Wednesday, November 12, 2008

More Strategies for Managing Online Burn-Out: Tips 4-6




Tip #4: Collaborate!
Form a learning community with your fellow faculty and friends (even if it’s a small group), and meet at least once a month to dialog about your experiences, best practices, and E-learning literature. TWU has an Emerging Technology learning community that you may wish to join. It’s amazing what this hour can do for your spirit! Social support is essential for burn-out prevention. Working together, across disciplines, can reduce feelings of isolation and can even lead to vita-enhancing projects.

For example, two years ago, I was asked to lead a learning community focusing on E-learning. Aside from the social aspects of the activity, five of us from the group explored asynchronous audio communication, implemented it in our online classrooms, and facilitated a study which led to a recent publication in the Journal of Learning and Teaching Online at http://jolt.merlot.org/vol14no3/oomen-early_0908.htm

Increasing interaction and collaboration may sound like "more work," but it actually can help you manage and even ease the load of grading, planning, creating--and even research! As your students interact and dialog using Web 2.0 tools, you don't have to keep downloading and printing out formal assignments. You can blend the informal with the formal. As you see and hear their responses, you are better able to asses whether they are really "getting it." Collaborating with peers, across disciplines, can also stimulate creative teaching strategies, increase your social support, and even help with course development. Form a learning community with your fellow faculty and friends (even if it’s a small group), and meet at least once a month to dialogue about your experiences, best practices, and E-learning literature. It’s amazing what this hour can do for your spirit! Social support is essential for burn-out prevention. Working together, across disciplines, can reduce feelings of isolation and can even lead to vita-enhancing projects.


Tip #5: Establish boundaries but keep your social presence.
To reduce the “24/7” feeling some of us experience, inform your students of days and times that you will be available for office hours (live) either in person, online chat or by phone. Also, consider asynchronous mechanisms of communication, such as a Q&A board that you check twice a week. .

Tip #6: Include informal, non graded assignments to stimulate discussion and increase learning comprehension.
This can also reduce the amount of grading required of the instructor, but allows the students to stay connected to the content. Self quizzes, online games (speak to one of our TWU instructional designers), web tutorials (ex: breast health quiz at http://www.komen.org), online chats, wikis, online scavenger hunts, digital story telling, and blogs are just a few tools used for informal application.

3 comments:

  1. Dr. Oomen-Early,

    I am really enoying this set of tips for avoiding burnout. Have you thought about publishing this in one of the journals in your list? :-) It is so practical and filled with many great resources. I am glad you posted it here, but it is so good, I think a wider audience would benefit from your suggestions.

    Robin

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  2. These are some excellent suggestions! I especially like the list in your earlier post of the various conferences that are available for e-learning interests. It's nice to hear someone else talk about feelings that I'm sure all of us have experienced (at least to some degree) at one point or another.

    I will also add that your advice on becoming active in organizations or groups with similar interests is an idea that works! Surrounding myself with people who have similar interests, creative ideas, and a willingness to share, is always a boost to my mood and gets those wheels in my mind turning again. I appreciate you sharing your ideas, feelings, and solutions that worked for you!


    Heidi

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  3. Thank you all for this feedback! Robin, I think Magna pubs is going to use this as a feature for Online Classroom, but we'll see! I would love to hear/read any ideas you have as well.

    Perhaps I can share this with faculty during faculty development--for our Online Educator Symposium--in the Fall of 2009???

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