6 to 7 minutes of instructional video - that's the sweet spot!

I have sat through many 50 minute lectures in my life.  Notice how I wrote that sentence "sat through"... was I always engaged?  Probably not.  Is it realistic to be engaged for a full 50 minute block?  Probably not.  So how does one go about maximizing engagement in a distance course with video.  Well, is the best strategy to record a 50 minute lecture video?  Probably not.

First, let's consider how people typically "consume" video online on a daily basis.  Most of us watch trailers for new movies, we watch our favourite sitcom the day after the live broadcast, we watch funny videos that we see posted on Facebook, we watch sports highlights from last night's hockey game, we watch music videos, we watch news segments that include interviews, we watch Ted Talks, we watch some movies on Netflix, we watch some commercials (mainly because we are forced to!), we watch a how-to video on YouTube, we watch a funny segment from a late night talk show comedy, etc.  If you assembled all this video consumption together to try to describe the average length of the videos that we watch online, then I think you would agree that the length of the average video that most of us watch online is short.  The nice people at One Productions have built this infographic that illustrates this point.  Short is the average.  So we are most accustomed to short videos when we are consuming videos online.

Second, let's consider video in education.  Learning a concept is a much different business than watching a talking dog video or being Rick Rolled.  So what would the ideal video length be for the educational context?   Philip Guo at the University of Rochester has shared his recent findings regarding a preliminary analysis of videos used in edX math and science courses.  His take home message is that "the average engagement time of any video maxes out at 6 minutes, regardless of its length." Also, his findings showed that the longer the video, the less engagement students had with it, on average. So if you want to create instructional videos for learning then don't go much more than 6-7 minutes, if possible.  Consider adopting the strategy of breaking your long videos into short segments and you'll likely be doing the students a service.

What do you think about Philip Guo's findings?  Will it change how you create instructional video for your course?

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Your Online Teaching Dream Team - Pick their brains HERE!

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if you could meet with an online distance teacher “dream-team” and pick their brains about the broad topic of interpersonal interaction in online learning? Well – your wish has come true! With a combined 68+ years of experience teaching online, please allow me to present your dream-team:

• Zane Berge (University of Maryland, Baltimore County)  
• Curtis Bonk (Indiana University)  
• Phil Ice (American Public University System)  
• Rena Palloff (Fielding Graduate University)  
• Anthony Picciano (City University of New York)  
• Karen Swan (University of Illinois) 

Cindy York and Jennifer Richardson had the brilliant idea of interviewing these master online teachers to try to find the common threads and the differences in how they try to achieve the optimal balance of student-to-student and student-to-instructor interaction. In June 2012, the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks published their findings. The paper is worth the detailed read as they identify a series of useful factors that contribute towards interpersonal interaction in online courses. Factors such as group work, discussion question type and assessment, feedback type, immediacy behaviors and instructor participation – just to name a few.

Are you an experienced online teacher? If so, what factors do you feel are most important when trying to achieve the optimal level of interaction that promotes learning in your course?

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Undergraduate Students and Technology 2013 [INFOGRAPHIC]

The Educause Center for Analysis and Research (ECAR) have released their Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology for 2013. They surveyed over 100,000 undergraduate students at more than 250 college/university sites in 14 countries. The full text of the 49 page report can be found here. However, if you only have a few minutes, then this infographic does a good job at giving you the high points. What do you think about this information? Does it resonate with you in your profession?

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Authentic Learning in Online Courses

The library at my school has a book entitled A Guide to Authentic e-Learning by Jan Herrington. Unfortunately, it is currently signed out.

However, Jan had a brilliant idea! She made a series of short videos that describe each of the steps in her authentic learning model: Authentic context, Authentic task, Expert perspectives, Collaboration, Articulation, Reflection, Coaching & Scaffolding and Authentic assessment. The videos are all accessible from the website devoted to the book so even without access to the book at this moment, in about 30 minutes time, I have gleaned a reasonable amount of comprehension about her process. The website contains more than just videos. One very interesting item is a link to a shared Diigo group on Authentic Learning where people can share resources on the topic together using social bookmarking. Great idea. Another very useful document on Jan’s website is an evaluation matrix so that you can evaluate your course activities in the continuum from non-authentic to authentic. I like it a lot. Do you have experience conducting authentic tasks in e-Learning contexts? If so, tell us about them in a comment below. What are your favourite tips, tricks and strategies?

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7 Strategies for Building Community in Online Courses

Loneliness and a feeling of working in isolation is one reason why some online students eventually choose to drop a course. You can combat this attrition by building community in your course. Building a learning community and a sense of social belonging doesn’t happen by accident, you as the designer, developer and instructor of your online courses have to plan to build a learning community. Here are some ways that I have found useful to accomplish this task:

1. Set some ground rules on day one of the course (see my previous post).

2. Provide two non-graded asynchronous discussion forum in the course.

Social Forum - actively encourage learners to introduce themselves and to perform a simple ice-breaker activity in the 1st week of class. Explain that this forum can be used to socialize and to post about current events during the semester. This forum should not be used to contact an instructor or a TA.; however, the instructor and the TA can participate informally in the social discussions.

General Q&A Forum - this forum should be monitored regularly by the Instructor and the TAs. It is a place for the learners to ask questions about course materials. Other learners should be encouraged to answers questions posed by their peers. Work to foster a dialogue around each question posed in this forum and take the time to post addition resources in the context of the questions being discussed.

3. Create a balance between individual and group work activities in the course. If learners will be working in groups, explain when/how the group rosters will be formed. Provide each group with its own private discussion forum. Provide some guidelines on effective virtual team-work. Include a confidential peer assessment of group work component, for all graded group-based assessment tools.

4. Design the course with the appropriate balance of synchronous and asynchronous learning activities that work for the learning outcomes in your course.

5. Provide netiquette and guidelines on how best to participate in the graded discussion forum, if applicable.

6. Post a weekly summary or weekly welcome message. Highlight aspects of the course that have just occurred or are about to be developed in the coming week.

7. Ask learners for feedback early in the course (about 25% of the way through). This early feedback can help inform minor course modifications that may have a high impact on learner satisfaction. It will show the learners that you care about the quality of their experience.

So there’s my list. Do you have any good points that can be added to this? Leave a comment below.

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Week 1 Teaching Online is Critical - A Recipe for Making the Connection with your Learners

Connecting with Learners is the topic of Week 2 for the Teaching Online MOOC. It's a very important topic in technology-mediated distance education. Setting the tone from the beginning is an effective way to close the transactional distance between the instructor and the students, who many never meet each other physically during the semester. How do you do it effectively? Well - it's not an exact science and there is more than one way to accomplish this task. Do you want to see how I do it?

I do it in three parts:

Part 1. I write an email message to the students the week before class. The purpose is five-fold: 1) to confirm their email address on file is correct, 2) to share my contact information, 3) to share a link to a 10-minute video intro of the course, 4) to share some ground rules of the course, 5) to give them a task of preparing a personal bio/intro for themselves, and 6) to share the Course Outline.

Part 2. As I mentioned in Point 1 above, I make a 10-minute video intro for the course. It's purposefully and simply just a talking head on YouTube. I spend time giving them my perspective on the course and the online course delivery method. The goal is to convey that together we are a learning team and I try to break down some of the anxiety issues that they might be feeling about taking a course online.

Part 3. In the email message I send out before class, I ask them to prepare a personal bio/intro (and I give them specific criteria to include). The goal of the activity is to establish Social Presence in the course and I try to inject a somewhat humourous and casual aspect to the activity. Here's the key: I model the activity on the course website BEFORE students have access to the course website so that when they first logon and look around, they see my version of the activity laid out for them. Modelling has the result of encouraging the desired community-building behaviour. Then as the first few days of class unfold, I make it a point to reply to each intro to try to build connections. Again, I do this in hopes that other students follow suit, and invariably a sub-set do!

So in the spirit of sharing, below you will find a copy of an Introductory Email message I sent out this term to students in my Basic Chemistry course. Also, find my 10-minute video below too.

What tools/techniques/strategies/approaches do you use when connecting with learners in the first week of your online class? Share your comments below.

---body of email message below---

Hi,

I confirm that as of today (Sunday August 25th) that you are one of the 22 students registered in CCE106: Basic Chemistry at RMCC. The course is web-enabled and in 6 or 7 days you will be able to access the class website at moodle.rmc.ca. I am not 100% certain when students are given access to the class website - it could be as late as the first day of class: next Tuesday September 3rd. If by Tuesday you still do not have access to the class website, then please call the RMCC IT Help Desk: 1-866-677-2857 for assistance.

ACTION REQUIRED: I would ask that each of you please confirm receipt of this message so that I can be assured the correctness of your email address that is on file.

Let me give you several ways with which you can contact me during this term: Email: eric.a.tremblay@rmc.ca

Office Hours / Face-to-face or telephone: by appointment

Instant Messaging Services:
GTalk: eric.tremblay23@gmail.com (no email here please)
Facebook: Eric Tremblay in Kingston, Ontario (add me on LinkedIn too!)
Twitter: http://twitter.com/elearn4u

In addition, I am required to remind you of the RMCC Academic Honesty Policy which reads:

"Academic misconduct, including plagiarism, cheating, and other violations of academic ethics, is a serious academic infraction for which penalties may range from a recorded caution to expulsion from the College. The RMCC Academic Regulations Section 23 defines plagiarism as: “Using the work of others and attempting to present it as original thought, prose or work. This includes failure to appropriately acknowledge a source, misrepresentation of cited work, and misuse of quotation marks or attribution.” It also includes “the failure to acknowledge that work has been submitted for credit elsewhere.” All students should consult the published statements on Academic Misconduct contained in the Royal Military College of Canada Undergraduate Calendar, Section 23."

When preparing assignments, if any questions arise about how to interpret this policy please ask me BEFORE you submit your assignment. In this case, asking for advice before submitting an assignment is far better than asking for forgiveness after the fact.

Please find attached the CCE106 Course Manual that will serve as the syllabus for the course. If you have not already done so, you should order the required textbook for the course. Details are found in the Course Manual. Also, I made a quick video Intro to the course. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikQg6R1Q2bY (if that link doesn't work, try this one: http://goo.gl/4giQR5 ) Let me know what you think. I have also posted an Welcome Message on the class website. Because you don’t yet have access to the class website yet, I copied it below for you.

I'm looking forward to learning with you really soon.

Take care

-Eric

---copy from course website---

Welcome Everyone to CCE106. I am Eric Tremblay and I will be your instructor this term. Feel free to read my bio or view the Intro Video post to the main page of this course.

I am really looking forward to a fun semester of learning. In order to kick it off on the right foot, I have a few ground rules to explain and requests to make.

Ground Rules

Rule #1. Learning is fun. If you don’t want to have fun, then drop this course right away. (*smile*) I’m a jovial person. I try to be positive-minded and I crack the odd joke here and there. Also, I’m the kind of person that loves learning – I have been doing it my entire life. I love it because I find it very enjoyable and challenging. And who doesn’t enjoy a good challenge anyway? So I hope you are prepared to mix a little fun in your learning this semester – even in an online course! I sure am.

Rule #2. Please leave your rank at the door. If your rank is General, then with all due respect, I will not call you ‘Sir’ during the offering of this course. I understand that rank has its place; however, in my classroom everyone is equal – including the instructor. So I would like everyone to simply call me ‘Eric’. Please, no emails calling me ‘Professor Tremblay’ or ‘Sir’ or anything like that. Just plain old ‘Eric’ works for me. In return, I will address you by your first name also.

Rule #3. What happens in the classroom stays in the classroom. This particular ground rule is better suited for a humanities course than a science course, but I am still going to state it here. I taught a Bioethics class in the past and some pretty personal and heart-felt comments were uttered by some members during class time. It’s important to always be aware that if someone shares with you a sensitive/personal anecdote during the course of this class, that that occurrence is not a license for you to broadcast this personal information across the CF or at your work. Let’s keep the classroom a safe place for us to share whatever we wish with each other in the context of the subject matter being studied.

Rule #4. Respect other people’s contribution to the class and do not fear mistakes. We are all responsible for collectively learning the material for CCE106 this semester. We are all here to help each other and invariably some of us are going to know more about the subject matter than others. Be mindful that everyone is a valuable member of this class and that we all have learning to do. In addition, remind yourself that we all make mistakes – and that’s ok, in fact, I encourage it! Myself included. Just because I am the instructor does not mean I am the ‘God of Chemistry’ (*grin*). I am far from that and I will make mistakes during the term. Remember that old John Powell quote: “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” So when it comes to learning, mistakes are a necessary part of the equation. In the context of the lab experiments this term, you may end up making some mistakes while conducting the procedures – that’s ok. Take a deep breath, count to 10, check to make sure you have enough supplies to start again, re-read the instructions and then start again. It’s normal.

Rule #5: Extensions. From time to time our personal and professional lives infringe too greatly on our studies. In those cases you may need an extension on an assignment or a lab. I do grant them in some warranted cases. So if you request an extension please supply an excellent reason and propose a new due date for your assignment/lab. I carefully consider each request and I will get back to you quickly with my decision. If I decide not to grant your request, be advised that I do accept assignments and labs late. In the course material, a daily late penalty is defined for each assignment/lab which will allow you to submit things late if you wish. There are some types of extension requests which I never honour: 1) extension requests that come in on the actual due date of assignment/lab, and 2) extensions on extensions. In these cases, late penalties will begin to accrue. I hope you see the fairness in this system.

Rule #6. Know your netiquette. This course is not heavily rooted in weekly discussions but there may be times when we want to talk about a current event or something so be sure to understand the etiquette for online discussion. Sarcasm does not translate well in writing. So if you want to make a joke, then please give us a visual cue. Use things like emoticons, smilie faces, bracket comments like (*grin*) or (*smile*), or the abbreviations ‘j/k’ for ‘just kidding’ or ‘lol’ for ‘laugh out loud’.

Ok, those are my 6 ground rules, now it’s time for two requests.

Request #1: During the first week of class, I would like you to post a message in the main discussion forum introducing yourself. The message must cover the following topics: a) Your name
b) Your current occupation
c) Your geographic location
d) [Optional but highly encouraged] Basic information about your family status. For example, “I am single”, or “I have a wife and two boys, ages 3 and 7”, etc.
e) Why you are taking this course
f) One (or more) interesting ‘fun facts’ about yourself. Examples might include, “I have eleven iguanas”, “I once had beers with Tom Cruise”, "My hobby is playing World of Warcraft", or “I was the first Canadian to play drums on a tour with the band KISS”, etc. You get the idea. (*smile*)
g) Your favourite music band or singer.
h) Post a picture (or a link to a video!) of yourself as an attachment to your message.

Request #2: During the 15 weeks that we will be learning together, if you travel anywhere on vacation (or on Temporary Duty), you must then post a picture of yourself while on this trip in the discussion forum and you must tell us a little about it. I love to hear about people’s vacations/travel when I take an online course. It reaffirms to me that online learning is a great way to study because it still allows time for ‘real life’ and doesn't force you to be in one place all the time. (*smile*)

Ok, so, enough typing from me for the moment.

Again - Welcome Everyone to CCE106!

-Eric

--------

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Try Experiential Learning in Your Courses

Scott McLean, History professor at the Queen’s Bader International Study Center at Herstmonceux Castle in England recently gave a talk entitled “Sites, Sources and Assessment in an Experiential Learning Environment.” I was there. It was a fantastic talk.

He walked the audience through a few case studies that describe courses where he uses physical artifacts in an experiential learning context to help students make deep connections in their learning. Scott places a high degree of importance on using primary sources in field studies and students report elevated levels of motivation and engagement when working with these authentic artifacts in real life locations. For some students this is the first time they touch and work with primary sources! Luckily, the good folks at the Center for Teaching and Learning at Queen’s University arranged to have the keynote recorded and they have placed it online. If you teach history or are interested in experiential learning then you will find this talk fascinating. Be sure to check it out.

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Sneak Peek: Best Practices in Online Course Design for Higher Education

I am assembling a set of best practices for online course design in a higher education setting. It’s hard to do. I started about two weeks ago and almost every day I add something to it. It now measures about four pages in length. Now I find myself wondering if the document is getting too large? Will people read it if it is that long? Hmmm. I will have to think about this.

So far I have categorized the document into six major sections:

Section 1. Overall Elements of the Online Course and Learner Support
Section 2. Course Outline
Section 3. Course Material
Section 4. Communication, Engagement and Activities
Section 5. Graded Assessment
Section 6. Accessibility

Do you want a sneak peek into Section 1? Sure you do. Here are my top 5 items that fit into the first section - Overall Elements of the Online Course and Learner Support:

1. Brand the course website to be consistent with your Institution and/or Faculty. Have a unique image (with Course Code and Course Title) on the main page of the course website that provides differentiation from other courses in the same Faculty.
2. Ensure simple and intuitive navigation in the online space.
3. Provide learners with an effective orientation to the course including an instructor introduction. The introduction should convey the instructor’s enthusiasm for the subject and be encouraging to learners that this course will be rewarding.
4. Provide the learner with links to: technical support, library, writing center, academic policies, etc.
5. Provide as much of the course material as possible for the 1st day of class.

What do you think of those five items in Section 1? Do you disagree with any of them? Do any of them resonate with you? Leave a comment below.

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How To Teach Online - MOOC - Week 1

The MOOC for How To Teach Online (#tomooc) has begun. Naturally, the 1st week’s activities are pretty general. They have questions for learners to answer on their blog, so I’ll do it below:

1. What is your intention for this course (why are you here)?
2. What issues do you think are important?
3. How will you contribute?
4. How would you like to see community develop among participants?
5. These types of courses are new for most people. In fact about 90% don’t even participate. How will you overcome the fear of learning in the open and the frustration of using new technology? How do you plan to courageously work through any setbacks, and not give up?

1&2: I just started a new job as an Educational Developer for the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Anytime you start a new job, it’s a very unique time where you can re-evaluate yourself and start fresh. My mandate will be to help move more courses online. So when I saw this MOOC advertised it was a perfect fit. I really hope to find some gold nuggets of wisdom in this course than can compliment my current knowledge and skills.

3: I will contribute largely by authoring posts on this blog and tagging them with the required #tomooc tag. I will do my best to try to keep up with the weekly asynchronous activities, as well as synchronous activities. I am curious how the synchronous activity will go given the (I assume) large number of students in this MOOC. Note: if you are curious about some of the blog posts, you can visit this page and scroll down to see them: http://blogs.leeward.hawaii.edu/teachonline/

4: I hope that the community can develop not only by interlinking blogs but also on Twitter. I am trying to grow my Personal Learning Network using my Twitter account (@elearn4u) so scanning the #tomooc tag on twitter will be a way for me to connect with like-minded individuals. I also really hope to find people working in the higher education field who specialize in Engineering – that would be a bonus.

5: I’m not afraid. Learning is fun. Bring it on ;-)

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Psychology of peer evaluation for group work effort online

Wouldn’t that title be a good title for a research paper? Hmm. (Note to self.) If you are designing or teaching a strictly online distance course, no doubt you have thought about group work.

I personally like some amount of group work especially in the more senior courses. But how do you combat the age-old aspect of social loafing that can affect group work activities? That’s where peer evaluation can come in. You’ve seen it before. Basically, you ask learners to fill in an evaluation form at the end of the group work activities, which asks them to evaluate themselves and their team-mates on how much effort they put forward. These evaluations can either contribute to an individual's grade component of the group project grade, or the instructor can use the results to ‘modify’ an individual's participation grade in the course.

It generally seems to work at the practical level; however, some people wonder how effective it is? Questions are raised such as “Does this evaluation provide enough incentive for learners to give their best effort?”, “What is the optimal balance in the relative weights of the peer evaluation vs the group project itself?”, “Will learners ignore the evaluation and just give everyone 10/10 due to guilt or other emotional factors?”, “Should learners be advised of the peer evaluation grades issued by their team-mates? If so, in what amount of detail?”, etc.

What do you think about these questions? Do you have other questions to ask on the subject? Do you have any answers to these questions based on your experience? Click the "comments" link below to share your ideas. #tomooc

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What are you waiting for? Start a MOOC today!

Massively Online Open Courses (MOOCs) is a term coined by Canadiens eh. Yup – and now it’s all over the place. These heavily subscribed courses marry the best of both worlds: FREE and EASY ACCESS. You don’t have to take out a student loan to enrol in a MOOC, and you don’t have to show up in class at 8:30am on Monday morning either. It turns out that this very attractive formula works and students are flocking to them in droves. Have you tried a MOOC yet? If not, what’s stopping you? There’s no downside to giving one a try. I just learned about this great website called MOOC.ca that is a treasure trove of MOOC information and also sends out a newsletter about MOOCs. It has an extensive set of resources that describes what MOOCs are, how they work, and the history of the MOOC phenomenon, etc. So it’s a one-stop-shop to find out information about MOOCs and to see which MOOCs are about to start soon. Remember MOOCs can be on any topic, so find a subject that interests you and sign up! What are you waiting for? You might just learn something eh.

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Your TOP 5 Favourite EdTech Tools for Online Education

I was asked recently to do a presentation about educational technology tools for online education. Before I rolled right into my Top 5 Favourite Tools, I made sure I spent some time encouraging my audience to consider the criteria for selecting the tools first. These are the criteria I use:

Criteria 1. Choose a tool that allows your distance students to study anytime, anywhere. Tools that meet this criterion allow the student to be flexible and to adapt the schoolwork around their other commitments such as family and work, etc.

Criteria 2. Choose a tool that encourages social connectedness in the online classroom. I mean student-to-student and student-to-instructor interaction in this case. The perceived feeling of social connectedness promotes student retention. Colleges and Universities are always concerned about student retention.

So with these two criteria in mind, here are my Top 5 Favourite Tools and some bonus ‘starting links’ if you want to know more about the subject:

1. Discussions
Tried, tested and true. Text-based discussions definitely fit this criteria and are really a staple for online courses. Sure, there are poor ways to design a discussion forum activity; however, on the whole I feel that most educators do a good job implementing this tool.

• http://web2integration.pbworks.com/f/USING+ONLINE+THREADED+DISCUSSIONS-+BEST+PRACTICES+FOR+THE+DIGITAL+LEARNER.pdf
• http://jolt.merlot.org/vol7no2/goldman_0611.htm
• http://www.contactnorth.ca/sites/default/files/contactNorth/files/pdf/publications/how_to_plan_for_and_moderate_online_discussions.pdf

2. Collaborative Document Authoring
Here’s where educators can drastically increase the feelings of social connectedness in students. Anytime there is a joint deliverable, that a small group of students need to create, it necessitates that they get to know each other a little and that they interact in a relatively intense way. If you are new to online group work, you may want to do some research into best practices of this assessment tool before implementing it into your course. Online students often need special supports to help them with this challenge, such as learning contracts, collaborative workspaces, adequate time to complete the assignments, etc.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY
• http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/ATC/Collaboratory/Teaching/groupwork.html
• http://cebe.cf.ac.uk/learning/casestudies/case_pdf/ChrisGarbett09.pdf
• http://suite101.com/article/distance-learning-tips-for-online-group-work-success-a322356
• http://www.jofde.ca/index.php/jde/article/view/477/905

3. Video / audio
The third tool on my list is here to reinforce to me (and to you) that student-to-instructor social connectedness is an important factor. There are a few small things you can do as an educator to increase the strength of this factor. One that jumps to mind is to leverage a tiny bit of video to communicate with your students. Take out that fancy cell-phone and do a two minute introductory video to your online class. Be careful, don’t make it too dry. Don’t talk about all your degrees or your research interests but instead talk about the student and how exciting this course is going to be. You can talk about some course-specific logistics too. The goal here is to motivate the student to get off on the right foot, while helping to emotionally connect to you; an email can’t do this as effectively as video in my opinion. Students who can experience you as a walking talking educator, excited about the course, can go a long way towards building a feeling that they actually “know” you (even though they may never meet you face-to-face).

• http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/107/teacher-presence-using-introductory-videos-in-online-and-hybrid-courses

4. Screencasting
If you have to demonstrate a process then avoid writing out a four page step-by-step document; instead, make a screencast by SHOWING the step-by-step process on your screen. If you want to talk about a website, don’t just give a link and drop it into a word document, instead SHOW them the website with a screencast. When the educator can guide using show and tell, I think this really helps students learn. This, coupled with the fact that they can watch the video as many times as they like, will also contribute a feeling of being more connected to you as an educator: a win:win.

• http://jolt.merlot.org/vol5no3/rose_0909.htm
• http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html
• http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131512000644

5. Voicethread
This last tool is hard to explain. Here are some videos that I like it and I think you will too.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW2nb7FO7p8
• http://voicethread.com/about/library/Using_VoiceThread_in_an_online_course_from_Professor_Russ_Meade/
• http://voicethread.com/about/library/
• http://voicethread.com/#q.b2779571.i14673028 (requires a VoiceThread Account)
• http://voicethread.com/#q+discussion.b967381.i5355919 (requires a VoiceThread Account)

Are any these YOUR favourite tools for online education or do you have others? What are your criteria for choosing a tool? If you have anything to add, please leave a comment below.

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Find out what 40 universities in Canada are doing about copyright

Lisa Di Valentino at the University of Western Ontario had the idea of studying what Canadian universities are doing with respect to the recent changes in copyright legislation in Canada. She decided to go all out by collecting data from a whopping 40 Canadian universities. She selected all non-Quebec university members of the Association of Universities and Colleges in Canada that have an enrollment of 5,000 students or greater. So you will agree, her sample is very representative of the Canadian university landscape. For her Doctoral thesis, Lisa prepared a paper entitled "Review of Canadian University Fair Dealing Policies". It's well worth a read if you are in any way, shape or form responsible for copyright clearances anywhere in Canada as it shows some interesting trends and consistencies among universities. The paper itself is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Put it on your bedtime reading list - it's worth it.

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The future of online learning for higher education is here today ... and it's FREE!

How did this slip under my radar? Posted to YouTube on August 1st, 2012, Computer Science professor Daphne Koller of Standford University talks about the Coursera project. Massively open and free course-ware that enables learners from anywhere to study online. It's not computer-based training; it's group-paced web-enabled learning. Great features exist like peer grading, student-to-student interaction, short video chunks by masterful instructors, recall practice and real assignments and exams. As of April 2013, more than 62 universities are contributing in order to offer more than 334 courses on Coursera - all free. Check out Daphne's intriguing TED TALK below. Thought provoking isn't it?

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The Big Current Issue in Educational Technology - how to fix it?

Michelle Marshall, a student at the University of Texas, asked me a question for her project which involved talking to people who work in the field of Instructional Design. She asked my opinion on what the “biggest current issues or controversial topics are in relation to Educational Technology”.

My response: Great question Michelle. There’s no magic bullet in the educational technology realm so there are always ‘issues’. The absolute biggest one in my opinion is how quickly educational technology changes. Teachers have always been very busy people. Despite what they might tell you, over time they develop mastery in many different arenas: multitasking while teaching many courses simultaneously, communicating complex ideas with learners, assessment of learner performance, and motivation of learners. The problem with educational technology is that despite all the benefits it has to offer, it represents yet another topic that teachers are now expected to become masterful at, and this one is tough to master because it changes so quickly.

So what’s the solution to overcome this big issue? My short answer is “I don’t know”. My longer answer goes something like this. To be successful with educational technology in the learning process, I believe that is it important for teachers to keep a few hallmark things in mind:

1. Keep it simple. Learning comes first; everything else comes second. If it’s not obvious to everyone involved what an educational technology component is contributing to the course, then get rid of it immediately. Courses that are uncomplicated go a long way towards keeping the stress level of learners down during a semester. Lower stress definitively helps the learning process.
2. Know an expert. In your school there is probably an Instructional Designer or Educational Developer whose bread and butter is to be up on educational technology developments. Never ask this person what is the new cool thing that you can add to your course. Yup – you heard me right – NEVER ask this person that question. Instead, ask a question like this: “I would like a better way to get my students to meet this type of learning objective (or learning outcome), can we sit down together and I’ll show you how I do it now and then you can tell me if you know of any educational technology element that might help me do this better in the future?” The difference is clear. Any decisions you make about integrating educational technology into your course need to stem from a need to serve a learning objective (or learning outcome). Otherwise, the educational technology element may turn out to be a useless bell or whistle.
3. Don’t fix it if it’s not broken. If you are using an educational technology element that is two years old then some young whippersnapper might tell you that it’s an antique at this point, based on how quickly the field is changing. In my view, antique technology can still be useful. Heck – look at pen and paper for example; they’re still useful. If the educational technology element is helping your students learn then don’t replace it with something new just because you feel like it. Any replacement should be by design and not by default.

Do you have any words of wisdom for Michelle about the most important issues or controversial topics in the field of Educational Technology? If so, leave a comment below.

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The Importance of Video in e-Learning

Let’s consider distance education for a bit. First there were correspondence courses. You know – read a bunch of stuff, write a bunch of stuff, and your instructor mails you your grade. Sometimes in the setting of a correspondence course there was media involved such as things like audiocassette tapes or VHS videotapes. These audio and video media types took the edge off of correspondence courses and many students found these courses to be slightly less boring due to the variety of media used. Then there was e-Learning: where student-to-instructor and student-to-student interaction could be enhanced. Also, eLearning courses pushed the envelop of media choices because all of a sudden computers were involved. All kinds of things arrived: flash animations, java objects, PowerPoint slides, YouTube videos, podcasts, and even synchronous video chats. We have had this plethora of media choices to inject variety into eLearning courses for over 10 years now, but do most professors use them? In my experience, no. The barrier to the creation of these media objects still feels insurmountable for some instructors. Luckily, there are many “how-to” articles around the Internet that can help. But before you run into the production of your video, do a bit of research on best practices. Alison Bickford from the Connect Thinking for the e-Learning Academy reminds us that to be effective at performance support, the user will expect video “to be short, succinct and supported by visuals.” I agree with that very wise recommendation. It’s almost common sense; however, people can still miss the mark. Have a look at her short 7-minute video on Video for Organization Learning. It’s great.
If you are interested in knowing more about how to actually produce your video then Alison has a follow up video that will give you a good overview. Take special note at the 6-minute mark of this second video as she presents a great table containing the Do’s and Don’ts for video production. In addition, she has this great blog post about how to use Camtasia and PowerPoint to make video for your students.
Do you have any ideas about using video in web-based courses? If so, let us know by leaving a comment below.

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Dear Professors: Please think like a student sometimes. Thanks!

We are changing Learning Management Systems (LMS) at my school. Lately I have been very busy transferring content from one LMS to another and prettying up courses. You must envy me right? (*smile*)

Anyway, I am working on distance courses where the instructor and the students never meet face to face. So the primary method of communication of the course materials is via the course website on the LMS. I’ve seen some crazy things in my course conversion tasks. Sometime, I have to ask myself this simple question: Do professors ever put their ‘Student Hat’ on and consider what it must be like to visit their course website from a student perspective? I think the answer is different for each professor because I have seen some things that are disheartening. I feel that professors often (inadvertently?) place roadblocks that impede students from keeping their course material. For example,

• 
  I saw one course where there were so many files to download that it probably takes each student about half a day to save all the course materials. What a waste of time. Why can’t professors merge some of these files together to decrease the number? Why can’t a ZIP file be offered for download when a large amount of files are present?


• I saw one course that was entirely HTML-based with many sub-pages for each lesson. It was pretty in the web browser but there was no easy way to save the files. Nor did it have an easy way to print the material. In order to keep the course materials, students probably resort to printing over 100 different html files… one by one. OUCH! If there is no student-to-content interaction required (you know like drag and drop exercises with feedback, or input fields with feedback, etc.) then why can’t professors avoid HTML altogether? In the case where a large number of HTML pages are unavoidable, can professors please try to provide a print-friendly PDF version as well?


• I’ve seen many courses that have a large number of files to download, but one course added insult to injury. The file names of the files were so cryptic that once saved on the student’s computer it will be a nightmare to decipher which file contains what. Is it too difficult to name the WORD document that contains the Lesson 1 commentary something like “ECON101 Lesson 1.doc”? Apparently for some instructors the answer is “yes”; instead they select files names like “Supply and Demand – Fall 2012.doc”. There were many other strange file names… stuff like “c.p.2012.doc”, “Overview.doc”, “2009-alternate.doc”. Once the student downloads the 50+ files in the course onto their computer, locating which file contains the Lesson 1 commentary could be compared to finding a needle in a haystack. Could professors please consider using a logical file naming system that might mean something to the student?

Are you a professor or a student in an online course? Do you have any experiences, either good or bad, with some of the situations I describe above? If so, leave a comment.

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Calling all Canadian Instructional Designers

I recently learned that a new association has been created that seeks to assemble all Instructional Designers in Canada. Appropriately called the Canadian Association of Instructional Designers (or in French: Association canadienne des concepteurs et des conceptrices pédagogique).

In broad terms, their mandate is to promote the professional development on instructional designers in Canada regardless of the setting they work ind (i.e. various types of training and education settings) and promoting the profession in general. I think these are good things so I joined. Along with membership comes access to free professional development activities such as webinars as well as access to the LinkedIn group containing the members of the association. That's great for networking! See you there!

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Consistency vs Variety in Online Assessments: is the balance important?

I received an email last week from a college professor who had a good question. She is designing her second online course and was wondering what my opinion was on the types of assignments that work best online. Specifically, she wanted my opinion about whether predictability and variety were important facets in good assessment schemes for online courses.

Yes – I vote for predictability and variety; however, there is more than one way to skin the cat. Let me give you a few examples:

Scenario 1:

Assignment 1: Due Sunday of Week 3
Assignment 2: Due Sunday of Week 6
Assignment 3: Due Sunday of Week 9
Assignment 4: Due Sunday of Week 12
Online discussion: weekly
Final Exam: Week 14

In Scenario 1, the student can clearly see the pattern and predict the workflow from week-to-week as the course progresses through a semester. How about variability? Well, there are two types of weeks in this course: i) weeks with two deliverables (i.e. assignment and discussion) and ii) weeks with only one deliverable.

Scenario 2:

Assignment 1: Due Sunday of Week 2
Assignment 2: Due Sunday of Week 3
Assignment 3: Due Sunday of Week 4
Assignment 4: Due Sunday of Week 5
Assignment 5: Due Sunday of Week 6
Assignment 6: Due Sunday of Week 7
Assignment 7: Due Sunday of Week 8
Assignment 8: Due Sunday of Week 9
Assignment 9: Due Sunday of Week 10
Assignment 10: Due Sunday of Week 11
Assignment 11: Due Sunday of Week 12
Online discussion: weekly

In Scenario 2, like Scenario 1, students can clearly see the pattern and predict the workflow from week-to-week throughout the semester. For variability, there isn’t any. Every week is the same.

Scenario 3:

Assignment 1: Due Sunday Week 6
Term Paper proposal: Due Sunday Week 7
Online discussion: Weeks 4-8
Final Term Paper: Due Sunday of Week 12

In Scenario 3, it’s more difficult for students to see a pattern and they can have difficulty predicting the workflow as the course progresses. For variability, it’s pretty high. Some weeks have one deliverable, others have two deliverables and still other weeks have no deliverables whatsoever.

Scenario 4:

Mid-term Exam: Week 7
Final Exam: Week 14

It’s easy to see that Scenario 4 is highly predictable by students but the overall variability in the course is low.

So, given these types of scenarios, which is the ‘best’? In an online course, good course designs must strive to create student engagement. Over time I have learned that the best way to engage students is to provide them two things: 1) a balanced yet consistent level of predictability and variability in the coursework, 2) a balanced level of student-to-student and student-to-instructor interaction. I’ve dealt with the interaction piece before (here or here). So let me just stick to the predictability and variability component for this blog post.

Now if you re-examine the four scenarios above you might come to the conclusion that Scenario 1 is the most balanced as far as variety and predictability are concerned. Can it be improved? Consider Scenario 5:

Scenario 5:

Discussion 1: Due Sunday of Week 2
Assignment 1: Due Sunday of Week 3
Discussion 2: Due Sunday of Week 5
Assignment 2: Due Sunday of Week 6
Mid-term Quiz: Due Sunday of Week 7
Discussion 3: Due Sunday of Week 8
Assignment 3: Due Sunday of Week 9
Discussion 4: Due Sunday of Week 11
Assignment 4: Due Sunday of Week 12
Final Exam: Week 14

What do you think about Scenario 5 for an online course? Is it better or worse than Scenario 1? What do you think about the entire idea of predictability and variability in assessment schemes? Please leave your comment below.

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SchoolTube: Learning Without the Risk of Explicit Content

There's a dilemma in the K-12 Educational Realm: to block YouTube or not to block YouTube. Parents have the same dilemma at home too. There's a lot of explicit and suggestive videos on YouTube that most teachers/parents wouldn't allow children to be exposed to. The opposite is true as well: there's a lot of fantastic content on YouTube that can help kids in the learning journey. Each school and family makes up their own rules on how to navigate this problem. However, the father and son team of Carl and Andrew Arizpe are giving us all an alternative. It's called SchoolTube. It has all the good parts of YouTube without the risks of inappropriate content. The way that SchoolTube creates this safe environment is to empower teachers to moderate the videos posted to SchoolTube by their very own students. NEAT! Like YouTube, no account is necessary to view videos and the collection of interesting clips tops over 400,000 videos at the moment. Here's one example below that provides a fun and useful introduction to the Periodic Table of Elements. Chemistry geeks will love this.
The main page of SchoolTube also contains a "Video of the Day" that is judged worthy by users. Pretty cool. Do you have any experience with SchoolTube? Are there any other advantages or disadvantages? If so, let us know by leaving a comment below.

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