David Pogue wrote a New York Time’s column with technology tips. Many of the tips I know, such as use the tab key to go to the next box when filling out a form, but I found some new ones, especially when looked at a few of the 1351 comments, many consisting of readers’ tips. As Pogue and his comment authors demonstrated, many people want to spread the word when they either devise or learn a tip that substantially improves their life.
As an online instructor, I came up with some ways to, I believe, increase engagement and learning as well as developing useful skills. Here are my favorite e-learning tips.
1) During synchronous sessions, I used rotating student scribes who would take notes during that session to distribute to all. It had the advantages that at least one student was fully attentive and all benefited from the notes, especially anyone who missed class or whose native language was not English. On a few occasions it was great for me if I needed a recap of part of the class discussion.
2) Also during synchronous sessions, if I had a chat session, I would ask a student to moderate the chat. The student would be expected to respond to questions, where possible, and to notify me of ones I needed to answer, freeing me from reading the chat while speaking.
3) In any online course where students post in a discussion forum, I would ask a student to moderate a discussion topic and post a daily summary. Students were generally more conscientious about posting in time for the daily summary, and busy students could read the summary if they didn’t have time to read every post. And of course I could focus on reading the summaries if I was strapped for time.
4) And my final tip, also for any online course where students post in a discussion forum, I would highlight a post-of-the-day on the course home page. Students loved the recognition for their insightful comments, and would occasionally get competitive, emailing me that they thought their post was more enlightening than the one I chose.
What are your favorite tips?
Lately, I like using YouTube videos to start or end discussion in class. I might find them and show them or my students might. I included a link to a paper I wrote for AERA this past March on how this works. I think there are 10 examples that are student-centered and 10 that are teacher-centered. This use of YouTube or TeacherTube or CNN videos or Google Videos or whatever takes us back to the days of anchored instruction and macrocontexts that John Bransford and colleagues at Vanderbilt talked about in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Hope you enjoy the article.
I liked to make the content come to life through meaningful applications. I’d ask learners to collaboratively design responses to pseudo-real business applications of the knowledge (that is, close to the types of things they hope to be able to do after the course). For an ID course, I’d have them respond to RFPs as a consulting firm. They quite got into it, designing logos, responding in kind (I often had a humorous or cynical twist). And, of course, having the exercise the principles.
Uncertainty engages the mind. I always tell people I made many changes to my presentation the night before, so they should be alert for goofs, contradictions, screw-ups, and so on.
When I use PowerPoint, I always throw in some obscure art and zany photographs to keep people’s attention from wandering.
Lisa, Some Good Tips. Here are a couple of tips I use for e-Learning.
I tell students that in the next online class, they are going to be asked to interview a fellow student like it was a television show. This means each student must prepare some questions on the topic and prepare to answer some questions on the topic. Then during the class, I appoint one interviewer and one interviewee and let the learning begin.
Additionally, I sometimes use the break out feature of synchronous courseware and have each student group create a presentation on a topic that we are covering in the class and have them teach it to each other.
Sometimes, I will create a slide that has blanks and ask the student to use the whiteboard features and write in answers…more fun than a survey. Sometimes I will place 4 pictures on a slide and ask a question and have them “mark” the picture that best illustrates a concept and ask them to explain why.
Anything that gets them engaged with the drawing tools is great for learning…even though it makes the screen a little messy.
Kindness. I have up to 10 pts possible throughout semester for kindness shown to fellow learners. It takes some of the technical burden off me when students help others who can’t figure out pieces of the required technology. It also increases logins and engagement/creation of community/personal connections between the students. All for a few extra credit pts.
I often use a slide in lieu of a poll. I put the question and answers on the slide and ask people to put a check mark next to their answer. It’s faster than a poll, and you can discuss the answers and ask for questions before moving on to the next item.
Thanks, Lisa, for your useful ideas. The course I tutor on is totally online and involves people from all over the world who want to discuss online education and training. They’re often experiencing an online course for the first time and for me the main thing is to establish some sense of community from the start. A simple task like asking each student to describe what they can see from their window or around them as they sit at their computer working on the course is an easy and unthreatening thing to do and can build confidence in people who may be unused to posting to a group. It also helps everyone get a sense of the other students as real people and so seems to make the collaborative learning experience of the course richer and more engaging.
I’ve had several online courses and the one that kept the most students interested was the one that gave students opportunities to participate and even present their own online topic. The professor would post a fun attention-getter at the beginning of class with music playing in the background and as students arrived, they could participate in the bell-ringer until class started. She also did these types of exercises on our 10 minute breaks so students could always be actively engaged. Our professor also randomly assigned us numbers that allowed for anonymous participation throughout the entire class. All of these ideas allowed for a highly engaging and fun class!
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