Tech Tools for Students and Teachers

Guest Blogger: Brenda Snider

 

As we continue to develop online learning, what can we do to prepare students to succeed? Consider the tools and resources you need to help your online students succeed. Online students do not always have access to campus resources.  Departments such as the Learning Resource Center and the library will need updated websites to provide the resources online students require to complete their assignments.

The role of the instructor of an online course is to guide the learner. The student becomes responsible for his/her own learning and develops into a life-long learner. Instructors must guide the learners to be critical of online resources. The students need to learn which online resources are trustworthy. 

Consider the following technology to help with your online classes:

Have you ever tried Grammarly? This program checks for grammar issues and plagiarism.  In addition, it provides a personal writing handbook. This online handbook lists grammar rules based on your usage of Grammarly.  The program is simple to use. Copy and paste your text in the document box, and click “start review.”  When the program finishes the review, you see your score, a listing of your errors, and suggestions on how to correct them.  To sign up for a free seven-day trial, visit grammarly.com.

The appropriate use of media elements can improve learning.  An effective tool is podcasts, which may be audio-only, audio with images, or video.  Pod Bean is a free tool for creating podcasts (http://www.podbean.com/start-podcast?sourceid=bing_01).  

Jing  by TechSmith  allows you to capture basic video, animation, and still images, and share them on the web (http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html). The program is free and limits your output to five minutes.  The captures are short and focused. This program can be used for clarifying an important aspect of the learning materials.  If you review the short videos on the D2L faculty resource page, you will see examples of how Jing works. These short videos may be added to your online classes.  In addition, your students may create videos for highlighting what they have learned.

Another tool is mind mapping. XMind is an example of mind mapping (http://www.xmind.net/).  This tool can be used to clarify thinking, manage complex information, brainstorming, and organizing your thoughts and projects. A free version is available.

With online classes, the possibilities are endless. We have to open our minds to new ways of presenting information without going overboard. Too much technology can be overwhelming and hinder learning.  A little technology goes a long way in promoting learning.

Re-thinking Retention

High drop-out rates are a problem for colleges across the country, and certainly an issue that Lincoln is working to address.  A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education describes the efforts of Complete College America, a group supported in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that is working to improve retention and graduation rates. CCA has identified a few basic strategies that, they claim, “can double the number of remedial students passing college-level courses, triple the graduation rates for students transferring with associate degrees to four-year colleges, and quadruple completion of career certificate programs.”

One of their main recommendations is placing students directly into college-level courses rather than placing them in developmental courses for which they must pay but earn no college credits.  CCA argues that relying on a single placement test is not sound educational policy. Besides, they say, a more relevant predictor of ability than a student’s Accuplacer score might be that student’s “grit,” the term coined by Penn professor Angela Duckworth for a student’s ability to persevere toward a goal despite hardships.    

Rather than forcing students to spend time in non-credit developmental courses, CCA recommends instead placing them in a credit-bearing course and providing co-requisite remediation alongside the regular course if needed. The Community College of Baltimore County has been one of the pioneers in this mainstreaming approach; see http://alp-deved.org/what-is-alp-exactly/ to read about their program for developmental English.  Similar work is being done with accelerated math pathways (Statway and Quantway) being used throughout the Texas community college system.

One other somewhat counter-intuitive recommendation from CCA is that colleges should provide incentives for all students to take at least 15 credits per semester. Additionally they recommend that students’ schedules and their path towards a major be highly structured, as too much choice creates anxiety rather than freedom.

What do you think? What seems to ring true or false from your experience? Is there anything we might adopt or adapt as we work to increase retention?  If not these ideas, what?

The Millenial Reading Games

Guest Blogger:  Jamila Cupid

Every semester, I have at least one student ask how to become a better writer.  Once in a while I also get inquiries regarding how to grow one’s vocabulary and how to get better at copy editing.  Every semester, I reiterate to students the best way to improve these skills is to read, read, and read some more.  Yet, a couple of classes into the semester, I walk into a room full of pupils who have not cracked open the textbook, reviewed any of supplemental material and certainly have not done any independent reading on related topics.  Many of them even reveal limited knowledge of current events plastered across print and online newspapers.  The question that haunts me with each class prep, the question that seeps into my dreams at night, is “How do educators get students to not just read, but want to read?”    

I reached out to colleagues and mentors to find out what techniques they use to convince students to read.  The method that ranked number one was quizzing students after each chapter.  Some said they administer quizzes in class, but many now set up timed exams online for the students to take prior to class.  Other methods at the top of the list were assigning reaction papers and small group presentations.  Others said they always lead the lecture with questions related to the reading.  These are all terrific ideas, tried and true.  The only problem was that I had already implemented most of these tactics in classes.  It seemed that over time their effectiveness had been waning as some newer students did not mind accepting an assignment, quiz or class participation grade of zero for the day and were not the least bit embarrassed about being unprepared for class discussions.  What a conundrum!

Well then, imagine my surprise when I came across the 2012 U.S. Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behaviors Annual Review that claims Millennials (Generation Y) passed Baby Boomers in book purchasing in 2011 (Bowker.com).  This statistic raised a gaggle of questions in my mind.  What kinds of books are they buying?  Are they actually reading the books?  What are they reading?  Where are they reading it?  Do these books serve more of a decorative purpose, like a coffee table prop or a new age tea cup coaster?  I imagined these books stacked into pedestals holding up iPads and smartphones in positions of reverence.  Then I came across further findings which revealed that many Millennial book purchases are across digital spaces and they are ushering in the digital shift for the book industry.  The stacks of books toppled, making way for the expansion of e-book and audio book applications on the shiny mobile devices. 

Perhaps, the copious notes, reaction papers, quizzes, and printed textbooks are on their way to obsolescence.  For now, many of us still find them somewhat effective.  Thus, we may not need to abandon traditional methods, but it may be time for us to transition in more than a few reading assignments that are broken into shorter segments on digital platforms in audio formats followed by fireworks.  (I’m just joking about the fireworks …unless it works.)  Additionally, classroom flipping – the method in which homework and activities occur in class while lectures and PowerPoint presentations are administered online outside of class time – may be a missing link in our curricula.  With its flexible nature, classroom flipping could advance traditional teaching methods to accommodate the brains of the “digital natives” we are now charged with training.  The only way to find out is to give it a whirl.  So I find myself compartmentalizing the reading assignments and relating them to topics the students can’t stop chatting about, then extending the conversation to topics beyond their daily scope and comfort zone.  I am considering full flipping options through the correct university channels and processes for upcoming semesters.  Until then, more class time is now dedicated to increasing class activities that get students engaged and even catapult the higher performing students into leadership roles amongst their peers.  Also, more of the real world is physically brought into the classroom with every opportunity that arises.  Much of it works, some of it does not, but the process is ongoing and more of my students are opening their book (apps).   There is still, and always will be, tons of room for growth.  So please share the things you do to get students to read, think critically, and engage.   

Authentic Learning

According to Authentic Learning for the 21st Century: An Overview, an interesting white paper published by EDUCAUSE, we need to immerse our students in authentic learning activities because it is through this sort of learning that they will develop

• The judgment to distinguish reliable from unreliable information
• The patience to follow longer arguments
• The synthetic ability to recognize relevant patterns in unfamiliar contexts
• The flexibility to work across disciplinary and cultural boundaries to generate innovative solutions (p.2) 

If I am a writing teacher, then, my focus should not be what I want to teach my students about writing but how I can teach them to be writers.
 

While the article focuses on technology-based examples, it includes an interesting 10-point checklist that teachers can use to judge the authenticity of any learning component.

1. Real-world relevance: Authentic activities match the real-world tasks of professionals in practice as nearly as possible. Learning rises to the level of authenticity when it asks students to work actively with abstract concepts, facts, and formulae inside a realistic—and highly social—context mimicking “the ordinary practices of the [disciplinary] culture.”
2. Ill-defined problem: Challenges cannot be solved easily by the application of an existing algorithm; instead, authentic activities are relatively undefined and open to multiple interpretations, requiring students to identify for themselves the tasks and subtasks needed to complete the major task.
3. Sustained investigation: Problems cannot be solved in a matter of minutes or even hours. Instead, authentic activities comprise complex tasks to be investigated by students over a sustained period of time, requiring significant investment of time and intellectual resources.
4. Multiple sources and perspectives: Learners are not given a list of resources. Authentic activities provide the opportunity for students to examine the task from a variety of theoretical and practical perspectives, using a variety of resources, and requires students to distinguish relevant from irrelevant information in the process.
5. Collaboration: Success is not achievable by an individual learner working alone. Authentic activities make collaboration integral to the task, both within the course and in the real world.
6. Reflection (metacognition): Authentic activities enable learners to make choices and reflect on their learning, both individually and as a team or community.
7. Interdisciplinary perspective: Relevance is not confined to a single domain or subject matter specialization. Instead, authentic activities have consequences that extend beyond a particular discipline, encouraging students to adopt diverse roles and think in interdisciplinary terms.
8. Integrated assessment: Assessment is not merely summative in authentic activities but is woven seamlessly into the major task in a manner that reflects real-world evaluation processes.
9. Polished products: Conclusions are not merely exercises or substeps in preparation for something else. Authentic activities culminate in the creation of a whole product, valuable in its own right.
10. Multiple interpretations and outcomes: Rather than yielding a single correct answer obtained by the application of rules and procedures, authentic activities allow for diverse interpretations and competing solutions.  (pp. 3 – 4)

Do any of those 10 checkpoints stand out to you with respect to an assignment that has worked well in your class? Please share a brief description of that activity—what you do and how it works?  Let’s start an authentic Lincoln learning list!