Engaging Students Online

John Robertson, Learning Technologies UW Oshkosh,Presentation at College of Education Professional Development Day, 22 January 2013

Just like face to face classes, sort of

Why am I here?What is the value of this?What do I get from this?Why do I care?Who owns this?

The internet has cats

https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/6952760064/h406145DD/

The internet has cats in boxes

https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/6952756736/hD0403B03/

The internet has lots of cats

https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/6975174912/h8F5EC6A7/

and a billion other things

Twitter, Facebook, Ebay, Amazon, Farmville, more cat videos, facts and theories about everything, that song / music video/ tv episode, ...

The challenge of mediated presence

In a classroom your presence and personality play a big part in communicating your passion and engaging students. Structure, resources, and environments play a role.

In an online environment the balance shifts.

The medium is the message (a)

types of engagement speed of engagementnature of engagement

How do expectations change?Facebook, Twitter, D2L, email, phone, text chat

Mediated environments?

three kinds of experimentation● a safe space ● a space to try, explore, and fail● a space to find a voice

The medium is the message (b)

what activities are you doing, why are you doing them this way?

eg forum discussionssubstance/ style/ spelling/ citations/ evidence/

Do you grade them as a forum discussion or as an essay? is there a difference?

Everyone likes free stuff

● course outline● lecture notes● lecture recordings ● bibliography (annotated/ linked)

there are good reasons why you might not want to provide these for your students but it's straightforward to do so have you articulated why you haven't

Attendance or learning

both obviously but...

what are you assessing in your course?

eg all notes online and podcasts might mean students don't need to turn up; there are lots of reasons why this is not good, but if they're engaged online does that count - and why?

If you own the server, you make the rules, but with consequences

An example:● Graduate course● Students given forums● Some specific subforums for particular

courses but for general use● Post politely critical of lack of course

feedback appears● Extensive discussion ensues● ...and the thread is deleted by Faculty mod ● Forum use vanishes

Badges, levels, experience, roles

Online community profiles and digital badges

Much of this is about identity and feedback● capture something specific about

themselves / create context● make some aspect of the digital tangible● describe / award others● get feedback

e-Learning and Digital Cultures

https://www.coursera.org/course/edc

P2PU - School of Ed

https://p2pu.org/en/schools/school-of-ed-pilot/

What are they doing right?

How can you do it?

Saylor

Educational Psychology Course http://www.saylor.org/courses/psych303/

Make art - ds106

http://assignments.ds106.us/