New York Times Headlline: In Florida, Virtual Classrooms With No Teachers

This is almost funny -- these classes are actually from the Florida Virtual School, which has some truly wonderful courses, very well-designed, and all taught by actual, live, teachers.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/education/18classrooms.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2

Hat tip to USDLA via Twitter.

Lisa

Games and Learning

I know the concept of games and learning has been beaten almost to death, but Donna's post (I love that link) reminded me of a post I read the other day about games, application, and learning.

We learn more effectively when the education has some sort of applicable value to us, when the learning is meaningful. The experience is even more valuable if we actually enjoy the learning process. Games and virtual worlds can help make education more meaningful and fun.

Games and virtual worlds make learning meaningful when students can see the results of their actions. Players are applying their knowledge, so it’s not just learning for the sake of knowing, but putting the learning to use. The feeling of immersion in a game or virtual world can lead the player to a sense of inclusiveness and empowerment, because the player’s actions matter in the game world. The amount of control that the player has in the game world is also correlated with her sense of value. If the player’s actions have little to no bearing on the game’s outcomes, then the sense of meaning is lost.

From http://leefblog.com/2011/01/games-and-adult-learning-part-5-intrinsic-motivation/ 

I haven't seen any good economics games lately (although there was an old "Whack the Economist" patterned after "Whack a Mole" that I got a kick out of and surely allowed my students to blow off some stress).  I used to use an economics jokes website to provide a joke a day for my class -- I actually received lots of positive feedback on that.  This is a reminder that it's time to redo my first assessment finally -- I've been talking about turning it into a scavenger hunt for semesters now.

Lisa

Other Retention Discussions. . .

Ha ha! I had just the article Lisa mentioned in her previous post about "low tech" methods for improving retention. I found it particularly interesting because I had actually been thinking about giving the phone call concept a try. I just HATE when students simply disappear, and maybe, just maybe, a little bit of personal interaction will help me avoid that mid-semester "guess I'll just go away" mindset. This idea is made more feasible for me by my recent introduction to the G-Mail phone feature. I can call students using this free service and not have to use up my own minutes. . .or divulge my cell phone number. Stay tuned! I'll let you know if I actually make the time to do it AND what kind of response I get.

In this same issue of EQ, an article titled "The Case for Nudge Analytics" had a link to this YouTube video about "the fun theory." This may be an example of someone having far too much time on his/her hands, but I think it's a great example of how we can take something that seems impossibly boring and mundane and turn it into something fun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw

Old-School Tools in Student Retention

Interesting article in the Educause Quarterly on using email and the telephone as student retention tools in online courses.  The article is here:  http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE%2BQuarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/DefeatingtheKobayashiMaruSuppo/219103

I absolutely agree with the author that one-on-one communication with students via email and especially the telephone can increase student retention.   I wonder how much though and what the ROI is for the instructor and the institution.  Extensive use of the telephone in particular is extremely time-consuming on the part of the instructor.  Email is a little less so because it may be possible to standardize the initial emails, however email conversations that continue on beyond that first communication are necessarily individualized and thus time-consuming.  More important perhaps is the question of pedagogy, one-on-one conversations with individual students exclude the other students in the class -- as the instructor are you required to have the same or similar conversations with all students in the class?  What information or insight is one student receiving that the others are not?  When do you go over the line between building the type of relationship that will keep the student enrolled in the class and giving some students an unfair amount of  information/insight/time? 

Early in the development of online teaching practices instructors moved to the threaded discussion area as the replacement for the face-to-face classroom discussions.  All of the students in a class could see the discussions and everyone was able to participate.  There is inevitably some distance created by the medium of the threaded discussion, for every student who loves the distance because they get to think about their answers before typing them in, there is at least one who does not feel a part of a learning community and does not feel a responsibility to the class because of that distance.  

The telephone might solve some of that initial distance problem. An phone call at the beginning of the term (perhaps not required) might draw in some of the students who would otherwise gradually drop out of the class.  It might give them a sense of belonging and responsibility towards the class, keep them involved, and help them complete the course successfully.  

I have a role as faculty and also a role as administrator.  As both I worry about how much time we can expect adjunct faculty to invest in a class, given the pay rates.  As administrator I then wonder if any of this one-on-one interaction with students can be shared with student services.  Is the telephone as effective when the call comes from student services or even from a vendor?  What if we looked at class data and chose who to call and when based on something like number or schedule of logins or another class participation measure? 

Learning to Learn

Long discussion with my dressage instructor about horses learning how to learn. Some of them do figure out the learning concept and they do some fairly impressing analysis, especially when they are back in the pasture for the evening.  This week we spent a few minutes teaching Gracie how to come to the whip instead of move away from it.  Weird concept, but she got it as soon as we applied treats to the problem.  Then the next day when I asked it was there immediately.  She had clearly thought about it overnight.  She has thought her way through the idea of Piaffe and, while she finds it ridiculous, she is willing to give it a try.

My other mare just shuts down if you ask her to try something new that she thinks is too difficult.  You then have to go back to something she finds easy and build up to the new thing very slowly and from another direction.  I am pretty sure there is a teaching lesson in both those horses.

Lisa

Student Retention

Rhonda Epper thinks the hottest issue of the next couple of years will be student retention and I tend to agree with her.   It's great that we are getting students into our classes, but if they are going to graduate they need to complete them successfully.

The new issue of Educause Quarterly is focused on student retention.  More here as I actually read the articles.  http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/IntelligentCounselingSystemA24/219101

Lisa

Wikipedia

How many times have you listened to an instructor diatrabe on the evils of Wikipedia?  And how many times have you used Wikipedia as a quick start to a research project or to look up some oddball fact?  Really, Wikipedia is here and we all use it.  Sure, there are factual errors, but on average it's pretty good.  (And there are factual errors in peer reviewed studies and documents also.)  A few mistakes are not a valid reason to throw the whole thing out.  What they are a valid reason for is teaching our students how best to use Wikipedia.  And that's not a lot different from teaching our students how to use any encyclopedia.  It's not peer-reviewed and it's not a primary source. You go there to get a good overview and to look at the citations.

Casper Grathwohl, the author of this article says it much better than I do:

http://chronicle.com/article/Wikipedia-Comes-of-Age/125899/ 

Lisa