Action Report

Action Plan

TOTAL Using Best Practices in Online Teaching Workshop

Current Situation

Classroom discussion is a major part of my on-site English 111 course, but I’ve struggled to successfully incorporate discussion board assignments into the online version of the course. Currently, I post a question related to a reading and require that students create an original post, and then respond to two of their classmates’ posts. The quality of the posts is less than I’d like to see; therefore, I need to make some changes to ensure adequate student participation and performance.

Desired Change

I will model my discussion board after the Asynchronous Discussion Forum (ADF) advocated by John Nash in his article “A Tale of Two Forums: One Professor’s Path to Improve Learning Through a Common Online Teaching Tool.” Nash uses a scaffolded approach in which students respond with initial reactions to the discussion question early in the week. In the middle of the week, they respond to two classmates’ posts which helps them gain further understanding of the required reading material. At the end of the week, each student writes a more developed 300 word response (187). Nash concludes his course by requiring that students write a 1250 word syntheses essay in which they select one week’s class discussion topic to explore in great detail (187). This model should work well for my English 111 course. It promotes the course content while fostering immediacy and interaction.

Plan Elements with Warrants

Elements	Warrants
Implement an Asynchronous Discussion Forum (ADF) which utilizes a scaffolded approach.	A scaffolded approach helps make sure that ADFs are effective for students (Nash 183). Using the scaffolded approach encourages autonomous learning (Linn 832).
Provide a discussion question for students at the beginning of the week, and ask that they post an initial response at the beginning of the week. Then, ask that students respond to two classmates by the middle of the week.	Instructors should create challenging assignments that foster interaction and dialogue (Dysthe 350).
Maintain a presence in the course by responding to students and providing feedback throughout the week.	Instructor presence could make a bigger difference with how a student perceives the class than the presence of fellow students (Swan and Shih 122).
At the end of the week, students will write a 300 word response based on their discussions throughout the week. At the end of the semester, students will write a fully developed 1200-1500  word essay that draws on one of their previous 300 word essays and the relevant discussions.	A synthesis essay allows the instructor to track the student’s line of thought while helping students combine different ideas addressed throughout the semester (Nash 191).

Works Cited

Dysthe, Olga. “The Learning Potential of a Web-mediated Discussion in a University Course. Studies in Higher Education 27.3 (2002): 339-352.

Linn, Marcia C. “Cognition and Distance Learning.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 47.11 (1996): 826-842).

Nash, John. “A Tale of Two Forums: One Professor’s Path to Improve Learning Through a Common Online Teaching Tool.” Journal of Research on Leadership Education 6.5 (2011): 181-194.

Swan, Karen and Li Fang Shih. “On the Nature and Development of Social Presence in Online Course Discussions.” Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks 9.3 (2005): 115-136).

Research Report

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I'm enrolled in a Topics in Online Teaching and Learning (TOTAL) course. As part of that course, I've been working individually as well as with other students to locate and review various best practices in online teaching resources. As a result of this research, I've decided to focus on three areas of online teaching in an effort to improve my online English courses:

• Fostering Immediacy

• Course Organization & Planning

• Developing a Robust Asynchronous Discussion Forum (ADF)

These goals might overlap at times. For example, by implementing a new ADF, I'll no doubt be making early and positive changes to course organization while fostering not only communication but also immediacy. 

Fostering Immediacy

Conaway, Easton, and Schmidt define immediacy as, “the degree of psychological closeness that exists between communicators and the objects of their communication” (25). They insist that “[i]f students are expected to assume more of [the responsibility for supplying immediacy,] the instructor must consider ways to encourage different communication behaviors in the learner-to-learner exchanges” (31). To do this, instructors can “[ask] students to respond with their own personal examples and stories as a component of the class assignment or to assign students to interview each other online as it relates to the learning activity itself” (Conaway, Easton, and Schmidt 32). In the traditional classroom environment, it's important to achieve a comfortable learning environment. Through conversations, ice breaker activities, and regular interaction my students develop a rapport with one another and with me. The same rapport can be achieved in an online class by weaving student interaction into the class assignments.

Course Organization & Planning

It's important to know the differences between teaching online classes and teaching in the traditional classroom setting. This is of particular interest to me because I got my start in teaching by way of the traditional classroom setting. And when I started teaching online, I feel as if I was expected to adopt the “learn as you go” mentality. I now realize that this is not an optimal approach; it takes a concerted effort on the part of an instructor to seek the current best practices for online instruction and put those to use.

A major difference between teaching online and teaching in the traditional classroom setting is the level of planning required to create a successful online learning environment. Dykman and Davis emphasize the importance of organization and planning in the online setting. They assert that the organization of an online course should include, “...detailed planning for every individual part of a course, including developing specific objectives overall and for each instructional unit of the course, specifying reading and other assignments in detail, and describing specific deliverables” (158). This means a whole lot of upfront work for the instructor, but it pays off. It pays because the alternative can result in confusion and frustration; whereas, proper planning can result in a rewarding experience for both instructor and student. Going forward, I'll design my online courses so that upon logging in and looking around for a few minutes, my students will have an understanding of the overall design of the course. They'll know to course objectives, and they'll be able to see a link between those objectives and the learning objectives for each instructional unit or module. 

Developing a Robust Asynchronous Discussion Forum (ADF)

Developing a functional and user friendly ADF is enormously important to achieve a positive learning experience for students. According to John Nash, "[e]ffective ADFs require planning, maintenance, and attention to be effective in contributing to student learning and to maintain students’ interest" (182). To accomplish this in his course, Nash implemented a scaffolded approach. He provided weekly discussion questions on the course material. Students were required to post once early in the week with initial reactions. Then they would respond at least two times to other students. The week would culminate with a final post of 300 words (Nash 187). At the end of the semester, Nash asked his students to "[u]se the content created over the entire term within the ADF to develop [...] [a] course capstone" (187). This capstone was a 1250 word synthesis essay in which students selected one week's class discussion topic to explore in depth (Nash 187). This type of assignment requires students to reflect on the material and display a deep understanding. The weekly discussions foster interaction and immediacy. I can easily imagine this type of online organization working for my English classes. Discussion is a major component of my on-site classes, and this method will allow me to successfully integrate classroom discussion into my online courses.

I look forward to making changes to my online courses by focusing on organization and planning; fostering immediacy; and implementing a robust asynchronous discussion forum. I'm most excited about the ADF because it encompasses many best practices and lends itself to excellence in instructional design. 

Works Cited

Conaway, Roger N., Easton, Susan S., and Schmidt, Wallace V. “Strategies for Enhancing
       Student Interaction and Immediacy in Online Courses.” Business Communication 
       Quarterly 68.1 (2005): 23-35.  

Dykman, Charlene A., and Charles K. Davis. “Online Education Forum: Part Two- Teaching
        Online Versus Teaching Conventionally.” Journal of Information Systems Education 19.2 
        (2008): 157-164.

Nash, John. "A Tale of Two Forums: One Professor’s Path to Improve Learning Through a 
       Common Online Teaching Tool." Journal of Research on Leadership Education 6.5 
       (2011): 181-194.

Current Knowledge Assessment

My name is Jason Settle, and I teach English at Wytheville Community College. I've taught online classes since about 2009, which means that by now I should have a pretty good grasp on things. But when I got into online teaching, I did what I think many others have done too: I took what I did for my face-to-face classes and simply put it online. I didn't have much background in online design, so I sought help from my colleagues. Unfortunately many of us have adhered to the same "learn as we go" strategy to figuring out the best way to present our content in an online format. I learned that I needed some formal training in online instruction.

This blog will chronicle my journey as I attempt to make my online classes more accessible and educationally sound. I'm a content expert. I know my stuff. But gone are the days of standing in front of a classroom and talking at length about what we know and love while hoping and trusting that our students absorb the information. In the online format (and even in face-to-face classes) there are strategies of delivery that can be used to better ensure that our content actually reaches our students in a way that proves useful to them.

My first major learning event related to online teaching was a Quality Matters course that I took in the summer of 2013. This alone is telling: I've been teaching online since 2009, and what I consider my first major learning event didn't happen until 2013. Why is that? The answer is two-fold. One reason is that I didn't have much knowledge of online design prior to teaching the initial classes, and as I've already mentioned, I adopted the "learn as I go" mentality. The other reason is that for the majority of the first years, I was teaching part-time as an adjunct instructor. I don't offer this as an excuse, but as a simple fact. I was often teaching at multiple institutions, and I felt, often wrongly, that I had limited access to continuing education opportunities at those various institutions: I was a teacher without a permanent home. Around 2012, I took it upon myself to pursue whatever opportunity arose so that I could become a better online instructor.

As I was saying, I took a Quality Matters course in 2013. This course opened my eyes to the fact that there is a big difference between content and design. And I learned that a big factor in whether or not students get the information is how that information is presented in the online format. I learned that having clearly stated learning objectives that are directly linked to individual assignments is extremely important to students. And I learned that students need clearly articulated assessment methods.

I think that an online course should be as clean as possible without added clutter. Students want to know where the syllabus is, where the assignments are and how to submit them, and they want to know how they'll be graded. Those things should be obvious upon browsing the class website for a few brief moments.

Another major learning event was attending the New Horizons conference in Roanoke this year. I intentionally selected presentations about online instruction; I observed presentations on Blackboard grading rubrics, and I went to a presentation on Topics in Online Teaching and Learning (TOTAL) courses. The latter presentation piqued my interest in taking a TOTAL workshop, and I'm currently enrolled in a TOTAL workshop on best practices in online instruction.

I'm committed to continuing to grow as an online instructor. And I hope that this blog will serve as motivation for me as I continue to hone my craft. I also hope that the blog might prove useful for other teachers as they embark on similar journeys.