For-profit with a High Retention Rate?

American Public University has that.  Interesting podcast/interview with Frank McCluskey on what it takes to manage a high retention rate with 80,000 students.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/podcast-a-for-profit-online-college-with-high-retention-rates/29924?sid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en

It sounds like retention is all about student engagement.  Importance of the use of rubrics was interesting. 

Lisa

ITC Last Day

I went to two great session on Tuesday.  The first was a discussion about designing classes and programs around adult learning styles by Mary Petrie and Anne Johnson of IverHills Community College.  The presenters had so many great tips!  Including a schedule page was #1 on their list also -- adults like to have all the information/due dates available on day 1 of the class.  That of course is my experience also.  Mary talked a lot about communicating in a positive, respectful manner and about being available on their schedule -- she holds office hours Tuesday evening from 9:00-10:00 (via Skype, email, and phone) and on Saturday.  I try to be available Sunday evening and that is when I receive calls, on the rare times I do receive calls.  

Adults are busy and very very scheduled, so they need rapid response times from us.  That seems reasonable to me when we are talking about FT faculty, a bit of a problem for adjunct.  We did all agree that posting times when you are online and available and what an expected response time would be was critical.  Also a standardized schedule is helpful -- assignments always due the same day of the week and the same time is beneficial.  Personally I know I couldn't keep track of a changing due day or time, so that makes sense to me. 

Mary also worried about the reading skills of students, so includes a video "tour" of each assignment and of her syllabus.  

Many more tips, but I am off to the beach. Photo credit to Classic Glass from Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/mbrannon/5456135712/, Egmont Key

Lisa

ITC eLearning 11, Day 1

I spent day one following a student retention track.

The morning keynote was Alan Levine of CogDogBlog fame with a presentation on photopgraphy as a metaphor for education.  My take-away was to try to apply the Daily Shoot concept to the developmental math courses I am teaching -- how did each student apply this unit's math concept in their daily live each day.  I think I might ask them to post that (maybe not daily) beginning in unit 3.  

Next presentation was on student risk factors and how to ameliorate them.  #1 was time or registration.  CCCO didn't find any difference in success between students who registered on-time and students who registered the first week of classes, so I am not sure I would cut off registration any earlier than that.  It seems to me that some creative course design could solve any issues there.  #2 was poor/non-existent advising.  Monique has that under control at CMC. :^)  I did think that the idea of cutting students off from online classes when their GPA fell below a certain level was interesting.  I of course disagreed with the thought that students should be required to take F2F courses before they take online courses even if that does positively impact completion rates.

A presentation on 10 tips to increase course retention rates was interesting --

1. Classmate questions (kind of like the intro discussion only continues on into the term)
2. Learn as you go quizzes - group quizzes given before the material is officially covered
3. Weekly notes posted every Friday afternoon, covering the following week's activities.
4. Assignment schedule page. We know I love this one.
5. Two due dates -- Tuesday a quick and easy assignment, Thursday the major assignment.  The Tuesday assignment is also a reminder to begin the Thursday assignment.
6. Consistent Due Dates - Every Tuesday and Thursday, no other days.
7. Variety -- in assignments, learning styles, etc.
8. Survey Students
1. class concepts
2. How assignments work.
3. study habits
4. tie the questions to your learning objectives.
9. Open Book exams with randomized andpooled questions
10. Politeness - lots of please and thank you (kill them with kindness), encourage I messages.

Assignment ideas I need to look up :

1. Tag Galaxy
2. Playlist.com
3. Collagemaker
4. Windows and Mirrors
5. In Plain English on Youtube
6. Free Rice (has more than English)

Last presentation was similar.... 

Also lots of good conversation about implementing Quality Matters.

(Photo credit - Billy V from Flickr.  My hotel is next door to the tall round one. http://www.flickr.com/photos/billyv/1621273470/in/photostream/)  

Buy One, Get One?

Well certainly if I buy one, I should get one, contends the author of  a blog post at www.opencontent.org/blog. Of course, in the marketplace, "BOGO" offers appear regularly, and the literal interpretation of this concept in the post is intended to refute the idea that the free sharing of (educational) content is akin to socialism.What?

Could I look at your syllabus? Do you mind if I use those test questions? Hey, that's a great assignment. Can I incorporate it into my class? I must admit that I've never been told "no" when I've asked if I could use or modify someone else's content. Thus, I've always been a little puzzled by the reluctance, at least when faculty come together, to applaud the opportunity to opening share their content. I remember in the "early days" of exploring use of the object repository in WebCT, faculty were very concerned about openly sharing their work.

Of course, many if not all institution policies say that if work is created during contracted time with the institution, it does not belong solely to the developer but at least in part to the college. That leads to another point made by the blog's author about work created using taxpayer dollars (NSF and DOE grants, etc.). For example, "When you pay (through the Department of Education) for a brand-name university in New England to produce simulation-based educational games that can help almost anyone learn basic physics, do you ever get to play that game? No."

The post notes another example of research (conducted with NSF funds) that leads to an article publishing the "groundbreaking" findings. . .that we don't get to read.

I guess I never thought about the source for some of the research articles, etc., that I might have found interesting had I been able to see them without a subscription OR about various other content created with, perhaps, taxpayer $$ to which I don't have access. Of course, there are logistical challenges to openly sharing content, and perhaps that's more the issue in most cases than individuals not wanting to share it. 

I wonder if the federal government's foray into the OER world will make a difference?

SCORM Requirement for OER Grants

Based on input from the "community," the DoL has reversed its ruling requiring SCORM compliance in the development of content under new OER grants.  The new guidelines indicate that content should be created to maximize "interoperability, exchange, and reuse." The guidelines seem to recognize now, too, the more mainstream interoperability standards of AICC and IMS while still including PESC and SCORM.

Musings on Lecture Notes

Where do you post your lectures in your online class?  

Are they something you write up or recorded a long time ago that are in the content area of your course?

 Or do you write something more or less new once a week or so and pop them into the announcements? 

 Or maybe they are part of your discussion pages now?  Email? 

 There are clearly many places to put what we might have considered lecture notes back in the face-to-face world.  But what is right? And what are the implications of each choice?

I see a lot of faculty putting a weekly "Introduction to the Week's Material" in the announcement area of the course.  In Blackboard that can be emailed automatically to each student's email account.  That gives it two benefits. First, a well-written, exciting post may generate some enthusiasm on the part of the student to look at the material.  It's a place to add some immediacy to the content and to explain to students why they are spending their limited time with it. An introduction should help them understand what they have in common with the material (application even) and help them begin to interact with it.  Second, of course it's a reminder that they are in a class and that they might want to do some reading, homework, etc.   


Those are different goals that the lecture notes or videos you might have placed in a content area of a course back when you first developed the course.  Those notes are more of a map through the content; a way to further explain areas in the course where you know students may have difficulties of find particularly challenging.  They might give the students the detailed learning outcomes for each unit of the course, to help them focus their reading. This area is important.  It's unrealistic to expect students to automatically focus on the critical aspects of each unit without some assistance from their instructor.  It's not about daily communication or community building though. And it's not quite about building a relationship with the course content in the way the announcements can be.


Then there is the discussion area of the course.  This is where students build that relationship with the course content. It's where they wrestle with the details and try to fill in the missing pieces.  It's where they practice explaining the concepts and make sure they understand correctly.  Faculty do lecture here in discussions, but here it's critical to end the lecture with a question.  This is the part of the course where the student is supposed to talk back.  This is the area where instructors aren't taking to an auditorium where no hands go up. Some faculty structure their discussions in such a way that the learner is "led" through the material.  Early questions are more basic, later questions are more complex.  Or early questions cover material from early in the course, later questions (in a single thread) cover later material.  Questions bring in current events and possible applications. Students grapple with concepts in front of everyone else in the class.

Is the conclusion that your course needs all three?

Gen Y Students

Faculty Focus had an article today about teaching Gen Y students that included this quote:

Research suggests that Generation Y first-year students have a high attrition rate as a result of their level of expectations and enthusiasm for the college experience, which often leads to disillusionment. According to Education Dynamics' November 2008 survey by California State University-Northridge, reasons online students drop out include financial challenges (41%), life events (32%), health issues (23%), lack of personal motivation (21%), and lack of faculty interaction (21%). Among online students who dropped out of their degree or certificate programs, 40% percent failed to seek any help or resources before abandoning their programs. Nearly half (47%) of students who dropped out did so before completing one online course.  (Article by Loren Kleinman)

My only personal survey -- I have a daughter in college  -- also results in complaints about faculty who don't post grades in an online system immediately after collecting exams or essays.  I definitely believe that high schools are raising student expectations about feedback and about the immediacy of feedback.  That seems to me to imply the need for two types of assessments.  


Students today do want immediate feedback.  Assessments and especially self-assessments can be added to classes which include instant feedback.  While challenging to build, feedback can be personalized at least to the extent that it gives direction on what specifically the student needs to review and where to find the missing information in the course content.  Pearson has done a good job of building this sort of detailed feedback into their MyMathLab product.


On the other hand, this sort of feedback really is not faculty interaction in any meaningful sense.  Learners still need a discussion area where faculty are quick to respond to questions and concerns.  Requiring that learners participate in a discussion area several times a week and responding promptly to the majority of posts builds a sense of community and the type of relationship with learners that ensures they are comfortable asking questions.  We don't want learners to abandon courses without asking at least one person for assistance and we need to make it easy and natural for them to go to their instructor for assistance.


Lisa