?

Michelle: This is a good question! It’s so flattering to me to see that several people have read the things I have written so far for eLearn Magazine. I’m not sure why my articles resonate with readers. I am very passionate about teaching online, and I hope that comes through in what I write. It’s important to me to create an online learning environment that is conducive to student learning. Because of this, I’m always reflecting on what I do and how I could do better, and I think a lot about advice I might give to new online instructors, or about advice I wish I had when I first started teaching online. Perhaps my articles resonate with others because they tend to wrestle with some of the same challenges I do.

Lisa: What is your favorite aspect of online teaching?

Michelle: I like that when I teach online, I get to learn a lot more about my students and how they think than I ever could in the classroom. In my classroom-based courses, students engage in a lot of small-group activity and discussion, but it’s impossible for me to hear the contents of each group discussion (let alone participate in all of those discussions), and I don’t always come away with a good sense of who is “getting it” and who is not. In the online environment, I can read through small-group discussions from start to finish, and I can see how these discussions evolve. I can also participate in each small-group discussion, and this is important to me because I feel the instructor should have a presence in the online course. I can see right away which students really understand the material and which students might need extra help, and I have the opportunity to reach out to the students who are having difficulties. I find I learn a lot about how students reason through different problems by reading through the thoughts they post, and I hope they are reflecting more deeply on the material since they have to write out their thoughts and post them in a public forum. I’ve actually ended up changing a lot of my activities and assignments based on what I’ve learned by reading through student discussions and seeing what some of their misconceptions about teaching are. I like that I get such a different perspective on students learning by witnessing what goes on in the online classroom.

Lisa: What is something interesting about you that you would like to share with readers?

Michelle: I live on a small hobby far about 60 miles north of the university I teach at. We have chickens, ducks, a goose, two dogs and several cats. I often think that if I weren’t teaching, I’d probably be a veterinarian because I love being around animals so much.

Watch for Michelle’s next column in January.

Crowdsource an Answer and Help Out a Colleague

Lisa Neal Gualtieri — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 20:35:40 +0000

Do you have advice or suggestions for Dave M, who wrote: We have been asked to develop 8 week online courses, but my faculty are concerned that the 8 weeks limits the course too much (and that science and math in particular are more difficult to do online). We have the concern that 3 credits are given for both versions of the same course when one (full semester) is rigorous at the college level and the other (8 week) covers much much less.
Do you have advice or similar experiences? Please let us – and Dave M – know!

Learning While “Paying a Debt to Society”

Lisa Neal Gualtieri — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 10:39:04 +0000

The ultimate “win-win” proposition: Scientists get “research collaborators and inmates get a job that beats stamping out license plates”. Forest ecologist Nalini Nadkarni is using prisoners to learn how best to cultivate the dwindling prairie plants in a National Science Foundation research project. Inmates at the Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen, Washington, plant seeds and record observations on plant growth.
Nadkarni says that the inmates’ learning is equally valuable:

Everyone can be a scientist – everyone can relate to nature, everyone can contribute to the scientific enterprise, even those who are shut away from nature.

The project may model how other prisons can provide useful skills and learning opportunities to inmates while helping scientists find reliable (long term, in some cases) research collaborators.
SOURCE: National Science Foundation http://bit.ly/c8QP0 via The World Future Society

Student Blogs: Reflection for the Student and Perspective for the Applicant

Lisa Neal Gualtieri — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 12:19:03 +0000

Refection is pivotal to learning. Since it is hard to write without reflecting on an experience, blogs are a wonderful aid to reflection. I have been thinking about patient blogs recently, and explored other types of blogs to see the similarities and differences in the reflection process. When I searched on “student blogs” one of the first links was to Worcester Polytechnic Institute, know locally as WPI. The page of student blogs were entertaining, diverse, and a fascinating insight into the students there. Updates were available on twitter.
It struck me that this page of blog entries might be more illuminating to an applicant than any marketing materials the school could produce. I had a few questions: how were the bloggers chosen? Are they paid, and, if so, should that be stated? How do they decide (and who is “they”) which one is featured at the top with an image, since it isn’t the most recent entry?

3 Biggest Myths about Teaching Online Education

Lisa Neal Gualtieri — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 18:24:33 +0000

Like most of the students who enroll in an online course thinking it’ll be a walk in the park, instructors also fantasize about the simplicity of teaching a course from the confines of their own home. Maybe that’s why the rise of online education went from 3.2 million in 2006 to 12 million in 2009, according to research firm Ambient Insight. But despite the rise in popularity of online degree programs, many instructors still have a skewed idea of what teaching “distance education” truly entails. Below are the top three myths about online education, a must-read before you decide to teach.
Myth1: Teaching online will take less time since you don’t have to be in class 3 hours a week. Teaching an online class – especially for the first time – can be extremely hectic. Because these classes are supposed to be designed to be just as complex and intense as campus-based classes and because there is little or no face-to-face interaction – they require much time, energy, and creativity to transform an online class into a meaningful learning experience for students. It’s important to remember that teaching an online course is no different from teaching a campus-based course: you’ll still need to prepare class materials, grade, and find ways to engage your students.
Myth 2: Everyone who teaches the courses are qualified to teach online. A lot of online programs try to convince potential students that online education is simple for them – the technology-driven generation. However, what might be simple for them might prove very difficult for you, the instructor. As the software for distance education continues to advance at a rapid rate, some instructors are struggling to keep up with the constant changes. Especially instructors who are used to traditional methods of teaching may find it troublesome adjusting to the new software, which will ultimately create problems for students. But you don’t need to be a technology expert to teach a thorough class. Don’t know a lot about HTML? Programs like Dreamweaver can simplify this for you. It’s important to remember that experimentation is key: Prepare your class as you normally would and then search the web to figure out how to do it online. Don’t be too proud get technical help when you need it. It’s your job to find a way to get the information across to your students.
Myth 3: There will be little or less class-participation. A well-developed online class can in fact increase participation from students who might not feel comfortable sharing their views/opinions in a campus-based class. Students who are usually silenced due to language barriers or are merely just on the shy side are given the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and strengths through these online opportunities. And in a way, everyone’s ideas are expressed since the information is accessible online and posted for everyone to see. This also provides an opportunity for instructors to have a better connection with students who might have been virtually invisible in a campus-based course.
This guest post is contributed by Angelita Williams, who writes for online college courses.

A Great Example of a Storyboard for Improving Hand Hygiene

Lisa Neal Gualtieri — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 11:53:29 +0000

I love to create storyboards for courses, presentations, you name it, usually using a Post-It Easel Pad. But I rarely see other people’s storyboards, primitive like mine or slick and polished. The Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare created a course on hand hygiene and posted their polished “Hand Hygiene” storyboard [PDF]. In particular, I like the very realistic analysis of Expectations vs. Reality (slide 4), the Causes of Failure (slide 5), and, especially, the matching of Causes with Solutions (slide 6). Next question: did it help produce a better course?

Study Better – When Did You Last Reflect on the Process and How to Improve It?

Lisa Neal Gualtieri — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:48:16 +0000

We all study, whether we are students, teachers, or professionals, when we need to learn something, but rarely stop to reflect on the process and how to improve it. My student, Pam Ressler, published a brief guide to studying. I extracted some of Pam’s ideas:
Begin by relaxing (which makes sense no matter how much work you have to do in a short time period).
Notice what you don’t understand.
Then STOP (Stop, Take a Breath, Observe, Proceed) to recall what you have learned in your own words.
Summarize, return to what you didn’t understand, and contact expert sources (e.g., other books or an instructor) if you still cannot understand it.
Expand your knowledge by asking yourself, “If I could speak to the author, what questions would I ask or what criticism would I offer?”
Support and reward yourself and seek out another student who you can support and co-mentor in your studies.