Linking Communities (Asynchronous Session)
Creating an Interactive Online Community through Social and Instructor Presence using GROUPME View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kimberley Williams
Creating a collaborative environment within an online course is key to student success. One way that educators can create such an environment is through the use of technological applications that allow for community building. Following the theoretical tenets of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, social and instructor presence can be implemented within a course through the use of communication platforms like GROUPME. GROUPME is a group messaging application in which all students can connect together in one social forum. This study investigates the impact of GROUPME as mechanism for social and instructor presence in order to promote student success, engagement, and collaboration.
Online University Based Retirement Communities: An Expanded Concept of University Based Retirement Communities for Inclusion View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Donna Duellberg, Mary Ann Swendsen
University Based Retirement Communities (UBRCs), where seniors head back into the classroom to pursue learning opportunities during retirement, is one of the fastest growing trends in the United States. Unfortunately, because of the significant fees associated with this lifestyle (e.g. entry fee, meals, activities and maintenance), most of the participants are wealthier than most. Most are also white. We explore this stratification through a self-reported interest instrument and delineate interest levels across diverse populations. We also examine possible solutions to increase inclusion by: 1) partnering with universities to create a Virtual University Based Retirement Community, where online participants can “piggyback” on existing infrastructure already in place; 2) propose through legislation a dedicated 529 for lifelong learning, designed specifically for use by seniors; and 3) propose modifications to VA related funding for veteran retiree populations.
Piloting Online Writing for First-year Students at a Public Research University: Rewards and Challenges for Online Composition Instruction View Digital Media
Focused Discussion Stephen Rust
This presentation documents and reflects on the development of the online writing pilot at the University of Oregon between 2017 and 2019. Despite being the state’s flagship research institution, the UO lacks the robust technological and administrative support structure of competing schools like Oregon State University eCampus (consistently ranked among the nation’s best online universities). With minimal training and support, six experienced writing instructors have devoted our time and energy to develop individualized online sections of two required courses that offer accessible, rigorous, and rewarding experiences for our students. We have also partnered with the tutoring center to pilot an online tutoring lab. We offer 20 online sections per year to supplement 250 in-person sections. The online sections have been particularly appealing to nontraditional students, student-athletes, international students, and students with disabilities. Students must also be taking classes on campus to register. I will share background on the institutional history of our online writing pilot and demonstrate how current academic research in online writing education (see King, Keeth, and Ryan, 2018, for example) and inclusive pedagogy have informed our curriculum development. I will spend the second half of my talk sharing experiences and challenges I have faced piloting my own course. I will provide a resource list for the audience as well as teaching materials and examples from my own courses, which use traditional and digital tools to improve students’ rhetorical analysis skills through individual and collaborative assignments that bridge the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
More Professor, Less Madman: Supporting Learners as More Active Participants in Their Own Learning Without Driving Yourself Crazy View Digital Media
Focused Discussion Lenese Colson, Nicole Alemanne
The Covid-19 pandemic has increased visibility of online teaching and the need for best practices as faculty from all levels and across all academic fields have moved to online and hybrid environments. Giving students agency and providing instructor presence while avoiding burnout is an interdisciplinary concern. In this discussion we’ll talk about developing best practices to support students in becoming active participants in their own learning and provide instructor presence without unduly burdening the teacher. This approach combines Facilitative Learning and a Constructivist approach to teaching and learning, with the practical outcome of increasing students’ self-efficacy. Participants will leave with new approaches to interacting with and supporting their students.
The Effectiveness of Distance Learning Within Moroccan Universities View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Hind Moustadraf
Although distance learning has become an essential vector in university education for the majority of students during this period of health crisis, there is little evidence of its effectiveness among students in Morocco. The aim of this study is to assess the effectiveness of the current distance learning process in higher education institutions, to describe the types of distance learning provided, to analyse the teaching methods adopted, highlight the negative and positive aspects of the introduction of this form of learning; describe the perspectives and approaches to overcome the challenges of distance learning in Moroccan universities. This mixed methodology study, both quantitative and qualitative, aims to collect data on students' attitudes and needs for distance learning through an online questionnaire administered to a sample of 550 students.
A Way to Resolve Students' Attention Distraction In Remote Teaching View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ling Wang
This study introduces an innovative instructional strategy in a newly designed first level online Chinese course. It describes 1) why and how to write little verses with a metrical rhythm, usually having a rhyme, by integrating grammar patterns with the key words of each dialogue of a new text; 2) how to utilize this instructional strategy to facilitate the teaching and learning of Chinese pronunciation and intonation, grammar and the oral and written discourse development; And 3) how students feel about the use of little verses in teaching and learning. With students’ feedback, discussion will be concerned with its theoretical and pedagogical implications. This paper suggests that writing little verses for the first level Chinese courses should be a very interesting and inspiring way to help beginners to learn. It makes the language sound overly simplistic, which helps students exercise his/her mouth and improve pronunciation and intonation. Reading aloud little verses help students absorb new vocabulary and the grammar patterns. Encouraging students to memorize the funning little verses help them apply the newly learned vocabulary and grammar to make sentences and develop short paragraphs. This instructional strategy helps create more fun and spirit-lifting online learning environment for the beginners who have just started their journey into learning the different and difficult Chinese language during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mobile-blended Learning: Fostering Autonomous Learning among Low Proficiency ESL Learners View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Harwati Hashim
Rapid advancement of mobile technology continues to change the landscape of blended learning in education. Mobile technology is increasingly being used to support blended learning beyond other devices which then lead to the introduction of mobile-blended learning. However, as far as the English as a Second Language (ESL) learning is concerned, it is overly simplistic to assume that mobile-blended learning will uniformly benefit all ESL learners especially among the low proficiency learners. This paper reviews the challenges and constraints of mobile-blended learning among the low proficiency ESL learners focusing on the fostering of autonomous learning. It can be summarised that while learners autonomously explored a variety of mobile learning resources, the low proficiency ESL learners expressed a need for guidance through the vast amount of information, and wished for learning activities and materials to be organised around pedagogical tasks. This paper discusses on the challenges and constraints in order to get better understanding about the critical issues in mobile-blended learning among the low proficiency ESL learners as well as suggesting suitable recommendations to improve the implementation of mobile-blended learning.
“This Class Is Not Just a Class. It Really Is a Community” : The Discovery of Online Forums as High-impact Practices and Sites of Agile Teaching and Learning View Digital Media
Focused Discussion Nancy Fox Edele
Since the forums of the sophists, our first teachers, we’ve suited our purposes to the geographies, interests, and needs of our audiences, our students. We find ourselves now adapting to a teaching space that’s not much older than most of the students who inhabit it and travel within it, the online classroom. In its first iteration this online experience was characterized by the words “alone together.” Much critique in the time of Covid has decried the lack of physical contact as well as a feared loss of educational integrity. This study argues that fears of arrested progress are often premature and unnecessary. Education is a field both cultivated and sustained by change. Now, in the words of university student Peyton, we may in online pedagogies be defining “the beginning of a new normal (that) gives everyone a voice,” and the asynchronous online forum is a potentially transformative practice that has been insufficiently documented. Indeed, these meetings and the discussions they engender not only serve as helpful activities in this emergency, but portend a creative development in our invention of a cohesive and responsive curriculum. They rise to the level of High Impact Practices (HIPs) that define the most effective means of fostering engagement and retention of our students, the integral collaborators in this story. Their engagement gives the work its integrity and reason. It is they who create this pedagogy as they engage in it, who forge this new path in an ancient field as they, too, walk it.
Virtual Teamwork and Rubrics: Is There a Connection? View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Maureen Snow Andrade, Jill Jasperson
Effective teamwork is important in higher education courses to prepare students for future professional contexts. Learning outcomes resulting from teamwork include motivation, knowledge retention, deep learning, critical thinking, and professional competency development. Teamwork in online courses can help students make connections, build community, reduce feelings of isolation, and encourage course persistence. Effective teams typically work toward a common goal. When teams know what that goal is, they can collaborate and share their skills to achieve it. Instructors can assist in this process by making assignment goals clear through the use of rubrics that outline assignment expectations and by providing feedback to help students achieve their goals. This study examines the use of teamwork and rubrics in three online undergraduate courses in a school of business in an open admission regional public university to determine if rubrics improved the effectiveness of student teams. Findings indicate that in the course sections where rubrics were not used, students perceived greater effectiveness in three of the eight areas examined—understanding roles, dividing the work, and contributing equally, suggesting that rubrics may not have the impact expected. Although one would expect that feedback by means of a rubric would encourage both individual learners and teams to monitor their performance and make needed adjustments in their processes, this did not appear to be the case. Future research needs to explore if and how assignment rubrics, which are typically used to identify goals and expectations and provide formative feedback, impact teamwork skill development.
