Teaching Tips and Questions

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  • 1.  How to triage in courses moving online

    Posted 03-20-2020 07:04

    I’m one of the lucky ones: I already teach online. I hope SRCD Commons will be a great space for engaging discussions about online education in the future. But now is probably not the time to discuss best practices, particularly for those moving their courses online for the first time. Now is the time to triage.

    My social media feeds are filled with instructors supporting each other through this transition. The most inspirational messages have encouraged instructors to be kind to themselves. They give us permission to make mistakes and let some things go. This situation is not normal, and we should not (cannot) hold ourselves to normal standards. So how do we choose what students really need and what we can give up, at least for now?

    When I started teaching online, synchrony was the first thing to go. My online class enrolls 250-275 students, so synchronous instruction just wasn’t feasible. I have online office hours for those who want to chat. Everything else is completely asynchronous. This works well, and most students love the flexibility.

    I have seen a lot of recommendations to use existing content rather than trying to create one’s own. I have mixed feelings about this one. I currently use a lot of existing content (e.g., YouTube videos, policy briefs, news stories) in my online class. Students seem to like the variety. However, there is a trade-off. Finding good content that is freely available and fits with one’s learning goals can be difficult and time-consuming. Some instructors might find it more efficient to simply create their own text or videos based on what they would have otherwise presented in class.

    What else can instructors do to triage during this transition period? Are there any strategies that have worked well for others?

    To end with some levity in this tumultuous time, check out Daniel Rairdin-Hale’s announcement about moving courses online.



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    Heather Kirkorian, Ph.D.
    Laura M. Secord Chair in Early Childhood Development
    Associate Professor | Human Development & Family Studies
    School of Human Ecology | University of Wisconsin-Madison
    4105 Nancy Nicholas Hall | 1300 Linden Drive
    Madison, WI 53706
    kirkorian@wisc.edu | 608-263-4020
    https://sites.google.com/site/kirkorianlab/
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  • 2.  RE: How to triage in courses moving online

    Posted 03-20-2020 13:31
    Thank you Heather for your knowledgeable perspective on this. I believe that one big problem is that many us--me included- haven't been properly trained in on-line teaching. So now in this panic--we are asked to put everything online with absolutely no guidance. The first inclination is to just put all face-to-face strategies online. But face-to-face and online approaches are so different. 

    So I appreciate your plea to triage. I will add that certain guiding principles may help this process; for example, instructors should really think about what information their students should walk away with at the end of the semester--and this should be reasonable --and orchestrate their online classrooms around this information. 

    I also suggest that, instructors assess (not necessarily for a grade) periodically whether students are processing what they are meant to---and adjust their practices to improve transmission of information. 

    Your large classes are quite different from small classes and this needs to be considered as well. 

    Breckie
    Director | NIH MARC Program
    Director | NSF Science of Learning: The role of gesture in mathematics learning: From research to practice
    Coordinator for Program Assessment | Assessment Information 
    Bernard J. Brommel Distinguished Research Professor


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    Ruth Church
    Dr.
    Northeastern Illinois University
    Chicago IL
    773-442-5837
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: How to triage in courses moving online

    Posted 03-20-2020 15:20
    Hi Heather!
     
    I know for me, I'm one of the lucky ones in that I've actually been teaching online courses and have taken advantage of the online course training we have at CSUN. But in this semester with teaching in person face to face classes; I've been having to think creatively about our online platform of Canvas and how to use it to the best of my ability and what will help the students. 

    I've been making sure that the assignments I give the students- which are usually 1 point thought assignments, are still easy and allow them to reflect on their own personal experiences; so for example,  for my socialization lecture, I ask the question: "In your family, are there any practices or customs you have that help you celebrate and know about your culture/race/ethnicity?" This is usually after I have given the lecture on ethnic-racial socialization. So, as a South Asian, I usually use myself to tell them how we celebrated certain holidays (e.g., Diwali; Durga Puja) in that we would dress up in Indian clothes; my mother would cook certain foods like rice; sweets, so that by my example they know what it would mean to celebrate and know about culture.

    I have also been teaching now utilizing an asynchronous model, meaning that the students can log in at any time of that week, watch the lecture; do the one point assignment, instead of making it at the normal in person class time of 3:30-6:15 Wednesdays, because it is difficult for students who are caregivers to family members or who are parents themselves.

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    Meeta Banerjee
    California State University Northridge
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: How to triage in courses moving online

    Posted 03-20-2020 17:37
    Thanks for your insights, Breckie and Meeta!

    I agree wholeheartedly that this transition will be different depending on the class size and structure. The challenges faced by large classes will be different than those faced by small classes (just like in face-to-face instruction). In both cases, I think we agree that mediocre online courses will be good enough in this moment.

    Also to clarify: When I suggested that some instructors might prefer to create their own content, I was thinking of relatively low-tech solutions. For instance, the first time I taught a writing-intensive class for a small group of students, I distributed readings and daily "discussion notes" in the form of Word documents - no images, no audio, no video. We emailed drafts back and forth, using red font to insert written comments/feedback (no track changes back then). The first time I taught my larger online course, I simply typed my lecture notes in the notes section below each PowerPoint slide and posted them on the course website for students to download/read. It wasn't elegant, but it worked well enough at the time. In the absence of adequate training and preparation time, these relatively low-tech solutions might be sufficient for now.

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    Heather Kirkorian, Ph.D.
    Laura M. Secord Chair in Early Childhood Development
    Associate Professor | Human Development & Family Studies
    School of Human Ecology | University of Wisconsin-Madison
    4105 Nancy Nicholas Hall | 1300 Linden Drive
    Madison, WI 53706
    kirkorian@wisc.edu | 608-263-4020
    https://sites.google.com/site/kirkorianlab/
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    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: How to triage in courses moving online

    Posted 03-21-2020 14:41
    Here's an article that was circulated around. While I think the author's approach is a little too snarky and dismissive of the importance of doing a good job for our students, she does speak in clear ways about specific ways to triage:

    https://anygoodthing.com/2020/03/12/please-do-a-bad-job-of-putting-your-courses-online/

    My own suggestions would be to mostly not try to learn many new technologies.

    As noted already, using tools that you're already familiar with seems to be the way to go. You can do a lot just with the learning platform from your school (Blackboard, etc.), the Microsoft suite, and Youtube (both for recording content and accessing content).

    I, for one, am one who doesn't think trying to go synchronous for large lecture classes is a good idea. If I was teaching a graduate seminar this semester, with a small number of motivated students, I think I would try it but I don't think it's likely to be successful with a large number of students in a general lecture class.

    Here's two specific triage tips of mine:
    1. Put together an online rubric for grading written assignments. A little work on the front end and you can grade written assignments relatively quickly.
    2. For online assessments, you can use your textbook's test bank to develop a lot of questions instantly. Almost all of them are available to download. If you have say 60-70 questions from the chapter, you can quickly put together a pool of questions that then allows you to set up assessments where every student has a slightly different test by having questions randomly selected for each student.

    I think this is a really important question for a lot of teachers and it's great that you put it out there.

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    Matthew Mulvaney
    Syracuse University
    Syracuse NY
    mmulvane@syr.edu
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    Original Message