BSU Research and Teaching Talk

Editor's Notes

• #2: I was asked to talk today about my research and teaching. I have titled this talk “Teaching and Learning in Online Learning Environments”
• #3: I was told that I have an hour to speak and that I should leave about 15 minutes for questions at the end
• #5: So when I think about spending about 45 minutes talking about my research and my teaching, I think wow… that is not nearly enough time. I figured I would spend about 30 minutes focused on my research and then about 15 minutes about my teaching. More specifically when I think about talking about my research in 30 minutes I realize that I can’t possibly go into it into much depth. So I figured I would put myself in your shoes and ask myself what is it that each of you want to learn from this presentation and these are the questions I came up with.
• #7: I have 55 publications. Of those, 24 are refereed journal articles or book chapters
• #8: To-date I have not published in the top journals in our field – namely, ETR&D, Computers & Ed, and British Journal of Ed. Technology. And while I plan to submit manuscripts to each of these journals in the next six months, I have published in three SSCI journals.
• #9: SSCI of course is only one way to determine a journals significance. Acceptance rates as well as practitioner beliefs are another
• #10: This number is deceiving in waysbecause a number of these are short practitioner pieces. However, what it does do is point out that I do regularly publish non-refereed publications. A number of these are the result of my work at UCD. There was an expectation that 20% of our time can be on projects of our choice. I decided to edit two books on giving faculty voice to share their experiences teaching and learning online.
• #11: We strive to identify multiple ways to determine whether a publication is of value. We first want to see that it’s peer reviewed. We then want to see that it is a high quality publication (which we typically measure by its impact factor), we then want to see if people are actually citing our work.
• #12: Another way though to measure impact is to look at whether people are actually reading our work. I try to intentionally publish some of my work in open access journals – in large part that more people will read my work.
• #15: But not only have I published with 25 different co-authors, I have also published with many of them more than once. For instance, while I have written the most with Joni Dunlap, if you look at others, I have worked the most with past colleagues – White & Thomas.
• #25: So you might be asking yourself… What’s so important about Connecting???? Well, I will respond to that with a story.For a number of years I worked at Regis University – a Jesuit University located in Denver Colorado.I worked in the Teacher Education Department. Our primary job was teacher preparation. So at the end of the fall and spring semesters we had an event to celebrate the successful completion of student teaching called “wine and cheese”.At wine and cheese, we had a Jesuit tell a send off speech (much like a commencement address). For a number of years we had this Jesuit describe his experience teaching social studies at the high school level. He talked about all of these great students he had over the years and time after time he would meet one of them and they could never tell him a thing about “social studies” or what he “taught” them but they could always speak fondly about the way he made them feel about themselves. Education IS a social process. Connecting with others matters… and this plain fact coupled with my initial fears teaching online brought me to this concept called social presence.Image source: Created this image using an image of old main and jacobs
• #26: Short, Williams, and Christie spent the early 1970’s researching how a communication medium influences how people communicate.Social Presence theory began with the Communication Studies Group in London and was popularized by Short, Williams, and Christie’s book on the subject.They developed a theory called social presence which they outline in their book the social psychology of telecommunications.Social presence is a theory that explains the ability of people to present themselves as "real” and “there” when using a communication medium.For more information check out: http://patricklowenthal.com/the-evolution-and-influence-of-social-presence-theory-on-online-learning/Image source: Created the image from a blue book and added text (couldn’t find a copy of the book anywhere).
• #27: But what does this mean? Well…
• #28: But what does this mean? Well…
• #29: But what does this mean? Well…
• #57: --Chareen and I share an interest qualitative research, video, and youtube. There are lots of ways we can collaborate whether that is focusing on video in general or specifically on social presence and video or perceptions of screencasting and topics like that.--Kerry Rice and I share an interest on online learning. While she focuses on K12 and I focus on higher ed, I am confident there are multiple projects we can collaborate on--Young Baek and Chris Haskell both focus on “games”. While I am not a game expert, I have an interest in creativity, play, fun, and emotion and learning--Yu-Chang and Yu-Hui have an interest in mobile learning as well as social media / web 2.0 technologies and computer-supported collaborative learning; online community building; Learning and instruction innovation through emerging technologies; Mobile CSCL and Web 2.0 technologies; Social nature of learning; Information and new media literacy--Andy is interested in data mining. I think there are number of ways we could collaborate on projects whether that be current projects like open access journals or through mining LMS for data to inform social presence / interactions--Ross and I share an interest in culture and context as well as professional practice--Barbara has an interest with emerging technologies and teaching skills as well as I do. Not to mention I think we can write a case study on the PMIEF--Dazhi and I’s interests overlap in many ways. She has written a number of article online learning. When I think about STEM, among other things I am interested in issues of identity--Lee Ann and I are both interested in teacher education and literacy.
• #63: Teacher bios. Since we ask our students to share information about themselves, we share a lot of information about ourselves. Besides helping students to have insight into our values, passions, interests, credibility and so on, our sharing models the type and level of sharing we want them to engage in, in order to set the appropriate tone for social presence and establishing a personal, supporting online learning environment. To this end, we share pertinent resources (e.g., our teaching philosophies, links to articles we’ve written, presentations we’ve delivered, our blogs, and so on)For more info: http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/intentional-web-presence-10-seo-strategies-every-academic-needs-know
• #64: Joni’s Story -- http://www.augustcouncil.com/~jdunlap/JoniDunlapSOR.movPatrick’s Story -- http://youtu.be/VL0QkVu5t6wFor more info: http://patricklowenthal.com/establishing-social-presence-using-digital-storytelling/
• #65: Weekly announcements. At the start of each week, we post a new announcement orienting students to the activities of the week, and also send the announcement to students via email. Even though this information exists elsewhere in the course, we like to reach out to students (as opposed to making them log into the course shell) with an enthusiastic and more personal announcement about the week (whether in text format or video). In each announcement, we provide a reminder about how they should focus their time and energy during the week. We also include personal information (e.g., like what we did the week before), and well wishes for a successful up-coming week. Weekly agendas.Finally, for each week in the course, we provide students with a weekly agenda checklist that they can print out to help them track what they should be working on during the week. Again, although this information exists in the course’s master calendar, it helps to have the week’s activities laid out in a checklist format. We also use the agendas as another way to help students connect with us by adding personal touches. For instance, Joni includes inspirational artwork and music at the top of each agenda and a “What’s fun got to do with it?” section at the bottom, where she shares fun and interesting items that are related to the activities of the week.  
• #66: We also focus on orienting students to our courses much like we do in a face-to-face course. The following are a few “finding-your-way-around” activities we use to help students with course orientation, in the first week and throughout the term. Orientation videos. We present short orientation videos, with each video walking students through different aspects of the course shell, learning activities, and projects (see Figure 6). Using tools like Jing, we create screencasts showing students all around the course shell. We interject our sense of humor where possible, tell stories, and provide explanations for our design decisions. These videos not only orient students to the course, but to us as well (see this example of a video Patrick used to orient his students to the first unit in his course: http://www.screencast.com/t/MmM3MjM5MjUt). We also do: Course & syllabus scavenger hunt. Videos though aren’t the only way to orient students to a course. We also use the quiz feature in our LMS to create a course and syllabus scavenger hunt that students submit by the end of the first week. To complete the scavenger hunt, students have to read the syllabus, locate materials, and watch the orientation videos. The results of the scavenger hunt reassure us that students are locating and tracking important course information, and alert us to any misconceptions or confusions that individual students have about the materials so we can immediately reach out to them and provide additional support and guidance. Weekly announcements. At the start of each week, we post a new announcement orienting students to the activities of the week, and also send the announcement to students via email (see Figure 7). Even though this information exists elsewhere in the course, we like to reach out to students (as opposed to making them log into the course shell) with an enthusiastic and more personal announcement about the week (whether in text format or video). In each announcement, we provide a reminder about how they should focus their time and energy during the week. We also include personal information (e.g., like what we did the week before), and well wishes for a successful up-coming week.  Weekly agendas.Finally, for each week in the course, we provide students with a weekly agenda checklist that they can print out to help them track what they should be working on during the week (see Figure 8). Again, although this information exists in the course’s master calendar, it helps to have the week’s activities laid out in a checklist format. We also use the agendas as another way to help students connect with us by adding personal touches. For instance, Joni includes inspirational artwork and music at the top of each agenda and a “What’s fun got to do with it?” section at the bottom, where she shares fun and interesting items that are related to the activities of the week.  
• #67: Personalized, Detailed Feedback Assessment and evaluation (and the feedback it entails) are difficult aspects of teaching. Whenever possible we strive to provide personalized and detailed feedback to our students to not only improve the learning process but also to maintain our social presence and connection with each student throughout the semester. The following are a few ways that we do this:  One-on-one and group emails. As low tech as it might appear and while it goes against the school of thought that all communication should be kept within the LMS, we are strong believers in the power of one-on-one emails (see Dunlap & Lowenthal, 2010c). While we use one-on-one and group emails in a variety of ways throughout the semester, we primarily use it as a way to provide personalized detailed feedback with our students.   Video feedback. Sometimes though we find the need to provide feedback in a different—high tech—format. For instance, Patrick uses screen recording tools like Jing to provide video feedback to his students on certain assignments in which it is hard to provide feedback in text alone. While cumbersome in that you have to get all set up with your microphone and the software and so forth, students have commented on how valuable it is to hear both the positive and the negative feedback in the tone of our voices.
• #68: In our experience, it is not realistic to get to know people in an online course with one getting-to-know-you activity during the first week of class. Establishing social presence and building relationships and community requires multiple opportunities to share and connect. So, for reconnection purposes, we use activities like the following to reengage students every few weeks.Soundtrack of your life. Another reconnecting activity (and one of our personal favorites) involves having our students create a playlist of six songs: two that represent their past, two that represent their present, and two that represent their planned/hoped for future. Students share their playlists (using a digital jukebox like Grooveshark). They then ask questions about the songs to figure out why certain songs were selected. You can learn a lot about someone from the music they select (Dunlap & Lowenthal, 2010b).For more information: http://patricklowenthal.com/hot-for-teacher-using-digital-music-to-enhance-students-experience-in-online-courses/
• #69: Free-flowing, organic interactions Last but not least, one of our most recent attempts at establishing and maintaining social presence in our courses involves social networking tools—specifically, Twitter. We began using Twitter (and inviting our students to follow us) because we wanted to have an informal, playful way for our online students to connect with us and each other throughout the day. On our quest for the social presence grail—as effective as we thought many of the strategies we have previously discussed were—we felt confined within the structure of the LMS. This was exasperated by the fact that we have been missing the informal, playful banter and chit-chat that is possible when everyone is physically located in the same geographic space. This banter helps students connect with us, and experience our personalities. And, it helps them connect with each other in a more emotional way. Twitter seemed to have potential to further support our social-presence efforts. Twitter. We invite our students to follow us on Twitter and to follow each other. In addition, we provide a list of people outside of the course who tweet about course-relevant topics to follow as well as a number of publications and professional organizations. Our decision to use Twitter to enhance social presence in our online courses was reinforced by students’ experiences (see Dunlap & Lowenthal, 2009a, 2009b) as well as the plain fact that our communications via Twitter seemed much more natural than logging into our LMS, getting into the course shell, then getting into a discussion forum and posting a message . . . and then waiting for someone to respond later (after she or he has already moved on to other work, thoughts, issues). But unlike many of the other strategies, we found Twitter to be an extremely time consuming strategy so we were left wondering about its effectiveness.For more infohttp://patricklowenthal.com/tweeting-the-night-away-using-twitter-to-enhance-social-presence/