Successful distance learning and teacher presence

Further to my thoughts about the importance of teacher presence, I have been looking through the literature, and of course one of my favourites and most useful ones: Garrison & Anderson’s E-Learning in the 21st Century. What struck me in their framework of a community of inquiry was what they said about teacher presence (2003, p. 29)

The third mutually reinforcing element in a community of inquiry is teacher presence. [...] While there must be full and open participation, for a purposeful educational experience there is an inherent need for an architect and facilitator to design, direct, and inform the transaction.

For me, the most important point here is the design of any online learning environment in the broadest sense (activities, collaborative tasks, materials, assessment, etc) but as Garrison & Anderson further explain “teaching presence is defined as ‘the design, facilitation and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realising personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes’ (Anderson et al, 2001).”

The challenges are manifold, not only that which is for me most important, because it is the base of it all and the first step, the design, which leads the learner through the experience in a meaningful and encouraging way, but the design then has to support and enable the teaching/teacher presence to function as a balancer and motivator who facilitates the learning experience. This is no mean task, and in fact I dare say more challenging than presence in a F2F environment.

How to achieve this balance? How to encourage learners and their community without being overpowering and leading any discussions and experiences? A fine balancing act indeed.

The skills of summarising and encouraging further thought are designed to help with the above, but this is time and resource intensive. Thus there is another balance: that of teacher presence and engagement through summarising and encouraging deeper thought and giving feedback where appropriate – and that of the simple base line of it all: resources. Resources are finite, and we must strike a balance between what is necessary, what is ideal, and what is realistic.

Garrison, D.R. and Anderson, T. (2003) E-Learning in the 21st Century: a framework for research and practice, London: Routledge.

 

International Women’s Day

While I am musing over the many possible posts regarding DL student support, take a moment out of your day and watch this excellent video. M and James Bond on gender equality. If you wonder what this has to do with student support, then think twice.

 

I just made a new Voki. See it here:

Inspired by my fellow students on the MSc, I tested out the Voki speaking avatar creation. Quite interesting, and while I personally find it is a gimmick, I realise that I am a cynical and crusty old so-and-so, who thinks that almost anything is a gimmick, and thus one shouldn’t mind me.

I can see potential here for distance learners, if used sparingly and with good reason.

 

Academic Integrity and Distance Learners

There are many resources available on universities’ web sites on academic integrity, and avoiding plagiarism, but this is not what I want to blog about today. How to define Academic Misconduct and Plagiarism. I put together a short selection:

Plagiarism – “Submitting someone else’s work as your own” (source: Jude Carroll)

Collusion – “Collusion refers to working too closely with one or more individuals to help solve and/or answer an assessed task or question, producing a joint answer or solution (intentionally or not) to gain an unfair advantage over other students.” (source: Open University)

Data Fabrication – “Fabrication, falsification or sabotage of research data is any action that misrepresents, willfully distorts or alters the process and results of scholarly investigation. This includes but is not limited to making up or fabricating data as part of a laboratory, fieldwork or other scholarly investigation [,,,]. ” (source: DePaul University)

(Contract) Cheating – ““Contract cheating” occurs when a student gets someone else to do an assignment for them and then hands it in as their own work.” (source: Birmingham City University)

I wanted to understand better why students plagiarise, and have been looking into this truly faceted problem. There are many reasons, and most of them have nothing to do with students deliberately going out to cheat. I learned a lot from Jude Carroll (and various other resources and speakers) and put together, I’d say that reasons for plagiarising are as follows:

Misunderstanding of rules & last minute panic are most frequently cited by students.

Students might be juggling other commitments along with university study, such as part-time work or family responsibilities, so they can have significant time management issues to deal with, and possible ‘short-cuts’ to getting an essay in on time (e.g. not providing sufficient detail for referencing sources) might be a likely result.

Misuse 

International students are more likely to be punished. (Do they plagiarise more or are they just found out more often?) If so:

• Because they fear failure, lack writing skills, and are under time pressure?
• They know about the concept of plagiarism but have little idea how to comply?
• Paraphrasing and trying new strategies is risky & they revert to ‘tried and tested’ strategies?

This is an incredibly important point, because international/non-native English speaking students are more likely to be found out, and it would be a fallacy to take from this that they also plagiarise more.

“… in common with all students, most plagiarism by international students arises from misunderstanding of academic writing conventions and from misusing citation rules … The particular difficulty of operating in a second language makes copying by international students easier to identify and more likely to prompt action because it seems so clear-cut.” (Carroll, 2008)

Students’ prior educational experiences may mean that when they enter university, they have not developed effective information literacy skills and experience difficulties with academic writing, as they do not understand the importance of citation and referencing.

Carroll (2008) has emphasised how international students’ experiences of assessment prior to undertaking study in the UK may be rather different to the assessment approaches adopted in UK HEIs: they may not have previously undertaken coursework or given presentations to their lecturer and peers, for example.

Source: HE Academy

Misconduct

Pre-planned fraud and contract cheating. Still rare but varies by disciplines. Its increase is due to easy access to cheating sites on the net. e.g. essay swap/upload sites, essay and even dissertation writing for money.

Ways to prevent plagiarism

What can we do to prevent this problem? I am a keen believer in the use of Turnitin Plagiarism Prevention service for formative purposes, and have launched – and am kind of succeeding – in changing the university’s understanding of the usefulness of Turnitin formatively. Turnitin is directly accessible through our VLE and is available in every course one is teaching. I would strongly urge to use this tool for distance learners, and will be investigating this shortly.

Sending DL learners simply off to the many resources on the net is not going to be enough. I refer to Jude Carroll again, and an excellent presentation/workshop she ran for my institution a few years ago, which is still as valid as then.

The Cornerstones of Plagiarism Avoidance

Policies: Shared understanding, clear definitions in unambiguous language

Teaching: Designing out in course & assessment design

Guidance: Good induction and support

Knowledge: Early and continuous skills teaching

1. Policies

Strategy

• teaching and learning strategies should aim to minimise opportunities for misconduct. (see: Teaching)
• no variation in approach and process
• clear language

2. Teaching

 Curriculum/Assessment Design

• Novelty – new each time or unusual format
• Requirements: e.g. primary data, specific text; personal experience
• Application: Local, recent, specific assessment briefs
• Assess process and/or require evidence of process
• Design-in reflection & metacognition
• Right Level (Bloom)

3. Guidance

• Induction necessary but not sufficient
• Define terms, give examples, stress academic culture rules
• Short and regular exercises
• Lots of written guidance (Library resources)
• Don’t be fooled into thinking they’ve got it

4. Knowledge

 Writing Skills

• How and what to cite
• Paraphrasing based on understanding of the sources
• Weaving together others’ ideas from several sources
• Taking notes that maintain link to source
• Key idea = Finding your own writing ‘voice’ (likely to take a long time)

The challenge is now, for me, to implement all of the above into the DL course I am teaching, but not for actual students, but for staff to teach their students!

Resources

Plagiarismadvice.org
http://www.plagiarismadvice.org/

East, J. (2009) ‘Judging plagiarism: a problem of morality and convention’, Higher Education: The International Journal of Higher Education and Educational Planning, Volume 59, Number 1, 69-83
In East’s paper ‘Judging plagiarism: a problem of morality and convention’ (2009) she argues that while morality is not a primary concern of universities, it is nevertheless a big part of it, because academic integrity is a question of morality. She further explains that this is the reason why plagiarism evokes emotional responses, because moral issues evoke emotions in humans.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/h0302m1628143g03/

The Higher Education Academy JISC Academic Integrity Service (2010) “Supporting academic integrity: Approaches and resources for higher education,” (especially pages 6-15)
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/ourwork/academicintegrity/Supporting_academic_integrity_approaches_and_resources_for_HE

 

Supporting distance learners’ sensory learning styles

I’ve been thinking about this while preparing my own DL module to show to my course team colleagues, because we are going to go for a homogenous look and feel of our DL courses. I didn’t add any podcasts to my newly designed module, not only because the resource-based module is incredibly time intensive to set up initially, (no PPT anywhere in sight) but because I began to realise that I absolutely need written equivalents of audio information.

I’ve learned this in the module I am curently participating in as a student, where I am supposed to subscribe and listen to podcasts, but I just can’t and won’t. I can’t, because this is completely against how I learn, and I cannot listen to podcasts. Never did, never will. Goes against the very grain of my being. I need something to focus my eyes on, but if I do, and it is not a video, then I cannot follow what is being said.

I had a discussion with one of my colleagues about this, and we were surprised to find out how very much opposites of the audio – visual spectrum we are. My colleague is an audio learner, and says she doesn’t even notice anything visual, not even in her daily life, and that she can remember anything she has been told. I, on the other hand, am a visual learner and my visuals/surroundings are most important to me, and I never forget anything I’ve seen.

We didn’t touch on (see what I did there? ) kinesthetic learners. I do think I have a lot of that, too, and it would fit with the visuals. However, I can’t see a way of incorporating this in a DL course, can you?

Thus I came to the conclusion that while I will be offering audio resources in the next incarnation of my module, they will either have written content (transcripts are not always necessary) or they are freely available educational resources I can link to, which offer transcripts anyway, such as JISC.

Resources

Felder, R.M. & Silverman, L.K. (1988) ‘Learning and Teaching Styles in Engineering Education’, Engr. Education, 78(7), 674–681

Sadly I couldn’t get full text access to the following article:

James, W. B. & Gardner, D. L. (1995) ‘Learning styles: Implications for distance learning’, New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 1995: 19–31

 

Teacher visibility in distance learning courses

I am experiencing and thus learning something extremely important right now, and that is the utmost importance of teacher visibility i.e. of communicating with students and not leave them in a void. When running a distance learning course, we don’t see our students, they are at the other end of a computer somewhere, and when they are asking questions, or, worse, are distressed, unable to cope, or unhappy about the course, and even thinking about dropping the studies altogether, we not only have to take them seriously and respond in a timely fashion, but we have to make sure we are not silent.

Unlike in F2F situations the only contact is via email or VLE, and when this does not happen, the student is left completely alone and isolated, with the uncertainty and frustration growing.

From a student point of view, of a learner who is currently being left in the silent dark, I am learning a most valuable lot, and I will always strive not to fall into this trap with my own students.

This learning experience really is invaluable, albeit upsetting, but emotion has always been a part of learning and motivation.

 

“We must resist change(ing the VLE)”

Thanks to a colleague in another School, who sent me this entertaining clip. Granted, they are trying to sell their own Learning Management System, but the sentiment in the video is one that probably many colleagues across the sector, who are working with VLEs (teaching, assessment, support, etc) can sympathise with.

It definitely got a chuckle out of me.

 

360 Feedback: an interesting look at feedback in HE

While I’m on a roll regarding feedback (currently designing the asessment & feedback learning unit for my DL students), I came across this interesting presentation Slideshare.net by Ken Ronkowitz, which I found quite thought provoking.

I had not heard of zero sum and non-zero sum feedbaack before, but the concept makes a lot of sense and is worth investigating further in an HE context. I found particularly useful the definitions of the types of reinforcement that can be used in student feedback (slides 11-13):

• confirmation
• corrective
• explanatory
• diagnostic
• elaborative

 

Giving Audio Feedback to Students case study

While this not be directly connected to what I am supposed to be reflecting on in this module, I nevertheless would like to share a wee case study I put together. It is directly related to the MSc, after all, because I took my individual assignment for module 1 and turned it into a case study for my institution.

Waste not – want not, is what I always say, and make do and mend.

Hope it’s of use to anyone who is thinking about giving audio feedback to their students.

Giving Audio Feedback to Students

 

Encouraging Distance Learners

I was thinking about writing “supporting” first, but really, what I am thinking about is more encouragement of those who are isolated as independent distance learners. Reflecting on my own experience right now, I have to say that I find it extremely hard to motivate myself to log into the VLE, to seek out my module, and to engage with the activities. I wonder why, is it because I am so busy myself, or because I am teaching online myself (surely, that should have an encouraging effect?) or that the content just doesn’t grip me all that much. Am I not being challenged enough? Is my interest not tickled enough? Am I already too far ahead in my experiential knowledge in the first place?

There is truth in all of the above. What striked me the most, though, is that I am currently experiencing the same with the DL cohort I am teaching. Some have never logged into the VLE, others have never completed a task, thus I do not know where they are, how much they have taken in, how they are progressing, and a few are posting and contributing to tasks. It’s an interesting question what the hurdle is. I do believe the fact one has to actively go to yet another online space can not be helpful, and yet there is no other solution. Or is there? Can we use areas that are socially used? What about Google tools? (Beware the servers outside of Europe, we can not force any student to take part in anything where data is held in the US and legally we have to tread carefully)

But how much does the use of tools one uses for purposes outside of study actually interfere, and then have a negative impact, on one’s life holistically speaking? For example, I have 3 WordPress blogs that are all active. One private one for my creativity project, one private one for a different identity of mine as which I am a published fiction author, and this one here, a mix of mostly study and some work. How does this feel? It stresses me out, to be honest. I forget to log into places and services with all my different identities and beings, because there is too much to keep up with, and two was difficult, three is painful.

Hang on, how did I get to this topic? Interestingly I must be frustrated/stressed enough to have veered off into a direction I didn’t mean to go to.

Back to encouraging distance learners. What does it take to coax someone out of their shell and to make them want to participate? It all comes down to intrinsic motivation in the end, or does it? Or could we do more to make it worthwhile for our distance learners and to make it interesting? Should we, or could we, move away from a one size fits all and look for more tailor-made solutions? Is that even realistic?

As you can see, lots of questions and no real answers yet, but I am working on it, because I am in this situation twice: as a teacher and as a student.

I found a very interesting resource by the University of Idaho: distance education at a glance. It lists strategies for distance learning: http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/eo/dist8.html Having struggled through the Paloff reading for the module, I have to say I prefer this profile of the distance learner instead. I’m sorry, but I felt the Paloff chapters were woefully out of date with developments and changes in learner demography in the last 5 years.

Emerald’s Teaching Zone also has a useful article on supporting distance learners: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/teaching/insights/distance_learning.htm  and, after 10 years working with and in distance and blended education, this truly struck a chord with me, probably because I am now a DL student myself:

However, because the learner is physically separated from the point of instruction, by definition he/she is also absent from the other infrastructure of university life – the whole student services side of admissions, study support, enrollment, plus library, exams etc. Because of their absence from campus, students need a support infrastructure which is campus independent. And however excellent the learning materials, the personal factor – the ability to sort out one’s own learning problems and receive the emotional support to stimulate learning – is still important: all students need human contact and live interaction.

I am missing the stimuli, it seems, the emotional support of human interaction, the encouragement of fellow human beings to chat with, talk about time constraints, problems, ideas, etc. Are my own students missing the same? I am going to investigate…

P.S. regarding the use of clouds e.g. Google, JISCLegal is an excellent resource to answer such questions: http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/LegalAreas/DataProtection.aspx and Google has signed up to “safe harbour” principles: http://www.google.com/privacy/privacy-policy.html which is a statutory US-EU agreement: http://www.export.gov/safeharbor/