Instructor on Computer
Distance Ed, Teaching Advice

5 Great Sites to Help You Find Open Educational Resources (OER) for Your Course(s)

What is OER?

“Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium–digital or otherwise–that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions” (UNESCO, 2002).

 

Who’s using OER?

According to a recent national survey of more than 4,000 faculty and department chairs, “for the first time, more faculty express a preference for digital material over print in the classroom” (Babson Survey Research Group, 2019). In fact, 46% of faculty surveyed reported some level of awareness of OER (+12% since 2015), with 13% requiring an OER in one or more of their courses—almost 3x the OER required in 2015 (Babson Survey Research Group, 2019).

 

Where can I find OER?

MERLOT

Multimedia Education Resource for Learning and Online Teaching
www.merlot.org | California State University System | ~160,000 Contributors | 84,000+ Learning Materials

MERLOT


 

OASIS

Openly Available Sources Integrated Search
https://oasis.geneseo.edu | SUNY Geneseo’s Milne Library | 88 Sources | 352,000+ Learning Materials

OASIS


 

OER COMMONS

Open Educational Resources Commons
www.oercommons.org | ISKME | 60,000+ Learning Materials

OER Commons


 

OPEN TEXTBOOK LIBRARY

https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks | University of Minnesota | 625 Peer-Reviewed Textbooks

Open Textbook Library


 

PIXABAY

https://pixabay.com | 1,000,000+ Images & Videos (No Attribution Required, But Encouraged!)

Pixabay

 

Dig deeper with the Distance Education Extension Program launching January 2019
Distance Ed, TLT, Training Opportunities

Dig Deeper into Online Teaching and Learning!

Your Teaching & Learning Team is excited to announce a new professional development opportunity you won’t want to miss.  On January 30, 2019, we will launch the Distance Education Extension Program (DEEP for short).  This will be a series of online, self-paced mini-courses for faculty who are teaching online and hybrid classes.  While the Distance Education Readiness Course provides an introductory survey of pedagogical best practices, DEEP courses will focus on specific themes, allowing faculty to dig deeper into scholarship and praxis.

Online, Self-Paced, and On-Demand

The best part is DEEP courses are on-demand and self-paced.  Facilitated via OAKS, you can participate on your own schedule.  Spend a week or spend an entire semester.  There are no synchronous elements, required assignments, or grades. You can use the information presented to completely overhaul your teaching practices or you can use a single suggestion to make a small change.  However you use these courses is up to you.

To reward you for experimenting with new ideas, you have the option to earn a digital badge for each DEEP course you complete. Completion is determined by consuming all course content and submitting reflection exercises that demonstrate what you’ve learned. These badges can be added to your email signature, website, blog, or even your tenure and promotion materials.
A variety of colorful digital badges you can earn

On January 30, 2019, two DEEP courses will launch: “Cultivating a Community of Inquiry” and “Creating a Learner-Centered Syllabus.”  Over the summer and into the future, additional courses will become available.

Cultivating a Community of Inquiry

What is “presence” in the context of teaching and learning? As an instructor, you might think of presence as being mindful of the course climate and intentionally fostering a community of learners. One of the strongest factors impacting student retention in online courses is feeling a sense of community as opposed to learning in isolation.  Thus, cultivating community your online course makes a huge impact on student learning, engagement, and overall success. So, how do we accomplish this?

Dig deeper with self-paced online modules. Cultivating a Community of Inquiry course launching January 30, 2019

One approach is to apply the Community of Inquiry framework. This model describes the interplay between three elements—teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence. These types of presence are essential to develop deep and meaningful educational experiences in online learning environments. This course will address these three elements from theoretical and practical perspectives.  You will be provided with an overview of the research and get the opportunity to explore practical strategies that can be incorporated into your own classes.  Depending on what you create in response to the reflection exercises, this course will take most people 6 – 8 hours to complete. But, what you create and how much time you spend is completely up to you!

Creating a Learner-Centered Syllabus

What functions do syllabi serve? Common functions faculty cite include serving as a contract, listing required textbooks, detailing policies and procedures, and describing the focus of the course.  Less commonly, professors note that the syllabus describes their teaching philosophy, lists resources available to help students succeed, and explains how their course fits into a discipline or broader context.

Dig deeper with self-paced online modules. Creating a Learner-Centered Syllabus course launching January 30, 2019

One important role a syllabus plays that is frequently overlooked by professors is that it sets the tone for the rest of the semester.  The syllabus is the initial point of interaction between you and your students and it can create powerful first impressions.  Through content, tone, and format, does your syllabus come across as welcoming, conversational, and aesthetically-pleasing?  Or, does it seem cold, dictatorial, even infantilizing?  Be honest — if you were a student, would you want to read your syllabus?

Based on one of TLT’s most popular workshops, this course will provide an overview of the research on learner-centered syllabi, share best practices in syllabus design, and suggest non-traditional methods of presenting this essential document.  Depending on what you create in response to the reflection exercises, this course will take most people 4 – 6 hours to complete.  If you are creating a syllabus from scratch, it could take longer.  But, what you create and how much time you spend is completely up to you!

How Do I Sign Up?

No application or sign-up is required.  These courses are “on-demand” within OAKS and available to anyone who has already graduated from the Distance Education Readiness Course.  After January 30th, you can simply search for the courses on the OAKS homepage and access them whenever you like:

  1. Log into OAKS
  2. Click on the waffle icon in the top menu bar near your notifications and name
  3. In the search box, type either: Cultivating a Community of Inquiry or Learner Centered Syllabus
  4. Click the magnifying glass to search
  5. Click the name of the course that comes up in the results list.
  6. If you have any trouble accessing the course, please email Jessica at smithjt@cofc.edu

Haven’t taken the DE Readiness Course yet? We encourage you to chat with your department chair about whether online teaching is right for you and for your department.  We offer the 7-week, online preparatory course three times per year.  Visit the distance education webpage for more information.

Have questions about the Distance Education Extension Program or suggestions for future courses?  Please reach out to Jessica at smithjt@cofc.edu

Kahoot Challenge
Classrooms, Distance Ed, instructional technology, iPad, Mobile, Pedagogy

Kahoot! Now Has A New Out-of-Class Feature!

Kahoot mobile screenshotKahoot! is a game-based learning platform that, up until now, could really only be used face-to-face.  But great news, it now has an out-of-class feature as well that can be used for homework or for online courses.  I know many of you teaching online has wanted to use Kahoot! but haven’t been able to.  Well now you can!

The new feature is called Challenge and does require the Kahoot! App to play.  When you (or your students) want to start a Challenge just click on an existing Kahoot! (or you can make a new one) and at the top, click Challenge.  You then set a due date by when the challenge must be completed.  Lastly, you are given a Challenge link and PIN that you then share with your students, either via OAKS, Email, or Google Classroom.  The student really just needs to type in the PIN into the Kahoot! app and they go on with the game as they would in class.  At the end, the instructor can see how everyone in the class did.

The only thing I’m not in love with is that Challenges can’t be done on a computer and most young children (for EHHP) don’t have cell phones or iPads.  For a college classroom this shouldn’t be an issue.

Here’s how it works:

Kahoot! can be used to:

  • Review, revise and reinforce
  • Re-energize and reward
  • Get classroom insights
  • Gather opinions
  • Motivate teamwork
  • Challenge past results
  • Join global classrooms
  • Introduce new topics
  • Great for competitions
(taken from Inspiring Ways to Kahoot! )

Also, as you learned above, there is a new mobile app to make it even easier to join and play!  Check it out on their Mobile app page.

Assessment, Best Practices, Collaboration, Distance Ed, Events, Innovative Instruction, Pedagogy, Teaching Advice

DE 2.0 Workshop: Humanizing Your Online Course

humanize-your-content-900x423
“I miss getting to really know my students. It’s just not the same.”

“There’s no way of knowing who is on the other side of the screen.”

Sound familiar? If so then you aren’t alone.

Not only do some instructors feel this way about online learning, but students do as well. Often they feel isolated, disconnected, and insignificant. These feelings of seclusion can often lead to decreased motivation, attention, and engagement. As part of the online learning process, it is vital to intentionally design elements to make sure that that the human connection isn’t lost in the online learning process.

 

What is Humanizing?

Humanizing your course involves considering the teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence of all participants in order to build community and enhance communication. The ultimate goal of this process is to make online education as personal and individualized as possible while building relationships between your students, the content, and yourself.

About the DE 2.0 Workshop

This 3-week long, self-paced session will take you through some strategies that you can use in your online class to make you and your students feel more connected. While this course is held fully online, it does contain three optional synchronous sessions with experts in humanizing online education from around the world!

You might be interested in this session if:

  • You feel you are not connecting with your students in your online class the way you do in your face-to-face class.
  • You feel like your online class lacks community.
  • You want to make your course more engaging and personal for the students.

 

humanizing-youronline-course

Workshop Goals

  • Discover the elements of teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence as it applies to the online learning environment, particularly in the areas of facilitation, learning domains, and course design.
  • Research assessment and engagement strategies, community building/maintaining platforms, and technology tools for increasing the humanized element.
  • Discuss elements of humanized learning with other faculty teaching online at College of Charleston.
  • Ask questions, exchange ideas, and meet other CofC faculty teaching distance education courses.
  • Create engaging content and online activities that foster the elements of teaching presence, social presence and cognitive presence.

Learning Outcomes

  • Explore instructional theories that lead to a more humanized online class.
  • Identify areas of your course that can be made learner centered and/or interactive.
  • Revise and/or create course interactions, including social learning experiences, content delivery methods, and assessment of student learning.

Register now on TLT’s DE Readiness Blog!

Applications are open until January 31, 2017!

 

Best Practices, Distance Ed, Events, Pedagogy, Training Opportunities

Wanted! CofC DE Instructors Interested in Professional Development

TLT is proud to announce the start of a new training opportunity for online faculty!

DE 2.0 is a series of immersive workshops that will be delivered largely asynchronously online. These sessions will be focused on topic specific items for faculty who are currently teaching online and want to dig a little deeper into updated technology and pedagogy for online learning.Now that you’ve taken the DE Readiness Course and taught online, what do you want to learn more about?

2.0 Deuces wild flyer

One workshop will be offered each semester starting Fall 2016.

Here are some examples of faculty nominated workshop topics that will be offered:

2.0 Card table

More information about these workshops will be available on TLT’s DE Readiness Blog by August 15th.

Do you have a session topic you’d like to suggest for the future? Or a resource that you’d like to see?

Visit http://blogs.charleston.edu/dereadiness/de-2-0/ and fill out the suggestion form.
Accessibility, Best Practices, Distance Ed, Pedagogy, Productivity, Teaching Advice, TLT

TLT’s Top Tips for Time Management

What are instructors spending time on?

Below are the five most mentioned teaching behaviors identified in the research and from the feedback of online instructors. The ranking begins with the teaching activity that involved the highest time commitment, and descends from there. This is not a scientific analysis, but I included the list to provide an overview of the most prevalent online teaching activities (Van de Vord & Pogue, 2012).

  • Interacting with students: moderating discussion forums, responding to student emails
  • Evaluating student work: assignments, papers, discussion forums
  • Recording grades
  • Modifying and making changes to course materials and/or course home page
  • Addressing technical issues/course administration (not including grading)

 

Tips for Time Management

  1. Handle it once.

Following the principles of the GTD (Getting Things Done) Methodology, manage items as soon as you can.  For online teaching, this means doing things in a regimented format.  When emails come in, if an answer or action can be done in less than 5 minutes…do it now.  If It needs deeper thinking and reflection, mark it in a follow up folder or category before closing it.  While reading discussion boards, keep a spreadsheet open so that you can grade as you go and make notes while reading to help keep your students straight. Grade as items arrive and space out due dates to cut down on last minute or end of term grading.  Create blocks of time during each day to work on a particular item.  For example, Mondays from 10-11 am I work on items strictly for the mentors.  Everyday from 830-930 am I answer emails from participants about course related issues.  Thursdays from 1-4 are spend grading specified assignments.  Making this set schedule for yourself will make sure that you are allowing ample time to focus.

 

2.   Respond to students efficiently.

If a student asks a great question via email, reply to them and ask them to post their question and the response to the class, but if more than one student has emailed about the same issue or set of instructions, then address the group as a whole with a news item, whole class email, or something else that will make sure that all students see the information.  For example, if there is a procedural problem (students not knowing how to do something in a class) create a short video or screencast to walk them through the process.

 

3.   Make Time Count.

If it’s something that a student won’t notice…don’t do it!  If it’s something the students can do for themselves or with each other…delegate or provide opportunity to do it.  For example, a Course Lounge or question forum will allow students the ability to answer each other.  You can back this up by adding an “ask 3 before me” type policy so that you know they’ve tried to find help on their own first.  To make this efficient, you need to mindfully not engage in what one professor called “Whack a Mole” facilitation, where as soon as a discussion post or a question comes up the professor logs in to answer it or replies immediately.  Make sure you give your students that time to help each other or they will become accustomed to that immediate feedback and you’ll spend all your time responding to email.

 

4. Get Organized:  Location, Location Location

Have your course follow a logical path so that not only you but your students also know exactly where to go and what to do.  The easier it is to find something, the less time you spend looking for it!  This is especially applicable to the syllabus.  The more text heavy and exhaustive your syllabus, the less likely your students will be able to find what they need in the process.  Try breaking your syllabus up into sections and bulleting information rather than using paragraph texts.  Have your students engage in a scavenger hunt or quiz to show that they understand the key pieces of the document before the class gets too far underway.  This will lead to less questions and less time emailing “it’s in the syllabus”.

5. Get Organized: Me, Myself, and I

Make sure that your workspace is organized and ready to go.  This includes your computer!  If you have a hard time finding files or folders on your machine, take some time to organize your files so that you can easily grab an item when it is needed.  Keep a list handy of places you can go to for help.  Obviously TLT is going to be number one (:)) but make sure that you add your librarian, CDS, CSL, and other campus resources and how to contact them.

 

6. Develop a routine and electronic minions

There are a lot of moving parts in an online classroom.  Some can be automated, some cannot.  First, make a list of all items that you need to do (that you know of) and due dates prior to the course starting. Identify any weekly activities and blocks of time you’ll need to answer emails, grade, respond to discussions, etc.  If an item can be automated (for example, a news item reminder about a test that you want to go out on a certain date) go ahead and create the wording and release conditions before the class starts.  In the immortal words of Ronco…set it and forget it!  For those items that can’t be automated, create calendar reminders or use a task management tool that contains reminders like Asana.

 

7. #Unplugged

In honor of the TLT Lifetime DE Mentor award recipient Lancie Affonso, we bring you this most important tip.  Unplug every now and again!  Take some time away from the screen and technology to engage in the world.  It is tempting to want to be logged in 24/7 when your students are in session, but taking some time to take care of yourself (and your eyes, back, and wrists) will benefit you in the long run as an instructor.

 

8.  Use the right tools for the job.

Technology can do so much to help with time and task management, as well as automating parts of your responses without losing that personal touch.  Talk to your instructional technologist about some of the options to help you with time, task, grading, and communication management for your online class.  Check out this article on how to go about choosing the right tool for your situation:  https://blogs.charleston.edu/tlt/2014/03/05/plan-attack-implementing-technology-instruction/

 

9.  To Thine Own Self Be True

“Each person has a daily cycle when he or she is most alert; schedule that time for online work. Determine the best time of day to check and respond to email. Flag and prioritize emails.  Realize that what is an overload for some instructors is not for others. Before accepting teaching assignments, look at the other assignments already accepted for that semester and consider whether the workload is too heavy. Factor in family obligations and planned vacations when considering personal work capacity.  When planning for the future record notes each week in a teaching journal identifying thoughts about revisions for the next semester. Some fixes like broken links can be done on the fly during the current run, but others, like the rewriting of a section, need to wait until the students are no longer present. At the end of the semester, reflect on the notes and adjust as needed.”

 

10.  Practice your online writing

Because writing is a major channel of communication in an online class, the importance of clear and concise writing of the course materials cannot be over-emphasized. If one student finds a sentence unclear, the instructor will need to spend valuable additional time responding to clarify. Five or ten minutes of additional time for polishing a message or task instructions before distributing or publishing may save hours in clarifying later.  Have someone who is not familiar with an assignment read the instructions and see if it makes sense or if they could do the assignment with the information you provided.  Keep a list of frequently asked questions and your responses.  You can then copy and paste your responses or keep a running list published in a Google Doc that would get updated in real time for your students and would be easy to search for keywords.

 

11.  Design with Accessibility in Mind

Too often faculty members will design an online course and then realise a semester later that they have a student with a disability in their courses that require accommodations (screen readers, subtitles, alternative formats, etc.)  While it may take more time as you build the course, designing your course to be as accessible as possible from the start will save you more time (and you will reach more students) than trying to scramble after you get an accommodation request letter.  Remember, it is easier to construct than to retrofit a class!

 

Distance Ed, TLT

Fall Application Deadline for DE Readiness Course

Teaching, Learning, & Technology is accepting applications for the Fall 2015 DE Readiness Course.  Applications are due May 1, 2015.

In order to teach online for the College of Charleston, faculty must complete this 8-week online course which will run from September 16 to November 18.

The course guides faculty through best practices and technology tools in online education.  Participants will progress through seven modules that examine course planning and design, content delivery, community formation, communication, and assessment.  Every participant will create content that can be integrated into their future online courses and will receive feedback and guidance from fellow participants and faculty mentors.

To learn more about what to expect from the DE Readiness Course, please visit: blogs.charleston.edu/tlt/learning/distance-education/  This video will also provide an overview of the course:

To apply, please click here:  blogs.charleston.edu/tlt/learning/distance-education/distance-education-de-readiness-course-application/

Distance Ed, Information Session

Distance Education (DE) Information Session

On Wednesday, October 23, at 3:00 PM there will be an Information Session for faculty planning to develop and teach an online course in Summer 2014 or beyond. We will meet in Craig Admissions Presentation Room.

All faculty with an interest in developing and teaching online courses now or in the future are highly encouraged to attend this session. The session will review the overall philosophy of online teaching and learning at the College, feature the experiences of faculty already teaching online, and provide faculty with critical information to determine whether online teaching is right for you and your department or program. Information will also be presented on training requirements, the Faculty Facilitator program and important dates.

Additional information and course petition documents may be found on the TLT blog at https://blogs.charleston.edu/tlt/learning/distance-education/. Please note that course petitions and applications for the Spring 2014 DE Readiness Course must be submitted by Monday, November 25.

We look forward to seeing you on the 23rd!

Sent via email from Lynne Ford, Associate Provost for Curriculum and Academic Administration, on October 11, 2013.