We are almost half-way through January, and the spring semester will be here before you know it! If you have questions as you prepare for the spring semester, contact one of our instructional designers or assessment specialists at celt@stonybrook.edu.
f you are planning for the summer and beyond, join us for one of our spring Online Teaching Certificate (OTC) Courses:
Kimberly Bell, PhD., Postdoctoral Associate
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:
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:
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
Polling & Quizzing
In both synchronous and asynchronous learning environments, frequent quizzing and polling can help keep students engaged. Zoom polling is already built in!
Google Docs
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.
Echo360
Echo360 is a lecture streaming/capture/recording/active learning tool you can use to record lectures and foster student engagement.
What has worked well in your courses?
Contact CELT and request a consultation if you would like to discuss with us how you can best incorporate engagement tools and strategies.
References
We are in the home stretch! The semester is winding down, and the holidays are in full swing. Happy Holidays to everyone and keep us in mind as you prepare for your January and spring classes.
While CELT is still available for you throughout December, we will not be posting on the blog until the start of the new year. Join us here, on January 5th, for a post about tools for engaging students online. We thank you for spending time with us, and look forward to an exciting 2021.
We wish everyone a safe, healthy, and relaxing break.
Troy Priest, Senior Instructional Designer
Faculty spend a lot of time creating and grading assessments while providing students feedback on their performance. These can include projects, papers, presentations, exams, and quizzes, and are an integral part of teaching and learning
Summative assessments measure how well students have achieved the course learning outcomes; they make sure that the courses and the students have met the rigorous standards of the programs objectives; and they ensure that when students graduate from Stony Brook University, they are qualified and credentialed within their discipline and major. These are assessments of student learning and are typically what we think about when deciding on how to assess students.
Formative assessments are often low stakes (or no stakes) assessments or activities that provide feedback to students and faculty in order to better understand what students have learned, but more importantly what they still need to learn or are struggling to comprehend and/or master. They refer to a variety of assessment methods that faculty and students can use to identify what students have learned as well as address any gaps. These are assessments for student learning and their importance can often be overlooked.
Below are a few simple, formative assessment techniques, most of which can be facilitated and managed by using tools such as Blackboard, Google, or Qualtrics. These suggestions are techniques that are easily implemented and do not require any significant course or assessment redesign.
Assessing formatively before the class
It is useful that we gauge what our students know coming into a course or lesson. Assessing students’ background knowledge helps the instructor to know what content and concepts may need extra emphasis and attention. A background knowledge probe is a short and simple questionnaire that gauges students’ background knowledge on and assumptions about a topic or unit. This can be done prior to the start of the course or unit or could be done at the beginning of a class.
Assessing formatively during class
In-class assessments provide instant feedback on students’ understanding of material being presented in class. These can include ‘low-stakes’ or ‘no-stakes’ assessments using a polling tool (Turning Technologies clickers, Zoom polls, Google forms, etc.) or an in-class chat tool (Zoom chat, Google chat, Google Docs, etc.) where faculty can ask questions and gauge what students understand (or don’t) in real time.
Real-time, in-class formative assessments can be very powerful when lecturing by allowing instructors to adapt and respond to students’ questions as they arise.
Assessing formatively at the end of class
Quick formative assessments at the end of the class can not only help faculty gauge their students’ learning and mastery of the content, it can also provide them with feedback on how well the lesson or lecture hit the mark. They can also help faculty identify if their assumptions about students’ understanding, experiences, and expectations of the content were correct. Some examples include:
Assessing formatively outside of class
A great way to understand what students have learned or what they are still struggling with is by asking questions through reflection. Some examples using tools available in Blackboard include:
These are just a few, easily implemented formative assessment techniques that any instructor could implement in their courses. However, if you would like to explore these further or rethink your course or assessment strategies, please contact an assessment specialist or instructional designer in CELT for a consultation.
Did you know that during 2018-2019, 22.6 billion pounds of coffee was produced globally (Worldwide Coffee Production, n.d.)?
Coffee and caffeine may be what are getting us through to the end of the semester and the holiday season! We here at CELT have our coffee (and tea) brewing, and are ready to support you as we wrap up this semester and prepare for the next! If you would like to chat about your experiences this semester and what you might like to make some changes to your course moving forward, send us an email to set up a consultation!
Worldwide coffee production. (n.d.). Statista. Retrieved November 25, 2020, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/263311/worldwide-production-of-coffee/
Linda Unger, Senior Instructional Designer
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:
Assessment/Feedback:
Workload:
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:
*Description of Filtering Content image
**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.
Thanks to everyone who joined us for our inaugural week of posts! If you missed any of the National Distance Learning Week (NDLW) webinars, you can watch recordings on the SUNY Online NDLW page.
As finals quickly approach, we want to remind you that CELT and DoIT still have a few upcoming webinars. If you would like to schedule a specialized webinar for your department, email celt@stonybrook.edu for more information!
Thinking about your upcoming January course? Let us know if you would like to schedule a consultation.
Carol Hernandez, Senior Instructional Designer
Online assessment is an equity issue. Right now, the majority of us are doing some, if not all, of our teaching and learning online while at the same time, all of us are living through a global pandemic. But we are not all facing the same barriers. COVID-19 is disproportionately affecting people in low income groups and those who are members of racial and ethnic minorities (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020). In addition to facing an increased risk of becoming ill, and experiencing job, food, and housing insecurities, these circumstances have also exacerbated the digital divide–the gap in technology and internet access that already existed between wealthy and poor households (Ramsetty & Adams, 2020).
What does this have to do with assessment? Everything. Oftentimes we hear the word assessment, and immediately think of multiple choice exams and grades. This may lead to assuming that exams must be synchronous, proctored, timed, or otherwise “controlled” to prevent cheating and to ultimately ensure academic honesty (Hubler, 2020). However, we may not be aware that these approaches could also place extra burdens on already marginalized students. How? If a student does not have access to technology, Wi-Fi, and other resources, such as a private, dedicated workspace with a video camera and an open schedule that does not include working or caring for family members, a synchronous proctored online exam could be out of reach (if not impossible). A recent Pew Research study found that low-income parents of school-aged children expect to experience at least one of these three digital obstacles: having to complete schoolwork on a cell phone, having to use public Wi-Fi, and not having a computer in the home (Vogels, 2020).
When designing assessments, it’s important to remember that the types of controls that can be enforced in a physical setting may not be ideal for an online setting. This challenges us to think in new ways about how to conduct assessments that take into consideration not only the online environment, but also the associated factors that result in COVID-19 disparities in the lives of our students. Earlier this year, Montenegro and Jankowski (2020) discussed the need to embed equity into the assessment practice. Now that we are all living through the pandemic, this concept has taken on a greater sense of urgency.
According to Singer-Freeman, Hobbs, & Robinson (2019), “timed tests that use closed-ended questions and are completed in groups [synchronously] have the greatest potential to reveal false achievement gaps,” and fail to reflect a student’s true competence (p. 15). This points to less equity for students. However, assessments that use open-ended test questions and projects with real-world applications, such as reflective writing, ePortfolios, and research experiences, increase equity for students.
One way to bring equity into the process of designing assessments is to reframe them as a way to see how students have transformed as a result of learning what we are teaching (Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, & Norman, 2010). In doing so, we open the door to more creative ways to document student progress. Furthermore, in an online environment, there are arguably an increased number of opportunities for students to show or demonstrate their newly acquired knowledge, attitudes, and skills. Students can create, present, write, problem solve, and collaborate via the tools that are already available to them through Blackboard or Google Suite.
Here are three approaches to keep in mind when designing equity-minded assessments for the online classroom.
For more ideas and strategies, watch this presentation, Assessment Through a Lens of Inclusion in Times of COVID-19, or email us at CELT@stonybrook.edu and set up a consultation.
References
Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M. C., & Norman, M. K. (2010). How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching. Jossey-Bass.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020, July 24). Health equity considerations and racial and ethnic minority groups. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/health-equity/race-ethnicity.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fneed-extra-precautions%2Fracial-ethnic-minorities.html
Cohn, J., & Seltzer, B. (2020). Teaching effectively during times of disruption, for SIS and PWR. Retrieved from bit.ly/stanfordteachingdisruption
Hubler, S. (2020, May 10). Keeping online testing honest? Or an Orwellian overreach? The New York Times. Retrieved from https://nyti.ms/2LcnKz7
Montenegro, E., & Jankowski, N. A. (2020, January). A new decade for assessment: Embedding equity into assessment praxis (Occasional Paper No. 42). National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA). Retrieved from https://www.learningoutcomesassessment.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/A-New-Decade-for-Assessment.pdf
Ramsetty, A., & Adams, C. (2020). Impact of the digital divide in the age of COVID-19. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 27(7), 1147-1148.
Singer‐Freeman, K., Hobbs, H., & Robinson, C. (2019). Theoretical matrix of culturally relevant assessment. Assessment Update, 31(4), 1-16.
Vogels, E., A. (2020). 59% of U.S. parents with lower incomes say their child may face digital obstacles in schoolwork. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/10/59-of-u-s-parents-with-lower-incomes-say-their-child-may-face-digital-obstacles-in-schoolwork/
Kristin Hall, Instructional Designer
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:
Some tips to keep in mind when getting started with VoiceThread:
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.
Troy Priest, Senior Instructional Designer
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.).
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:
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:
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:
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
References:
Community of Inquiry Framework (n.d.) Purdue University Innovative Learning. Retrieved November 3, 2020, from https://www.purdue.edu/innovativelearning/supporting-instruction/portal/files/4_Community_of_Inquiry_Framework.pdf
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.
