Robert Chamberlain

These are links to all of my previous blog posts.  In general, I didn’t want to use my posts to just summarize the related week’s materials but rather to make a few comments on what I thought after completing the readings and how they affected me, which I think my posts reflect.  I was usually torn between making a very long post (I can become too wordy) and keeping it short enough so that my busy colleagues wouldn’t have to use too much of their time.  I truly enjoyed reading everyone’s else’s posts and their comments, which were an important element of this class.  Thank you everyone!

Week 1: This first post was a good way to introduce myself to the members of the class. Likewise, I got a feeling for the personalities and backgrounds of the other members by reading their posts.

Week 2: I completed the questionnaire, which seemed to indicate I’m not at either extreme in my teaching style.

Week 3: I pointed out that group projects aren’t always beneficial and that everyone has different learning styles. This is a particular issue for me because I’ve seen my four kids be forced into group projects with no clear purpose and no assistance from instructors when some group members don’t contribute their share of work to the group. I use group activities in my classes but they have their limits and can be a source of frustration for students, especially for higher-achieving students paired with less committed students. The week helped me decide to use more videos in my classes and improve on the Blackboard appearance.

Week 4: I found this week’s material very practical and have already used it in redesigning the Blackboard sites for my spring classes. This was particularly helpful since I’m teaching my first hybrid this semester instead of just f2f classes.

Week 5: My post recognized the difficulties involved in creating a sense of community in any class but especially in an on-line class. A rubric for discussion board posts was a great idea.

Week 6: I admitted the challenge of making synchronous activities in an on-line class worried me and it was something that seemed desirable but that I would have to defer until after I have mastered other aspects of teaching on-line.

Week 7: The discussion of copyrights worried me because I don’t think I’m always as careful as I should be with attribution and I need to become more familiar with what I can and can’t use in my classes.

Week 8: The number of tools available is a bit overwhelming but fortunately some of them seem to be more incremental changes rather than completely new tools (Prezi vs PowerPoint, etc.). Mastering a few tools that I can immediately use seems like a more realistic goal than trying to learn and use too many new tools poorly. Also, the use of too many different tools can confuse students, who have been brought up with computers but are often not especially technologically sophisticated.

Week 9: I enjoyed the discussions of students distracted by technology because I have four kids of my own, including three in college, who seem to spend way too much of their time on computers & cell phones. The FAQs suggested by everyone were great and I compiled my own set of FAQs and have already added them to my spring classes.

Week 10: The topic of LMS/CMS’s was interesting and gave me some things to think about in using Blackboard but Bb seems to meet my needs so I’ll be sticking with it for now. I also use an extensive suite of on-line tools from the publishers of my different textbooks and these suites complement and integrate with Bb nicely so I’ll focus on learning more about these existing tools rather than trying anything else new.

Week 11: My post addressed the view that an emphasis on “social learning” seems to ignore the reality that people still need to be able to think creatively and critically for themselves, independent of any social network. I do try to get students to be more critical thinkers and I try to avoid rote memorization, although part of learning is knowing (memorizing) information and how to apply it.

Week 12: Distance education seems to be a wave that can’t be stopped and I’m part of it because I take several on-line classes each year and will now be teaching on-line. On-line classes offer some advantages, however, I recognize that most on-line classes lose something with the absence of that direct student-teacher interaction and live discussions where we can see each other’s expressions and body language, live discussions that can take interesting turns which enrich learning. MOOCs have their own advantages and disadvantages but seem to have a lot of upside potential.

Week 13: The term “Personal Learning Network” was new to me and I found it interesting. It made me think a little more deliberately about all the elements of my PLN and how beneficial they are relative to the time involved. The ides made me decide to use more of my time with my professional contacts to discuss classroom teaching issues/ideas and maybe a little less time just socializing. I heartily agree with the assertion that sharing information is much better for everyone than not sharing.

Week 14: This is my video on using on-line surveys in the classroom. I learned more about surveys in making this video and now I plan to try them in my classes, sprinkling them in throughout the semester. I’m wondering how I can make the questions useful to me and interesting to the students. Hmmm….

My video is on the use of on-line surveys as a tool in the classroom.

Video on surveys

Interesting topic.  I read articles on the web, attend workshops, watch videos, discuss teaching topics with colleagues but I had never thought of this as my “Personal Learning Network.”  This week’s work will make me think about my PLN a little differently (now that I know have such a thing!) and maybe plan for my personal learning opportunities more deliberately, including getting together more often with other teachers to share ideas.

There was a quote from an issue of Fortune magazine a few years ago that read, in essence, “When learning a new skill, most people get good at first and then stop improving.   However, a few continue to get better and go on to greatness.”  I think that any of us will stop growing if we don’t continually keep learning ourselves and thinking about how to make our classes go better.  With the constant onslaught of new digital tools and increased demand for online classes, this need to keep learning is more important now than ever.

I don’t know that sharing is a “moral obligation,” as one of the video authors asserted, but I do agree that it’s important to give back to others since so many people have helped us over the years.  Sort of that “play it forward” concept.  When I’ve shared ideas that work for me, oftentimes others have given me feedback to make those ideas work even better.  Sharing helped them AND me.  Unless you are writing a book or involved in some other profit-making venture, it seems like the potential benefits from sharing are unlimited and there’s very little downside.

Now for the bad news.  As a result of this week’s topics, I thought I would search for blogs related to my field.  My search produced quite a few.  Some were filled with ads (bloggers trying to make a buck?) but I found a couple that were of interest.  In one, there was a link to what was supposed to be another paper so I thought I would read it.  Ouch, big mistake!  It wasn’t a harmless link to a scholarly article and my antivirus software jumped into action and warned me that the site was downloading serious malware to my computer.  Whew!  I was relieved because I thought my antivirus program had saved me.  Ugh.  No such luck.  My browser is now randomly opening up new tabs to what look like more dangerous sites.  Arghhh!!! I’ll post this to my blog and then let my computer run a complete virus scan to see if it can find and remove the offending software.  Wish me luck!

I enjoyed the introductory video by Cris Crissman, if for no other reason than it was professional and entertaining.  The expanding opportunities for everyone to learn by distance education are exciting, especially as the quality of online education improves.  I take several online classes every year for professional continuing education and they are informative but I now realize how much more interesting they could be.  It motivates me to focus on keeping my own courses more interesting for my students.

The chapter in Ko & Rosen was very timely for me.  I’m teaching my first hybrid class this spring so I read the text very carefully.  I’m almost finished with my new class website and I know it is much better than it would have been if I had not learned so much from this POT course.  Next I plan to update my f2f classes to likewise incorporate more of what I’ve learned so that I can provide a better learning experience to my students.

I’m not sure what I will do for my project but I think it could be fun since we covered so many great topics.  Finally, I did have to laugh a little to myself at what I saw as George Sieman’s obvious envy of the more well-funded MOOCs and the high opinion he seemed to hold of his method of teaching versus the more “corporate” models.

For those who enjoy psychology and theories, this week’s readings and video were probably very enjoyable.  However, I’m a more analytical type and the only material that really sparked my interest was Larry Sanger’s article.  I appreciated his skepticism about the current emphasis on social learning as well as his defense of the fact that individuals will always need to be able to “think creatively and critically” for themselves, independent of their social network.

My field, accounting, is very practical and accountants, and students, need to be able solve problems on their own.  Accounting has numerous formulas and rules but I don’t require “rote memorization,” even in my f2f classes.  I recognize that in the real world we can usually look up answers to specific questions.  So instead of memorization, I have students each compile an index card with the essential information they think they will need on quizzes and exams and then allow them to use the index card on exams.  I’ve found that just the act of identifying the important data and compiling it on one note card helps the students learn the material, more so than those who make up a stack of cards for studying purposes.  Sanger pointed out that getting information from the internet is much different from having a real understanding about a topic, and information on a note card won’t help the students solve problems on an exam if they haven’t acquired the knowledge and ability to apply that information in practice.

In line with Sanger’s belief that students need to be able to think critically for themselves, I always incorporate several questions in my assignments and exams that really require students to analyze a situation and think critically about how to answer it, instead of simply applying an obvious formula.  My students sometimes call those questions my “curve balls” but when I show them how to approach the problems they bang their heads over how simple the solutions are if they just think about them.  Although I miss the ease of Scantron-graded exams that are mostly True/False and Multiple Choice, I think my students got lazy about learning the material if they had a “multiple-guess” assessment so I no longer use M/C.  Stanger-Hall published a study on the importance of constructed-response questions for critical thinking and ever since reading it I’ve felt a bit guilty about the many M/C questions I used to use. 🙁

I incorporate an on-line suite of tools/resources from the publishers of the textbooks I use (McGraw-Hill and Pearson) and these integrate pretty well with Blackboard, which is the LMS supported by the colleges where I teach.  I have found that there are many more resources available in these publisher packages than the students have time to use and, unless I require them to use particular options and assign points for them, a majority of the students don’t take advantage of these options.

Frankly, I haven’t learned all of the intricacies yet for the existing packages that I’m already using and I don’t fully utilize what’s available there because I don’t want to overwhelm my students.  Therefore, I don’t feel the urgency to learn some new systems and add just that much more on to my students’ workloads.  What I would really like is a way to help the students master the material with less, not more, time commitment on their parts as well as my own.  Unfortunately, it seems that introducing too many new types of tasks, in addition to the ones I use with the publisher suite and the Blackboard LMS, may be counter-productive.

I enjoy technology but I don’t want to add more technology to my classes just for technology’s sake.  I’m trying to narrow down what I throw at my students so that they find it manageable and stay with the course and, ultimately, succeed.  I want to make my classes interesting to the students (as interesting as accounting can be) and I’m open to new ideas but I’m not ready to throw out the baby with bathwater and any changes I make will be done slowly to see what is a real improvement and what isn’t.

I have three kids of my own in college right now and the issue of how distracted students are by technology has been a common topic around our house since the advent of social media (IM, texting, Facebook, etc.).  In particular, my oldest daughter seemed to be on FB or texting every minute and always procrastinated getting her school work done.  Unlike the parents described in the article, we never let her skip school work or even miss due dates, which led to more than a few disagreements and nights where she had to stay up until the wee hours of the morning.  It seems to have paid off because she got straight A’s in high school, earned an academic scholarship to college, and is scheduled to graduate on time (Yea!!) this spring with her bachelors and masters degrees earned concurrently.  The moral of the story is that even severely social media-addicted teens can do well in school if they put in the effort and parents stay involved to make sure they keep up with their school work.

I haven’t used an FAQ because I’ve been teaching f2f classes but I’m thinking I’ll add one even to those classes.  I use my syllabus to try to address everything that I think will come up but some students don’t read it, or reread it, so the questions that seem to come up during the semester, which I’ll be adding to my FAQ, include:

Q.  My student aid/loan didn’t come in yet; when do I have to buy the book?

A.  Students need to complete the readings and assignments from the book starting the very first week.  There is a copy of the textbook on reserve in the library for those who haven’t purchased their own copy yet but it’s best to buy your own as soon as possible.  If you don’t have the book yet, the publisher also has a free two-week trial period for the e-book and sign up information is under “Getting Started” on Blackboard.

Q.  I have an older edition of the textbook.  May I use that instead of buying the new edition?  Money’s really tight.

A.  If you already have the previous edition, you don’t have to buy a new hard copy but you will still have to purchase access to the publisher’s online suite of tools, which is used for completing homework assignments online.

Q.  I didn’t get my homework turned in online because (insert excuse here).  May I turn it in late and still get credit?

A.  Homework may be turned in late for partial credit, with a point reduction of 10% for every day late.  It’s important to complete all the assignments in order to understand the course material and do well on the exams.  The homework also counts 15% of your course grade so it’s important to submit the homework on time to get maximum points and earn the best grade you can.  I drop the lowest homework score so missing just one shouldn’t hurt your homework grade.

Q.  The website doesn’t show that I completed the assignment. Why?

A.  Your assignment isn’t graded until you click “Submit.”  If you submitted it on time and it still doesn’t appear, please let me know and I’ll see if I can see it.  If not, you may need to contact the publisher’s help desk, which you can do online or via telephone (see syllabus for contact info).

Q.  Is there anything I can do for extra credit?

A.  I usually don’t offer extra credit, but if I do it will be near the end of the semester and I will offer it to the entire class.

Many good suggestions in the comments this week.  Unfortunately, all these tools have a learning curve so I tend to stick with what works for me.  An exception is the “Snipping Tool,” which I didn’t know existed.  I’ve used PrtSc for many, many years to capture a screenshot and then pasted it in Paint, where I had to crop the image.  Snipping eliminates a step or two and I’ve already been using it this week.  Paint offers a few more options but for speed and simple tasks, I like the Snipping Tool.

I haven’t tried Prezi because I find the jumping around and zooming in/out to be distracting as a viewer.  Perhaps there’s a way to simplify it but, for now, it’s not something I’m going to take the time to master because I don’t see a real need for it and I don’t particularly care to watch most of the types of presentations I’ve seen using Prezi.

Earlier this week, another instructor asked me about adding banners to Blackboard so I used that as my subject for a video using Screencast-o-matic.  Here’s how to add a custom banner to your Blackboard Home Page in two minutes.  (If your entry point to Blackboard is your Announcements page or something other than the default Home Page, then you have add your custom banner via the Teaching Style option under Customization in the Control Panel, which most of you using Bb already know.)

As a final observation, I’ve been surprised that even though most of our students have grown up in the digital age using computers, smart phones and social media, many of them don’t really have a lot of technical computer skills.  Therefore, I try to keep my class websites simple, without too many new tools for students to learn that may distract them from the course material itself.

I use YouTube videos in all of my classes but link to them, rather than downloading and storing within my CMS, so I hope I’m not running afoul of any issues.  I also use current news stories, typically from the Wall Street Journal or the internet, but I do try to make it a habit to credit the source.

I make and post my own videos online using only my own material, to avoid risking any copyright infringements there.  However, where I know I’m not in compliance is in making my videos closed captioned. I haven’t had any issues in my f2f classes but when I start teaching an online class next semester I plan to make them all CC to avoid any problems.  I realize that even in my f2f class some students might benefit from closed captioning if they have language or other learning issues so I would like to have all my own videos CC’d already but there don’t seem to be enough hours in the day.

I checked out the Calif Community College Consortium for open books and found the books in my area were either very basic, in the case of accounting, or were several years out of date, which in the case of computer programs makes them of limited use.  The cost of textbooks is always an issue with my students so I have allowed them to use an older print edition, when the information was comparable, and I would certainly support anything we can do to bring down the cost of books for our students.

Trying synchronous activities is something I think I’ll put off until after I’ve made it through my first online class.  I think it could be one of the best ways to bring a class together but one of the reasons students take online classes instead of f2f classes is because of the flexibility not to have a fixed schedule.  Adding a requirement for students to be online at a certain time seems contrary to the desired scheduling flexibility, which is one of online’s advantages, but I may still try it in the future.

If you believe the studies, the majority of communication is body language closely followed by tone of voice, both of which are lost in emails, discussion boards, and most other asynchronous forms of communication.  (Yes, I know there can still be a “tone” or “voice” in people’s written communication but it’s not the same as a live voice.)  Thus, I think it would be nice to try synchronous activities but I’m hesitant to make them a requirement, although I may experiment with them at some point.