I am having one of those "I'm the 'flake." moments. I'm soon teaching a hybrid traditional/on-line class. I agreed to this months ago. I've been half consciously looking forward to this. I've been thinking about the topics to cover. I've been thinking about the common features of my past syllabi and what to keep and what to get rid of. I've written a couple of tentative exams and problem sets.
I have no fucking idea how to run an on-line class.
I have no idea how to conduct the class part. I have no idea aside from "Read this: ____ and open this: ____ and solve problems 4, 17 and 23." how to conduct it. I mean I can assign the work, but how do I do the teaching? Seriously.
How do I do the teaching?
How do I give a test?
I don't know what the fuck I was thinking. I can't do this. I'm totally unprepared.
Contact your university's course management software helpdesk. If they use Blackboard, there are online tutorials or someone can help you learn to create tests, etc. I video tape myself and post the lectures to youtube then embed the videos on Blackboard for my purely online class. There are many journal articles on how classes are taught online using discussion boards, chat functions, etc. You can do it!
ReplyDeleteSubstitute "cosmology" for "online" and I could have written this post. What do I know about the origin of the Universe, and why did I volunteer to teach a course on it? A few galaxy redshifts I took in my youth are about it.
ReplyDeleteHow did you hear my daily internal monologue (usually restricted to my head) this week??? I'm trying to gear up for a conference presentation that I signed up for and now wonder, "WTF did I have in mind when I sent this abstract in b/c this isn't even in my subject field???!!!"
ReplyDeleteGood luck!!! I have a friend who always tells me, "No matter what, you already know 20 x what they know, so relax and just act like you meant for the PowerPoint online to follow your lecture two weeks later." It sometimes works for me; I hope it works for you.
I don't provide lectures. I provide twice as much reading and writing, and a lively discussion board.
ReplyDeleteMy university provides a service where they record my lectures- the visual is my power point slides, and the audio is my voice. Students can then download these. Why would these not work for your situation? If they can do it, do a fake lecture and let them record it. if they cant, do a fake lecture, set up a tripod in front of the screen showing your powerpoint slides, and mike yourself so the audio is your voice. Then upload to Youtube. I prefer the Uni doing though, they should give you technical support if they're making you do this.
ReplyDeleteYou can do it! I had to figure this out days before class started with a 6-week old at home. Not too hard-- seriously. I did watch the lame-o Blackboard orientation video and played around with it. Luckily, they do make the software pretty self-explanatory (even a silverback could do it!).
ReplyDeleteI keep my hybrid classes practically identical to my traditional classes. For the most part, this involves reading and discussion threads online. This is where I "teach," just like I would in the classroom. I would NEVER post video or audio lectures, though I have posted the occasional powerpoin). Totally not my style. I also throw in reading comprehension quizzes for flava. Although I am pedagogically opposed to multiple choice and true/false quizzes (I'm a philosopher dammit!), it is so awesome that Blackboard grades and records the results.
My advice-- keep it as close as possible to your regular courses, especially since you'll be moving back and forth between the classroom and the computer on a weekly basis.
I can't imagine teaching online WITHOUT some teaching video, even 5-10 minute chunks, things I would do in a regular class. It is beyond me how you can do it without a steady YouTube diet.
ReplyDeleteEating Low Salt-- I think this may be discipline-specific. In philosophy (and some other humanities), we read and then sit around and discuss the text for the most part. Whatever "teaching" or "lecturing" I need to do, I can do in the discussion threads. I will say that my discussion threads are organized around central themes in the text that I have designated as significant. If I need to do something beyond that, I'll post a powerpoint as a means of introducing a major theory.
ReplyDeleteIt could be worse. My former institution made me take a semester long course in how to run an on-line course! Biggest waste of time in my life (and during my first year of teaching, when I was doing new course preps at the same time). Trust me—you can learn to do this on your own. I guarantee your institution has some sort of task force to help you do this. You just have to find them.
ReplyDeleteOur moderating colleagues have completely stopped listing hits per week because even they can't refresh enough to maintain the illusion.
ReplyDeleteIt is really quite sad, and to answer someone else, I come around so I can watch the page die.
Your self-aggrandizing bullshit and condescension will taste pretty bitter in your mouths when you realize this sham can't last.
Ah yes, the death throes. I cannot wait. I'd say this coming Wednesday. Just watch. The page will go down, nary a peep of "We're sorry that we're such douchebags." The moderators will slink off.
I love the smell of blog-corpse in the morning.
First of all, breathe.
ReplyDeleteMy cohorts above, with the exception of Anon, have all given some good advice. Somethings to keep in mind though. If you are teaching a hybrid, you don't have to give tests online. Give them on days that the class meets. This will cut down on cheating and take a lot of stress off of you in terms of learning a new system.
See if you can get a program called Respondus from your IT department. It allows you to create tests in a Word file and then will upload those tests into Blackboard without any issues. That program has made my life so much better, especially with multiple choice questions.
Lastly, I think what you do with the online portion of the class depends on your discipline. I teach in the social sciences so I put in lots of reading and discussions based on that reading. Videos really aren't necessary.
Now breathe again and think "I can do this."
Chizzill., Wombatski. You can run a hybrid course much the same way that you run an onsite course; just use your content management system as a vehicle to deliver extra content and a venue to host discussion.
ReplyDeleteWhen teaching hybrid courses, I use the classroom session for lecture/guided-practice and then, on the day that we'd meet otherwise, require some sort of assignment requiring reflection. Discussion board posts and/or brief writing assignments work nicely. If you require DB posts, though, require that the students make substantive comments and respond to each others' posts in kind. You can get a lot of mileage out of getting the students talking, and as an added plus, you can require students to post questions about things they don't understand and start getting some informal peer tutoring going on that way. As we all know, the best way to learn something is to teach it.
As far as content for non-meeting days goes, I create or post videos that they need to watch. For example, how-this-works videos that demonstrate skills the students need to practice on their own are both useful and popular. You can always create a narrated PPT lecture about something you didn't cover in class, too. Just use Camtasia/Captivate to record it. As long as you're not tech-phobic and know how to give good PPT, you'll be OK.
Also, just as the other posters suggested, contact your university's teaching-tech resources people; they likely have a system set up to teach you how to teach online.
Oh...one last thing... I strongly, strongly, strongly suggest setting up a "virtual attendance" quiz due on the date that you'd have class were it not a hybrid course. That'll keep the students from mentally buggering off during the week.
I've been doing a hybrid ethics course for a while..
ReplyDeleteIt started from the need to squeeze a course into a time that wouldn't give enough class time, so I had them do all the reading quizzes on-line and had a limited discussion board set up.
Now I've figured out that it works pretty well. I do the "in person" discussion part and tell them that they are responsible for on-line discussions. I ask a question every week and they post a substantial (1-2 page) response that I grade. I don't intervene in the on-line discussions... that's their territory. IF someone misses the substantial response deadline, it's their assignment to respond with a 1-2 paragraph response, to EVERY on-time post. I have 50 student sections, so I put them in groups of 10... just to keep the discussion manageable.
They also do on-line essay exams and this semester they have a group paper writing project that involves watching movies related to the ethical problems we discuss in class. The group must decide on the movie to watch. Watch it (together or not... I don't care) and discuss it on-line. They then post drafts of papers and produce ONE final paper for me, which they turn in on paper. I don't know how it will work, but I figure the watching of movies I'd otherwise probably show in class counts as "class" time, as does the discussion.
I do see them every week, but I've cut a MWF 3 credit class down to two meetings before spring break and one after...
My best advice is to make friends with the course management folks and brainstorm with them about how to achieve your course goals -- I've always been pleasantly surprised by the results.
There are lots of good suggestions above. What works best definitely varies with discipline, but I'd agree that the most effective use of online platforms is to facilitate some form of written discussion and/or peer workshopping (a lot of the online interactions for my writing courses are of the post an idea, outline, partial draft, etc. of something by x deadline/comment on your small group members' using a rubric I provide by y deadline, usually a few days later, for a total project turnaround of the week in between two face to face classes, sort).
ReplyDeleteOf course, you could also use the online part of the class to deliver lectures and/or demonstrations, saving your face to face time for discussion and other forms of interaction. I'm not sure that's a good idea, however; I think students would check out of a long online lecture even more easily than they check out of a face to face one. At the very least, it would need to be followed by reflection, or a quiz, or something along those lines.
For quick presentations/lectures that combine screenshots and audio, screencastomatic (http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/ ; basically a free, easy-to-use version of camtasia, mentioned above) works well, and doesn't require a video camera.
As far as I know, there's no way to conduct tests that could be cheated on via Google or consulting the textbook online; those need to take place in class (and even some online-only classes have in-person exams for this reason; of course, guaranteeing that the person who shows up to take the exam is who he/she says he/she is is another issue). Tests that require reflection on materials obscure enough not to be covered on the internet or in the textbook, reading quizzes that it would be more of a hassle to pass by googling the answers than by simply doing the reading, tests involving brand-new problems that require application rather than memorization of methods and formulas, etc., all work fine.
Oh wow, thanks guys. Want to hear something really embarrassing? I didn't even realize this system we use (you can use it for regular classes too, so I've been, but not to the extent I'm going to need it) was Blackboard. I hear people talking about Blackboard all the time, and I used it as a grad student from the student side, but never as the teacher. It's called something different here, but it's actually a version of Blackboard. I feel even stupider, but relieved. I never heard anyone at CM use the name we use for it at my school, so I didn't realize the help I'd get here would be applicable.
ReplyDeleteI figured out how to start a discussion forum and make exams. I'll probably heed the advice to give the real exams face-to-face, but it's much easier than I was expecting. It was a lot of "fear of the unknown" (which is abating) and a little bit of ego (because, afterall, this is my first time and I'm going to make mistakes, and that gives me anxiety, but I have to just get over it.) But even the ego part is subsiding because it's really not that hard.
Thanks for talking me off the ledge.
I used PhotoPeach to make some mini-lessons for my high school classes. Has anyone ever used a PhotoPeach for a college class? Is it going to look kindergarten, or can I do that?
And I don't know if anyone else has ever used any of these, but for my hopeless traditional students, I sometimes send them to Khan Academy for some YouTube support from outside. They're long, and nothing is perfect when you don't do it yourself, but for a quick fix and just accepting someone else's lesson, I find them a pretty good pret-a-porter option. I imagine he made them using one of the above mentioned techniques, and if I can figure those out before the end of the term, I'll make some of my own. But I don't want to bite off more than I can chew, so I'm going to work on that a while.
And obviously, the blackboard tutorials helped.
I feel a zillion times better :)
I'm trying to figure out how to weight various aspects of participating in the discussions. My husband took a similar class (non-majors science for education students) and they had to make a comment of their own, and a follow up comment to someone else's. Or maybe it was answer a question and ask another. I forget, I was pregnant when this was going on and if I ask him now he'll know I was yessing him when he was always talking to me about it. (When he has to replace his shoes with slippers the size of a Thanksgiving turkey, he can ignore me with impunity.) Any suggestions?
PS excuse my run on sentences etc. I'm manically relieved, as well as pressed for time.
Assign them specific questions, as you mentioned, and then ask them open-ended discussion questions that each person much respond to X times.
ReplyDeleteAsk them to write a single-page paper considering the theory behind those problems.
Send them links to videos or interactive maps or relative content.
These are the three hallmarks of online teaching. Discussion, short essay, online links. Lecture in person and create online multiple choice for a blend of exams.
You'll be fine.
Don't worry, Wombat, Blackboard naming confusion is pretty common. Bb swallowed up at least one competitor (WebCT) in the last 5 years or so, and may also do customized versions with customized names (not sure about that; some of the others do). What's really confusing is that there are now a bunch of different "Blackboard" platforms out there, at least some of them transitional from WebCT, and each existing in several versions, so the exact features will vary from school to school. But the basic features people mentioned should be there, and your school's own help should be relevant; just keep in mind that the different versions can get confusing if you search for help on the internet at large.
ReplyDeleteI think hybrid will work pretty well for a science concepts for non-majors class (I'm sure there are workarounds, but I'd think a more lab-centered class would be harder to teach online). One more hint: if you want a fairly substantive initial post and/or reply, it helps to specify a word count ("write 300-500 words reflecting on. . ."). This also helps with grading; I use only 3 or 4 possible point totals (either no post/late and/or incomplete/ontime and complete or no post/last and/or incomplete/ontime and average/ontime and above average), and the "incomplete" category covers posts that fall significantly below the requested word range. In general, it's a good idea to up the participation part of the course grade a bit from what you'd do in a traditional class (I generally go for 15% to 20% of the final grade). And I allot the same number of possible points to replies as I do to initial posts: the replies are shorter but there are more of them, and this approach gets across the idea that having a conversation with others in the class is as important as expressing one's own ideas.
Glad to hear you're feeling more on track. While there are lots of detail work and planning involved in creating online activities (as there are in any kind of pedagogy that goes beyond a lecture/test/paper format), it's really not so hard, and the online tools, though they'll occasionally have you tearing your hair out trying to get them to do what (you think) they're supposed to do, are generally pretty good.