One of the frameworks we often use for crafting learning objectives is Benjamin Bloom’s taxonomy of the cognitive domain. Bloom’s taxonomy is a hierarchy with six levels that are used to categorize educational goals. Each level has different groups of verbs that are associated with the level of knowledge or skill students should have acquired.
The lower levels of the hierarchy (remember, understand) are low level, usually involving simple recall or restatement of content. While these are appropriate in most courses, we also want students to go beyond remembering and understanding to higher order thinking skills, such as apply, analyze, evaluate, create. These higher order thinking skills are often the main focus of upper division and graduate courses, but can be implemented across the curriculum from general, introductory courses to graduate seminars.
Well-crafted objectives are concrete, specific, measurable/observable, achievable, and relevant. Instead of thinking about what the course will do, think what students should be able to do, having taken the course. Try to avoid using passive verbs such as “know,” “appreciate,” or “understand” because these can be too subjective and difficult to measure. Good learning objectives focus on what we want students to be able to learn or to do by the end of our course, and we need to choose what evidence (behavior/performance/artifact) best demonstrates that learning.
For assistance in creating objectives, you can use our homegrown digital tool. Select the best verbs by grabbing the red portion with your mouse pointer and dragging it clockwise. The medium blue in each wedge includes the appropriate verbs, and the lighter blue outside includes related teaching methods. The notes in the left-hand, gray column will change with each new section you uncover; they elaborate and give some examples from various disciplines.
If you have difficulty crafting your learning outcomes, it often helps to work backwards. That is, think about student assessments first. What are you actually measuring? Whatever the graded items measure, that is what you want students to know and be able to do with their knowledge.
If you would like a consultation with one of our instructional designers, please reach out!
Mcdaniel, R. (2020, March 25). Bloom’s Taxonomy. Retrieved January 19, 2021, from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/
Online engagement may look different from what you are used to in your face-to-face classes, and perhaps even different from your previous online courses. If you are teaching on Zoom to a sea of black boxes with names on them, it is impossible to see facial expressions or body language – those cues we may be used to looking for in a physical classroom. The same is true for asynchronous courses, where you may not have video interaction with students. To determine if students are engaged in your online courses, you might ask: Are they submitting their work on time? Are they posting thoughtful replies in the discussion forums? Do they ask questions? Do they reply to quick polls in Zoom? How are their weekly quiz and exam grades?
→ Asynchronous Engagement
If you make your presence known in your asynchronous online course up front, it will be off to an engaging start. A welcome video shows your students who you are and lets you speak to them more directly about course expectations. Post announcements frequently in Blackboard, and give students timely feedback. You can record videos to the cloud in Zoom for quick and accessible summaries or feedback. A clear and detailed syllabus, a variety of activities, frequent formative assessments, open-ended questions for discussion, opportunities for group work, and a careful choice of tools all make for an engaging asynchronous course.
→ Synchronous Engagement
Use synchronous sessions for interactive lectures, office hours, recitations to follow up on asynchronous lecture material, review sessions (try a trivia game!), group projects, and other active learning activities. Make eye contact with the camera, allow time for your students to become familiar with engagement features, wait after you pose a question, plan structured breakout activities, and check in often making sure your students are engaging in your synchronous sessions. If time allows, you can start your Zoom sessions 10 minutes early and stay around 10 minutes after, so students can chat with each other and ask you questions, as they would before and after an in-person class.
*The pandemic is an ongoing challenge*
I mentioned teaching to a “sea of black boxes” above. Does that sound familiar? Teaching remotely can be challenging, but there are many engagement options in both the synchronous and asynchronous space. It may be tempting to convince yourself that none of your students are paying attention in Zoom and that you need to require a webcam. Or it may be easy to give up if students become disengaged in asynchronous discussion forums a few weeks into the semester. At this time, when it remains hard for many of us to stay engaged, remain flexible and understanding. Reach out to struggling students. We are all doing our best!
Tools and Tips for Engaging Students in Online Courses
VoiceThread
VoiceThread is an asynchronous discussion tool designed to enhance student engagement and foster presence in online courses. You can upload media in various formats and both you and your students can add comments (video, audio, text). Read our previous blog post about VoiceThread. Try using VoiceThread in the following ways:
Assign a lecture to watch and allow students to comment using guiding questions
Have students create their own VoiceThread presentations and comment on each other’s for peer feedback
Assign a group presentation – students can add individual comments and/or slides
Upload a case study or other document for students to comment on and ask questions about
Have students critique or discuss creative works (audio, video, or text!)
Use in small asynchronous classes for introductions/ice breakers
Blackboard Discussion Board
Discussion forums are commonly used in online courses. Questions that encourage critical thinking, forums for purposes other than homework, and clear expectations help to ensure your students stay engaged in the conversation. Try out the following forum ideas:
General Question or “Water Cooler” forum: students can ask questions about course administration and help each other (fewer emails!)
Introduction forum: you and your students can get to know each other (fostering student connections is a key to success!)
Study Hall forum: to use prior to exams for specific questions (a TA can moderate!)
“Muddiest Point” (what is still unclear) forum: students can post questions after synchronous or asynchronous lectures
Student Generated forum questions: to use for class discussions
“Key Terms/Vocabulary” forum: generated by students
Zoom Breakout Rooms
Breakout rooms in Zooms can help you incorporate small group engagement in your courses. You can assign them randomly, manually, or let students choose (Zoom may need to be updated). You can assign TAs or student leaders co-host status to help manage your breakout rooms.
Assign random pairs to breakout rooms for a quick think-pair-share. In large classes, combine with Google Docs or have only a few pairs share
Pre-assign small groups for a structured, 20-minute in class activity
Utilize synchronous class time for groups to work together on a long-tern project
Polling & Quizzing
In both synchronous and asynchronous learning environments, frequent quizzing and polling can help keep students engaged. Zoom polling is already built in!
Add multiple choice polls to your Zoom meetings Use other polling tools such as Kahoot or PollEverywhere (limited free usage)
Create weekly quizzes in Blackboard for asynchronous classes
Google Docs are a great way to foster collaboration in your courses. Think of creative ways to incorporate docs, sheets, slides, and other Google apps.
Have students produce work together such as an infographic or concept map
Ask your students to share their “muddiest point” at the end of class
Echo360
Echo360 is a lecture streaming/capture/recording/active learning tool you can use to record lectures and foster student engagement.
Add a variety of quiz questions to your lecture
Students can indicate which parts are unclear with “flags”
What has worked well in your courses?
Contact CELTand request a consultation if you would like to discuss with us how you can best incorporate engagement tools and strategies.
Preparing your online course for winter term? Worried about how to maintain the academic rigor without overwhelming yourself and your students?
Here are some strategies for shortened terms that might help.
Course Design Tips:
Organize your content into topical modules, rather than “weeks.” For example, in the fall semester each week might consist of 1 topic, but you can easily double or triple up on topics to teach in winter or summer.
For modules with more than one topic, you can provide students with a choice in topics and have them present to the whole group so students are learning from each other and covering more than one facet of the course.
If you use Blackboard’s Date Restrictions to reveal new content in stages, consider overlapping dates so students can work slightly ahead. For example, if module 2 normally ends on Sunday night, you can open module 3 on Saturday instead of Monday.
Consider using frequent quizzes, short one-paragraph “checks for understanding,” or discussion boards to help students gauge their own progress.
Grade assignments quickly so that students have the benefit of your feedback before it’s too late to improve their performance.
Workload:
Use an online workload calculator to get a handle on how realistic your expectations are, especially for a winter or summer term. Then think about whether you can trim anything while keeping the essentials of the course.
Does everything in a regular 14-week term need to be identical in a 6- week or 3-week? Might it be counterproductive in an accelerated term? Can anything be omitted? Try this filtering process for examining the course content*:
One to two weeks before the course starts:
Prepare and send out your syllabus as a Word/PDF attachment. This gives students a chance to buy books and get a jump start on the readings. It also sets the tone for an accelerated term.
Send out a link to a welcome video where you briefly introduce yourself and your course. Here’s an example.
Allow students to post an introduction in the discussion board or VoiceThread so they can get to know their classmates.
Open the Blackboard site early** so students can access your lectures and other materials. Make the assignment dues dates explicit. You’d be surprised to know that experienced online students will take advantage of this.
Cheerlead! Use the Announcements tool in Blackboard to encourage your students to log in early and often. Post an announcement and send it to students’ email addresses. Tell them how much you want them to succeed in the course.
**Note: Blackboard will be down for critical system maintenance from December 27, 2020 – January 4, 2021. Consider emailing some readings, etc. to the students with your syllabus so they can get started prior to Blackboard’s availability. While Blackboard is unavailable, you can download a list of your student’s emails from SOLAR.
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/
