I Have Been Online TOO MUCH!!!!!

 THAT'S IT!!!

IT'S BEEN TOO MUCH!!!

Today I returned to campus to sign some things and do some work. I have spent most of the last 7 months teaching from home in my basement. All of my classes have been online as well as my meetings.

Just for a change, I donned my mask and walked across campus to the Union. I purchased a chocolate milk, picked up a Northern Iowan to read, walked outside, and sat on a concrete bench.

I perused the paper along with the thumbnail articles across the top. The Derecho Relief article looked interesting and would you believe that

I "clicked" it with my thumb and wondered why it didn't show me the whole article?

I need to get back into the real world. It's not as efficient sometimes, but it can be much more fun!!

What have YOU been experiencing?

3 Major Challenges to Teaching Online and How to Beat Them

While there are many advantages to teaching online, I want to begin with the challenges because those are the demons in the room that we have to confront.  This list is done completely from my experience.  I have purposely not reviewed the online lists that others have created because I wanted this to come from my heart.  After I complete this post, I will search the web for a few lists that others have created and might expand your knowledgebase with items that I may have missed or answers that I hadn’t considered.  It will be a learning experience for us all.

To keep this from being a Whiners Fest, I will try to include strategies that I am using to confront these challenges.  I can not say that my suggestions are the only answers to these challenges and I would be MIGHTY GRATEFUL if you could share your ideas for addressing these challenges.  I might also note that I am providing the  plans that I have had in my head and tried to implement.  Posting them here requires me to bare my soul to the world and makes it more of a commitment for me to accomplish them.  (Please note that these are not curricular challenges.  Those I will save for another day.  These are personal management challenges):

“Out of Sight, Out of Mind” – It can be mighty difficult to stay engaged in an online course.  We are advocates for keeping our students engaged, but it is easy to get involved in my day-to-day activities if my students are not going to be meeting with me in person on a regular basis. This is not to say that these students or their work are not important to me, it’s just that it requires discipline to keep engaged as a teacher as well as a student.

• Schedule: I try to organize my schedule so that there are specific times when I am reviewing their work.  Most of my classes meet on Tuesday.  Their assignments are due the Monday before we meet so I have allotted Monday for reviewing their work and preparing for incorporating their work into our Tuesday meeting.  I don’t think that it makes sense to grade their assignments before we meet, so I will go through and take notes about what they said and then use that to guide some of our discussion.  I can use these notes to make grading much easier when I grade.  
• Schedule to go online daily.  I haven’t fully achieved this yet, but I need to create a checklist of things that I will check on a daily basis in each of the classes.  This might include Checking email; Checking assignments submitted; and Reviewing discussions.

TimeZones -  This is a challenge for which there is no cure.  One of my sections begins at 6:00 AM CST because I have students in South Korea where it is 9:00 PM and a student in Nepal where it is 6:00 PM. I am also meeting at 6:00 PM and 7:30 PM (CST) that same day because I have students in Iowa who are home from work and ready to learn. 

• Schedule: The key is to create a schedule that will work for all of you. I have to be flexible. It is my job to teach these students and there are more of them than me.  Most of them have teaching jobs where they work all day and then meet with me at night.  You can also address this issue by recording your class sessions and making them available online for students to watch at a later time.  I have had courses where there was just no reasonable possibility for the student to attend the course live so he watched it the next day as a video and then asked me any questions that arose. I even teleconferenced with him periodically to keep him "in the loop."

Providing Support for Students – When you have a classroom full of students, it is easier to tell if there are issues with group work or interest in the class than if the students are on the other side of the “Big Pond.” I try to deal with this by keeping an open line of communication going between the students and myself. Some of this is covered in my previous posting, Communicating with Students Online, but here are a few other things I have tried:

• Use Email Filters: I use Gmail filters to sort my incoming emails into folders (labels). (I will provide a video later to show you how to do this.) I have asked my students to send me email through the Blackboard LMS that we use so that there will be a specific heading in the subject line. The filter that I have created will then move the email into a folder specific for that class. I have positioned these labels in such a way that I can see immediately whenever students have sent me email. 
• Consider Your Students' Experience: This may be a no-brainer, but I was just discussing working with students in collaborative groups with my colleague the other day when something dawned on me. Working in collaborative groups can be difficult for students. I do what I can to discuss the roles of members in collaborative groups and how they can best work together. I was noting that the undergrads were having bigger problems with this than my graduate students when it hit me that our graduate students are mostly practicing teachers who use collaborative grouping with their own students in their classrooms and have had experience working together as professionals.  My undergraduates are less experienced in collaborative grouping.  Sure, they have had teachers do it throughout their schooling but they haven't had to take responsibility as an adult to "get the job done."  This means that I need to have weekly feedback from the group members about how they are progressing. I need to work with the students to address any situations where students are not doing their part.
• Make Personal Connections As Necessary: Based upon what I just said above, let me say there is no replacement for personal contact. When one of your students informs you that isn't doing his/her work, there is nothing wrong with you, the teacher, contacting the students in need. At first you can do this by e-mail. But if you don't get a response from your e-mail, don't be sure about making a phone call. If your students are in your country or continent this probably won't be a problem in today's day of cell phones and no long distance charges. I have had many situations where it was simply a matter of getting the communication going. In some cases I had students who were working three jobs and having problems connecting with the rest of the team. But in some cases I just had students to work doing what they need to do.  Receiving a phone call from their professor often handled the matter.
• Use Social Media: This strategy has an interesting twist to it. I have created Facebook Fan Pages in the past and asked my students to share their ideas and frustrations there.  These didn't seem to work. When I asked my students to create the Fan Pages and administer them, the students used them much more readily. They used this venue for asking each other for clarification about assignments.  They were sharing interesting stuff they found. They asked colleagues for advice on professional situations. They even use it to share things that they are learning (while they are learning it) in professional workshops.  The best part is that the Facebook Feed for this academic medium appears with their social feeds through Facebook.  It is a constant part of their lives.  It was much more effective because they took ownership.  Try it.
• Online Office Hours: Having office hours is easy in a face-to-face world.  You just sit in your office for the same 5 hours a week throughout the semester and wait for nobody to come. =-)  In the online world, it's not that easy. First of all, you can't expect them to come to your brick-and-mortar office. Your students will need to meet with you through some online channel.  This might be by phone, but more likely they will want to video conference with you through Zoom, Google Hangout or Facetime.  I have identified 5 hours on Tuesday (2:00 - 5:00) and Wednesday (3:00 - 5:00) to meet with me through Zoom. This means that I have opened my ZoomRoom on my computer and I am sitting there (usually correcting homework) waiting for students to drop by. I have selected times that are after school for my practicing teachers but sometimes I set up specific meetings with students who contact me for evenings or weekends.  It's whatever it takes to assist my students.

Here are some additional resources for you to review:  

• Teaching Online: A How-to Guide for Teachers of All Grades
• Faculty Focus: 11 Strategies for Managing Your Online Courses
• Benefits and Challenges of Online Instruction
• Collaborative Research Circles Extend Learning Beyond the Online Course

What do you have to add to the discussion? 

What is your greatest challenge (or fear) with online learning.  (Mine is that you won't leave a comment on this blog posting so that this PLC can respond to it.)

Z

Who Are My Online Students This Semester?

I have had the privilege of having Educational Leadership students in my distance ed courses from all around the world. I also have a cohort of Instructional Technology Masters students and a class of Undergraduate Teacher Education students from primarily Iowa.

6:00 AM Crowd (9:00 PM in Korea. Last two are in Iowa and Texas)

International Students: This semester, most of my international students join me through the Masters Degree in International Teacher Leader Program taught by the UNI Educational Leadership and PostSecondary Education graduate program. They are building tomorrow’s education leaders through a program with American Schools in Europe, Western-Central-Eastern Asia, and the US.   I teach a course, Selecting and Integrating Instructional Technologies, which is required in their program. I am constantly impressed by this group’s dedication to innovative teaching and learning.  They are continually sharing progressive ideas and implementing new ones as they learn in class.  I am also impressed with their dedication towards attending class.  Many countries experience rolling electrical blackouts or Internet barriers.  We have students staying at school into the night because the connection is better there. Some of them find alternate sites like coffee shops to address their needs. This group meets with me at two different times on Tuesdays.

10 AM Crew (5 PM-Germany, 6:00-Egypt, 7:00-Saudi Arabia)

The South Korea and Philippines students meet me at 6:00 AM (9:00 PM their time). It is 6:00 PM for the Nepal student.  There are two students from the states (Iowa and Texas) who meet at 6:00 AM before they begin their teaching days.

At 10:00 AM, I meet with the Europe and Middle East crew.  It is 5:00 PM in Germany, 6:00 PM in Egypt and 7:00 PM in Saudi Arabia. We also have some students from Iowa.

6:00 PM Crew - Iowa and Arizona

7:30 PM Crew - Iowa

Iowa Masters Degree Students: I have another cohort of Iowa students (and one student who moved to Arizona) who are earning a Masters degree in Instructional Technology. They range from K-3 teachers to high school math teachers to Technology Integration Specialists to a web designer for UNI.  

It is another amazing group of educators who are constantly working to expand their students’/teachers’ learning experiences through technology.  This group is especially close because they had the opportunity to spend a week together on the UNI campus at the beginning of their cohort last June.  They will be concluding their program in Spring 2016.  There are a few other non-cohort students in the class but they have been accepted as members.  

I am teaching a course entitled Writing a Graduate Paper/ePortfolio where we are exploring the process of reading and writing a literature review.  It is a process where they will soon be submitting their lit review to me section by section and it will be necessary for me to return their writings to them in a timely fashion.   I have committed to returning them in 72 hours from class time.  I must admit that in the past, I have not been very timely but I hope that the scheduling system (see future posting) will enable me to fulfill my commitment.

Iowa Undergraduate Students: I am teaching an undergraduate course online as well. It is entitled Educational Technology and Design. This is an introduction to technology course that all students seeking a teaching credential must complete. What is unique about this group is that it is part of the UNI 2+2 program.  The 2+2 program works with the Des Moines Community Area College (DMACC) where students complete 2 years of college through DMACC and then 2 more years through UNI courses (primarily online.)  This is another great group of students who range from 20-year-old sophomores to non-traditional students who are parents with 4 kids.  Most of these students have full-time jobs which is why they are taking an online course.  

This course is completely asynchronous and we DON’T meet through video conferencing on a regular basis.  There are two occasions where I have met with each working group to discuss their progress on larger projects, but those are the only planned video conferencing experiences between the students and me.  I am highly recommending that they use Zoom.us or Apple Facetime or Google Hangout to meet online Face-to-Face.  They have tried chatting with one another but that doesn’t seem to be too successful.   I have provided them with information about how to create their own Zoom Rooms based upon the University’s Zoom.us license, but I will do that at the beginning of the group work next time.

It's going to be a great semester because of these students.

Communicating with Students Online

I am finding that one of the toughest parts of online learning is COMMUNICATION. 

Communication between teacher and students is ALWAYS important but there is another level needed for developing crisp communication lines when you are teaching online.

When you are working with online courses, your students are accessing your materials at different times on different days.  They have different circumstances and questions that often you don't anticipate.  Sometimes (definitely not often) they find problems with your online materials that aren't accessible, have conflicting due dates, link to the wrong materials, or are just plain wrong.  The problems need to be fixed and the students need to be informed about the corrections ASAP.   The key is to find a system for connecting with your students that is effective, efficient and useful.

Here are some types of communication that I have been using:

Syllabus - This is the most important tool because it is the premise for your class. This is actually true in any class, but it is especially needed for online courses so that they know the rules when they begin.

Agenda/Schedule/Calendar - I like to call this an agenda because it will may change as time progresses because of changes in the class or innovations that the teacher or students have identified.  It might also be because of unforeseen developments that have caused due dates to be changed or whatever.  It needs to be explicit about the time and date that assignments are due as well as the exact days and times when you and your class will be meeting online in a video conference if you are doing that.

Face-to-Face Video Conferencing (Weekly) - I prefer to ZOOM with my students on a weekly basis.  ZOOM is a wonderful video conferencing program that will allow me (and my students) to see each other at the same time.  This is limited to 24 students (and me) at a time on the screen.  (actually, it will allow up to 99 students at the same time but a single screen will only hold 25 people) It really provides a connection that may not even be seen in a regular class.  The downside of this is that when I teach evening class, sometimes we have to watch students eat their chili or sandwiches during class, but that is just part of the game. =-)

Face-to-Face Video Conferencing (Individual/Team) - Invariably, I meet with students outside of the weekly session sometime throughout the semester. This might be with a team of 3 or 4 students to discuss their progress on an assignment or it might involve meeting with them individually to discuss their topic for the Literature Review they will be writing this semester.

Weekly Emails - It is easy to overwhelm our students with emails.  You send out an email and then send another to clarify the one before.  I have had some students complain that they are getting overwhelmed with emails and lose track of what is important.  I had this same experience when I was taking a course on "teaching online courses" and it was frustrating.  I try to limit my emails to 2 emails per week - One on Monday and Another on Thursday.  The one on Monday is to wake people up for the week and the Thursday one is to comment on their progress so far and remind them of any Friday quizzes or assignments.

Announcements - We are using Blackboard 9 (BB9) for our LMS.  It has an announcement tool.  Actually, I use this Announcements tool to send out my weekly emails.  I write the announcement in BB9 and then click the box to send it out to the class.  This way I have sent them the email reminders and the content of that email is also available on our website in case they need a reminder (or they state that I never sent the email.)

Text Message Reminders - The biggest problem with online courses is described in the saying "Out of Sight - Out of Mind."  It is so easy to forget about things in a course where you never actually meet with the teacher or students.  My courses have a weekly meeting so that is less of a problem but it isn't gone.  I have successfully used a Text Messaging system called Remind.com.  I strongly recommend this system because it is easy to use; it is an "Opt-in" program where the students have the option of signing up or not; it allows you to schedule messages in the future; and it has a number of additional options that are being developed and released as we speak.   
       Some teachers feel that this is too much "spoon feeding" for the students, but I know that it has helped my students a great deal (even in on-campus face-to-face courses) because it provides an easy reminder.  They are ALL connected to their phones so this doesn't even need them to check their email.  It comes to them

Online Office Hours - This is a time when students can Zoom in with me to talk.  I sit at my desk with Zoom open on my computer and work on my many projects (like correcting assignments) while I wait for the Zoom doorbell to sound which indicates that a student has entered my ZoomRoom.  I would really like to have a system that would automatically contact me through my phone or tablet but I haven't found that with Zoom yet.  I could open Zoom on my phone and wait the same way I do at my desk but I am interested in having a special system that will send me a text with the student's name (since they signed in) and a special TOOT on my phone.  Haven't figured that one out yet, but will be looking for it.

So that is my perspective on communicating in online courses.  What do you do?  What have you done that is successful?  How can I improve my communication systems?  What has this inspired you to do?

Z

Reflections of Online Dr. Z

As I pointed out in my last posting, I am experiencing a new world this semester in that I am teaching ALL of my courses online. I have taught online courses in the past, but have always taught 1 or 2 in the classroom face-to-face with my students.  

This has been exciting but also challenging so I thought that I would chronicle my adventures through a blogging opportunity. In a previous posting, I asked my readers about whether I should create this additional blog in either WordPress or Facebook.  A variety of answers emerged.  Some suggested a Facebook Fan Page.  Others underscored the wonderful opportunity to learn WordPress.  One reader, a student in our program, suggested that this wife has had the most success by using both media.  She has a Facebook Fan page and a WordPress blog.  Whenever she posts to the WordPress blog, it will automatically appear on her fan page in Facebook.  All great ideas.

Finally, a golden word came from a friend of mine - CoolCatTeacher (Vicki Davis).  She suggested that I just use Dr. Z Reflects since it is already an active blogging venue.  I thought about this.  I considered my lack of consistency in posting to Dr. Z Reflects and how, if I started another blog, it would probably get worse instead of better. At least if I used Dr. Z Reflects, I would have a consistent topic for posting . . . but I wanted to have some exclusivity with this other blog - Online Dr. Z - so that those who were interested in online teaching would be able to just read those postings.

Suddenly, it dawned on me.  What if I could create a button that would search Dr. Z Reflects and return only those that were labeled with Online Dr Z.  Well, after some soul searching and web searching I found a way to do this.  You will see that I have created a button at the top of the right column. When you click on that, it will search for the Online Dr Z label and share those with you.  I know that the graphics are wonderful, but at least it seems to work right now.  

Give it a click and see what happens.  This will be an interesting experiment.  I have decided to commit to posting at least two posts per week for Online Dr. Z.  Additional Dr. Z Reflects postings will happen as well. 

Let's see what happens.   It should be fun . . . what do you think?

Z

I Need Your Help: WordPress or Facebook?

This semester I am teaching completely online.  I am finding it to be quite challenging and have been thinking about chronicling my journey. I want to write a journal of my experiences in teaching all of my classes online this semester and I am trying to select the medium. 

I will discuss what I have done, how I have organized it, my challenges, how I am doing things, my strategies, etc. I hope that this can be something that will help me organize my thoughts as well as provide a venue for ideas, suggestions and commiseration from other educators.

My challenge is the medium. I was all set to make this an opportunity to learn more about WordPress and how I can use it when hosted through my GoDaddy account. Conversely, it would be quite easy to set up an open facebook group. What are the advantages/disadvantages of each? Which could I use to connect with more people?

What are your thoughts?  What are your experiences?

Z