Podcast: 6 Qualities of a Good Online Instructor

My Brother J. Clark and I recently recorded a podcast discussion about what it takes to be a good online instructor. We created a list of 6 qualities that we believe good instructors embody. A good online instructor: 

1. is comfortable with technology.
2.  clearly articulates expectations for students.
3.  guides learners through student-led activities.
4.  responds to students’ needs in a timely way.
5.  manages time efficiently.
6.  is willing to do it all over again.

Here is a link to the Podcast. 

Planning Teaching Activities in Online and Hybrid Courses

It is a growing trend that instruction and learning in higher education is taking place increasingly online. Traditional face-to-face courses are now looking more like hybrids. And online courses are becoming the norm. But what if you have never taught online before? How can you begin to bridge your current skills to the new environment? In this post I share my advice:

1. Learn the tools of the online environment
2. Understand the weekly flow of your class
3. Plan your online teaching and course management activities

Learn the Tools of the Online Environment
It is important to become aware of the new tools that you can use to accomplish the activities you do in a face-to-face teaching environment. The table below identifies some of the general tools that are found in most Learning Management Systems. You can employ these tools to accomplish many of the activities you normally accomplish in a traditional environment.

It is crucial that you become familiar with these tools and master how to use them effectively in your work. Doing so will empower you to use the strengths of the online environment and will enable you to help your students move forward effectively. The table below outlines the tools that you might use to accomplish the activities you normally do as an instructor.

Traditional Teaching Activity	Online Tools
Grading	Grade Book
Feedback	Announcement (general) Email (general or specific) Assignment feedback in Grade Book (specific)
Communication to students	Announcement Email
Giving instructions	Announcement Email
Giving additional materials	Discussion Build Content Video Conference
Discussions	Discussion Boards Video Conference
Meeting with students	Video Conference Lecturing
Additional Instruction	Video Conference both live and prerecorded
Sharing Examples	Video Conference Discussion Board Announcement Build Content

The Weekly Flow of Your Class
Below is one visual display of how I plan out my week for courses that I teach in the IDPT Program at Franklin University. While this may not apply directly to your own teaching context, it should give you an idea of the kinds of activities you might schedule and perform in your own courses. You will notice that this image also displays the kinds of activities the students are performing during the same time period. You can see how the faculty member's activities are designed to support the work and the learning of the students.

Implementing Hybrid Technologies into Your Daily and Weekly Schedule
Once you have obtained the skills of using these tools, it is important that you plan out how you will begin to use these tools in your own teaching. This means that you must plan out which tasks you will perform throughout the week. I have personally found that scheduling time to do course management and teaching activities throughout the week really helps me to facilitate learning in an online course. As is implied in the image above, these activities should support your students' learning. I have found it helpful to schedule the following into my calendar:

• grading and feedback - I try to complete grading the day or two after the assignments are submitted so that students can read my feedback and use it in future assignments.
• planning and preparing my class meetings and slides to ensure an effective online meeting.
• participating in student discussion boards to help guide the students' thinking and to increase my presence in the class.
• responding to student emails (usually every morning and often throughout the day) to give students the support they need in their coursework.
• proactively scheduling online and phone office hours to meet with students in need.

Planning Your Own Online Teaching and Management Activities
If you are new to online teaching, or want to improve your effectiveness and efficiency as an instructor, take some time to plan your own weekly activities. In this case, I recommend identifying what activities you will perform on which days and at what times. This will help you have a clear idea of what you must do to maintain your presence in your online course and will help you more effectively support your students' learning .

Tips for "Chunking" Instructional Materials

In the knowledge society, there is no end to the amount of information we have access to. Unfortunately, in a training and instruction, content overload can significantly reduce student learning. This is why many people recommend chunking instructional materials - this means breaking the training content into appropriate "chunks" or pieces so that they can be more easily processed by the learner. In this blog post, I explain the benefits of chunking instructional materials and describe how to do it effectively.

Benefits
If done effectively, chunking instructional materials has the following benefits:

1. Manages cognitive load - our minds have limited information-processing ability, so we have to process it in relatively small pieces.
2. Helps students stay motivated -if students become overwhelmed with the amount of information they receive, they often have a decrease in motivation.
3. Helps learners organize knowledge - when we break information into logical pieces, the learners can see how the information is organized and can therefore mentally organize it more easily.
4. Helps instructional designers stay organized and redesign more easily - when instructional materials are organized and chunked logically, it is easier for the designer to find, revise, and improve them.

Strategies for Chunking Instructional Materials
What are the best strategies for chunking instructional materials? Based on my experience and research, here are some basic strategies that can really increased the effectiveness of your instruction. 

Organizing and Chunking Text (use these all the time): 

Text is often the foundation of all instructional materials, and it should be chunked effectively. Here are some tips:

• use headings for different sections of the text to help students organize their thinking.
• use bullet points to summarize and clarify important points.
• use tables to summarize large amounts of data.
• break things up with images that illustrate what is being taught.
• summarize the content at the beginning and at the end of the text.
• use italics and bold important words.
• Use LOTS AND LOTS of emoticons. :)  Just kidding.

Organizing and Chunking an Online Course:

Course-level Chunking
Break your course materials into logical, meaningful pieces and structures. This can be done according to weeks, modules, topics, or projects, depending on the content and the situation.

Module-level Chunking
Break each module up according to types of activities (reading, watching, discussing, sharing, applying, etc.) This helps students see what they will be doing with each piece of content. It makes sense to use the same sequence and structure for each module so that students know what to expect.

It should be noted organizing instructional materials should follow known instructional strategies. For example, the conventional strategy of Tell, Show, and Do can be used by having students Read, Watch, and Apply. 

Organizing and Chunking Videos

If working with video, be sure to break things up by using smaller videos that are focused on specific pieces of content. Small videos will not distract as much as longer ones* do.

*Note that video length does not apply to the original Karate Kid movie. An epic classic.

Chunking within E-Learning

Some of the same advice for videos applies for chunking in e-learning. Keep the time spent on each slide or screen relatively short and targeted. Follow a sequence of activities that matches instructional theory. In addition, make sure that the information on each slide is well-organized and focused. Include only what is necessary to convey the knowledge you desire and eliminate any distracting or unimportant information or images.

*          *          *

Hopefully these suggestions are helpful to you. And while these have worked really well for me, in the end, you need to follow what makes the most sense based on your goals and your situation. Design is heavily based on the context in which the work is done, so adapt these strategies to your own situation. I am interested to read of any other recommendations for chunking materials effectively - please comment!

10 Best Practices for Student Retention in Online Courses

Student retention in an online course or program is absolutely vital. However, this continues to be a potent issue in many online programs. In the IDPT Program at Franklin University, we have recently focused on this topic.

To provide insight on this issue, a former coworker of mine, Kevin Shanley, recently reviewed the literature on the most important factors in retaining students in online courses. His focus was on general education courses at the undergraduate level, but I believe that most of the recommendations can and should be applied in in nearly all online courses. I provide a summary of his suggestions below, but I definitely recommend reviewing his entire publication. He provides some excellent ideas on improving student retention. (Here is a link to his review of literature.)

Summary of strategies for improving online student retention:

1. support services - provide students with technology and other support
2. early submission of work - allow students to get feedback on assignments before final submission
3. clear expectations - be clear about work and grading expectations
4. orientation - overview course and assignments at the beginning of each course
5. content relevancy and accuracy - be sure everything is up to date in your course
6. faculty preparedness - make sure faculty understand their expectations
7. student control - allow students to have some control over the learning process
8. age factors - be aware of age factors affecting student success
9. participation - encourage participation from all students
10. social integration - ensure plenty of relevant, positive social interaction

These strategies can be organized according to different levels within the university or college offering the course or program:

1. University Level
2. Program/Department Level
3. Course Design Level
4. Instructor Level

The difficult thing in implementing these and other strategies is that support must be provided at all levels. Without the necessary infrastructure and support from the university, student success is unlikely. Without support and resources from the program level, implementing effective course design and staffing with quality instructors is not possible. Without excellent course design, students are less likely to persist and succeed. And without great instructors, student success diminishes.

So, what are your best strategies for improving student retention in online courses?  I am definitely interested in hearing best practices that I can use in my own program and teaching.

4 Fundamental Ways to Engage Students in an Online Course

In my experience as over the last several years, an important part of providing a quality learning experience is engaging students- having them actively interact in meaningful learning experiences. This is particularly important in online courses where students may tend to feel isolated or removed from others. In this post I describe what I call the the 4 fundamental ways to engage students in an online course. 

Four Fundamental Ways to Engage Online Students.

There are 4 basic ways to engage students in an online course:

1. Have students engage in doing real world tasks and solving real-world problems. This provides concrete, meaningful experience for the students and is much more intrinsically motivating to the students than learning content that doesn't seem relevant to them. It means having students do relevant things that they will likely do in their careers or in their lives.
2. Engage students with the content in meaningful ways. this means having students use course content to solve problems or perform real-world tasks. It means providing students with well-designed multimedia. It means providing students with enough content that they can learn it and use it, but not so much content that they are overwhelmed.
3. Engage students with their peers. Students should interact with peers in the context of solving real-world problems. Students should present ideas, critique, give feedback, and collaborate together. This interaction builds a sense of community and there is a great deal of peer-to-peer teaching that can take place.
4. Engage students with the instructor. Students need guidance, support and feedback in the learning process. As one of my students wrote, instructors should "lead us through the fog." The teacher should make themselves available and provide feedback and guidance quickly so that students can progress in their learning.

As I have taught online courses at several universities, I have found that students continually ask for and appreciate these kinds of interaction. And when I design my course to include these kinds of interaction, students seem more satisfied with and excited about the online experience. Students seem to thrive and enjoy with successful, effective, satisfying learning experiences.

What do you think? Are these really the 4 fundamental ways to engage students in an online course? What else would you add? What are your experiences with engagement as a teacher or a student in online courses?

Article: Evaluating Online Course Quality: Teaching Evaluation Using First Principles of Instruction

Pre-publication draft, reference information at end of post. 
To access PDF copies of this and other articles, visit my Academia.edu page.

Authors:

Joel Gardner
Max Cropper
Joanne Bentley

 Abstract

In a recent online class teaching the evaluation of online courses, Merrill's First Principles of Instruction were utilized to teach students how to evaluate online courses.  Students were taught how to use multiple online course rating rubrics, including Merrill's 5-Star Instructional Design Rating Form. A description of the course, the unique instructional methods and the outcome of the course is given, including recommendations for teaching effectively in an online environment. 

Background

Effective instruction is important, and because this is as true in online courses as it is in the classroom, many have recently taken a close look at the quality in online courses (Hirumi, 2005; Sherry, 2005). One important method for identifying the quality of online courses is by evaluating the effectiveness of the instructional strategy.  This article will discuss how the instructors utilized First Principles of Instruction (Merrill, 2002, 2007b) to teach a hybrid course on evaluating online courses.  The benefits of using First Principles of Instruction based on this case are included.
 

First Principles of Instruction

Recognizing the plethora of instructional design theories, Dr. David Merrill determined to establish basic principles of effective instruction.  To do this, he reviewed a number of instructional theories to identify and incorporate instructional principles found common among those theories. Merrill then abstracted from these theories what he calls First Principles of Instruction, a set of interrelated prescriptive instructional design principles (Merrill, 2002).

These First Principles of Instruction are outlined briefly below. Merrill asserts that learning is facilitated when:

• learners are engaged in solving real-world problems and real-world whole tasks. 
• existing knowledge is activated as a foundation for new knowledge. 
• new knowledge is demonstrated to the learner. 
• new knowledge is applied by the learner. 
• new knowledge is integrated into the learner's world (Merrill, 2002). See Figure 1.
  Figure 1. First Principles of Instruction diagram (Merrill, 2002).

Since first writing First Principles, several authors have written on its validity and usefulness as an instructional strategy (Collis, 2005a, 2005b; Romiszowski, 2006).  Instructors chose this strategy as the method for the course based on A detailed description of each of these principles follows, including a description of how these principles were utilized in teaching the course.

Teaching Instructional Evaluation With First Principles

The course was designed to teach students to evaluate online courses using a variety of rubrics, with an emphasis on Merrill’s 5 Star Instruction rating form.  It was taught in a hybrid format, approximately 30% of the course in-class, with the majority of the instruction online through Blackboard Vista and Macromedia Breeze. The goal for the course was to teach students to effectively evaluate online course quality.

Task-Centered

In designing this course, we decided from the beginning to make this course problem- or task-centered(Merrill, 2002).  Merrill describes these problems or tasks as specific, authentic, complete real-world tasks. If, possible they should be personal to the learner.  Merrill is careful, however, to point out that problem-centered instruction is not the same as problem-based learning (Merrill, 2007b). Although the kinds of problems utilized in PBL are also those that are valued in the real world (Savery, 2006), the way that those problems are presented and solved is quite different.  Merrill emphasizes the presentation and solving of increasingly complex problems (Merrill, 2006b), problem-based learning deemphasizes the demonstration of the problem and advocates the collaborative solving of ill-structured problems (Barrows, 1996; Savery, 2006).

In this case, the instructors were very careful to follow Merrill's lead and base the course primarily on the real-world task of evaluating actual online courses, a task which was very useful to the students.

In keeping our instructional strategy task-centered, we attempted to present what Merrill calls a progression of tasks, moving from simpler to more complex tasks (Merrill, 2006b). The students began by using the easier rubrics and later moved to the more difficult and central 5 Star Instructional Design Rating form and finished by giving a full evaluation report. This presentation fulfilled Merrill's recommendation of "going public with new knowledge," (2005) a key part of Integration, discussed later in this article.

Activation
Merrill recommends beginning a course by activating students prior learning regarding the topic or task (Merrill, 2002).  Activation takes place with students recall, describe or demonstrate relevant prior knowledge (Merrill, 2006a). To activate students’ prior knowledge in this course, instructors began by discussing the basics of evaluation and allowed students to discuss their prior learning and experience with instructional design and evaluation. Because the students had had several courses on designing instruction, this principle was accomplished with ease. 

Demonstration

Merrill asserts that learning is facilitated with new knowledge is demonstrated to the learners (Merrill, 2002). Proper demonstration enables learners to observe a demonstration of the skills to be learned (Merrill, 2006a). To facilitate the training process, the instructors for this course taught the first day of class face to face. After activation of students' prior learning and understanding of instructional evaluation, instructors immediately began demonstrating to the students how to evaluate a course. Instructors showed students a course to be evaluated, went through the process of evaluating that course and explained why specific decisions were made in that process.  Students were also allowed to ask questions for clarification of decision-making rules. This focus on demonstrating the whole task enabled students to see how the whole task was to be accomplished.

Application

The third principle of instruction is application, wherein students apply their newly acquired knowledge or skill (Merrill, 2006a). Merrill recommends that instructors provide successively less guidance with each subsequent task until learners are completing the tasks on their own (Merrill, 2006a). After instructor demonstration of how to evaluate a course, students were given the opportunity to evaluate a second course using the assigned evaluation rubric.  To help facilitate this process, the instructors gave them some assistance at the beginning of the second course evaluation and allowed the students to do more on their own until the students were rating courses without any instructor assistance. The students then worked with each other to achieve interrater reliability.  This process of students evaluating a course and then achieving interrater reliability was repeated yet again with little to no instructor guidance to ensure reliability.

Throughout the remainder of the class, students were assigned to rate 10 courses on their own. These students worked with each other throughout the course to ensure that they still had interrater reliability for each of the ratings. Finally, in a teleconference held a few weeks before the end of the course, Dr. Merrill trained the students on how to use of his latest 5-Star Instruction rating form, based on First Principles of Instruction (Merrill, 2007a).

Integration
Finally, Merrill recommends having learners integrate their new knowledge into everyday life (Merrill, 2006a). Since the completion of the course, some of the students have already begun using the skills and knowledge the gained from the course.  One student began evaluating courses for the company where he was interning, and now works for the company full time.  Another student used the skill to redevelop a university grant-writing course.

Another aspect of integration includes having students reflect on and publicly demonstrate their new knowledge or skill. (Merrill, 2006a). To facilitate this integration, students were required to read and summarize several articles on online course evaluation. And on the final day of class, each student presented an analysis of a selected course they evaluated during the class, along with with a written report of their evaluation.  

Discussion
Something interesting occurred when the students had learned about First Principles of Instruction near the end of the course. After students had just been trained by Dr. Merrill on how to use the 5 Star Rating form, they began commenting about how the 5 Star rubric seemed to be much more central and meaningful than the others. Having read Merrill's latest articles, and participated in the teleconference, they concluded that Merrill's rubric, which focuses entirely upon core instructional strategies and sub strategies, should be valued more highly than the peripheral polish associated with traditional standards of quality associated with the other rubrics.

The differences in emphasis among the rubrics was of interest to the instructors as well. The Southeast Regional Education Board (SREB) rubric, Texas IQ, and WebCT evaluation rubrics are those used for this particular study, along with Merrill’s 5 Star Rating. While Merrill’s rating provides balanced focus across his five principles, other rubrics provide extensive focus in certain areas. For example, the Texas IQ rubric has 9 questions about the syllabus and course requirements of a course. The WebCT rubric has six questions about collaboration. The SREB rubric includes four questions on collaboration five questions on practice and feedback and very few questions about other topics. See Figure 2.

This article discusses the development and pedagogical decisions that went into creating an evaluation course within the field of Instructional Technology. Like Evans, Beyer, & Todd, (1988) we have found that “evaluators have too often taken for granted the tacit assumptions underlying…” [teaching evaluation], “using these to determine the criteria for evaluating success” of a particular course. We would add that the teachers of evaluation should also be more explicit about the values they use to determine course content.

Worthen & Sanders suggest that evaluation differs from traditional research in that evaluation is trying to assess the value or social utility of something rather than just discover knowledge about it (pg, 30, 1987). In teaching this course, we attempted to balance our acknowledged bias towards Merrill's approach by having the students use a variety of instruments to evaluate the same courses. To a large extent, each of the evaluation instruments chosen for use in this class emphasized instructional strategies. However, each valued instructional methods differently as evidenced by the types and frequency of questions asked about different instructional methods. 

Using a variety of instruments with different values allowed us to demonstrate to the students how differently value-based evaluation of online course quality can be conducted depending on the instrument used.  Psychometricians are well aware that no matter how carefully constructed, the creators’ philosophical paradigm and personal values creep into instrument construction. While the public may naively think that evaluation rubrics are neutral or unbiased. As students reflected on their experience using each instrument they could compare and contrast the judgment of quality/merit as determined by each instrument. 

Summary 

Based on this case, the instructors recommend using a task-centered approach for teaching instructional evaluation. Students seem more engaged in the subject matter and better able to integrate the new knowledge to practice.  In addition, when Merrill's 5 Star Rating form is compared with the other rubrics, his focus dramatically eclipses the peripheral criteria of the other rubrics.  Making instructional strategies that support your instructional goal your primary focus will bring about greater student learning.

The use of First Principles of Instruction also appears to increase the effectiveness of online instruction. Where possible, instructors think it more effective to teach evaluation using real world tasks as the center of the instructional strategy.

This is a pre-publication draft of an article previously published in the Midwest Journal of Educational Communications and Technology in 2008. Feel free to refer to and use these materials, just be sure to use the reference below when citing the publication:

Gardner, J., Bentley, J., & Cropper, M. (2008). Evaluating On line Course Quality: Teaching Evaluation Using First Principles of Instruction. Midwest Journal of Educational Communication and Technology, 2(2), pp. 1-7. Accessed online at http://www.wiu.edu/users/iaect/MJECT/MJECT_V2_N2.pdf.