300-500 words article reflection and discussion

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Chapter Four

Course Structure

The whole is more than the sum of its parts. —a r istotle

Instructional systems may be understood in part through an examination of the essential features and elements of various instructional phenomena, as well as in the ways in which these interact with each other. Faculty may consider how the courses we teach are situated within an institution, department, and program. We may also strive to understand how they are similar or dissimilar to other courses that we are aware of. In addition, we may consciously or unconsciously compare elements within and across our own courses. And all for good reason. Understand- ing course structure, which comprises these elements and interrelations that fac- ulty intuitively seek to understand, can help us to grasp the meaning of a complex instructional system. From that understanding, we can make better decisions about our teaching and thus create better courses. When we teach online, there are new structures for us to consider and understand, however, and these differences can lead us to new patterns of making decisions and eliciting meaning.

About Course Structure

A course is a unit of instruction, typically fixed not only by the subject matter but also by the or gan i za tion al parts, or elements, through which the course is of- fered. Common or gan i za tion al elements of courses include course term (e.g., se- mester, quarter, or a set number of weeks), course credit hour (e.g., fixed or vari- able), course enrollment (e.g., small or large), course curricular designation (e.g., prefix or section number), and course type (e.g., lecture or seminar). These elements signal the interrelation of courses and other or gan i za tion al units in institutions, and many of them have been determined prior to the assignment of an instructor to teach the course. Course structure, then, comprises the basic or gan i za tion al el- ements of a course and their arrangements and relations to other elements.

Johns, Hopkins University Press. Teaching Online : A Guide to Theory, Research, and Practice, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uvic/detail.action?docID=3318874. Created from uvic on 2020-07-16 21:41:42.

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Course Structure 77

Changes to Faculty Experience of Course Structure When Teaching Online

When reading literature related to online learning, the structures of different types of courses are not always readily apparent. Indeed, it would be possible to conclude from this literature that “online learning” is one specific thing: a mono- lithic approach to any teaching that takes place over the Internet. In the past de- cade, authors have used many different terms seemingly interchangeably to signal teaching by means of the Internet, thus bolstering this perception. These terms include online learning, e-learning, web- based teaching, Internet- based teaching, computer- based learning, virtual learning, and countless combinations of these terms. In practice, however, the diversity that exists among online courses is im- pressive, demonstrating the myriad ways in which individuals teach online courses. New elements associated with teaching online include enrollment, timing, amount, platform, and pathway. A host of different combinations of these elements are pos- sible for individual online courses; thus these elements signal course composition at a fundamental level. Table 4.1 outlines the different structural elements along a continuum, in the form of a classification chain.

While the table illustrates extremes, many courses fall somewhere in between, offering a combination, or middle ground, thus increasing the number of possibili- ties. Knowing more about the different elements and their potential combinations can help faculty better understand the current state of online learning and pro- vide a foundation for understanding the ways in which making choices among these elements is an aspect of instructional change.

Table 4.1 Classification chain of online course structures

Completely Completely Structure

Enrollment closed open Amount online blended Timing asynchronous synchronous Platform provider- offered do- it- yourself Pathway centralized distributed

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78 Teaching Online

enrollment

One of the most currently discussed structural elements of online courses is en- rollment, which may be closed or open. A closed course is available only to those who formally sign up for it through a recognized institution. An alternative term that some use to describe closed- enrollment courses is “traditional online course,” which marks a notable shift away from stakeholders viewing only onsite courses as a traditional form of higher education. This term thus demonstrates a growing awareness that online learning has been in existence for a sufficient length of time (in this case, de cades) to be considered mainstream.1 While what counts as tradi- tional online teaching is extensive and loosely defined, the common ground among these courses is that they mirror the enrollment structure of the onsite classroom. In short, only those students who register through an institution of higher educa- tion and who pay tuition can enroll in the courses.

On the other hand, an online course may have open enrollment. Open- enrollment courses have had some history as an option within higher education, but they have rapidly gained visibility with the relatively recent development of mas- sively open online courses (MOOCs). The core feature of these courses is that they are available to anyone who has adequate technological tools, who wishes to learn something about the topic, and who has the time to participate. Thus thousands of participants potentially could enroll in them. Some courses are both closed and open: a small group of students can enroll for course credit, but the course is also open to a larger group of participants who will not earn credit, such as the model described by Alec Couros. Couros is credited with being a foundational influence on the MOOC movement, and he enthusiastically describes an open course he taught in 2007.

While open courses have been around for some time, Dave Cormier of Univer- sity of Prince Edward Island is credited with coining the term “MOOC” in 2008 while teaching a course with fellow Canadians George Siemens of Athabasca Uni- versity and Stephen Downes of the National Research Council.2 More than two thousand students enrolled.3 As their model suggests, MOOCs typically are large- scale open courses (or have the potential to be large- scale ones). Participation in these courses typically is free, unless participants wish to use them for credit, at which point various kinds of fees attach to them. These differ by course provider and user purpose and could involve payment for a transfer credit to a MOOC- accepting institution of higher education or for taking and passing a certifying examination.

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Open Courses alec couros Associate Professor Education University of Regina, CA

In 2007, I facilitated Social Media & Open Education, an open online graduate- level course now seen as a fundamental influence for the early MOOC movement. The design of the course was heavily influenced by my research on the open- source software movement and, more specifically, on the individuals and the networks they formed to solve difficult and elaborate problems. The development of GNU/Linux, an incredibly suc- cessful endeavor, was a testament to how a problem as complex as an op- erating system could be addressed through the weak ties of networks. I wanted to leverage such networks for teaching and learning.

When the course began, I had twenty registered students, which was above the norm for enrollment. But then, in a discussion with my stu- dents, we decided to invite the world to participate. I put out a “call for network mentors” on my blog, sent out a tweet, and soon we had over two hundred mentors for my students— a 10:1 mentor- to- student ratio. And these “outsiders” weren’t your average students: they included professors, teachers, instructional designers, educational researchers, and several university administrators (one of whom was a university president).

The role of mentors was multifaceted: participation in course events, feedback on student work, resource sharing, and a number of other activi- ties. But it was their role as informal learners that really made a signifi- cant difference. These were professionals, role models to my students, who were participating in the class as learners without the motivation of earning course credit. These were individuals who were genuinely inter- ested in the material and in supporting the learning of my students. Their

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80 Teaching Online

presence added an enormous motivational aspect that would have been difficult to replicate.

But there was another student who also made a significant impact. He was a sixteen- year- old high school student from Scotland who stayed up late every Tuesday so he could participate in this graduate course emanat- ing from Canada. One night, during an Elluminate session on student dig- ital literacies, this Scottish student pulled out his bass guitar, added a few loops from GarageBand, and gave us a live per for mance. The chat room lit up with amazement at what we had just experienced.

Open courses provide opportunities and connections that can serve as inspiring supports for students. The serendipity of networks is one of the reasons I’m a huge advocate for openness in course design.

Currently there are at least two distinct forms of MOOCs: cMOOCs and xMOOCs.4 The differences between the two have the potential to influence the future directions of open courses. The first, cMOOCs, are associated with the no- tion of connectivism, a theory of learning that uses the meta phor of a network made up of nodes and ties to describe learning.5 What characterizes this type of MOOC is openness, diversity, autonomy, and connectivity across a network of distributed knowledge. In cMOOCs, the learner is expected to discuss, debate, discover, and produce.6 The second form, the xMOOC, emerged largely from the work of Stan- ford University professors Sebastian Thurn and Peter Norvig, who taught a course in artificial intelligence in which over 160,000 participants enrolled.7 The three leading providers of xMOOCs currently are Coursera (started by Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng), a for- profit company with Stanford roots and many university partners, including many ivy- league institutions; Udacity, a for- profit with Stan- ford roots but with no university affiliation; and EdX, a nonprofit run out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University, along with the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Texas system. Early forms of xMOOCs differed dramatically from their cMOOC pre de ces sors, partic- ularly pedagogically. Many of the xMOOCs started with somewhat traditional ped- agogy, in which learners watch video lectures and participate in objective online assessments (e.g., quizzes and exams). These courses have evolved over time, how- ever, as some xMOOCs rely on team- based learning and participant reviews of each other’s work, while others, particularly those taught in the humanities, are thought

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Course Structure 81

to be moving closer to the methodology of the cMOOC by using more construc- tivist pedagogical approaches.8

MOOCs have captured the attention of journalists, administrators, faculty, and students, all of whom have striven to understand more about them. These courses have been hailed for their potential to make higher education scalable as well as free and affordable to anyone interested in enrolling.9 They also have been criti- cized for possibly being able to create a stratified educational system that provides onsite education to a privileged few and online education to those who cannot af- ford it otherwise.10 Some have argued that these courses will disrupt higher edu- cation as we now know it.11 Others claim that they will not matter much in the long run.12 While these several perspectives offer intellectually interesting and im- portant arguments, those who describe the potential influence of MOOCs on higher education do not typically consider the differences between various kinds of MOOCs, which can influence the future development of online courses. Com- binations with other elements create myriad possibilities for their structure, how- ever, and understanding the differences among various types of open courses can allow educators to have some influence on their development and, thus, a hand in shaping how they might affect higher education.

amount

Another structural element of online courses is the amount of the course that occurs by way of the Internet. In fully online courses, all of the content is deliv- ered and all of the interactions and activities happen through the Internet. There are no required onsite meetings. Orientations and examinations, however, may be either onsite or online, depending on institutional requirements. Teaching a course in this fashion often requires dramatically rethinking that course from the bottom up, providing instructors with the capacity to accomplish something different and unique when teaching fully online. But they also lose some of the benefits of on- site teaching, such as seeing students in real time and having visual cues, such as eye contact and body language.

In blended, or hybrid, courses, part of the content is delivered and some of the course activities and interactions take place at an onsite location, while other parts of the content and some interactions occur online, in a learning environment sup- ported by the Internet. There is no firmly established rule about how much of the course has to happen over the Internet for it to be blended, although some of the sessions that normally would be held onsite would take place online instead. In

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82 Teaching Online

short, putting a syllabus online and exchanging some emails with students is not blended learning. Rather, substantive and direct instructional activity should take place over the Internet in order for a course to be considered blended learning. Teaching a blended course purports to be the best of both worlds, allowing faculty and students to meet in real time and space and to be supported virtually. When alternating between online and onsite teaching, however, the continuity of the class can feel somewhat broken.

There are some differences in the literature about whether there are two or three classifications related to the amount of an online course that occurs by way of the Internet. In an influential Sloan Foundation report, I. Elaine Allen and Jeff Sea- man suggest a percentage allocation to determine the type:13

• Online. 80% or more of the course happens on the Internet. • Blended or hybrid. 30%– 79% of the course happens on the Internet. • Web- assisted. 1%– 29% of the course happens on the Internet.

Other researchers seem to favor a simple distinction between the terms “fully on- line” and either “blended” or “hybrid.” While the former approach has the advan- tage of making finer distinctions, the latter seems to be the most useful and wieldy for faculty who teach online. Fully online is a fairly clear description, while 80% or more online leaves that classification more open for interpretation. In addition, the difference between a course that is 75% online and one that is 80% online is probably small, if even detectable. Finally, 1% online is such a tiny amount that it seems questionable to count such a course within the category of courses taught through the Internet. Certainly many of us who teach online do not make a dis- tinction between 29% and 30%, nor would we be likely to consider a course with 1% offered online as a web- assisted course. As a practical matter, it seems most ac- curate to label a course that never meets onsite as fully online and designate one that has some meetings onsite and some activities conducted over the Internet as blended.

timing

Another structural element of an online course is related to how the course un- folds over time. In synchronous courses or sessions, students and instructors are required to be online at the same time. That is, the course has a regularly sched- uled meeting time, and the instructor and students participate in the course then. Lectures, discussions, and pre sen ta tions thus occur at that predetermined time. Synchronous courses provide students with the opportunity to participate in a real-

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Course Structure 83

time class experience, as well as to have fairly instant responses to their questions and comments. In asynchronous courses or course components, instructors sup- ply materials— including lectures, assignments, tasks, and tests— that students can access at any time. Students complete assignments at different times, although they often are given a timeframe for finishing the assignments, such as a one- week win- dow. They may watch a video or respond to a discussion prompt within their own timeframe. Instructors also respond to and interact with students at different times. Asynchronous courses allow students to have a longer period in which to form their thoughts and compose comments and responses before having to contribute them to the class, while synchronous classes can favor quick thinkers and fast typists.

platform

A learning platform is the foundation on which a course is built. A platform pro- vider offers a prebuilt product that can handle many online learning functions, in- cluding course administration, documentation, tracking, reporting, and delivery. Many instructors who choose a provider- offered platform use a learning manage- ment system (LMS), a software application that gives faculty members a central hub, which is a place in which to post content, facilitate discussion, and assess learning. (In the United Kingdom these systems are referred to as virtual learn- ing environments, or VLEs). Some of the most frequently used learning manage- ment systems are Blackboard,14 Desire2Learn,15 Moodle,16 and Canvas.17 Moodle and Canvas are open platforms, which means that they are free and that instruc- tors who use them may adapt the platforms to their own ends.18 What these sys- tems offer instructors and students is a single space in which they can interact. They also provide a relatively high level of confidentiality for course participants.

In addition, companies developing xMOOCs (Coursera,19 EdX,20 Udacity,21 and Venture Lab22) offer their own specialized and uniquely tailored platforms that serve as a central hub. This kind of platform provides an environment that is in the open, rather than the traditionally closed system of the LMS, and it offers fea- tures such as code execution and automatic grading. The emergence of the xMOOC platform has led some LMSs to provide their own open features, and LMSs, in turn, have features that may well lead MOOCs to offer more opportunities for course design; in short, these two currently different kinds of systems may soon become more aligned.

A do- it- yourself (DIY) approach involves drawing elements together from many existing media to design your own platform. Many individuals who choose a DIY approach in creating a learning platform for online courses use social media, such

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84 Teaching Online

Why Use Social Media to Teach Online? howard rheingold Critic, writer, teacher, and found er Rheingold University, US

I’ve been using social media in teaching and learning for many years, both in hybrid courses that mix face- to- face and online interactions and in purely online courses. I found that the use of these media influenced me to change my style of teaching, because (together with my attitude) these technologies enable students to communicate with me and with one another in ways that traditional classrooms don’t allow. They make use of the cornucopia of informational and human resources available through online networks, and (with my encouragement) make it easier for stu- dents to learn collaboratively (working on projects together) and coopera- tively (taking responsibility for each other as co- learners). The tool itself doesn’t magically make these changes happen or guarantee that they will work out. The critical factor is in knowing how to use the technology. It isn’t that complicated, but it’s new— and to those who have explored the possibilities of forums, blogs, wikis, videos, and other forms of online communication, it is more richly nuanced than the hype about “automat- ing education” would have us believe. To me, the real magic in using so- cial media in learning is not the ability to scale traditional teaching- as- knowledge- delivery (Paulo Freire’s “banking model” of learning1), but the ability to inquire together, to seek understanding and construct knowl- edge together, and to reflect personally on the learning pro cess itself. The critical uncertainty is know- how. The tools don’t teach you how to learn. But the best practices for social learning online are not secret.

Note 1. Freire (1970, 1973) discusses the “banking model” of education.

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Course Structure 85

as blogs (WordPress,23 EduBlogs,24 Blogger25 ), microblogs (Twitter,26 Tumblr 27 ), so- cial network sites (Facebook, Google+), wiki (e.g., Wikipedia), and video- sharing sites (e.g., YouTube). Many faculty combine several of these applications to form a learning environment for an online course. What these media offer is the opportu- nity to employ tools that individuals often use in their everyday lives, providing a native environment for learning. They also allow for easy sharing of a variety of media, whether text, pictures, audio, video, or a combination of them. Howard Rhein gold, a cultural critic and author of several books (including his recent Net smart28 ) as well as the found er of Rheingold University, describes why he uses social media.

Another form of social media is an immersive world,29 such as Second Life,30 Activeworlds,31 or OpenSimulator.32 Instructors and students typically take up an avatar (a graphic repre sen ta tion of the user) within a virtual space and interact with each other, so they have proximity to other individuals within the same virtual space at the same time. Immersive worlds give students the sense of “being there” even when they are unable to be present physically. While such courses differ widely from each other, what they share is mirroring some of the positive aspects of an onsite course, such as physical proximity, simultaneous interactions amongst par- ticipants, and some semblance of physical markers and identifiers from which par- ticipants can derive meaning about themselves and others.33

pathway

A learning pathway is another structural element of online courses, an element that is receiving increased attention with the growth of DIY open courses. An on- line course may have a centralized, decentralized, or distributed learning pathway, each of which is illustrated in figure 4.1.

In a course with a centralized pathway, all of the students interact with the course content in the same way. They join the course and find the content and each other; the learning forms the center of the course network. The instructor chooses, organizes, and controls the content / information flow. Learners receive the same information at the same time, participate in the same activities, complete the same assignments, and so forth. There is a central and structured pathway to learning that all students follow. Students may communicate with each other, but this com- munication may be minimal. The focus is on the instructor and the course con- tent. Such a course can feel or ga nized and manageable, and faculty can ensure stu- dent exposure to certain bodies of knowledge. This type of course can also feel rigid

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86 Teaching Online

and unchanging, however, for both students and faculty, as well as overly direc- tive of students.

In a course with a decentralized pathway, there is still a course center, but stu- dents can interact with it or each other and the course content in different ways. The instructor provides central support, and students, in various clusters, take on similar tasks. Within these clusters, students may form communities of interest or communities of practice. Information flow and content are generated by the communities. Information is shared within the community and published across the network.34 The focus is on groups. In this kind of course, a center exists, pro- viding students with some stability and an assurance that they are getting and do- ing what it is they are supposed to do. There is also some flexibility, in that students can branch out and pursue their own interests. Such courses can be more difficult to or ga nize than centralized ones, however, and it also may be harder to ensure that students have adequate exposure to core concepts and skills. Online tools may include email, discussion boards, and interactive websites. The courses may also make use of social media, which are a group of Internet- based applications that al- low people to create, share, exchange, and comment on the contents in virtual com- munities and networks.

Links

Nodes

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 4.1. Online structural elements: (a) centralized (star); (b) decentralized (tree); (c) distributed (mesh). These are adapted from Baran’s (1962) famous report. Baran is widely considered as one of the founding fathers of the Internet and a pioneer in computer networking.

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In a course where the learning pathway is distributed, there is no center. Stu- dents interact with each other and with the instructor at different times as they proceed through the course at various paces and in multiple ways. That is, course communication and activities may happen in different spaces, and there may be more than one pathway that a learner can take to fulfill course and personal goals. The network is fluid and groups can form, reconstitute, and dissolve at will. The focus is on people. In such courses, students have high levels of freedom and the flexibility to pursue their own interests. Distributed courses also have an authen- tic feel to them, so students may well have the impression that they are participat- ing in something worthwhile. Students can feel lost, however, without a center or grounding. They also can feel like they are missing important parts of the learn- ing pro cess in the course if they are not connected to the network at appropriate junctures and times.35 Many faculty who teach decentralized courses tend to make extensive use of social media.

Case Studies of Online Instructional Practices

In the accompanying sidebars, which begin on page 88, five faculty members who have taken different approaches to teaching online share information, in their own words, about their courses and their experiences in teaching them. First, Lisa Lane describes a history course. Second, Patrick Biddix discusses a course of- fering in higher education. Third, Cris Crissman recounts aspects of her young- adult literature course. Fourth, Alan Levine depicts a computer science course on digital storytelling. Fifth, David Evans reports on a computer science course on search engines. These authors have different goals for teaching online and vary- ing perceptions about the pro cesses. And their classes stand as evidence of sev- eral types of online courses.

Strategies for Structuring Online Courses

Online learning is not one specific thing. Rather, the possibilities for different combinations of the core elements of online courses are myriad. I offer the follow- ing strategies for selecting the structure of online courses.

str ategy #1: look to institutions for clues

Certain institutions, departments, and programs have set standards regarding what are acceptable course structures, although they can vary by institutions and, at times, departments and programs. Some institutions may not be as excited about offering open courses as others, and anyone hoping to develop an open course

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A Mature, Asynchronous Course lisa lane Instructor History MiraCosta Community College, US

Course Classification for Modern Western Civilization

Enrollment: closed Amount: online Timing: asynchronous Platform: provider- offered Pathway: centralized

The course I teach is a community- college- level class that covers Western civilization from 1648 to the present. It is intended to be offered as a one- semester general education course, emphasizing the humanities. Students come from diverse backgrounds— some have never had a college class, or are concurrently enrolled in high school, or are returning to school after being in the workforce. Their ages and levels of preparation vary widely. I teach the class using the Moodle learning management system, although the lecture and multimedia files are stored on a separate server and linked from within the system.

The Moodle system allows the main page of the course to be or ga nized like a syllabus, with blocks for each week’s activities and smaller informa- tion blocks on each side of the screen. I structure the arrangement visu- ally. Communication blocks(e.g., instant messaging to the instructor, a participant’s list, and Moodle messaging features) are placed on the left. Information blocks (e.g., the calendar, course information, and the grad- ing scheme) are on the right. The center column lists all tasks by week.

(Photo credit: CC A-NC- SA Lisa M. Lane)

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My pedagogy is balanced between pre sen ta tion and interactivity. Each week consists of context readings (often from Wikipedia) and lectures. My lectures are detailed and contain audio sections (with me reading the lecture), images, video clips, and links to primary- source documents. A multiple- choice quiz is assigned to check the students’ comprehension of the content of the pre sen ta tion portion.

Interactivity occurs primarily in the discussion forums, although I do not use them for discussion per se. Rather, at the beginning of each week, students must post a primary source for that era, complete with full citation information. They are encouraged to post visual sources, although excerpts from text documents are also common. My frequently asked questions (FAQ) section provides all instructions for embedding media in Moodle.

I am present throughout the class in various places in the site. Every week or two, I use an information block on the main page to post a Voki (animated character with my voice)1 or a talking- head video clip of me discussing that week’s tasks. My voice is in every lecture, reading my own writing. My forum posts are clearly in my own writing style.

In the forums, which are or ga nized as one nested page, I post the ini- tial primary source. Students have until Wednesday night each week to reply with their own primary source. On Thursday I create an extensive post, commenting on their sources and providing guidance for what to do for the rest of the week. Usually my post highlights their written work from the week before and provides instructions on writing their second post. This second post from students each week encourages them to prac- tice writing a historical thesis, supported by some of the primary sources posted in the forum. They develop their own theses, based on their inter- ests. Although they must support their theses only with sources that have been posted by the class, they may always add sources to any forum throughout the course.

Community is not an articulated goal for the class; nonetheless, their forum work encourages interaction. The initial forum invites the class members to get to know each other, and each week’s work often includes a request to comment on someone else’s writing, either adding context, or posting an additional source, or evaluating a peer’s thesis. Since I create a different post each Thursday, I can encourage more peer interactivity at appropriate times for what we are doing that week.

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In terms of my instructional time, a great deal is spent setting up the class. When I first offered it, many hours were devoted to creating the lec- tures. All of the readings, the links to lectures, and the forums are set up in advance each semester, and I frequently make revisions. During the class, most of my time is spent grading, reading student work in the fo- rums, and posting guidance for each week. I also have instant messaging (IM) open to talk with students in real time. IM time is unscheduled, but I use Plupper2 to indicate when I am online and available— the status in- dicator is embedded in a communication block so they can see if I’m ac- cessible whenever they’re logged in to the class.

My goals for this course not only are to introduce the events and sources of Western civilization from 1648 to the present, but also to en- courage students to participate in what historians actually do, rather than simply reading and recalling facts. I am interested in them learning higher- order thinking skills and developing their writing, gradually and with guidance. I create an environment and materials that are designed to lead them from an emphasis on facts to the creation of their own inter- pretations and the discovery of larger themes. I am particularly gratified that my forum activities fulfill these goals by having the students practice each week and engage in more complex tasks as the semester continues. Students comment on how much they enjoy the opportunity to research their own interests and shape their own interpretations and themes.

This class is a mature online course, having been developed over a pe- riod of many years. I began teaching online in 1998, before the advent of course- management systems and with little guidance. My first class was modeled after a philosophy class being offered by a colleague who had only begun teaching online the semester before. I then got an HTML for dummies guide and taught myself how to make web pages.3 Discussion took place through a program called WebBoard, a threaded forum that was similar to Blackboard’s forums today. When my college adopted Blackboard, I used that system but was frustrated with threaded discus- sions, so I changed to Moodle solely to use the simple forum that lets you see all the posts nested on one page, like a real conversation. It would be very difficult to see forty primary sources all at once in a threaded forum, where each post must be opened individually. I have offered the class as a hybrid in WordPress, however, and that technology works very well for creating a format similar to the one that I use in Moodle.

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Overall, I consider it a successful course, because students both are en- gaged and demonstrate skills as they learn. They receive frequent feed- back and other communications, which prevent isolation and encourage participation. I am also happy with the materials I have created, though I am continually updating them. The use of multiple forms of pre sen ta tion (audio, video, text) and multiple modes for learning (reading, listening, searching, writing, posting, analyzing, synthesizing) creates a rich experi- ence for both the instructor and the students.

Notes 1. Information about Voki is available at www .voki .com . 2. Information about Plupper is available at www .plupper .com . 3. HTML stands for hypertext markup language.

Modern Western Civilization main page screenshot. (Photo credit: CC A-NC- SA Lisa M. Lane)

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http://www.voki.com

http://www.plupper.com

92 Teaching Online

A New Online Course Using Social Media j. patrick biddix Associate Professor Higher Education University of Tennessee, US

Course Classification for Technology in Higher Education

Enrollment: closed Amount: online Timing: asynchronous Platform: DIY Pathway: decentralized

Tech595 was the unofficial name for ELPS 595 (Special Topics: Technol- ogy in Higher Education), a graduate- level, 100% online, asynchronous course I developed and taught over a four- week period in summer 2012. The course had two core purposes. The first was to introduce current, sig- nificant discussion surrounding the use of technology in higher educa- tion. The second was to expose students to technology that enables them to work in higher education institutions. Course objectives related to these purposes included “Identify the influence of ICT in governance and administration of higher education institutions” and “Evaluate the poten- tial for online learning to provide greater access to higher education.”

The idea for this course came to me after I read about Kraken, one of the supercomputers maintained on our campus. Up to that point, I thought I was pretty current on campus technology. Learning that one of the world’s fastest supercomputers resided on campus reminded me that I knew much less than I thought about the breadth of technology at a major research in- stitution. As a faculty member responsible for both preparing future ad- ministrators and introducing current professionals to new research, the-

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ory, and application, I came to believe that exposing students to campus technology and contemporary developments was critical to their under- standing of how a major aspect of higher education works. My revelation also had me thinking about where and how administrators stay up to date on technology. I had essentially created a course I needed as much as one I wanted to teach. A social- learning approach seemed a natural fit.

Conceptually, the content of the course was a good match for the needs of my students. Unfortunately, the timing of the course and the availabil- ity of students in the summer, which was when I could offer it, created two significant challenges. First, the online teaching and learning infra- structure at my institution is unwieldy and unintuitive for new online learners. Second, my recently discovered lack of knowledge about campus technology could make developing and teaching the course problematic.

I addressed the first challenge by adopting technology already familiar to me: social media. I began with the assumption that most of my stu- dents had some experience with blogs as consumers, producers, or both; if not, I thought they were familiar enough with other forms of participa- tory social media to learn quickly. After some deliberation, I chose Blog- ger to run the course, a site that allows features I deemed essential to on- line teaching and learning, such as privacy, multiple contributors, social- media widgets, and the capability for hosting discussions. I loaded the site with familiar course elements (e.g., syllabus, readings) and added a detailed “Start Here” page, an updatable calendar, and RSS and Twitter feeds for new- content alerts.

Once the structure for the course was in place, I developed a task schedule for managing the three types of assignments (discussion, pre sen- ta tion, analysis) and kept it updated with a calendar widget from my mo- bile phone. The four- week course had twelve routinized discussion assign- ments due each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with corresponding readings. Since students got to choose when to submit one of the two ma- jor assignments, an online pre sen ta tion, I gave them access to the calen- dar to add their preferred date and topic. This structure helped the stu- dents fall into a routine for keeping up with the fast- paced course. The second major assignment was a reflective analysis, in which students an- swered one of three culminating questions as a blog post. Students were required to provide evidence for their analysis with hyperlinked citations

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94 Teaching Online

to reference material. All student work was evaluated on three basic crite- ria: (1) following assignment instructions, (2) creating clear and concise posts and comments, and (3) completing assignments in a timely manner.

I addressed the second challenge by adopting social media. This al- lowed me to moderate my lack of specific content knowledge by capitaliz- ing on the peer expertise of my students. As the instructor and course de- signer, I would create the infrastructure and run discussion prompts, but I would leave some content specifics to the experts— students who used the technology in their work settings. I thought that much of what they used daily was unique to their setting and unfamiliar to the rest of us, and I was correct. In addition to scheduled discussion assignments (e.g., “Ex- plore a course or module in Coursera or Khan Academy and post about your experience/s.”), students created a detailed overview of a technology they used as a review post on the blog (i.e., the pre sen ta tion assignment). They were also required to employ some form of media beyond text for their pre sen ta tion. Some students chose Prezi,1 others created custom videos of the technology in use, and still others interviewed users or technicians. The topics they chose ranged from housing room- assignment software to campus alert systems.

For me, the two core purposes of exposing students to technology and conducting a discussion on its use in higher education were easily met. The frequent discussions allowed me to direct students to where to find

Tech595 start page

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the latest material related to technology and keep up with it (e.g., Wired Campus,2 EDUCAUSE3). The discussions also facilitated debates about the merits and use of technological trends, such as the explosion of MOOCs in higher education. Students took the discussions seriously and frequently used links to outside material to substantiate their perspectives or point out a related trend.

The technology- review posts exceeded my expectations. The class indi- cated to me that online social learning may offer new ways to connect the collective knowledge of students into a highly efficient and effective learn- ing environment.

Notes 1. Prezi is a pre sen ta tion software. More information is available at http://

prezi .com . 2. Wired Campus ( http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/) is a

technology- related blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education. 3. EDUCAUSE ( www.educause.edu) is an or ga ni za tion whose membership is

interested in issues related to technology in higher education.

Tech595 community forum

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http://prezi.com

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/

http://www.educause.edu

96 Teaching Online

An Open Online Course cris crissman Adjunct Assistant Professor College of Education North Carolina State University, US

Course Classification for Teaching Literature for Young Adults

Enrollment: open Amount: online Timing: synchronous and asynchronous Platform: DIY Pathway: decentralized

ECI 521 is an open online course— open to creative explorations of peda- gogy, open to innovative uses of digital technologies, and open to anyone interested in the teaching of literature for young adults. It is in this envi- ronment of openness that I have come the closest yet to being the mentor for my students that I want to be.

My students are pre- and in- service teachers who want to learn about the latest trends and methods for teaching literature to middle and high school students. I include a strong young- adult (YA) literature component because I find that many students are not familiar with this category of literature and have no idea of its potential for both engaging young- adult readers and helping them come to know themselves and the world for which they will be responsible. Teaching for social responsibility and jus- tice is an integral part of both the course and our College of Education’s mission.

The course design breaks the standard online course mold, and I pay for that with a longer- than- usual buy- in period. Most students do not ex- pect to have weekly class meetings in an online course. And to meet in an

(Photo credit: Bill Lovin)

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online virtual space, the Bookhenge in Second Life, asks for a suspension of disbelief, a willingness to be open to change, and a playful, creative spirit— all valuable attributes for a twenty- first- century teacher.

Here is one student’s response to the course in a 2012 fall- semester midterm survey:

This is the biggest shocker of the course. I’m open to lots of technology, but I entered the course thinking that having a class in Second Life was the STUPIDEST thing I’d ever heard of. What can I say? I’m a complete convert. It’s sheer brilliance.

A typical week is built around an inquiry into a question/issue related to teaching literature. Students review resources, construct responses (we use blogs for text, audio, or video responses and, occasionally, a collabora- tive VoiceThread1), extend the conversation by commenting on each oth- ers’ contributions, and then come to class to engage in small- group work and a whole- class seminar. My students also choose YA books during vari- ous genre studies and meet in the Bookhenge to participate in book clubs and plan collaborative responses that include digital storytelling.

An asset of meeting in our virtual space is that we can invite the world. Open- course participants are invited to join us in real- time classes

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Bookhenge screenshot. (Photo credit: Bill Lovin)

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98 Teaching Online

that often feature conversations with guests, including award- winning YA authors.

Buy- in may take a while but, once achieved, reflects the openness that is the model for the course. As Christine, a fall 2012 pre- service teacher, reflected in her blog:

All of this technology would have been daunting just a few short weeks ago, but I’m starting to realize now why we’re pushed to get out of our comfort zone and try it. My students are definitely going to benefit from this knowledge. . . . Try new things. You never know— what you learn could change your life.

Finally, I would like to give special recognition to DELTA (Distance Education and Learning Technology Applications) at North Carolina State University, and, in par tic u lar, to Cathi Phillips, instructional designer, for always encouraging me to try new things and giving me the support to make them happen.

Note 1. VoiceThread is an application that allows users to leave a video or audio

comment. More information is available at http:// voicethread .com .

An Open Course (and Community) in Digital Storytelling alan levine Con sul tant Educational Technology CogDog IT ( http:// cogdogblog .com), US

Course Classification for Computer Science 106: Digital Storytelling Enrollment: open Amount: online

(Photo credit: Jonathan North)

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http://voicethread.com

http://cogdogblog.com

Course Structure 99

Timing: asynchronous Platform: DIY Pathway: distributed

The open course ds106 ( http:// ds106 .us), originating at the University of Mary Washington (UMW) in Fredericksburg, Virginia, experiments with convention, even by its very name. The actual course, located in the Com- puter Science Department, is CPSC 106. I have been part of ds106 as an open participant, a teacher of a face- to- face section, and, most recently, the instructor for a fully online class.

Digital- storytelling courses typically focus on personal narratives as digital videos. In ds106, however, students not only use the web as a plat- form for publishing stories, but also as a genre of storytelling itself, as well as a source of content for new forms of digital creations. As a pro cess that questions the very concept of what a story can be, ds106 explores Internet culture and related issues of identity, repre sen ta tion, and the notion of originality.

As first conceived by Jim Groom in 2010, a cornerstone of ds106 is that students publish creative work in their own Internet domain and Word- Press blog; they manage their own personal cyber- infrastructure. Stu- dents explore the concept of story via visual, design, audio, web, video, and remix modes. Beyond using their personal publishing space to share what they create, students reflectively write about their work and their pro cesses of creation .

The course runs in the open- source WordPress platform, and add- on software makes ds106 a syndication hub that aggregates and reorganizes the distributed content that is self- published by participants. The site cur- rently subscribes to over 620 individual blogs.

In January 2011, the early age of massive online open courses (MOOCs), ds106 was made available to the Internet community as an open course. Open participants register their own sites, which can be hosted on any blogging ser vice that provides an RSS feed. Much of the community interaction happens in Twitter, shared via the #ds106 hashtag ( https:// twitter .com /search /realtime ?q= %23ds106) .

Since then, classes at other institutions (Temple University in Japan, York College, Kansas State University, Kennesaw State University, State

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https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=%23ds106

100 Teaching Online

University of New York– Cortland, Jacksonville State University) con- nected students doing similar kinds of work into ds106. Thus the course has become an overlapping community of students from these places as well as UMW, plus people who joined out of general interest. Between UMW and these other institutions, more than five hundred students have

ds106 screenshot

ds106 assignments page

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Course Structure 101

participated in ds106 since January 2011; our database indicates that more than nine hundred individuals have participated in ds106 by publishing content syndicated into the main site.

The online UMW sections of ds106 have no lectures; weekly posts out- line the materials and assignments for each section. Among the key devel- opments of ds106 are regular challenges from the Daily Create ( http:// tdc .ds106 .us /); from a web- based radio station ( http:// ds106 .us /ds106 -radio); and from the Assignment Bank ( http:// assignments .ds106 .us /), a collec- tion of over four hundred creative activities designed by the ds106 com- munity. The latter provides much of the work students must complete. Rather than being given, say, a specific audio assignment, they have to finish fifteen stars’ worth of Audio Assignments (each one is rated for dif- ficulty by ds106 participants).

We do not prescribe or teach the nuts and bolts of the digital tools the students use; in addition to employing software they may have access to, we recommend choosing open- source or web- based options. Students learn how to use the web and how to acquire information from each other as a means of learning about the software.

The summer online versions of ds106 push the boundaries of the class itself as a participatory narrative. The 2011 Summer of Oblivion ( http:// ds106 .us /summer -of -oblivion /) included the disappearance of an eccentric professor who banished students, resulting in a class “rebellion.” The fol- lowing year, Camp Magic Macguffin ( http://magicmacguffin.info/) de- ployed a happy summer- camp metaphor— where things were not exactly what they seemed.

More than three hundred UMW students have taken ds106, and the most common feedback on class evaluations is along the lines of “I cannot believe how much work this was for a 100- level class . . . but I have learned so much in useful skills.” Former students often return to con- tinue participating in ds106. They learn to understand the tweeted state- ment, “#ds106 is #4life.”

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http://tdc.ds106.us/

http://ds106.us/ds106-radio

http://assignments.ds106.us/

http://ds106.us/summer-of-oblivion/

http://magicmacguffin.info/

102 Teaching Online

An Open Introductory Computer Science Course david evans Professor Computer Science University of Virginia, US

Course Classification for Udacity CS101: Introduction to Computer Science— Building a Search Engine

Enrollment: open Amount: online Timing: asynchronous Platform: provider- offered Pathway: centralized

Udacity CS101 ( https:// udacity .com /course /cs101 /) is an introductory com- puter science course, targeted to students with no previous background in computing who want to understand the foundations of computer science and learn how to program.1 Enrollment is free, and the class is open to anyone on the Internet.

The course was designed from the ground up as an open online course, rather than attempting to move an existing course online. Our goal was to teach computer science and provide students with a solid foundation to develop as programmers in an engaging, effective, and enjoyable way. This led to two main decisions for the course: (1) focus the course around a motivating project that would be used as a vehicle for introducing the computing concepts throughout the course; and (2) designing the lectures to be primarily centered on exercises students would do and for which they would receive automated feedback, on rather than long, non- interactive lectures.

For the motivating project, we selected building a web search engine. This is something nearly everyone uses every day, but to most people, search engines such as Google seem like magical oracles. Thus we hoped

(Photo credit: Cole Geddy)

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Course Structure 103

understanding how a search engine works would be a compelling motiva- tion for a broad range of students to take the class. From a technical per- spective, a search engine con ve niently fit nearly all of the key ideas in computing we wanted to cover in an introductory course. The task of ex- tracting a single link from a web page could motivate the first unit, and it could be completed using a few introductory concepts. The need to ex- tract all links from a page motivates learning about conditions and loops. Maintaining a list of pages to crawl requires understanding simple data structures. Later units use the problem of looking up a keyword to moti- vate understanding how to mea sure cost and use more- advanced data structures. The technique Google invented for ranking pages by popular- ity provides an interesting way to introduce recursive definitions.

The course was first offered in February 2012 as a scheduled seven- week course. Each week involved a lecture unit, consisting of about ninety minutes of recorded video. The video was divided into short seg- ments, typically one to three minutes in length, followed by interactive quizzes. A quiz could be a multiple- choice question, a many- choice ques- tion (select any number of items that apply), a request to enter a number or a text, or a programming quiz. For programming quizzes, the video player transformed into an in- browser programming environment that could be pre- loaded with code and comments. Students could submit quizzes as many times as they wanted, and they received feedback when their answers were incorrect. In addition to the lecture unit, each week included a homework assignment with a set of more open- ended problems that reinforced and mea sured the student’s understanding of the unit. The lecture videos for the final unit were a series of field trips and inter- views showing the past, present, and future of computing, followed by a comprehensive final exam.

Online discussion forums were an essential component of the class. They provided a very active environment, with over 88,000 discussion questions posted, most of which received at least a few answers. Because of the diverse group of students in the class, nearly every question is quickly answered by another student, although the course staff (primarily the assistant instructor, Peter Chapman) monitored the discussion forum closely and contributed additional answers and comments when useful. As well as the online text discussion, we recorded weekly video “office

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104 Teaching Online

hours” where we would select questions from the forums, based on stu- dent votes and interest, and post a video discussion.

The first offering attracted over 94,000 enrolled students, ranging from eight- year- olds to eighty- eight- year- olds, residing over one hundred countries, with occupations covering the gamut from truck drivers to neurosurgeons to software professionals to educators. Of these, 25,757 at- tempted the first homework assignment, and 9,723 completed the full course at a level sufficient to earn a certificate (over 4,000 were at the highest- distinction level, which required answering all problems cor- rectly, including the starred challenge problems).

After the first offering was completed, the course was relaunched in an open format, where students can complete the course at their own pace, with no deadlines, and then take a final exam to receive a certificate. The open course has enrolled over 159,000 new students. The unscheduled format makes the discussion forum less coherent, since students are at various units in the course, but enough students are active in each of the different parts that most questions still obtain good answers within an hour or less.

Teaching open online courses is a tremendous opportunity, and today’s computing and networking technologies make it possible to deliver inter-

CS101 screenshot

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active classes to students around the world at a significantly low cost. We are in the very early stages of learning how to teach well online, and rapid innovation and experimentation is needed. Some aspects of in- person teaching cannot be replicated online, but for many students, online courses can be a rewarding and meaningful experience, as well as an ef- fective way to learn challenging material.

Note 1. The Chronicle of Higher Education has highlighted Evans’s course on several

occasions. See Gose (2012), Mangan (2012), and Young (2012).

would be wise to consult with chairs, deans, and distance- learning personnel be- fore proceeding. Other institutions have specifications about which environment might be used, and some require a certain LMS. In one research study, the authors identified three institutional approaches to course structure:36

1. The fully autonomous approach. The institution leaves all structural decisions up to the instructor. There may be “encouraged” or “suggested” guidelines or tools, but without a formal policy, the instructor makes all final decisions autonomously.

2. The basic- guidelines approach. The institution provides basic, or general, guidelines for instructors to follow. In this case, the institution has minimal design and structural expectations that instructors are supposed to use.

3. The highly specified approach. The institution has an extensive set of components and standards that each online instructor must adhere to when designing and developing courses.

Moreover, some institutions develop a course with no input from the instructor; instead, faculty are responsible for teaching courses that others had previously de- signed and developed. Because of this, being aware of the type of approach insti- tutions favor and the specific structural requirements they have (and the degree of autonomy they afford faculty for designing and teaching online courses) are im- portant when choosing a course structure.

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str ategy #2: ex amine sample courses to understand different structur al elements

A given course may be considered to have a type, as determined through the classification chain, since the parts create a new, unified whole. For example, one course might have the following chain: closed, managed, centralized, asynchro- nous, and blended. Another might be classified in a chain that is nearly the direct opposite: open, social, decentralized, synchronous, and online. A third might mix classifications to create a different chain: LMS and social media, centralized with some decentralized modules, asynchronous with some synchronous components, blended, and open access with limited enrollment for credit. Examining sample courses can help faculty gain a sense of how the elements work together to create a unique whole.

The sidebars included in this chapter not only highlight courses from multi- ple disciplines, but also structural features that cross these disciplines and com- bine in various ways, documenting each as a specific type of online course. Table 4.2 offers a comparison of the different structural elements of the courses featured in the sidebars.

The faculty involved describe their reasons for making structural decisions. They discuss their decisions about the pattern of enrollment as an effort to best provide course content and activities to students, to best meet their goals for the course, and to best answer student needs. A closed and central location offers students a safe and secure place within which to interact privately, and two of the five faculty

Table 4.2 Comparison of the different courses in case studies

History (Lane)

Technology (Biddix)

Young- adult lit (Crissman)

Digital storytelling

(Levine)

Computer science (Evans)

Enrollment closed closed open open open

Amount online online online online online

Timing asynchronous asynchronous asynchronous and

synchronous

asynchronous asynchronous

Platform provider- offered

DIY DIY DIY provider- offered

Pathway centralized decentralized decentralized distributed centralized

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Course Structure 107

members chose to offer courses through this format. Opening a course enables it to cover a broad range of knowledge and experience, and three of the faculty believe this approach was most appropriate for the specific groups of students in their courses. While open courses are receiving a great deal of attention currently— with good reason, because they can provide greater access to higher education to a wider number of participants— there are also situations in which having some degree of privacy can be an asset. The faculty describing their experiences here considered a range of issues when making a decision about enrollment: the level of the course, the knowledge to be gained, and the level and experience of students.

In large part, these five faculty decided to offer courses through similar formats, and they chose a similar course timing. All of them offered courses that were fully online. They had several reasons for making the choice to teach a fully online rather than a blended course, from having an interest in the technology, to serving stu- dent needs, to teaching an already- existing online course. Most selected an asyn- chronous approach to timing. Some of them did so based on the needs of students, while others made their choice because the course was structured in that way, ei- ther previously or because of the technologists who were helping faculty develop the courses. One of the faculty members discusses the use of instant messaging for answering questions with students, based on her desire to seem present and available. Only one mentions offering significant portions of the class in a synchro- nous format, and she discusses the initial challenges to student buy- in because of this timing decision.

The five featured faculty describe their choice of a par tic u lar platform as be- ing closely tied to the technology available at the time the course was developed. Their determination of which platform to use was based on their technological skills and the tools with which they were most familiar. In addition, several of the faculty augmented their primary learning platforms with different technological applications, in order to enhance them. These faculty seemed to gauge their own

Table 4.3 Sample structural plan

Core structure Decision

Access closed Timing mixed: asynchronous and synchronous Amount blended Platform LMS Learning path centralized

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108 Teaching Online

level of knowledge about technologies and about their motivation for and interest in learning new technologies. Finally, many of the faculty seem to have enjoyed experimenting with and adding on different technologies that have a specific purpose, which played a supporting role in their teaching. These faculty talk about the pathway for student learning indirectly, perhaps because, in some ways, the network is closely connected to the learning platform that they choose. With an LMS, centrality is a built- in feature. With social media, the course is already rela- tively decentralized. It is possible to achieve some degree of decentralization in an LMS, however, particularly with adding in features of social media. It is also just as feasible to maintain centrality with social media, as some of the faculty indicate.

str ategy #3: develop a structur al plan for new courses

When developing new courses or reconsidering existing ones, faculty members may develop a structural plan for them, based on the structural elements reviewed in this chapter and the classification chain in table 4.1. Doing so can encourage additional intentionality during the design and development pro cesses for the course. Table 4.3 depicts a sample online course structural plan.

Conclusion

Online learning has become a regular and accepted way in which we offer in- struction in higher education. Today, however, online teaching is not a single, monolithic method. Rather, technology has advanced to the point where there are myriad ways in which instructors can and do choose how to teach online. Under- standing the contextual nature of online courses can help faculty leverage the mul- tiple possibilities available through the Internet. When examining, developing, or revising courses, working through the various structures of online courses can be a useful activity. Doing so can supply additional layers of understanding and in- tentionality that can permit faculty to make good decisions in devising or revis- ing their courses.

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