One of the secret ingredients in online courses: TAs!

I’ve just spent the morning thinking about Teaching Assistant (TA) roles for a large online course that I am designing and I thought I would take a moment to share.  It's a second year university course and I have a vision to dseign it such that it can be effective with large enrollment numbers between 200 and 1000 learners.  It's not a MOOC per se, it's just a large online course.

One of the secret ingredients that I will design into the mix is specialized TA roles so I am trying to develop a useful models for segmenting the TA cadre into different roles to provide a range of learner supports that complements the role of the senior instructor.  This will also be a customized model that is tailored to this particular course's subject matter as well.

If we think of student-to-(instructor/TA) interaction from a service perspective, these are some of the the tasks that TAs can contribute to:

1. TAs can mark student deliverables and provide written feedback on deliverables to students
2. TAs can monitor the Q&A discussion forum, and be active by asking and answering questions (this can help promote student engagement)
3. TAs can conduct optional Q&A sessions in a synchronous web-mediated fashion (like online office hours - this can help promote student engagement with students who have a preference for synchronous interaction)
4. TAs can contribute to a social media stream for the online course. The course can have a twitter account, announcements and motivating tweets (such as announcing a cool solution to a particular problem that has been just posted on the discussion forum, or a current event in the field, etc) could be made by TAs.
5. TAs could perform other tasks that are specific to the particular course design? (to be determined?)

The pool of available TAs can be ‘triaged’, depending on their skills and experience, into the role that best fits them.  Also, some TAs can be assigned more than one role as long as the work balance falls into the allotted number of hours for their effort over the term.  Naturally, TAs will require a solid training experience before the course starts so all the concurrent activities can be synchronized and all the expectations can be aligned.

Do you have any useful models for various role definitions for TAs in Online Courses?  Also, do you have any training guides developed specifically for TAs in online courses?   Leave a comment below and let's help each other out.

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Engage! Top 6 Best Practices that Foster Learner Engagement with Online Instructional Video

I've been watching Philip Guo at the University of Rochester closely since I stumbled across his great research on instructional video usage in MOOCs. This month, he is publishing a paper for the Association for Computing Machinery Conference on Learning at Scale that has very useful recommendation on ways to foster learner engagement with online instructional video. I love this paper and you should take the time to read it in detail because it contains more than 6 recommendations. However, for those in a rush, here's my interpretation of the Top 6 of his recommendations that resonated most with me:

1. Video length can significantly affect engagement. Shorter videos are much more engaging to learners. Invest in pre-production lesson planning to segment videos into chunks that are no longer than 6-7 minutes in length, if possible. 
2. Videos that intersperse an instructor’s talking head (where the instructor looks directly into the camera) with slides are more engaging than slides alone. Invest in post-production editing to display the instructor’s head at opportune times in the video. Avoid displaying the instructor’s head for the entire video unless there are no slides that accompany the presentation. 
3. Videos produced with a more personal feel could be more engaging than studio recordings. In videos where there are few slides and more video of the instructor’s talking head, try filming in an informal setting related to the subject matter of the video (i.e. office, lab, in the field, etc.) instead of a formal production studio. 
4. For step-by-step problem solving walkthroughs, Khan Academy-style tablet drawing tutorials are more engaging than slides alone. 
5. Videos where instructors speak fairly fast and with high enthusiasm are more engaging (especially for instructors who's native language is the same as the language of the course). The pace can be accelerated compared to conventional face-to-face lectures. This also has the indirect positive effect of keeping video length shorter (see point 1 above). During post production, consider removing some speech pauses including “umms” and “ahhs” if they are present too frequently. 
6. Learners engage differently with lecture-style conceptual videos compared to step-by-step walkthrough procedural tutorial videos. For lectures-style, focus more on the providing a good first-watch experience from beginning to end. For step-by-step walkthrough tutorials, make it easy to rewatch and/or skim the video. For example, clearly number the “step” in the process as the process develops so that students can easily orient themselves in the tutorial video when they re-watch relevant parts. 

What do you think of these 6 best practices?  Do you have experience with any of them?  Would you add any others to this list?

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