Did you find time to disconnect over Spring Break!

“Daily exposure to high technology – computers, smart phones, video games, search engines like Google and Yahoo—stimulates brain cell alteration and neurotransmitter release, gradually strengthening new neural pathways in our brains while weakening old ones. Because of the current technological revolution, our brains are evolving right now – at a speed like never before” (p. 1).

Small, G., & Vorgon, G. (2008). iBrain: Surviving the technological alteration of the modern mind. New York: Harper Collins.

Distance Education's Spring 2012 Snapshot Report

by Leslie Lindsey, Instructional Designer, Office of Distance Education

At the start of every semester, the Office of Distance Education publishes a "Snapshot Report" with updated information about TWU's online and blended degree programs and courses, student demographics, and online semester credit hour production. You can find the Spring 2012 report here, and previous reports are posted on the Distance Education homepage.

For Spring 2012, did you know:

• only 53% of all TWU students take at least one online or blended course? That means fully 47% of students take only face-to-face courses,
• that TWU does not offer any fully-online bachelor's degree programs? The closest the university does offer are five different degree completion programs online, all through the College of Arts and Sciences. (You can find a list of TWU online degrees and certificates here.)
• nearly two-thirds of TWU students enrolled only in online courses are completing a graduate degree?
• approximately 60% of students taking an online or blended course at TWU are under 30 years old?
• close to half of TWU's online and blended classes have fewer than 20 students? Only 5% of online or blended classes have more than 50 students.
• over 40% of students taking an online or blended class at TWU live in the Metroplex?
• less than half of one percent of students in an online or blended class at TWU live outside the state of Texas? And of those, the overwhelming majority reside in Oklahoma, Arkansas, or Louisiana.

And remember:

• a fully online class is defined as one in which 85% or more of the planned instruction takes place online, including class meetings in Wimba or virtual conferencing.
• a blended/hybrid class is defined as one in which a majority -- greater than 50% but less than 85% -- of the planned instruction occurs online, with a specified number of on-campus meetings.

What have been some of your preconceptions or stereotypes about online students or classes at TWU? Were there any surprises for you from this semester's Snapshot Report?

Let the Group Do the Work

Move communication on discussion board forums away from the individual model toward the collective model by requiring groups of student to communicate and collaborate in the Groups area. Once consensus is reached on the content of the posting from the group, one member posts the item to the Course Discussion area. Inform students that you will look in on the groups. It is helpful to add a participation dimension to your grading rubric for discussions. You spend your time responding to these collective posts in the main area.

Everyone Believes They Know How to Work in a Group

In this blogger series on group work, the Office of Distance Education takes a look at how group work should be managed.


Guidelines and rules should promote interdependence rather than independent work within the group.

Required reporting allows the group to see problems early in the process.

Groups should have guidelines for behavior that all in the group agree upon.

Group work must fit the skills and abilities of the group.

Groups must feel that the work is divided fairly among members and that all activities support the product.

The group must own their guidelines and division of labor.

Group decisions must be supported by the members of the group.

Full participation is a requirement.

"I Hate Group Work and So Do My Students"

This was said by a faculty member. They are certainly welcome to their opinion. Here is another viewpoint.

Instructors who:

“…continue to emphasize one-sided lecture methods are violating an important principle of our brain: Essentially we are social beings and our brains grow in a social environment. Because we often forge meaning through socialization, the whole role of student-to-student discussion is vastly underutilized. When used properly, cooperative learning is highly brain compatible. Talking, sharing, and discussing are critical; we are biologically wired for language and communicating with one another” (p. 93).

References

Jensen, E. (1998). Teaching with the brain in mind. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Online education is not yet the disruptive innovation it needs to be: Looking through the lenses of "the job to be done".

Guest Blogger: Carissa Enright, RN, MSN, PMHNP, Associate Clinical Professor, Clinical Coordinator for BS Nursing Students, College of Nursing, T. Boone Pickens Institute of Health Sciences - Dallas Center

 The “job to be done” is one of the constructs that come out of Disruptive Innovation. I am not familiar with business management, so the recent panel discussion about technology was my introduction into the idea of disruptive innovation made popular by Clayton Christensen from Harvard Business School. By looking into how the rapid development of new products has allowed some companies to grow and thrive while others became obsolete, Christensen developed a new business concept. Basically, an inferior product can supplant a better product if it meets the job the consumer needs done. This is true in all sorts of industries, not just technology. Therefore, in this blog I will focus on the industry I am familiar with – online education.

As an early adopter of online education, I have enjoyed the challenge and excitement of finding a new way to reach students. The endless hours of teaching myself to solve common problems in new ways is fun and productive time. But I know that my peers do not share this joy – instead they resist.

When the computer first appeared on my desk, the technology frightened me and, along with most of the faculty, I felt resistance to learning how to use them. But I soon learned to use the new technology to do jobs that computers are good at. This was a disruptive innovation that eventually made typewriters obsolete. Faculty embraces online technology that improves their research and the ability to publish their work.

So, the question is: If the faculty who do not choose to teach in the online environment are not resisting the technology, why are there still so few of us adopters?

Before I go into more detail about how to look at this through the lenses of disruptive innovation, I would like to share a couple of YouTube clips. The first is probably the easiest visual representation of the “disruptive innovation” business concept. You can see it here: http://youtu.be/DaKgMcFP4Mo

The faculty who do not come to our presentations, the ones who ignore this blog and who even distrust online education are those “non-consumers” at the bottom of the diagram in this video. These faculty members are ripe for disruptive innovation.

The other YouTube video that I think is instructive belongs to 6-part series of Clayton Christensen as he explains his concept of the “job to be done” in a presentation to the 2009 ECS National Forum on Education Policy conference. The series starts with this clip: http://youtu.be/ddtBiOo7uME

The series is rather lengthy and if you want to skip through the introductions, set your curser around 8 minutes into the video. That is where Christensen introduces the concept of “job to be done.” This is the new concept I want to focus on because I think there needs to be a change in marketing online instruction to faculty who have not adopted the modality.

Just like in the “milkshake” example Christensen describes in the video, surveying the faculty for those things that would improve the online education product, is the wrong approach. Let me explain what I mean by this. We have a product: on-line education. And the consumer of that product: faculty with expertise to share. To market this product to this consumer, we have asked the question: “Why won’t more faculty learn to use these advances in education?” According to Christensen, that is the wrong question.

Instead, we need to ask: “What job does the faculty want the product to do?” It may seem obvious that faculty are interested in meeting the learning needs of a new generation of technology-savvy students. But is that true? I do not believe that is the job the faculty needs this product to do.

What jobs do faculty need done?

One job is to deliver information. How many years have we been saying, “The lecture is dead?” Yet, when we go to conventions, when we pay to hear guest speakers, what are they doing? How can we really believe the lecture is dead when it appears to be an effective way to deliver information? When I am standing in a classroom looking into the eyes of my students, I know I can deliver information. Sure, the online environment allows me to use different tools to deliver information, but why change what already works? It is no surprise that there is resistance to changing an age-old method of delivering information.

Another job is to evaluate student learning. Faculty sees the online teaching environment as particularly hazardous in this regard. There is an obsessive need to prevent the student from cheating. When I listen to faculty talk about on-line education I hear a lot about the many new ways students use technology to defraud the faculty. A major hurtle in getting faculty to accept and adopt online education is how to address this fear.

But the most important job that faculty wants done is to improve their use of time. I have talked to more than one faculty member who said to me, “I am hoping I will get to retire before I have to learn any more software programs.” When faculty members have to divide their time to conduct research, teach and give service to their community, where is the time to learn a new model and method of teaching? I think faculty are waiting for the product that produces time.

Simply put, the late adopters and non-adopters of online education are waiting for online education to do a job it is not now doing.

Bain's View of Teaching

As we come up for a breath of fresh air after a frenzy of start-of-the-semester events, we can now concentrate on the main task at hand: Teaching!

 

There are several different ways of thinking about teaching. One approach looks almost entirely at the actions and behaviors of the instructor. In this approach, instruction is viewed as something that is provided to students. This approach is often characterized in ways that assume that learning cannot take place unless some type of teaching has happened.

 

In a study conducted by Bain (2004), he suggested highly effective instructors in higher education “thought of teaching as anything they might do to help and encourage students to learn” (p. 49). Bain points out that these instructors paid attention to creating an environment for learning. They also found teaching to be “an important and serious intellectual (or artistic) act” (p. 49).

 

Bain considered four questions in characterizing this view of teaching. From these questions, we can see a complex and rich approach to considering teaching.

1. What should my students be able to do intellectually, physically or emotionally as a result of their learning?
2. How can I best help and encourage them to develop those abilities and the habits of the heart and mind to use them.
3. How can my students and I best understand the nature, quality, and progress of their learning?
4. How can I evaluate my efforts to foster that learning? (p. 49)

 Great questions to consider as we continue in the sememster! Define, in your own terms, what students should know or be able to do as a result of your teaching. Define your actions to help students achieve those goals. Think carefully about what feedback students need to understand how they are progressing. Consider how you will know if your efforts are successful.

 

References:

 

Bain, K, (2004). What the best college teachers do. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.