Robert Chamberlain

Creating community in a live classroom is enough of a challenge and I’m not looking forward to trying to do that in my first fully online class in the fall.  My experience with discussion boards has been disappointing and it seems unless I require participation and assign points, the students don’t use them.

I plan to require some regular participation in my online class, hopefully getting students to ask and answer each others’ questions in one forum and then have another forum where I’ll provide prompts.   The challenge will be coming up with good, open-ended prompts that will make discussions about accounting topics interesting and worthwhile relative to the students’ time required.  Posting a rubric, like Louisa Moon’s, makes a lot of sense so I’ll do that up front.

I’ll be thinking about Pilar’s suggestion to request/require students to join a study group.  The adage, about being able to lead a horse to water, comes to mind.

I’ve started revising my next semester’s Blackboard site for my f2f class using some of the techniques shown in last week’s videos.  After much experimenting, and a visit to our on-campus technology gurus, I think I’ll reorganize my existing class by weeks instead of by the four modules I’ve been using.  I like students being able to see the activities for several weeks at a time and grouping similar topics but some of the benefit is lost if users have to scroll down too much.  I like the appearance of the weekly pages (Content Areas) starting off with an “Item” because it is more flexible and can be made to look more visually appealing, as Pilar showed.

On a final note, I have been using Screencast to make videos, which is super easy, but I’m going to try switching to Relay (Camtasia) because of the ads and limits on storage with Screencast.  Using OneNote with some videos is very useful for me (although my handwriting on a drawing tablet isn’t pretty).  I haven’t used the audio feature built into Blackboard but I might try it next semester, maybe for a very short “hello” message before class starts.  That seems like a very nice way to invite students into the class.

I’m finding the readings and examples very motivating.  In fact, I have already started redesigning my on-ground Blackboard site using some of the suggestions from chapters 3 & 5.  I especially liked some of the techniques that Pilar used in her Spanish class, although I think her design is so comprehensive for class management that it is well beyond what most people think of as the “syllabus.”

My department has a standard syllabus format that I will continue to follow and provide to students as a separate document (with numerous hyperlinks) so certain essential information for the class, beginning to end, is always readily available in one location, a single click away.  However, I also want to improve the flow of my Blackboard site to incorporate many of the concepts discussed.  I want to keep it simple but interesting, making it even more interactive and easy to navigate, and hopefully making it what the authors refer to as a true “online classroom,” complementing the activities of the physical classroom for my f2f and hybrid classes.

I found it helpful to think about going “back to the basics” in course design, starting with formally drafting the course goals and objectives and SLOs before even starting on the syllabus.  Doing this can certainly keep an instructor focused, when teaching a new course for the first time as well in a course that has been taught repeatedly (I have a couple of each this semester).

Bloom’s Taxonomy, per Seinfeld

I was never a fan of group projects when I was a student and the feedback I get from a majority of students today is similar, they just don’t like them much, often for very legitimate reasons. The “Seven Principles” states why the authors believe learning must be a “team effort,” “collaborative,” not a “solo race,” etc. but as we all know, each student is different and some students respond better to one learning method than another. Forcing all students to do group projects can be frustrating for those who are independent and very self-motivated learners, particularly when they are paired with other students who lack the same motivation.

I have seen many instances where there is nothing positive gained from group assignments, particularly where an instructor appears to be using a group assignment simply because that is the trend. If a group project is the only/best way to achieve some specific learning objective, then design the project carefully and go ahead and require participation in groups, otherwise, I believe it’s often better to use individual assignments and avoid the stress and frustration that can result from badly designed group projects.

I assign both individual and group assignments and when I use a group project, I explain to the students exactly why I am choosing this method and why I strongly believe it will benefit them. Still, I always have a few students who resist. However, I have seen some of the students who are uncomfortable participating in group assignments in a face-to-face setting are much more active when they only have to participate in discussions on-line. Again, different strokes for different folks.

Jim’s question for our post was, what will we consider as we build future classes? Like most instructors, I incorporate a combination of practices trying to resonate with students’ different learning styles, including readings, lectures, videos prepared by others, group discussions, individual and group assignments, and, most recently, my own short videos. My videos are far from polished but the more I make the more I learn what to do and not to do in them.  I plan to use them even more in my future face-to-face classes, since I’ve had very positive feedback from my students, and will definitely use them in my first hybrid class next semester. I use Blackboard and will also be trying to make it more visually appealing and even more interactive, keeping in mind the axiom that good site design means it never takes more than three clicks for a user to get to the information he/she needs.

The weather felt like fall tonight and the Chargers won; it’s been a good  weekend!

The link below is to a letter which appeared in the Wall Street Journal, 2 Sept 2014, from a Stanford economics professor, John Taylor, regarding his, and Stanford’s, experience offering the school’s first totally online undergraduate credit course.  The resources they devoted to this course were significant, including separately repeating and video-taping the professor’s entire face-to-face lectures just for online presentation and then having AV staff professionally modify the lectures with added graphs, photos, videos, etc., and also adding other supplemental resources including study materials and interactive sessions.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4KhYBwhmqp_VFdNQnBDS1VCWEk&authuser=0

I’m Robert Chamberlain and I am a C.P.A. and teach accounting and business courses at MiraCosta and Palomar Colleges.  I have been teaching only face-to-face classes although I use Blackboard quite a bit.  In the spring I will be teaching my first hybrid class and next fall I am slotted for my first completely on-line class so I’m looking forward to getting the perspectives and advice of those who have already been teaching on-line for awhile.

I’m a San Diego native but also lived in southwest Colorado for several years when I was working there in real estate.  My degrees are from UC Davis and SDSU in business and accounting.  I have four children, one who graduated from UCSB and three who are in college right now.

Well, at least I have a place for a blog.  Now what to do with it?  The challenge will be making sure I make the time to actually use it, which should be easier after we get through the semester’s first week craziness.

Thanks to the MiraCosta IT/IS people and everyone involved in the POT program for helping us to become better instructors, particularly in the on-line world.