journal entry

The Art of Teaching Online: Darci Harland – “Shaping” Student Learning

The Art of Teaching Online: Darci Harland – “Shaping” Student Learning Program Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

DARCI HARLAND: I have had the best success with shaping in a public setting rather than individual. Public shaping occurs for me during discussions. Remember that shaping has to do with wanting to change behaviors. And so you can do this in an online discussion by how you respond to students.

So for example, one of the things I like to do that influences how the students will behave in the future, and when I say behave in this case, I'm talking about how they will post responses to their peers, by modeling. But I have found that modeling in and of itself is not usually enough. They just think, well the teacher's smarter. Her responses are going to be different than mine.

And in actuality what I'm doing is I'm saying, the way I am posting my responses to students is modeling what I expect you to do. And I overtly tell them this or else it's just lost on them. So I set the requirements for how I want them to respond in the discussions. I tell them that I will be modeling them, and that they should be using my responses to their peers as good examples, exemplars, of how they also can be responding to their peers.

I also then remind them that if I respond to a student, I do kind of expect everyone to be reading my responses, particularly early in the quarter, just so that they can get a feel for-- get insight on the content, and also how to behave on the discussion boards.

Another thing I do in shaping, on the discussion boards, is when someone does a really, really good job, you compliment them. You have to be careful because you don't want to isolate people, either really good or really bad, publicly. You need to be careful about that. But when a student nails it, you want to make sure that the student who wrote it knows it's good, and that all the students who are reading it knows it's good.

And so you would put a post-- a reply post to what they said and say, this is exactly the kind of post that I am expecting in this course. Great job. Thanks for your hard work in sharing this, and thank you for writing it so well. Something like that.

Nearer to the middle and the end of the course, I expect my students to become more autonomous. So I back off. I don't reply as much. And I give them more ownership of what it is that they're doing. What I feel is very, very dangerous is if I feel like they're writing all of their discussion prompts to me. I do not want them writing to me. I don't want answers that they think the teacher will like.

© 2016 Laureate Education, Inc. 1

The Art of Teaching Online: Darci Harland – “Shaping” Student Learning

And so again I can shape those behaviors by asking follow up questions. When they do something I don't want them to do, I'll say, oh, that's a good point you make, however, what would happen if? And you lead them to the point where you want them in how you reply to them. Can you add something to this that would help explain your reasoning on this? Those kinds of replies will help get the critical thinking that you're after, and allow students to become more successful.

Another way you can use shaping in online teaching that you really couldn't do in a face to face situation, is use the data in the learning management system. You've got access to how often students log on, how long they're spending places. If you have a student who's struggling, that's a good thing to do. Go look and see. If they're only logging in the day something is due, you have a little insight into the problem. And so, that can give you information that can then help you help the student.

© 2016 Laureate Education, Inc. 2