Visually-Oriented Discussions with Consistent Instructions

Discussions are an important part of fostering student-student interactions in an online course. After completing the OEI Online Course Review process, Shannon Van Zant, who teaches History at Columbia College, recognized the importance of designing her discussions with clear, consistent instructions. Having the same instructions available to students each week scaffolds their learning and supports them to become confident and independent learners. Shannon, also incorporates images into the prompts of her discussion topics. By integrating images into the textual content of her discussion, she more fully engages the way people learn.

In the 7-minute video below, Shannon shares her experiences with the OEI Online Course Review process and takes us on a tour of her online visual discussions.

2:47: Skip to view the tour of Shannon's Course

Recently, we reached out to professional development contacts throughout the CCC system and inquired about campus flex day plans. We learned that at least 12 campuses have flex events scheduled on campus on Friday, January 12, 2018. In an effort to support those campus and reach faculty/staff who may not be able to get to campus, but still want to learn, @ONE (Online Network of Educators) is hosting its first Untethered Flex Day. Our online sessions are free and available to anyone who is interested in learning more about the topics. Please note, flex credit will be provided at the discretion of your campus flex committee.

Research continues to show that community college students are more likely to succeed in online classes if they sense that their instructor cares about them. For this reason, we've selected two topics for Untethered Flex that are designed to support faculty foster effective communications with students and a strong sense of presence in their students' learning.

10-10-10 Communication the Matters

with Lené Whitley-Putz, Faculty Mentor, Instructional Development, @ONE/OEI

Humanizing Online Learning with Adobe Spark Video

with Michelle Pacansky-Brock, Faculty Mentor, Digital Innovation, @ONE/OEI

Check out the details and download a flyer for your campus!

Tips to Help Students Make the Most of Feedback

Have you ever had the sinking suspicion that the feedback you have painstakingly provided for students is—gasp—not being read? Does the next essay you read make the same mistakes? Considering how many hours we dedicate to providing meaningful feedback, this can feel a little frustrating!

This semester I have been on a quest to ensure that my students are not only carefully reading my feedback, but applying it. Here are some strategies that I incorporate before, while, and after grading:

Before Grading

Illuminate Expectations

Along with each assignment, I provide a detailed rubric spelling out performance at each level so that students can see what is expected of them. I refer to this rubric repeatedly as we work on the assignment.

View a Sample Rubric! I invite you to view one of my rubrics, shared in the form of a public Canvas assignment. The rubric is located on the assignment page under the heading "Essay Evaluation and Feedback."

Actively Anticipate Student Work

I explain early and often that I will be spending lots of time with the incoming set of essays or projects and providing detailed feedback. I want my students to write knowing that they have an attentive and responsive audience. I find that if students know their work will be carefully reviewed, they are motivated to invest more time into it, which tends to lead to higher quality submissions.

While Grading

Make it stick!

I provide different types of feedback, both within a semester and even within an assignment: annotations, rubric comments, and audio/video feedback, for example. Why? Different methods appeal to different students, and I want my feedback to stick. I have also found that when one type of feedback reinforces another, the message has a better chance of breaking through. So, if I see several examples of “creative” source citation, I will use the annotation tools in Canvas to mark the examples, and then I’ll follow this up with a video comment that shows and explains the correct citation format.

Layer Praise with Suggestions

I balance kudos with suggestions for improvement so that students are encouraged to keep reading/viewing the feedback and then motivated to act on it.

After Grading

Video Guide for Finding Feedback

Before releasing the first graded assignment with feedback, I share a video explaining how to access and use my feedback. While the assignment is “muted” and they are waiting to see how they did, they are a captive and motivated audience! This video shows students how to find their feedback, what they can expect to see, and how to make the most of it:

3 Tips to Fuel Feedback

Here are three more ways to help students make the most of the feedback they have received:

Encourage students to respond to feedback by replying to you with their own annotations, comments, or video. This helps students move from passively reading to actively engaging with the feedback.
Offer extra credit to students who develop a work plan to address noted issues or seek tutoring to address a recommendation.
Instruct students to review your feedback when they prepare for their next assignment. For example, you might ask students to identify three goals for the next paper via a journal entry, reflective quiz, or survey. Or a required step in assignment submission might be using the comments area to explain how the new submission addresses feedback from the last one.

Students have a lot of information competing for their attention, and I have found that these strategies help my feedback rise above the noise . . . and hopefully start a conversation.

Learning Quirks: How Macaroons & Pinterest Made Me a Better Teacher

To have a craft means you have something to offer/produce through a skill. To have a craft takes practice, exercise and discipline.

Well… learning is a skill.

Most of us in academia believe the university gave us permission to be the expert in our craft by jumping through their required hoops. Once we are done jumping, we graduate and place our diploma in our office so people can see it and think, “They are legitimate.” I admit I have my degrees hanging in my wall. I paid a lot of money for them. But does that mean I should stop learning?

Instructors Are Learners Too

“Disciplines don’t change. But the way teachers design learning experiences for students must change.”
-John Landis, Apple, Keynote Speaker at the 2017 Directors of Higher Education (DET/CHE) Conference

How do you, as a college instructor, ensure your teaching adapts to meet the needs of your students’ learning? I have found that trying new tools enables me to uncover new teaching strategies. For example, I discovered a new way to learn with Pinterest. My Pinterest venture started with my quest for a single recipe – french macaroons. I was curious to understand WHY macaroon are so expensive, so I decided to learn how to make them. That curiosity led me to Google and Google led me to Pinterest.

Embracing Our Learning Quirks

I am a product of 70’s & 80’s inner-city public school. My K-12 experiences taught me to shut up, have “quiet hands and a quiet mouth.” Therefore, I was a solitary type of learner. I was taught that I should not ask for help, work with others, or speak up. However, using Pinterest gave me a chance to experience the value of socially-constructed online information and put it into my own practice. At first, I was just a Pinterest voyeur. But as I browsed, I began to interact. And that led me to failures and successes, which empowered me to identify the quirks of my own learning. I started clicking on links associated with macaroons and soon I was making macaroons, beignets, soba noodles, my own shampoo, lipstick, deodorant, makeup remove. I became addicted to learning.

I could follow directions no problem, but I discovered much more value in the reviews, tweaks, and suggestions made by other Pinterest users. Through Pinterest, my learning was enhanced by the learning of others. As I was given access to this socially constructed knowledge, I realized I was becoming empowered to understand and value my own individual quirks.

I don’t like salty food.

I don't like very sweet pastries.

I have sensitive skin.

I have thick curly hair.

I’m a quirky gal.

Quirks are peculiar habits. Habits in learning are part of our identity and we all have peculiar ways of learning. Identifying and understanding our own learning quirks can helps us become more empathetic to our students' needs. What kind of learning quirks do students have? Some might identify learning styles as quirks. Here are some learning quirks as defined by the fabulous Howard Gardner. If you want to learn more about Howard's multiple intelligences theory I recommend "Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice.”

Applying Learning Quirks to Our Teaching

Now I ask students to identify their own learning quirks. This helps me design my instruction and communicate with individual students. And when I struggle, I use Google for inspiration to empower me to discover more of my learning quirks and disrupt the limited views about learning that are often a result of K-12 experiences. Today, one way I develop my craft in learning is through Pinterest. By learning how to make the perfect macaroon, I tapped into other learning styles I never knew I had.

Join me!

Learn with me on Pinterest at la_fabi
Explore my Learning Sherpa Board Pinterest board featuring my favorite education posts.

Welcome to Our New Website!

Please stay awhile. Click around, explore, and discover. We are so excited about the design of our website and all of the fantastic opportunities our new design holds for you to connect, learn, and grow.

Get to Know @ONE (the Online Network of Educators)

You can begin your exploration of our site by connecting with us! Check out Our Team. These are the dedicated faculty mentors, instructional designers, accessibility experts, and coordinators who work hard each and every day to support faculty and staff like you from across the state.

Sign up now for a free, one-hour webinar, A New Year, A New One, on December 13th at 1pm. Our Faculty Mentors, Lené Whitley-Putz and Michelle Pacansky-Brock will give you a tour of our new website and orient you to our new, exciting offerings and spring events.

Learn and Grow

One of the things we’ve been working hard to do is provide you with a greater variety of courses and programs to help you grow and develop in your teaching, course design, and use of digital tools to enhance student learning and success. Our new certificate programs give you greater flexibility in meeting your professional development goals by allowing you to choose from a variety of topics and formats that meet your needs and interests.

Connect With Your Peers

We also want to help you connect with other faculty, staff, and administrators from across our 114 colleges. Learn from your peers through their blog posts - and maybe contribute one of your own. Participate in the Reflective Writing Club that begins January 26th and don’t forget to mark your calendars for the free, online Digital Learning Day Conference on February 22. Visit the Connect tab on our home page to join in and grow your own professional learning network!

Connect With @ONE

We have many ways for you to stay informed about our upcoming events and be inspired by your peers across the CCC system. Select the option(s) that work for you!

Subscribe to our newsletter
Subscribe to our blog (see the right column of this page)
Follow us on Twitter
Tweet with #CCCLearn
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our videos on YouTube

We Are Listening

Let us know what you think of our site and what we can do to support you in your incredibly vital work of teaching and supporting students. You have an open invitation to become part of our dynamic and dedicated Online Network of Educators!

If you said, “I do!” Sean Keegan, Director of the California Community Colleges Accessibility Center, and his team can help. Implementing accessibility can be a bit difficult sometimes. Keegan elaborates in his TechEdge blog, “Changes in technology capabilities, including that of assistive technologies for students with disabilities, can create confusion and uncertainty as to what is considered accessible or the best practice for ensuring access.” Fortunately, the California Community Colleges (CCC) Accessibility Center launched the Accessibility Center Help Desk in October. Help is here!

What Type of Accessibility Questions May I Ask?

The Accessibility Center Help Desk can answer accessibility questions such as:

Why do I need to include headings in a Canvas page?
What is the difference between a tool tip element and alt text?
Is there a difference between captions and subtitles?
How can I check accessibility in my MS Word documents?

How Can I Get Started?

To get started, users need to sign in to post questions. To register, you may create a new account, or use an existing Google or Facebook account. When you join, you receive the benefit of joining a community of learners who are just as committed as you are! Learning in isolation is difficult, and takes a tremendous amount of dedication and time (something we all have limited of!) Learning in a community is much easier, especially when it is your first time taking a deep dive into implementing accessibility. You can learn and share strategies to address accessibility in different scenarios, and have meaningful discussions with others.

Help! I Need Somebody

Help is in the form of a community-based forum that allows you to ask questions publicly, or privately by checking the “Post this Conversation Privately” option. The conversations are monitored regularly, which is helpful when you need assistance. Once answers are posted, you will conveniently receive an email notification. No need to wait on the phone or follow-up via email, your answer will be automatically delivered into your mailbox. In addition to the convenience, you receive support straight from an accessibility specialist versus searching the web for the answer!

Learning More Via Browsing the Conversations for Answers

Is there a question you would also like to know the answer to, but it is still awaiting a reply from an Accessibility Expert? Use the Follow button, and this will notify you of any updates via email. Curious to learn more about strategies to implement accessibility? You can subscribe to the Help Desk to receive newly asked questions and updates.

Learning how to apply accessibility elements such how to effectively describe images with alt text is like driving a car for the first time. Initially, it may be overwhelming as there are new ways to format your document or Canvas content page. With practice, time, and gaining additional knowledge, accessibility becomes easier to apply. When I was initially learning more about accessibility, I spent a lot of time researching. I browsed articles and forums, watched many videos, and taught myself how to use several screen-readers. Luckily, learning more about accessibility is a lot easier as faculty now have this convenient resource to provide prompt and helpful answers.

Take advantage of this free resource!

For more information, read Sean Keegan’s Accessibil-IT: Get Help From Accessibility Help Desk.

Good News

Spring is around the corner and you are developing your course. Need something to speed up course design and improve the student usability experience in Canvas? Here’s a nifty tool to help create an inclusive environment for all students: the Canvas Accessibility Checker.

Located in the bottom, right-hand corner of Canvas’ rich content editor is a button with a picture of a stick figure. Its arms are spread wide with pride – finally, Canvas has integrated a built-in accessibility checker! Faculty, fret no more - the Accessibility Checker is here to help.

Inclusive environment for all students? Yes please.

Student usability is essential in online course design. How we build the course, from using colored text, to applying heading styles, to adding meaningful URL descriptions, affects student usability:

What tasks are students expected to complete using Canvas?
How easily can students complete those tasks?
What is the most effective way for all students to access information?

I like to say, “Save time and build with accessibility in mind.” Retrofitting a course for accessibility can feel like tearing a home down, adding a new foundation, and then building it up again. It takes time. Now imagine needing to retrofit a course in the middle of a semester – no thank you, right? Designing courses is not an easy task, but the Accessibility Checker can help streamline the process.

Accessibility Checker - verifying common accessibility errors such as:

Table headers: Tables should include at least one header.
Sequential headings: Heading levels should not be skipped (e.g. H2 to H4). The title of page is designated as the H1.
Heading paragraphs: Headings should not contain more than 120 characters.
Image alt text: Images should include an alt attribute describing the image content.
Image alt length: Alt attribute text should not contain more than 120 characters.
Large text contrast: Text larger than 18pt (or bold 14pt) should display a minimum contrast ratio of 3:1*.
Small text contrast: Text smaller than 18pt (or bold 14pt) should display a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1*.
*Text contrast calculations match those used by WebAim tool.

Try it in your course!

The Canvas Accessibility Checker has great potential to support accessibility efforts in course design. Here is an action screenshot of the Canvas Accessibility Checker:

The screenshot above shows the Accessibility Checker report tell us what we need to focus on and why it is important to remediate. In this instance, for example, the Accessibility Checker notifies us which picture needs alt text, and why we need to add alt text to a picture. Instead of manually checking each Canvas content page after page, we have a tool that gives us an extra pair of eyes.

Remember that automatic accessibility checkers need an extra pair of human eyes to make sure all accessibility elements have been addressed! Similar to using the Microsoft Accessibility Checker or the Accessibility Acrobat Checker, these checkers offer valuable guidance. For example, accessibility checkers will let you know if a document or site is formatted with accessibility elements, for example, if you have added headings. Though accessibility checkers cannot verify if the heading levels are in order or if the headings are effectively structured to help connect related ideas. This is where you come in!

In course design, we need all the support we can get - try the built-in Accessibility Checker today! Learn more about how to use the Canvas Accessibility Checker.

Accessibility can be an overwhelming topic for online instructors. Kim Pippa-Tonnesen, who teaches English at Columbia College, learned a few key accessibility strategies through her experience in the OEI Online Course Review process. In the 7-minute video below, Kim reflects on the importance of designing pages in Canvas with short "chunks" of text and ample white space. When pages are designed with these principles in mind, students are less likely to feel overwhelmed and more likely to process the content. Kim also demonstrates what header text is and explains how it supports students with vision impairments who use screen readers.

Let’s start with the $6-million-dollar question: with so many other teaching tasks calling for your attention, why take the time to write a great rubric? (Because, while anyone can dash off a mediocre, not-very-useful rubric, it does take time to write a good one.)

Here’s why. A well-constructed rubric is a powerful communication tool that will result in a clear, measurable preparation process for students and a time efficient, consistent grading process for you. That means less time grading, fewer questions or complaints, and improved student performance in meeting your assignment standards and learning objectives.

What’s not to love?!

Canvas’s rubric tool makes using rubrics simple, easy and (dare I say it?) fun. There are three parts to the Canvas rubric grid:

Criteria: These are the big-picture categories for grading. In a Discussion, for example, your criteria might be “Initial Post” and “Replies to Classmates.”
Ratings: These are the explicit descriptions of the levels of performance that might be achieved within the specific criteria category.
Points: This is your rating scale.

Criteria are best determined by considering which learning outcomes are being assessed. What, exactly, do you want to grade for this assignment? Use these guiding questions to help identify your criteria:

What skills will students need to have or develop to successfully complete the assignment?
What, exactly, is the assigned task?
What are the component parts of the assignment?

Ratings, or descriptors, detail the measurable evidence that the student has achieved your criteria—or not. “Knowing” and “understanding” aren’t easily measured. Instead, describe the evidence students can provide that shows they’ve accomplished what you’d hoped they would. Think of this as the feedback portion of your rubric. What are the highest expectations you have for student performance on this assignment? What is the worst execution of this assignment you can imagine?

Points are pretty self-explanatory. It’s a good idea to weight criteria appropriately. For example, is “few grammatical/spelling errors” really worth the same as “clarity and originality of thought”? Points should reflect the effort being asked of the student.

3 Tips for Effective Rubrics

Choose between three to seven criteria.
As much as possible, omit negative wording. Be encouraging; indicate what you’re seeking rather than what you don’t want.
Use clear and specific language. Words like some, several, perfect, and boring are all subjective evaluations.

Examples

Here are a few example rubrics from several institutions. Some are better than others, but you’ll get a sense of the structure, variety and languaging.

Rubrics are an assessment tool, a means to improve learning and a communication tool all wrapped up in one neat little package. When done well, they can be an asset to both you and your students!

Additional Resources:

When designing your online course, it important to incorporate clear, consistent guidelines for participation activities. These guidelines might include:

Your criteria for effective student participation so they understand what is expected of them
How participation will be evaluated
Minimum word counts, number of posts and peer replies
Expectations for citation use
Quality guidelines including requirements for depth of analysis, critical thinking, and other encouragements to stimulate further thought in discussion

In the short video below, Tracy Schaelen walks you through an example of how to provide guidelines and criteria for online discussions.

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Online students want to know how and when they can contact you. This information should clearly displayed and placed in a location that students can get to quickly and easily. Your instructor contact information should include:

Multiple methods of contact which may include email, Canvas Inbox, phone, office hours, chat, Web conferencing, discussion forum, etc.
Your response time so that students know what to expect a reply
The specific days of the week that you will reply to inquiries and if these response times differ by contact method. For example, you may respond to email within 24 hours Monday-Friday, but only answer voicemails once per week.

In the brief video below, Teresa Borden shares her instructor communication information as it is displayed in her online course.

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It is important for assessments to align with learning objectives in order to reinforce content and lead to educational improvement. The given learning objectives helps the student anticipate what they will be expected to know for assessment.

In the brief video below, Aloha Sargent provides a tour of her online class showing how she uses a course overview page with a brief video to ensure students understand what they will be expected to know by the end of the unit and how they will demonstrate that they have learned.