teach

Blog, blahg, blahg...(Week 10 POTCERT)

I'm playing catch-up. Because my life has spun out of control with football season. Despite living through many winning seasons at Alabama (cause we ain't never been nothin' but winners) it never ceases to amaze me how much there is to do in such a short amount of time. All the preparing, planning, buying, merchandising, marketing, advertising, meeting...lots of meetings...and then just like that - it's over. Well, except it isn't over now. Because Alabama just won the SEC Championship (in one of the best games of college football I've seen in a long time, I might add), and now we're headed to the BCS National Championship game to play Notre Dame. So we get to do it all over again! Yay! I'm equal parts "Yay" and "Ugh," if you want to know the truth. Because once again, my job is getting in the way of my studying and reading and writing. It's a challenge I've dealt with for almost five years now, so you would think I could balance it all by now. And I know all this juggling will one day pay off. Right? Please say it will pay off. OK, so I'll figure it out. Because as I mentioned, we ain't never been nothin' but winners. Roll Tide!

I believe the big question for week 10 concerns the advantages and disadvantages of using blogs in a class I plan on teaching. For the sake of these assignments, I am considering teaching an online course in retail management, and as I mentioned here, I think a blog would be a great way to keep the dialogue open in this course. In my opinion, blogs are an excellent way to develop community in your course when you don't have the benefit of face to face interaction. Students (and instructors) seem to be more open and relaxed in a blog than on a message board - an environment that could lead to deeper thought and more conversation about the subject at hand. Of course, this advantage could also be seen as a disadvantage if students tend to wander off topic and do not stick to the basics of the assignments. As Lisa mentioned in her slidecast, the instructor can and should use his/her blog to model the practice for the students. I could go on and on about modeling (or the lack thereof) in many aspects of instruction, but I will spare you. I will just say that my learning in a course is significantly increased when the instructor models what he/she expects. This is probably more prevelant and critical in my field of study (higher education) than in others, but still a vital part of any course. I am enrolled in this POTCERT class as part of a course in my doctoral program. Our professor (and lead for POTCERT), Claire Major, does an excellent job of modeling here. I enjoy her writing (in this case, blogging) style, and she covers all the aspoects of an assignment in a thorough way while maintaining a concise, interesting and thought provoking dialogue. I want to write like that when I grow up. I've got a long way to go. 

I've decided I want to use blogs in yet another way in my course. I plan on starting a separate blog soon to discuss the day to day issues that pop up in retail management while I am still working in retail. Then I can share this blog with students in my course as "lessons" on real life / real world experiences. I feel like blogging about the day to day as the day to day happens will insure that I don't forget the little things, and that I address issues that might otherwise be missed in a typical management course. More of the practical to mix in with the theoretical. I know I could have benefited greatly from that perspective in undergrad. I hope students will use this blog as a reference even after the course is complete. One of my inspirations for this is a blog that I follow on twitter called "Ask a Manager." It's like the "Dear Abby" of management. 

And so I press on...thanks for allowing me to jump back in here. I leave you with something that gave me a bit of a giggle last week.

Hello, my name is... (Week 9 POTCERT)

Chapter 7 in the Ko and Rossen text is full of ideas (some new and innovative and some tried and true) for instructional activities for online learners. Since we have been discussing building community in online classes, I was particularly interested in the section on icebreaking activities (p.175) and the section on dividing students into groups (p.176). I feel like the basis or tone for community in an online course has to be set almost immediately, and an icebreaking activity can quickly facilitate this. 

Since I want to use blogs in my online course, I want students to be introduced to each other via their blogs at the very beginning of the term. I hope to give students the opportunity to post about themselves (an introduction and brief autobiography) on their own blogs within the first few days of the course. I will then ask that other students visit the blogs of classmates and leave comments. I see this not only as a way to introduce one another, but as a way to make some sort of connection (literally and figuratively) to others in the class. This activity will also help students who may not have visited many blogs before get comfortable with commenting and navigating the blogosphere.

As for dividing into groups: I want to divide the class members into smaller groups for the semester so that each group can work on a specific aspect of retail management. I feel like this will allow the students to get more hands-on with their field of interest (human resources, merchandising, operations), and will facilitate community on a smaller scale within the course. I will adopt many of the suggestions in our text, but I am still unsure about the selection of groups. Do I let the students decide which group they are in? Or do I decide this based on my limited knowledge of their backgrounds, goals, majors, etc? 

What are some ways you have used groups in your online courses? Did you allow students to self select their groups? If so, would you recommend this for the course I am planning?

Feeding the beast (Week 6 POTCERT)

There was a time (before I started this PhD business) that I read blogs. Lots and lots of blogs. It all started when I became friends with a group of women in Birmingham who met regularly to do crafty things and drink wine. Lots and lots of wine. We all started blogging in the days between our meetings about our creations and about our ideas for new crafty goodness. And then before we knew it - we had a pretty loyal following of other women in Birmingham who wanted to play along. One night a newcomer to our group mentioned something about one of our blog posts showing up in her Google Reader. 

"Whaaaaat," we all asked. "What's a Google Reader?"

My life changed that night.

Suddenly, there was no limit to the amount of information that I could digest in one day. Every morning I would open Google Reader to my long list of favorite blogs and begin to read. Every blog I read linked me to another blog which linked me to a blog about this which linked me to a blog about that. And wow. Instantly I had a plethora of friends with common interests, a mile-long list of things I needed to buy, an infinite number of causes I wanted to support, and more ideas for improving every aspect of my life than I could ever possibly use. My Google Reader was open all the time, and my world was expanded, to say the least. 

A year or so later I started to realize that I was worrying about people I had never even met. I was checking daily to see if Stephanie's husband was coming home from Afghanistan today (or was it next Wednesday?). I was obsessively checking to see if Virginia found a dress for her sister's wedding yet. I was mourning the loss of Julia's dog. All this in addition to my own life and its very real ups and downs. I realized I was spending a lot of energy wanting things I didn't necessarily need. And I began to see my life in comparison to the online lives of people I didn't even know. It was all too much, and it  was making me very tired. It wasn't improving or enriching my life at all. In fact, it was making my life much more complicated. 

And so, just as quickly as I had opened and built my Google Reader account, I deleted it.

And oh how I missed it. 

But over time I found that I was writing on my own blog again, crafting again, and enjoying my free time a whole lot more. After I entered the PhD program I opened a new Google Reader account and built my blog list from scratch. I limit the amount of time I spend online, and I limit the blogs I follow to those related to my field of study. This way I'm less likely to wander off topic into a blog oblivion while I should be studying or writing a paper. Sure, I still keep up with Stephanie and Virginia, and I will confess that Dooce will always be my guilty pleasure. But I force myself to type "dooce.com" into my browser when I want to catch up with Heather.

I have a rule: if it's worth remembering, I'll remember how to get there.

As for this week's assignment:

I love Common Craft. I've used these videos for training over the years, and have found them very effective. I really like the thought of being an explanation specialist. The video that started it all for Common Craft a few years ago is one that explains RSS Feeds in common English. I wanted to share this even though I knew that embedding had been disabled (probably by request of Common Craft), so you'll just need to click on the youtube link that displays after you try to start the video. Trust me. You'll like it. And I pinkie swear that I do know how to embed a video. 

 

 

 

Interactive syllabus on an as-needed basis (Week 5 POTCERT)

While reading chapter 5 the Ko and Rossen text I started a little handwritten chart of recommendations for creating a syllabus for an online course. I made one column of ideas I would use and one column of recommendations I would probably skip and/or recommendations I felt like would not work for me. When I finished reading, I had a long list of ideas I like, but I quickly realized that including all of these suggestions in one syllabus would make for a really busy and detailed document which is not at all what I want. I tend to err on the side of providing too much detail when giving direction, so I know I will already have a tendency to fill up a syllabus with information that students may not need right away.

That being said, I am truly committed to providing students with my expectations of them for each course, so I cannot eliminate this portion. As a student myself, I quickly scan the syllabus looking for the part that explains how to make an "A" before I read anything else. I suspect there are others like me, and I want to make sure I spell this out completely in my syllabus. So the challenge is how to give enough detail without overwhelming the student with information. I may have an idea for a solution to this, though, so stay with me.

I also like the concept of updating the announcements section of an online course at least weekly. I think it's important for students to get fresh content or fresh information so that they do not feel so disconnected. I also think contacting the students via email or text as soon as the new weekly announcements are posted is a great idea. It makes things a little more personal, and could help keep students on track. Of course, there will be students who still fall behind, but knowing that you, as the instructor, have made an effort to reach out to them weekly, allows you to hold them more accountable for turning in assignments on time. 

In considering just these two recommendations for an online syllabus I started thinking about how I could connect with students in an online course more frequently if and when the student desires or needs more connection. How can I make a syllabus more interactive yet less wordy? So here's what I'm thinking: In order to offer up a more detailed explanation of the syllabus or assignments outlined in the syllabus and in an effort to keep content fresh and relevant, I am thinking of creating a blog for my online course. I could provide a link to the blog from the very beginning of the course, and update it weekly (or as often as necessary) with information pertinent to that week's activities and assignments. The blog could be a place where students link to get more details about particular assignments. It could also be a place where I announce opportunities for extra credit or provide additional resources should a student want to explore a topic further. I could also post video lectures on the blog or videos where I detail assignments and express my expectations more clearly. The blog could serve as a place for students to ask questions and make comments, too.

Obviously, there were more ideas in the text that I found helpful, and I think I can implement many of them in a way that would not seem so overwhelming if I am able to also provide a place (like a blog) for students who need more information or a greater connection to find those things.

What do you think? 

I dig maps (Week 4 POTCERT)

As I've been considering my ideas for courses I may teach in the future, I am reminded of the courses I've taken in my lifetime. (Yes, it seems like I've been in school for a lifetime.) Fortunately, the majority of these courses have been effective, memorable, and worth both my time and money. Sure, there have been a few disasters from which I learned how NOT to design a course, but more often how NOT to behave, lecture or converse with students when I am teaching a class, but I'm not going to go down that road today. 

I've been listing some of the characteristics of the design of my favorite courses to determine if there is an overriding theme or practice that resonates with me and would hopefully resonate with students I may teach one day. In undergrad days I took a creative writing course in which the professor introduced us to the concept of mind mapping.  At the time I considered this exercise as something I would use more for my creative endeavors like writing, and it did not occur to me until many years later that I had begun to use mind mapping in my work and in other situations where I needed to organize my thoughts. I believe the correct term for the practice I typically employ is actually "concept mapping." I was reminded of this technique when reading the Chickering and Ehrmann article this week. Principle 3 ("Good practice uses active learning techniques") challenged me to think about how I could add active learning in an online class. 

You are wondering where I am going with this, aren't you?

Me, too. 

But trust me, I have an idea...

A goal I have for my students is for them to walk away from my class with more tools for continued learning. I want students to see how the articles I assign for them to read, the papers I ask them to write, and the conversations I ask them to participate in all fit into the bigger picture of what they are studying or what career they will persue or what area they will research. I am currently fascinated with mind mapping software such as DEVONthink because I feel it would assist students in connecting the dots from course to course. DEVONthink allows users to store most any type of document while using a content analysis function to pull related articles together and even suggest other articles that relate to the ones the user is currently reading. While this is a fabulous way for students to keep track of relevant readings over the years of coursework, I'm not sure how the software could help facilitate conversation and interaction among students in an online course. Social bookmarking sites mentioned in Ko and Rossen's Chapter 3 could prove useful for facilitating interaction, though. I'm working on the idea of students using software such as DEVONthink to research topics while using tools like Delicious or Diigo to share the most interesting finds with fellow classmates. I think I will include some expectation of sharing relevant articles or blog entries on a weekly basis in the syllabus of my course. Hopefully this will get learners in the habit of collecting information in an organized method, and will allow them to map out this information to create a bigger picture of what they are learning. 

Have any of you used DEVONthink? How do you like it? What social bookmarking sites do you use? Do you require students to share relevant articles or other information via a bookmarking site? 

Pedagogy as art (Week 3 POTCERT)

Sorry to drop an old news Week 3 post in the middle of all of this good thinking and discussion on Weeks 4 and 5, but when I went into typepad to blog about Week 4, I saw my Week 3 post sitting in the draft folder. I thought I posted it Thursday. I should have double-checked. And yes, Thursday was still late, but somehow I think I would have felt better about Thursday. So anyway - here you go. Happy Belated Week 3. Stay tuned for Weeks 4 and 5. 

It hit me this week that there really is no perfect way to do this online teaching thing. Maybe I was looking for a checklist or a template with step by step instructions on how to set up an online course or maybe I was thinking I would walk away from this training with the specific answers to my questions about making an online course decidedly effective. "Do this" and "Don't do that" kind of stuff. What I have found instead is something bigger and more thought provoking. I've found a plethora of information, ideas, examples, and experience surrounding online teaching along with the inspiration to build a course that is not only effective for students, but also works with my style and my preferred teaching methods. Maybe all of you already realized this, but I'm now thinking of teaching online as more of an art than a task. After looking into the five samples of online courses and working with the design worksheets provided, I feel more creative than ever about this. I don't need a checklist or a template with step by step instructions on building the most important part of the course: the learning outcomes. Sure, I need guidelines for the technical aspects of actually getting the material online, and these weeks are going to be great for gaining that knowledge. But what I see now is that I can be as creative and engaging online as I want to be. I know this year in POTCERT will be most valuable because of the ideas and insight I will gain from this group of participants. I'm inspired by your willingness to share your best practices and your honest feedback. 

Since I'm not teaching a course yet, I decided to think about a course that I might teach in the future: Retail Management. My objectives for this course would be practical and straightforward with a focus on understanding basics like gross margin, profit/loss, inventory turn, etc. I like the way Janeen's course was organized on the Pearson LMS because it seems easier to follow, but I want to explore ways to do this in a more visually appealing way. I realize that isn't possible within the constraints of an LMS like this, so I'm not sure how I can do this yet...but that's my goal. And in keeping with my new-found focus on creativity - I will include assignments that allow students to track data and report on data from retail operations that they develop and operate virtually. Since I work for the campus bookstores, I often try to think of ways to allow the student workers here (we employ over 100) an opportunity to learn about running a business while they are earning their spending money. I love this idea from University of Vermont. I just need to decide how to do this in an online format. Lofty goal, I know. 

I've got a million ideas swirling in my head now, but I'm worried I won't be able to rein all that in to fit in an online course. Is that what those of you who have done this for a while are thinking? That my goal is a little too unrealistic? 

eleven (week 2 POTCERT)

I scored 11 on the on the "Beginner's Questionnaire" that we took this week. This indicates that I fall in the middle of the scale that ranges from preferring student interactivity to favoring instructor presentation. This score doesn't surprise me since I prefer a mix of teaching methods when I participate in a class as a student as well. I believe the type of content that needs to be shared has a whole lot to do with the type of instruction that would be most beneficial. An obvious example: The best way to transfer American History knowledge might be via lecture while teaching a skill or technique such as how to use graphic design software might require more active student participation and hands-on learning. We've all been in classes where the professor lectures the entire time without even pausing for questions, let alone, discussion. Personally, I find this excrutiating, and I can't imagine how any professor ever arrives at the decision to use this as a primary teaching method, but I realize I'm not the expert on pedagogy. I digress.

I found the "Getting Started Chart" to be helpful in thinking about how I would most like to structure an online course. I had never even heard of. Moodle, so I spent a lot of time perusing the site and considering the possibilities this week. I hope to learn more about the platform as we go along in this course.

Clearly I prefer a combination of lecture and discussion/ group work, so I was already thinking in that direction when I attended a great seminar on our campus Tuesday. The Apple Learning Tour was fascinating. While I've been a big Apple fan and user for many years, I knew little about iBooks Author and iTunes U. The training in these areas was great, but what I enjoyed most about the day was the discussion among participants about "flipping the classroom." The instructor spent some time sharing information about the Digital First initiative, and we began to discuss ways an initiative like this could work on our campus. Really good ideas and dialogue happened, and I ate it up!

So what does flipping the classroom have to do with Week 2 in POTCERT? I don't know. But I'm fired up anyway.

Hello POTCERT Peeps!

Here goes...a blog called "teach" because I couldn't think of anything more original than that.

This is the space where I will blog as I learn more about teaching online. I hope to be bona fide and certified within a year, so I'm very excited to be a part of the Program for Online Teaching Certificate class.

I should introduce myself. I'm Mandy Johnson, a doctoral student in the Higher Education Administration program at the University of Alabama. I am nearing the end of course work in the program, and I need to get cracking on the dissertation, but that's another subject for another day. I also work at UA as an associate director for the university-owned and operated campus bookstores. I supervise the buyers of licensed products (think Roll Tide pajama pants and Bama hooded sweat shirts), Apple Campus Store (think really cool and sexy technology), and office and school supplies (think nerd). I also handle all marketing and advertising for the stores (think fun). Here's a link to the SUPe Store (pronounced like "soup" - it's a long story) website, but let me say right away -  I have very little to do with the look and feel of the site. So do not judge.  That's all I'm saying about that. 

I've been blogging on a personal level for a few years. You're certainly welcome to take a look at that blog - it's been an on and off again thing with me. I rarely have the time to do it justice. My personal blog is entitled "However Although Thus Several Several." And maybe someday I will share the story behind the name. 

Not sure what else you would want to know about me, but it's pretty much summarized for you here in the bio section of "However Although." I'm thrilled to be a part of this adventure, and I can't wait to get to know all of you a little better.