Category: Teaching

Maintain your presence when teaching online

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Why consider your ‘presence’ when teaching online?

Teaching online can feel strangely distant from your students, and students can also feel isolated or cut off from their teachers and other students. Maintaining a presence online is important in setting the tone, keeping students engaged, and allowing your teaching style to develop online.

Note

Keep your interactions short, regular, timely, personal to you, and linked to what the students are doing at the time.

Ideas to get you started

Podcasts

Create regular, short audio podcasts and publish to your Blackboard course. These could be used to introduce a new topic or week, to draw attention to anything particularly important or challenging, or even to connect the week’s topics to what’s happening in the news. Schedule them to appear at a certain day and time, so students know when to expect them. 

Headset on a yellow background
Photo by C D-X on Unsplash

Discussions 

Consider adding more social ‘cafe’ discussions to your course, to get students talking. Ideas such as ‘what three things…?’ or asking students to post something that they have seen or done in their own context can be good discussion starters.  

Having a Q&A space can also help reduce email questions, and help students help each other with common queries. Set expectations for how often you can expect replies, and make sure you drop in regularly to post and reply to posts.

Online drop-ins

Microsoft Teams provides an easy way to meet students informally, for example with drop-in sessions or for office hours. Note that time zones might make this difficult, so think about the best time to schedule sessions.

Vlogs

Video blogs are another way to regularly update students with a more personal touch. Create video updates from where you are working, to discuss interesting topics, share ideas, or introduce new perspectives, and publish them in your course. You could record yourself with your phone or webcam, take photos, or link to current affairs. These work best if they are more reflective than instructive, and informal in tone. You could even encourage students to do the same! 

Smartphone set to record video
Photo by Joey Huang on Unsplash

Weekly thoughts, updates, wrap-ups

Spend a few minutes at the start or end of the week to set the scene, or wrap things up for your students. Referencing specific comments in discussions or mentioning students by name is a great way to keep these relevant and motivate students to participate online. These can be announcements, text at the top of a course section, short videos or audio, or posts in a discussion.

Building and maintaining relationships in online courses – 10 ideas

Posted on by digitaleducation

This short guide provides some suggestions and includes links to relevant resources.  

  1. Show some of yourself as a person, maybe an image, biography with interests, Blackboard profile picture, short video or audio clip at the start of the course.
  2. Establish and maintain your teaching presence, eg responding in discussion forums or Padlets to ask or answer questions, nudge a discussion onwards, provide feedback or simply to show encouragement. Agree with students what “being active and present” means – both for you and them. Make sure you manage student expectations about your routine, the timing and frequency of your responses, clearly communicating this. Think of ways to create a personal touch which are sustainable for you, eg you could make a single regular short podcast or video clip with feedback for the whole cohort, addressing common questions.
  3. Give opportunities for students to share something of themselves, eg encourage students to upload profile pictures in Blackboard, create a short video about themselves, or write something about their favourite book, film, music, or the etymology/significance of their name in icebreaker activities. Examples of warm up activities from OneHE.
  4. Build peer to peer interaction into your course: scaffold group activity eg requiring groups to assign roles and providing a team-building activity at the start. Make sure students know why building online relationships, interacting with each other and with you, is important to their learning.  Consider the most appropriate group membership, perhaps persistent groups at the beginning to help students connect, then later mixing them up.  Allow plenty of time for students to build relationships in their groups as connecting online can take longer than in person. Create and manage Groups in Blackboard, Study skills group work resource.
  5. Reinforce a virtual home, your Blackboard space should be the hub where students know they can always go to access content, discussions, and other activities. Blackboard course design.
  6. Provide informal spaces for chat, eg edge times at the beginning and end of live online sessions, social online discussions, virtual study lounges.
  7. Check in with your students regularly, ask them how things are going eg in informal meetups or via quick polls, find out what is working well, what could be improved, acknowledge their feedback and adapt things if possible.
  8. Provide choice in activities, allowing students to connect with others who may have similar interests in personal learning networks, eg via self-enrol Blackboard groups which they can choose to join.
  9. Set engaging tasks, which can relate to students’ lives or interests, eg relating to real world problems or applications. Maybe these can be individual or group challenges.
  10. Empathise, try to show that you care, and to make everyone feel welcome and included, for example including low bandwidth ways to join in with discussions, such as text chat. 

Useful links 

Community building ideas: https://onehe.org/equity-unbound/ 

Estimating online learning time – how long will it take my students?

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When teaching online, it’s worth taking time to think about how long online activities will take. Some tasks will take a bit longer online than face to face, so planning time well will avoid overloading your students, and will help you keep a good rhythm to your online teaching.  

Things to consider

Orientation time 

At the start of the unit, it might take your students longer to work out what they need to do, or where they need to look. Factor this time in and make your initial tasks easy and quick to help them gain confidence.  

Reading time 

Be realistic about the length of texts you ask student to read in addition to the online task they have to complete (eg a discussion task), particularly for students who have English as an additional language. 

Thinking time 

Some students jump right into an online task, but others like to have time to think, particularly when writing their thoughts, which are more permanent than spoken conversation. Allow students enough time to consider before expecting a response.  

Interaction time 

Interacting online in a discussion takes time. Students need to read others’ responses, consider them, think about ways to respond, reply, and read others’ replies. This can happen over several days, if the discussion is not run synchronously (ie live, at a designated time). 

Putting it together 

When you plan your online activity, try to add together all the time needed to complete the task. Give students a realistic expectation of how long it will take, so they can plan their time.  

A discussion task involving reading text, answering questions in a discussion forum, and replying to others might look like this:

ActivityTime
Orientation5 minutes (understand the prompt, find the resources)
Reading30 minutes (depending on the text given)
Thinking20 minutes (to craft their response)
Interaction30 minutes (to post their responses, read others and reply)
Total activity1 hour and 25 minutes

Further information

For help with how to implement online tasks and activities, see a list of DEO Teaching Online guides. 

Universal Design for Learning in Blackboard Courses

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Woman in front of a bookcase, looking at her laptop screen and doing a happy or victorious gesture.
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The Universal Design for Learning Framework aims to optimise learning by acknowledging the diversity of needs and preferences of learners.

The core principles of UDL are designing for multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression. These are broken down into subcategories, considerations and suggestions.

Below you can find one suggestion for each principle, along with an example of how this could be implemented in a Blackboard course.

The WHY of learning – multiple means of engagement 

Example: ‘Offer feedback that emphasizes effort, improvement, and achieving a goal rather than on relative performance.’ (Consideration 8.5). 

The WHAT of learning – multiple means of representation 

Example: ‘Present key concepts beyond representation via text (e.g., an expository text or a math equation) with another or multiple formats (e.g., an illustration, dance/movement, diagram, table, model, video, comic strip, storyboard, photograph, animation, or physical or virtual manipulative).’ (Consideration 2.5). 

  • You can build complex resources with text, images, embedded videos and activities as well as quick knowledge check quizzes in Blackboard Documents.  

The HOW of learning – multiple means of action and expression 

Example: ‘The use of accessible materials and assistive and accessible technologies and tools strengthens opportunities for every learner to experience access, participation, and progress in the learning process.’ Consideration 4.2). 

Reflection

Take a look at the UDL Course Inventory created by Dr. Melissa Landers-Potts at the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Georgia. How well does your unit meet these principles? Are there any areas for improvement? 

It’s worth looking at the UDL guidelines when you are designing or reviewing your course or learning activities, to ensure a good learning experience for students.

References

Scaffolding in Online Learning

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Scaffolding
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Scaffolding has been widely applied as an effective educational strategy and has been shown to have a large and statistically significant effect on learning outcomes in online environments (Doo, Bonk, & Heo, 2020). As described by Jumaat and Tasir (2014, p.74): ‘In education, scaffolding has teachers instructing students in the early stages of learning, and gradually lessening their supports as the students gain mastery (Palinscar, 1986). This reduces difficulty of complex learning and at the same time, let the students focus on constructing knowledge and higher-order demands like thinking critically (Way & Rowe, 2008).’.

Scaffolding categories

It may be helpful to think about scaffolding through the four categories distinguished by Hannafin, Land, and Oliver (1999):

Conceptual scaffolding

Helping the student to identify essential themes and related knowledge. 

Example: When facilitating online discussion, instead of asking one broad question, you can provide prompts guiding students in formulating a comprehensive response. See the Blackboard Discussions guide.

Meta-cognitive scaffolding

Helping the student to monitor and reflect on the learning process. 

Example: Organise learning materials into smaller sections which build on each other. Make sure the progress tracking is turned on and explain to students how to use it to monitor their advancement through the content. 

Strategic scaffolding

Provides the student with alternative ways of completing a task. 

Example: Where possible, you may want to give students a choice of format in completing assessments and activities. Instead of writing an essay, could they meet the intended learning outcomes by creating a podcast, a video or a poster? 

Procedural scaffolding

Helping the student to use resources and tools for learning, such as providing an orientation to system functions and features. 

Example: You could consider creating a video tour of your unit introducing students to its structure, explaining what they can find in each section and how you expect them to use this space. You can use the Mosaic app to record and share it in your unit.

Reflection

Turn on the Student Preview and imagine you are entering your Blackboard unit for the first time as a student. What is your experience like? How scaffolded is it? Is there anything that could help you at each step?

References

  • Doo, M. Y., Bonk, C., & Heo, H. (2020). A Meta-Analysis of Scaffolding Effects in Online Learning in Higher Education. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 21(3), 60–80. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v21i3.4638 
  • Hannafin, Michael & Land, Susan & Oliver, Kevin. (1999). Open Learning Environments: Foundations, methods, and models. In Reigeluth, C., M. (Ed.), Instructional-design theories and models (Volume II). A New Paradigm of Instructional Theory (pp. 115-140). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 
  • Jumaat, Nurul & Tasir, Zaidatun. (2014). Instructional Scaffolding in Online Learning Environment: A Meta-analysis. Proceedings of the IEEE. 74-77. https://doi.org/10.1109/LaTiCE.2014.22 

Optimal Conditions for Student Engagement

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A woman engaging with something on her laptop.
Photo by Michael S on Unsplash

The Self-determination theory (SDT) is one of the most comprehensive and empirically supported theories of motivation. Past research indicated that SDT predicts a variety of learning outcomes, including performance, persistence, and course satisfaction (Deci & Ryan, 1985). The SDT-based strategies may apply to a variety of educational settings including online learning environments (Kuan-Chung & Syh-Jong, 2010).

In line with the SDT, when students’ basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are met, they are more likely to internalise their motivation to learn and be more engaged in their studies. Below are some examples of how each of the components could be fostered in your Blackboard courses.

Autonomy 

‘I prompt students to research a certain idea to bring back to our synchronous class time. I have found that making students responsible for finding content that guides the discussion makes them highly invested.‘ (Forbes, 2020)

  • Use a Form or Discussion to ask students what they are hoping to get out of the unit.
  • Make your asynchronous activities flexible e.g. if you ask students to write a blog post, let them choose the topic.
  • Where possible, offer multiple formats for completing assessments and activities.

Competence 

 ’A central notion is that students will only engage and personally value activities they can actually understand and master.‘ (Niemiec & Ryan, p. 139)

  • Provide students with a meaningful rationale for each learning activity. 
  • Use Blackboard functions such as progress tracking and release conditions to reinforce the perception of progression and avoid overwhelming students with a large number of activities presented to them at once. 
  • Keep your unit structure simple, easy to navigate and consistent. 
  • Explain how to navigate your module and give students a suggested timeframe for completing activities. 
  • Set clear expectations on how you will be communicating with students and how you expect them to communicate with you. 
  • Provide them with formative feedback which can be applied to their summative assessments. 

Relatedness 

‘Research has shown one of the greatest challenges for learning institutions and instructors when designing and implementing online courses is to provide a sense of community with constructive feedback and provide open forthcoming communications‘ (Boiling, et al., 2011, p. 123) 

  • Use Blackboard tools which facilitate collaboration such as Discussions. 
  • Use examples that your students can relate to. 
  • Link asynchronous online activities to live sessions. 
  • Create a short introduction welcome video to the unit. 
  • Be an active member of your unit’s online community, e.g., if you set up a Discussion, contribute to it.

How is autonomy, competence and relatedness fostered in your teaching? Could you implement any of the suggestions above?

References