As we navigate through this new way of teaching remotely and online, there have been many educational technologies available to faculty to implement into their courses to facilitate academic engagement. One of these technologies is VoiceThread. VoiceThread is an interactive way to present multimedia content that allows for collaboration among students and faculty. You can use VoiceThread to deliver instructional content, provide an alternative way to facilitate discussions, and allow students to create their own multimedia presentations for assignments.
There are many ways to incorporate VoiceThread into your class and this can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming. To help you navigate the VoiceThread waters, we have developed short instructional resources focusing on using VoiceThread inside of Blackboard:
You can use VoiceThread to deliver course content, for interactive multimedia discussions, and as a graded assessment for students. VoiceThread can also be used to deliver asynchronous presentations publicly.
VoiceThread integrates with Blackboard providing direct links to presentations and graded assignments.
You can grade VoiceThread assignments which link to the Grade Center in Blackboard.
Over time, more resources will be added on topics such as groups, assignments in Blackboard, and some basic troubleshooting tips. If you have an idea for a short VoiceThread tutorial or an issue that you have come across on which you would like more guidance, please email celt@stonybrook.edu.
Over the past few months as courses have moved from face-to-face to remote online, both faculty and students have had to – for better or for worse – adapt to the new format. Whether moving to remote, synchronous classes or to fully online, asynchronous courses, the transition has many faculty rethinking their course design. Many are reevaluating how they teach their courses and what they need to do to engage students when they may no longer meet at a scheduled time or in a physical space.
Shifting your course from face-to-face to online requires more than just using technologies to move your content online. It requires reflection and careful consideration on how you might adapt and redesign elements of your course to engage students as a community of learners.
One useful model for informing our course (re)design is the Community of Inquiry Framework (CoI) (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2000; Garrison & Arbaugh, 2007). A Community of Inquiry is a group of learners who through collaboration and discussion construct meaning and understanding. The CoI framework lays out a collaborative-constructivist approach to the learning experience which consists of three essential and interdependent elements – teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence (Community of Inquiry Framework, n.d.).
Matbury, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Teaching Presence
Within the CoI framework, teaching presence can be established by thoughtful and evidence-based instructional design principles. Careful course design, active facilitation, and direct instruction work together to promote social and cognitive processes to achieve meaningful learning. This requires us to rethink our assumptions about how our courses should be designed and delivered in the online space to engage students. We have to ask ourselves, will what I do in the face-to-face course work well in my online course?
Some factors to consider in the design and implementation of the online course are:
Facilitating student learning through discussion boards/VoiceThreads – giving consideration to the ways you want students to participate and how you will moderate those discussions
Providing students with frequent, timely, and formative feedback
Determining the layout of the course in Blackboard or Learning Management System (LMS) – thinking about how will students engage in the content, where they will find pertinent information, and being explicit about what students need to do to succeed
Social Presence
Garrison (2009, p. 352) describes social presence as “the ability of participants to identify with the community (e.g., course of study), communicate purposefully in a trusting environment, and develop interpersonal relationships by way of projecting their individual personalities.“ With careful consideration and intentional instructional design, we can create and facilitate social presence in an online learning environment.
Some ways we can create social presence are by:
Projecting our teaching persona via regular Blackboard announcements, welcome video and/or course or module overview videos (using Zoom, VoiceThread, or Echo 360) thus modeling behavior for our students
Developing course activities that allow the class to establish trust and rapport facilitated through the use of icebreakers, discussion boards, and group and collaborative assignments and projects
Offering virtual office hours via Zoom
Cognitive Presence
Cognitive presence relates to the extent that learners are able to construct meaning through discourse and reflection. By conveying the big ideas we want students to know and carefully designing activities and assessments around those activities.
Ways to develop cognitive presence are by:
Providing frequent formative assessment and meaningful feedback
Articulating clear and measurable learning objectives for the course and modules
Using a variety of teaching methods, media, and modalities with multiple opportunities for practice and reflection to achieve the learning outcomes
Encourage critical and creative thinking where students question their own assumptions, consider diverse perspectives, and respond to open-ended questions through online discussions and reflections
The CoI can be a useful framework when thinking about (re)designing your online course. If you would like more information about the CoI or you would like to consult with one of our instructional designers to talk about your courses, please contact us at CELT@stonybrook.edu
Garrison, D. R. (2009). Communities of inquiry in online learning. In Encyclopedia of Distance Learning, Second Edition (pp. 352-355). IGI Global.
Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (1999). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The internet and higher education, 2(2-3), 87-105.
Garrison, D. R., & Arbaugh, J. B. (2007). Researching the community of inquiry framework: Review, issues, and future directions. The Internet and higher education, 10(3), 157-172.
Jennifer Jaiswal, Instructional Designer & Sr Instructional Technologist
“follow the yellow brick road” by kinseikun is marked with CC0 1.0
With COVID-19 shaking up education, we struggle with the means to express what learning experiences we are creating for our students and identifying the type of learning
experience we are looking to create. Some of the terms have multiple meanings and may leave you feeling like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz lost in the Forest of Wild Beasts. Let’s start to identify some of these terms and find our way towards the Emerald City.
Distance learning/education is when learning takes place and the instructor and the students are not physically together. This can take place in many forms and the style of learning dates back to the 18th century where students would be sent packets of readings and send back completed tasks to be graded (Holmberg, 2005). These university correspondence courses were in extension programs as a way to engage students that were not near the campus. In modern times, distance learning and education is an overarching term that encompasses many different styles of learning and is a way of addressing the field as a whole.
Online Learning is when students interact with instructors and students through the use of online technologies including, but not limited to Blackboard, Echo360, VoiceThread and Zoom. Online learning is not a specific style of learning but describes that the students are not together and that the learning is taking place using online modalities. One of the key features of traditional online learning is that all content needs to be more planned, designed, and more fully developed prior to the start of term, especially in asynchronous courses. Having the course as a whole completed prior allows time to focus on delivery, creating engagement in the course, and addressing student concerns. The courses are built to follow a consistent format and layout so that students have an easier time finding where all the content is and navigating the course sites. Online learning breaks into two main styles, synchronous, where learning is focused around a set of scheduled meetings, and asynchronous, where learning takes place at the learner’s pace.
Synchronous courses are online courses where students and faculty meet at set times using a technology like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet to communicate with each other. Many synchronous classes provide students with the opportunity to ask questions of faculty and teaching assistants. They can also interact with their peers live in the chat or in breakout rooms. Synchronous gives the closest experience to a face-to-face class since it has scheduled dates and times, the instructor can present content from their computers, and there can be live discussions with the students during the session. Synchronous courses can also have asynchronous components where students are engaging with content outside of the active course time or participating in activities that take place over a period of time.
Asynchronous courses do not have required scheduled live meetings. All content is posted online through a technology like Blackboard and the students interact with content at their own pace with a weekly style schedule to encourage them to stay on pace together as a community. Typically, these courses are completely built prior to the course start to allow the instructor to focus on the delivery and student engagement while the course is running. In planning these courses faculty may use: readings, videos, and discussions to introduce topics and foster student engagement. Asynchronous courses can include synchronous components like optional live sessions where students can interact with students and the instructor and are recorded for students who are not able to attend.
Blended learning is a combination of face-to-face and online learning techniques. Blended courses have a specific set of days where the instructor and students are meeting in person to discuss topics related to the course. These in-person sessions may be less frequent then a traditional face-to-face course and may use online asynchronous activities during the weeks that course does not meet face-to-face. Blended learning can also be referred to as Hybrid.
Hybrid learning can also be used to define learning where some students are in the classroom and some are connecting virtually. Since the start of the pandemic, many in person courses have turned into hybrid so that students can still attend class even if they are quarantined or remote.
Flipped learning is an approach that can take place in face-to-face classes or online synchronous sessions. Traditional classes are framed so that the in-person class time is when students gain content and knowledge and the out of class time is when you work developing your proficiencies and applying the knowledge learned in class. Flipped uses the opposite model where students are provided with readings, videos, and content to help frame the learning activities that will take place during the in-person sessions. This gives the faculty the opportunity to engage with the students synchronously, either virtually or in-person, and students can learn problem solving and application skills. It allows the students to get immediate feedback from peers and faculty on their process and make changes early to how they are engaging with the content and applying it.
Remote Emergency Instruction or Emergency Remote Teaching is a term that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. While Remote Emergency Instruction can take advantage of synchronous and asynchronous components, the main difference is the planning. Many courses are only partially complete, and the instructor is building the course while they are delivering it. This is not a recommended method for teaching as it can be difficult to build and deliver the course at the same time. Pre-pandemic, some faculty used the same strategies when campuses closed due to snow.
Do you feel as though you have made it through the forest and see Oz in the distance? If you have questions please reach out to CELT and let us know how we can help with the delivery of your courses.
References
Holmberg B. (2005). The Evolution, Principles and Practices of Distance Education. Bibliotheks- und Informationssystem der Universität Oldenburg.
Sener, J. (2015, August 17). E-Learning Definitions. Retrieved November 06, 2020, from https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/updated-e-learning-definitions-2/
Kristin Hall, Instructional Designer
There are many ways to incorporate VoiceThread into your class and this can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming. To help you navigate the VoiceThread waters, we have developed short instructional resources focusing on using VoiceThread inside of Blackboard: 
