A Principled Online Teaching Journey: Part 2

This is part two of an article series by Colleen Harmon. To consider Colleen’s experiences as a learner in the @ONE Certificate programs, please read A Principled Online Teaching Journey: Part 1.

First, as a student; then as a mentor

After completing the Advanced Online Teaching Principles (OTP) Capstone, I became a mentor for colleagues pursuing the capstone. Mentoring gave me a chance to share what I learned and to help others, but in fact I was often the beneficiary in the relationship. My colleagues opened their minds and hearts to me, sharing their lessons learned and aspirations. I experienced through their eyes how they grew as a result of completing the OTP courses and the impacts that growth has on the success of their students. 

In the reflections documented in their capstone projects, several instructors expressed a desire to do more for their online students prior to beginning the @ONE courses. A couple of instructors were concerned that their students might think of them as robots. Others realized how negative and unsupportive their syllabi were. Across the board, faculty who completed the @ONE courses describe how those courses transformed their current teaching. Now, these instructors provide opportunities for their students to connect with each other and with them using video and interactive methods—no robots to be found! They communicate to students using supportive and guiding language. They create non-disposable assignments that take students into the real world. These faculty engage students in the continued evolution of their courses. The shift of attitudes and approaches from not just student-centered learning but to human-centered learning creates opportunities for their students to be present in their courses, to learn and place the meaning of the coursework within the world at large, and to connect with each other. As an example, one instructor shared a comment from a student who said that they now feel like there’s someone on the other end of the computer who cares about them. These transformations can make the difference in students’ success. 

My 45 California community college colleagues who completed the Advanced OTP Capstone come from various disciplines, from business law to counseling, English and other languages, fine arts, history, and sociology. No matter their discipline, their capstones share a common theme: The joy of online teaching and learning.

And that’s probably the most impactful take-away from the Advanced OTP courses: Joy.

Acknowledgements

With a full heart and an appreciative mind, I thank the facilitators of the Advanced Online Teaching Principles courses. You provided models of the principles in action. Your words and ideas continue to inform my teaching.

Thank you, too, to the many colleagues who graciously allowed me to accompany them on their own Advanced OTP Capstone journey. Each of you provided yet another opportunity for me to look at the path that lies ahead and you nudged me further along the journey.

To facilitators and colleagues alike, thank you for the inspiration.

While the CVC/@ONE Advanced Online Teaching Principles Certificate is no longer being offered, the principles it espouses continue to infuse quality into online teaching and learning.

A few inspiring examples

The final capstone project was a public website demonstrating growth and development in the five principles. I could easily list all the projects here to whet your appetite for what’s possible when the OTP principles inform teaching and learning, but I’ll list just a few. Enjoy!

Want to see more? View all projects on our capstone showcase page.

Syl Arena

Photography, Cuesta College and West Valley College

Michelle Crooks

English, Grossmont College

Allison Fonti

Education, Cerritos
College

Amy Leonard

English, DeAnza College and Foothill College

Ann Rosen

Spanish, Saddleback College

Michelle Boucher

Human Development,
Sierra College

Anthony Cuomo

Communication, West Los Angeles College

Kristin Hargrove

Instructional Technologist, Southwestern College

Maryanne Mills

Librarian, West Valley College

This article is part one of a two-part series. The next part will include a showcase of faculty capstone projects from the CVC/@ONE Advanced Certificate in Online Teaching Principles. 

I sometimes do things backwards. Not intentionally. It happens when I’m captivated by an idea and run with it. That’s how I initiated my pursuit of CVC/@ONE’s Advanced Certificate in Online Teaching Principles (Advanced OTP). @ONE (the Online Network of Educators) is the professional development arm of CVC, the Chancellor’s Office-funded initiative aimed at improving access to high quality and fully supported online courses for more students.

Although the Advanced OTP certificate is no longer offered, the five @ONE Principles for Quality Online Teaching that form its framework are compelling and vital to effective learning and teaching. What follows is my own journey as a student of Advanced OTP and then as a mentor for others.

First, as a student in online learning

In 2017, I had just completed local online learning certification on campus. I heard about CVC/@ONE, surveyed their online classes, and decided to enroll. My first course was Equity and Culturally Responsive Teaching in the Online Learning Environment with Arnita Porter and Fabiola Torres. In quick succession came Digital Citizenship with Aloha Sargent and James Glapa-Grossklag, Dynamic Online Teaching with Dayamudra Dennehy and Matt Calfin, and Humanizing Online Learning with Michelle Pacansky-Brock and Tracy Schaelen. These courses comprised the Advanced OTP certificate pathway which, combined with a capstone, lead to the certificate. What I didn’t realize at the time is that the Advanced OTP certificate was suggested to be completed after the Certificate in Online Teaching and Design (OTD) program, which consists of four other courses. So after completing the Advanced OTP, I backtracked and completed the OTD certificate, too. As it turns out, completing the two certificate pathways backwards was one of the best mistakes I’ve made.

@ONE course facilitators walk the talk

The four courses of the Advanced OTP certificate focus on online teaching principles, and the facilitators of those courses put the principles into practice, giving me a front row seat to see how learning spaces are created with the student in mind. Every facilitator, and @ONE facilitators are California Community College faculty, fostered connecting, growing, and sharing in the OTP courses, creating the space for each of us as students to be present, to give and take, and to learn.

The courses provided valuable opportunities to build relationships and participate in teaching communities that too often are not available to part-time faculty, and the facilitators encouraged such community building throughout the courses and beyond. This was an unexpected and welcome benefit which I continue to enjoy, and I heard this refrain repeated from my part-time colleagues around the state.

Principles before practice

The five @ONE Principles for Quality Online Teaching underscored in the Advanced OTP courses are human-centered. I describe them as:

1. Equitize the learning space.
2. Humanize the learning space.
3. Adapt the learning space.
4. Navigate and expand the learning space.
5. Learn and grow as an educator.

Let’s break them down 

These principles are designed to meet the needs of the diverse students that we serve in the California community college system.

1. Equitize: Equity ensures that each student has access to what they need to succeed. Turning “equity” into a verb, making the learning space more equitable includes not just providing opportunities for students to learn based on what they know, but also providing support for them to fill in gaps in their knowledge, stretch their wings, access services they need, and reach their full academic potential.
2. Humanize: I like to think of humanizing courses as “showing up”—not just for me, but for my students, too. The Humanizing course took me out of my “professorial” persona and gave me back my personal attributes, those traits, qualities, and quirks that make me, me, and make my courses different from other English instructors. My students, too, show up more in my courses now, building relationships and creating community.
3. Adapt: Even instructors who had no previous experience with online learning prior to spring 2020 had to pivot to an online modality because of the pandemic. That’s one way to adapt. But the principle conveyed by adapting refers to more than that. When I adapt my teaching to predict and respond to student performance and feedback, I increase students’ level of interaction and agency; they grow stronger as independent learners. They also adapt with exercises in meta-cognition and self-assessment.
4. Navigate and expand: Navigating and expanding the learning space is about traversing the disciplinary field and its  manifestations in my students’ world. My courses address this principle by strengthening students’ ability to navigate the information landscape skilfully and by fostering their curiosity. By making sense of content in the open web as opposed to only in Canvas, students develop information and digital literacy, skills that are critical for success in today’s world. Practicing this principle, I’ve also adopted OER and ideas from Open Pedagogy to increase student access to quality course materials and to engage students in learning by exploring, creating, and sharing what they’ve learned.
5. Learn and grow: The fifth principle, learn and grow, is about me. Although I teach, I’m also a student. I continue to learn, experiment, assess, and improve. My students and colleagues form my learning community. 

The values that underlie these five principles are those that lay the foundation for relationship: mutual respect and caring, appreciation for diversity, recognition of the whole person, and desire for growth. The @ONE online teaching principles are the articulation of these values.

Backwards was better

And that is why completing the two certificate tracks in reverse order worked to my advantage: I learned and practiced the principles before tackling the OTD certificate courses that focus on implementation. I learned “why” before learning “how”.

Learning why I should learn something creates a fertile field for then learning how to do something. We know that a context of meaning—meaning that speaks to the student—fosters learning.

Automaticity is not enough

Of course, we want our students to learn how to do something and to do it well. We want them to achieve mastery of practices, to achieve a level of automaticity so that they don’t have to struggle to remember how to do something or do it well. This level of mastery reflects a level of acquired knowledge and repeated practice translated into habit. When I believe I’ve mastered an individual skill in my teaching practices, I can say I’ve achieved a level of automaticity that facilitates my practice.

This automaticity is well and good, but it’s not enough. Not enough for our students or the world in which they live, and not enough for us. If I learn how to use Canvas to create a welcoming place, one which engages students in learning the course goals, which is accessible and incorporates various design elements to facilitate comprehension, and consider the course “done”, then I’m not putting the principles into practice. Instead, I’d be implementing what I learned without continuing to learn and adapt, and thereby place my courses and methods of teaching at risk of becoming irrelevant or worse. That’s the price of action devoid of principle.

Principles as lifelong goals

On the other hand, the @ONE Principles for Quality Online Teaching are best understood as goals, as signposts that point still further ahead. Yes, I can achieve a level where goals are realized to some degree, where I am closer to the goal, but I can get even closer if I continue the journey.

Learning is personal and social

Here’s one example of how practicing the principles covered in the OTP courses changed how I teach.

In course surveys I provide to students, I ask open-ended questions about their experiences with the online course, to reflect on their learning and the course environment. Requesting this kind of feedback speaks to the principles of increasing student presence in courses, adapting the learning environment to increase student success, and promoting student agency.

Many times, these surveys come back with comments that acknowledge the benefit of this or that element of the course or why students liked a particular assignment above others. But in one such survey, I got a response that stopped me in my tracks.

One student wrote in the nicest possible way, “I wish you would use ‘you’ and not ‘we’.”

At first, I didn’t know what to do with this feedback, though you may be nodding your head now thinking, “rookie mistake.” I had used the first-person plural intentionally throughout the course as a way to emphasize togetherness. I believed the word “we” could forge a subtle bridge between me and my students and between students, helping to create a community of learners.

And then it hit me. When I used the word “we”, I wasn’t talking directly to each student; instead, I was talking to an amorphous entity without an individual personality, goals, and background. The word “we” doesn’t create the space for a student to be present, for that student’s voice to be heard, for that student to interact with agency.

Learning online is an intimate experience. Students enter online courses from their personal spaces, even if that’s a coffee shop. More significantly, they enter as individuals; there’s no corner of the classroom in which they can sink into a desk and remain unseen. In an online class, each one of them shows up.

Thanks to this student’s feedback, I improved my courses by addressing the individual “you”, while continuing to provide opportunities for students to engage in social learning. In fact, social learning relies on individual agency; without “you”, there can be no “we”.

But this evolution in my teaching would not have happened if I was already satisfied that I had achieved successful course design and therefore didn’t solicit feedback or didn’t consider it necessary to iteratively adapt the learning space to meet student needs. This is where practicing the principles—viewing the signposts as pointing further ahead—makes the difference. My courses will never be complete. And that’s paramount.

One of the hurdles experienced by many instructors in higher education is the practice of hiring based on a graduate degree in one’s subject matter but which isn’t necessarily accompanied by any pedagogical training. This is an offshoot of the mistaken belief that if one knows a subject well, one is automatically going to be able to teach that subject. Au contraire, mon ami! As I’m sure many of you have come to realize, teaching is its own skillset. 

Cultivating new knowledge and/or skills is the whole point of teaching and learning. A finely-crafted lecture—or in the case of asynchronous online courses, well-designed content—may be fascinating and even full of sparkling wisdom but if there’s no cognitive or behavioral change in students as a result, it’s all just entertainment (or drudgery, depending on the perspective). As one of my mentors said, “Telling ain’t teaching.”

Traditional methods of curriculum planning, where a list of content is the starting point and outcomes and assessments come last, often lead to missing content (where the content provided doesn’t match what’s being assessed) or the dreaded “bloat” (you know, when the course is full of “Oh, that would be good for them to know!” stuff but is lacking a solid progression leading to specific learning outcomes). 

Typically, the missing ingredient is strategic planning based on a set of well-defined and clearly articulated learning objectives.  

Getting Strategic About Course Design

As a first step in our strategic course design, let’s draw the distinction between learning goals and learning objectives. In the educational context, goals are the higher-level outcomes you plan to accomplish in the course. Objectives are the specific, measurable competencies students will demonstrate that lead to that goal. For example, my goal might be: “understand the concept of conditional probability” and a correlating objective might be: “calculate the conditional probability of a given event using a tree diagram.” 

Once you’ve got a solid learning objective—clear, focused and measurable—your next step is to determine how you’ll assess whether students have mastered that objective (that’s why “measurable” is so important). Then it’s an easy jump to the final step of figuring out what content and activities—lecture, reading, videos, case studies, practice examples, etc.—will support students in achieving and demonstrating their competency. 

Voilà! There’s your course design sequence: goals 🡪 objectives 🡪 assessments 🡪 content. This is often referred to as backward design and ensures that your outcomes and assessments map across to the content you’re providing students. It’s akin to taking a road trip and choosing your destination first, then planning the route and rest stops so you’re sure to arrive when and where you want. 

It all starts with the humble learning objective. 

Writing an Effective Learning Objective

How do you write a well-defined and clearly articulated objective? I’m so glad you asked!

I’ll give you the basics here but know that a Google search for “how to write learning objectives” returned 251,000,000 results so there are plenty of resources out there if you want more details. (I particularly liked this article on why objectives matter from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard.)

1. Identify the thing you want students to learn.

Example: five steps of the scientific method

2. Pinpoint the level of knowledge desired (using Bloom’s or another learning taxonomy). 

The level of learning directly influences the type of assessment you’ll choose. In our example of the scientific method, asking students to apply the steps would be a higher level, and a different assessment task, than asking them to name the steps.

• Example 1: to know the five steps of the scientific method (remember)
• Example 2: to use the five steps of the scientific method (apply)

3. Identify a verb that describes the behavior students will demonstrate. (It’s gotta be observable/measurable. Understand or know are not observable.)

• Example 1: recall the five steps of the scientific method 
• Example 2: perform an experiment following the five steps of the scientific method 

If you’re getting fancy, you’ll also identify the conditions under which the skill or behavior is to be performed: 

• The student will recite Newton’s Laws without use of a memory aid.
• The student will use a thesaurus to identify synonyms for a given list of words. 
• Using primary and secondary sources, the student will analyze causes of the American Revolution.
• Given access to the College library, the student will identify the variety of research resources available.  

And getting extra fancy, you’ll include the criteria used to measure performance. So, putting it all together using our example, you might end up with: The student will use the scientific method to perform an experiment in their daily life with a rubric rating of 85/100. (And then you’d craft the grading rubric.)

There you have it—the why and the how of writing meaningful learning objectives. Though often considered a pro forma aspect of course design, when used properly as part of a backward design approach, learning objectives are truly the backbone of student learning.

Dig Deeper with Professional Development from @ONE

Are you feeling inspired and ready to learn more about improving the design of your online course? @ONE has you covered. Consider the array of professional development opportunities below.

• Download the CVC-OEI Course Design Rubric and use it as a guide to making changes in your course.
• Register for our 4-week facilitated course, Introduction to Course Design
• Complete your Certificate in Online Teaching & Design
• Enroll in our self-paced course, ABCs of Online Course Design
• Peruse course design-related articles written by your CCC peers

Professional development plays a critical role in improving the teaching and learning environments of the diverse students we serve in the California Community College system. To put it plainly: teaching matters -- face-to-face and online. Nearly all (96%) of college students who entered a STEM major and chose to leave (either drop out of college or enter a different major) cited poor teaching and learning experiences as a reason (Seymour & Hunter, 2020). Black and Latinx STEM major “switchers” were more likely (88% to 79%) to cite the competitive culture of STEM courses as an influence in their decision to change majors. While STEM courses serve as a microcosm of inequity in U.S. higher education, the problems cited by STEM students are not restricted to those disciplines alone. 

White and Asian students comprise less than 30% of the roughly 2.1 million students served by California community colleges. However, they are most likely to succeed in our courses, regardless of modality. Improving teaching and learning is an opportunity to advance equity in California. Our mindsets about race and ethnicity; knowledge about and appreciation for the rich, varied experiences our students bring to our classes; and our understanding of how to apply equitable teaching practices in our courses on-campus and online are integral to improving the lives of our students, the diversity of our state’s workforce, and the future of our country. 

Connecting PD with Equity at the College Level

For decades, online courses have increased access to college for Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students, and now they have also proven to be the resilient backbone of higher education. As we reflect on the past difficult six months of unexpected disruption brought on by COVID-19 and piqued racial injustice in our communities and across the country, I suspect that each educator reading these words can recognize why continuously improving our teaching and learning practices and being compensated for one’s time are so vital. 

From my experiences, many faculty, particularly those who are part-time, can be unaware for years, even decades, about how or if professional development can be used to increase their salary. Sierra College, driven by a systemic effort to improve equity, has made efforts to help faculty navigate this process. One of the changes Sierra made was to get the low-cost online professional development courses offered through @ONE and CVC-OEI and funded by the CCC Chancellor’s Office pre-approved by their Faculty Employees Reclassification Committee (FERC) and create a clear list of those courses, along with their locally-offered workshops and other off-campus opportunities. 

@ONE and You

@ONE’s nationally recognized online professional development courses serve the needs of thousands of CCC faculty and staff each year. They are facilitated by CCC educators; model and foster Culturally Responsive Teaching pedagogy, accessibility, and Universal Design for Learning principles; and are available to all CCC faculty and staff at a low cost. @ONE courses can be taken a la carte or stacked to earn a certificate in Online Teaching & Design. 

Many colleges in our system include @ONE courses in their locally-approved online teaching preparation process. Check with your college’s professional development coordinator or distance education coordinator to learn more. If you have a story to share about how @ONE helped improve your teaching, we’d love to hear from you in a comment below!

References:

Riegle-Crumb, C., King, B., and Irizarry, Y. (2019). Does STEM stand out? Examining racial/ethnic gaps in persistence across postsecondary fields. Educ. Res. 48, 133-144.

Seymour, E. & Hunter, E. B. (Eds.). (2020). Talking about leaving revisited: Persistence, relocation, and loss in undergraduate STEM education. Springer.

Accessibility is an important part of teaching online and, at times, it can benefit students, as well as faculty.  Early on in my career at MiraCosta, I recall watching a colleague photocopy problems out of the book, cut the problems from printed pages with scissors, and tape them to a new piece of paper to create the problems. He would make a handwritten note or use whiteout to modify a problem. He had files of these tests in his office - decades worth. But he never used the same test twice and this process would continue every term. His process was time consuming and, at times, frustrating to students who struggled to read the problems. Imagine being able to save your own time and help students too! 

Most faculty use typed exams but may not spend time thinking about how these materials create challenges for some students. While it is common for math instructors to spend time adjusting font size, making itemized lists for parts of a problem, and producing handouts to increase understanding, it is less common that we think about students who rely on screen readers, accessible technology devices used by people with vision impairments.  

Many faculty also make videos for their students, even short videos like the one above. If posted to YouTube, the captions are created automatically – but be careful! Those captions are pretty good, but aren’t perfect. Imagine a video where you described a new algorithm for “sub track shin” or “Polly know meals”. If you’re a math teacher, the intent was ‘subtraction’ and ‘polynomials’ but those misconceptions will confuse students who are following the automatic captions. It is time well spent for all students to update the captions by adding punctuation, capitalization, and fixing these incorrect translations.  Learn how to edit your YouTube captions for accuracy (a 7-minute video by Katie Palacios). 

Making Accessibility Part of Your Course Content Workflow

In the video embedded above, which is just over 200 seconds, I share some quick tips to save you time while making documents, PDFs, or Canvas pages accessible to students who use screen readers. It takes a lot less time to format pages with lists automatically rather than typing them manually. I will also show how following accessibility guidelines helped when a student who was blind needed a Braille version of the course materials. We were able to provide this quickly and without much additional work (it even included Braille graphs) because the content was made with accessibility guidelines in mind. 

The great pivot of Spring 2020 provided the opportunity for distance educators to contribute their specialized knowledge and experience throughout their institutions. At the same time, we were also challenged with applying our knowledge and experience to the greatly expanded use of synchronous interaction tools, such as ConferZoom.

During Summer 2020, at College of the Canyons, questions from faculty prompted discussions about consistent institutional approaches to synchronous tools. Fortunately, we were informed and inspired by the article Guidance for Recording Class Sessions with TechConnect (Confer) Zoom by Michelle Pacansky-Brock and CVC-OEI.

Using Michelle’s openly licensed article as a starting point, we convened a task force to develop a set of responses to key questions around recording live sessions, the use of cameras, and student privacy. Our task force consisted of leadership from our Academic Senate, Faculty Association, Enrollment Services, Instruction Office, and Online Education.

Since I first shared this document with colleagues, I have learned that different colleges interpret FERPA in different ways (hello Jim!). While I am happy to share our document with you here, I encourage you to consult with your local stakeholders while adapting it to your local setting. The same document is provided below in both Microsoft Word and PDF format for your convenience.

Like most everyone else, it seemed as if everything I knew changed overnight when COVID-19 hit in March 2020. My everyday schedule, which consisted mostly of going to school – the place I felt most safe and comfortable – was ripped away just like that, with little warning aside from the whispered rumors that were spreading around campus. This was just the start of what would be the most difficult semester I had ever experienced. 

When all of this first started, my initial reaction was anxiousness and complete shock. The week before campus closed, I couldn't concentrate on any of my classes. I was just trying to plan for so many unknowns, trying to be a support for other students, trying to hold it all together through the worry. As I sat in my classes, I did what I could to hold back my tears as thoughts overwhelmed me. Questions were flowing through my mind that I didn't really have many answers to: How am I going to access the technology I need? What will an online class look like? Will I still be able to work? What if I can't afford rent? How long will this last? If I get sick, will I be able to get treatment without healthcare? And so many more questions became all consuming. Among these anxious thoughts and unknowns, my professors’ voices began to blend in the background and sound much like the teacher from Charlie Brown. It was as if I was there in class, but not really there at the same time. 

Our school had a week-long break between our last in-person class and the start of online instruction to allow staff and professors time to transition online. Since I work on campus as well, I also had the opportunity to go on campus for work-related trainings. I was very thankful for this time because it gave me the opportunity to make plans for the coming weeks, as well as say goodbye – an opportunity most other students did not have. Although that week away from classes was appreciated, it did put us students behind in our classwork. Even with a week of preparation time for our professors, being thrust as a student into online learning with limited support and no clear expectations of how to best be an online student, led to a chaotic learning experience at best.                      

In my classes, I had some professors who transitioned to online seamlessly while others left students  on our own to teach ourselves. In some classes, we were assigned the same work as usual or even less, while in other classes, we were assigned a significantly heavier workload, adding to the stresses of the current situation. Some classes were very lenient in their policies; some were not. For me, some classes became overwhelming, and some were more manageable. 

During this time, it took everything in me to keep from giving up completely. I was scared and exhausted, felt completely alone, and didn't know if I could keep up in this new online format. Furthermore, COVID- 19 intensified the lack of basic needs security in regards to food, housing, and finances in my life, and has made achieving my goals much more challenging than before. However, as the world around me stopped, I needed to find a way to keep going, make sure I could pass my classes, and attend to all of the other responsibilities and worries placed upon me because of this situation. 

As time went on, I began to settle into this new way of studying and communicating with professors by finding what worked for me and what didn't. I created an organizational system for myself and a new school routine. As campus resources started becoming available again, and as I learned to reach out and connect more, things improved. However, even with my new skills, COVID-19 online learning was still difficult to navigate. At times, it felt as if professors didn't understand. There were many times when it was hard to focus and my grades dropped significantly in some classes. There were still many unknowns and most of the time school was not my first priority. Being a student is hard, but being a student through a global pandemic is even more difficult. 

Hopes for the Future

As we prepare for a new semester of online learning, it is my hope that students, faculty, and staff will  work together to support each other in creating an ideal online learning environment and make it through these challenging times. While no professor is going to have the perfect solution, looking back on last semester, here is some advice from my student perspective on what may help make learning online more optimal for both students and professors. 

• Flexibility/Understanding: Flexibility and understanding are essential in my opinion to online learning. Life happens: The internet crashes, family or roommates get sick, you accidentally click on a test at 12:30am that you haven't studied for while looking for another assignment (definitely not a personal experience at all). There are so many things that can potentially go wrong in the online format. Recording lectures, allowing students multiple attempts on assignments, having consistency, and, overall, working with students to find a solution can all be extremely helpful.    
• Access for all students: Not all students have the same access to technology or the same learning styles and needs. Being mindful and adapting classes based on a student's access to certain technologies and their need for academic accommodations due to documented disabilities can allow for an online class to be in reach of every student. 
• Trust/Communication: Guilty until proven innocent, that is the approach many professors have taken in regards to addressing cheating in online courses. When a human is assumed to be guilty, with no explanation other than “I know you all are cheating, so you must do all these things to prove you are not,” it is demoralizing and can cause students to shut down in class. By setting clear expectations, through explaining and communicating with students from the beginning, students and instructors will be more likely to be on the same page. Approaching those suspected of cheating individually instead of making the assumption that the whole class is cheating, may aid in creating an environment built on trust. Open communication, clear expectations, and a relationship built on trust help students to know what to expect from us.   
• Empathy/Kindness/ Patience: While delivering content knowledge is important, teaching is about much more than that. It also involves addressing the social-emotional needs of students. Both professors and students can relate to experiencing varying emotions through this time. Listen to students, and check-in with us if you can, because we need to know our professors are there and that they care. We need to know that you are human too and that we can come to you if the class gets too overwhelming for us to handle on our own. There have been many times that I have had to shut my camera off in class, have a good cry, and come back. We are living through unprecedented times, and now more than ever it is important to have empathy, kindness, and patience. 

The near future is still filled with many unknowns. Nobody feels good about that. However, if we can see past our educational roles and connect as people, we will be able to support one another through these difficult times. I hope this is helpful going into the next semester and that everyone stays healthy and well .

One of my earliest memories is sitting on the couch, pillows on either side for support, as I held my baby brother. I can remember putting my lips to his little head, and soaking in the baby smell of his downy head as if it were yesterday. Soon after, we would learn that my brother suffered a traumatic brain injury at birth, leaving lasting cognitive and physical echoes. And so my personal journey with disability awareness began. 

In college, I had the honor of working as an embedded writing tutor with a cohort of deaf students, and later, I worked with two students who experienced short-term memory loss due to car accidents. By the time I started teaching online, I had a lifetime of experiences working with people who have differing cognitive and physical differences, so embracing making my online course accessible should have been easy--a piece of cake. 

Accessibility Is a Team Effort

Instead, what I found was that training and tutorials on digital accessibility were convoluted, complex, and often confusing. I rarely knew if I had achieved the level of accessibility I was hoping for, so (like many online instructors) I often simply ignored broad components of accessibility. 

During my work with @ONE and the CVC-OEI, however, I decided to tackle accessibility, and what I discovered is that some parts of accessibility are more difficult, and require collaboration with our campus IT and disability resources--like testing software integrations with Canvas to ensure they meet standards--but other things are simple, and when practiced become muscle memory. Since that time, it’s been my goal to share what I have learned about accessibility within Canvas to as many faculty as possible--to straighten out, simplify, and clarify how to make our content in Canvas accessible. 

Take the 10-Day Accessibility Challenge

So, as Disability awareness month comes to a close, and we begin prepping for Fall courses in the era of COVID-19, where all of our students have been forced online, I’m happy to introduce a new series--the 10-Day Accessibility Challenge--focused on making your Canvas course accessible. The challenge is comprised of ten brief videos ranging from 2 to 4 minutes each that cover the six most prominent accessibility strategies for online courses:

• Headings
• Lists
• Links
• Images
• Color Contrast
• Closed-captions

The video playlist is shared with a Creative Commons license on YouTube, so feel free to share, embed, and encourage others to join in, too! 

Accessibility does not have to be shrouded in mystery and should be part of our daily routine. As a matter of fact, I’m positive you’re up to the challenge!

The typical California community college online student is often managing quite a lot. Today’s environment is proving how difficult it is for students who are now expected to function almost exclusively online, to maintain a healthy work -school- family life balance. The recent May 20th, 2020 survey conducted by  The Student Senate for the California Community Colleges Senate (SSCCC)  revealed that since the Covid-19 pandemic began, and with the moving of their academic endeavors online, 67% of students surveyed reported higher levels of stress, depression and mental health related issues. Additionally, students also shared that many of them “are struggling with the move to an all-online environment, particularly those who depend on the services available to them through campus-based resources such as library, counseling, EOPS, college jobs, financial aid, grants, and health services.” SSCCC. 

Understanding our students’ ability and preparedness for practicing self- care is a key factor when it comes to encouraging them to seek out services appropriate to their needs. The demand for such services is even more apparent if the focus is on the online student population. By default, online students run the risk of being isolated from the support structures they once depended on as on-campus students. If we were to assume that online college students require access to the same support services that are provided on campus, plus a few additional ones unique to their learning context, then the need for colleges to provide increased access to those services online is a given. When a college invests in offering online mental health support, it is creating opportunities for practitioners to provide interactive solutions to engage students in a self-directed and anonymous way. One such investment would be to increase professional development and training opportunities for college mental health practitioners.

Self-paced Mental Health Online Courses from CVC-OEI/@ONE

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the issue; mental health practitioners were becoming more aware of their online students’ needs for their kind of support.  As a result, the California Virtual Campus-Online Education Initiative’s (CVC-OEI) Student Experience team was inspired to partner with experienced mental health practitioners from within the California Community College system to create the content for a dynamic self-paced course that introduces participants to multiple forms of distance mental health counseling. The course is designed for experienced mental health clinicians, and created to address the demand for more of this kind of professional development opportunities within our system. 

The self-paced Distance Mental Health for Clinicians Course offered by the CVC-OEI in partnership with @ONE; is a version of CVC-OEI’s popular 3-week Distance Mental Health for Clinicians Course. Through the course, participants learn how to identify challenges and potential solutions specific to distance mental health counseling. The course also educates participants on the legal and ethical guidelines for providing online mental health services. Any participant who completes the course will gain a greater understanding of the growing trends in online mental health services, and learn valuable strategies required when working with community college students online.

There are many benefits that come from having college mental health practitioners trained in providing online support. Expanding mental health services online contributes to greater equity by having the potential to reach a wider group of students, some of whom may never have sought out such services while on campus. By incorporating web-based technology in their professional repertoire, college mental health service providers have the opportunity to deliver non-intrusive treatment to a wider audience of students who may be dealing with health and wellness issues ranging from mild problems to those with more severe challenges. Equally important, having a trained professional who can relate to the “newness” of functioning in the online learning environment, which many students experience,  can create a bond and help generate successful results in treating students. Additionally, for some students, the anonymity that comes from receiving such services online can provide comfort and confidence for those concerned with the stigma and perception associated with being seen entering the Mental Health Office on campus. 

It is essential that we increase the number of opportunities for online mental health and wellness support and equally important, that students are made aware of their options when it comes to receiving such support. The Distance Mental Health for Clinicians Course is open and free to all.

A fundamental aspect of instruction is the assessment of student learning. The rapid response to move classes online in a pandemic has exposed concerns surrounding the practice of online proctoring. There are many online proctoring features offered by companies such as Proctorio, Examity, Honorlock, and Respondus. The methods that do not require a webcam include locking down the students’ browser so they cannot perform functions such as open another application or tab, use the toolbar, copy/paste, or print screen while taking an exam. The intrusive methods include requesting a photo ID, activating facial recognition, and a live proctor monitoring for sounds and motions. Sessions are typically recorded from the exam start to finish and a live proctor can monitor potential testing infractions as they occur. Proctoring services say exam videos and other data are securely stored. Some store videos in a certified data center server, and then archive them after a defined period of time in line with Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act​ (FERPA) guidelines.

According to a 2017 study, it is suggested instructors familiarize themselves with how the services work so they can anticipate students’ concerns. Instructors should identify students’ technical difficulties and try to address them by spending time familiarizing students with how to get ready for and ultimately take their exams. In this pandemic, we know many students lack access to computers and wifi, and the newly issued Chromebooks challenge students to operate another new device and establish wifi access. 

Online testing may seem to make things easier but it’s possible the transition to new technology, or the lack of access using current technology that doesn’t include a webcam, may complicate matters and lead to a significant level of discomfort with online proctoring. A survey of 748 students about technology and achievement gaps found about one in five struggled to use the technology at their disposal because of issues such as broken hardware and connectivity problems. Students of color or lower socioeconomic status encountered these difficulties more often. 

My colleague, Aloha Sargent, Technology Services Librarian, shared with me an article from Hybrid Pedagogy that asserts "algorithmic test proctoring’s settings have discriminatory consequences across multiple identities and serious privacy implications." When Texas Tech rolled out online proctoring, they recognized students often take exams in their dorm or bedrooms, and students noted in a campus survey “They thought it was big brother invading their computers.” Some test takers were asked by live proctors to remove pictures from their surroundings and some students of color were told to shine more light on themselves. That’s a disturbing request in my opinion. Many of our community college students occupy multi-family or multi-person residences that include children. These proctoring settings will "disproportionately impact women who typically take on the majority of childcare, breast feeding, lactation, and care-taking roles for their family. Students who are parents may not be able to afford childcare, be able to leave the house, or set aside quiet, uninterrupted blocks of time to take a test."

At the University of California, Davis, they are discouraging faculty members from using online proctoring this semester unless they have previous experience with such services. “It suggests faculty consider alternatives that will lower students' anxiety levels during an already stressful time, such as requiring them to reflect on what they learned in the course.” The following article highlights a University of Washington story about adopting Proctorio because of the COVID-19 rapid transition to online. Read the experience of one University of Washington student, Paranoia about cheating is making online education terrible for everyone. The students’ experiences “are another sign that, amid the pandemic, the hurried move to re-create in-person classes online has been far from smooth, especially when it comes to testing.” Live online proctoring is a way to preemptively communicate to students, we don't trust you. It is a pedagogy of punishment and exclusion.

In higher education, traditional exams represent the most appropriate assessment tool. There are ways to cheat on exams no matter what method is used to deploy them. Even a major “NSA-style” proctoring software is not “cheat-proof.” Their sales representative was very candid in showing me how it’s done.  There are alternatives to typical exam questions—often referred to as authentic assessment. According to Oxford Research Encyclopedia, “authentic assessment is an effective measure of intellectual achievement or ability because it requires students to demonstrate their deep understanding, higher-order thinking, and complex problem solving through the performance of exemplary tasks.” 

Given the limited timeframe, there will be limits to what you can use now. That’s OK. Consider using Canvas question pools and randomizing questions, or even different versions of the final. For example, replacing six multiple-choice or true-and-false questions with two short-answer items may better indicate how well a question differentiates between students who know the subject matter and those who do not. Or ask students to record a brief spoken-word explanation for the question using the Canvas media tool. Just keep in mind, there are a dozen or more ways to assess learning without “biometric-lockdown-retinal scan-saliva-sample-genetic-mapping-fingerprint-analysis.”

References

1. Dimeo, Jean. “Online Exam Proctoring Catches Cheaters, Raises Concerns.” Inside Higher Ed, 2017.
2. Woldeab, Daniel, et al. “Under the Watchful Eye of Online Proctoring.” Innovative Learning and Teaching: Experiments Across the Disciplines, University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing Services’ open book and open textbook initiative, 2017.
3. ​Schwartz, Natalie. “Colleges flock to online proctors, but equity concerns remain.” Education Dive, April 2020.
4. Swager, Shea. "Our Bodies Encoded: Algorithmic Test Proctoring in Higher Education." Hybrid Pedagogy, April 2020.

“We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.” -Helen Keller

When I was nine or ten years old, my parents purchased a subscription to a mail-in series of books called Value Tales. My younger brother and I read through each book that featured a value to learn from prominent people in history. One person I read about that had a significant impact on me was Helen Keller, and the value attributed to her was determination. As a toddler, Helen lost both her sight and hearing, but she overcame these extreme challenges to learn to read, write, and speak. She became the first deaf and blind person to earn a college degree, with honors no less, and went on to champion pioneering work for people with disabilities as an author, political activist, and lecturer.

Helen would not have been able to accomplish any of these remarkable feats without people like Anne Sullivan. Anne was a recent graduate of the Perkins School for the Blind when Helen’s father Arthur Keller sought out help for his seven year old daughter. The director recommended Anne, who agreed and began teaching Helen. Helen had been acting out in frustration up to that point, understandably, so Anne was challenged to find a way to help her. She began with the simple act of having Helen touch an object, for example a doll, then she would spell out the word on the palm of her hand. Helen began to respond, understanding that for the first time someone was reaching out to teach her. This simple teaching strategy was the starting point for Helen. She eventually learned to read braille, “hear” people speak to her by placing her hand on their mouth, and speak by mimicking what she felt their mouths do.

By now you may have guessed that I intend to parallel my connection to Helen Keller to online learning. When learning something new, everyone needs a starting point. You very well may be that person who is just getting started in online teaching. Maybe you are eager to learn online teaching, or maybe you are frustrated and feeling forced into something against your will. Either way, my life’s calling as an instructional designer is to help you learn skills that will forever change your life, by expanding your communication and interaction with learners. In every project I work on in online education, my goal is to always contribute to the development of learning opportunities for a wide range of professionals that is clear, purposeful, and intentional. With this approach, our team has now developed a new series of professional development, specifically for those professionals needing a “jump start” into online learning.

Introducing the first of CVC-OEI/@ONE's New 5-Day Challenge Series

Course design is a vital part of equitable, asynchronous online learning that helps to promote a welcoming, engaging, and effective learner experience. This 5-Day Challenge is designed to guide you through the process of developing the framework for a content module in Canvas. You will build a foundation for designing an asynchronous online course that welcomes your students and is organized into manageable chunks to support the needs of your diverse learners. Each challenge is set up as a 20 minute daily activity to be completed across 5 days.

The 5 challenges to Organizing Your Canvas Course are:

• Day 1: Create a Home Page
• Day 2: Create a Module
• Day 3: Create an Assignment
• Day 4: Add Multimedia
• Day 5: Create a Discussion

This 5-Day course is classified as self-paced because you choose your start date, and have the option of either following the 5-Day recommended schedule, or modifying as desired. Completing all challenges and the quiz at the end will trigger a completion badge!

One final thought: The ability to learn is a gift; it is the essence of what it means to be alive. In all your learning, I wish you the very best! Keep learning, keep growing, keep moving forward!

Sincerely,

Shawn Valcárcel
Instructional Designer
CVC-OEI/@ONE

Now, more than ever, we must center our teaching practices on one thing: we are humans who are experiencing the physiological effects of trauma.

Whether you are a student, faculty, or staff, your ability to learn new things and manage tasks is compromised. Recognizing this in your own daily experiences unites all of us. These shared connections have a way of fostering empathy for one another.

Empathy is especially critical to support the needs of our California Community College (CCC) students. In 2019, a Hope Center #RealCollege survey of 40,000 CCC students revealed that:

• 50% of respondents were food insecure in the prior 30 days,
• 60% of respondents were housing insecure in the previous year,
• 19% of respondents were homeless in the previous year.

As a community college educator, you serve the most vulnerable population of students in higher education. Our same students are now even more traumatized by COVID-19 and many will be required to learn online in the fall to stay on track with their academic goals. They are more likely to feel exhausted, confused, sad, anxious, agitated, and numb. Learning online can be an isolating experience that can exacerbate the physiological effects of trauma. Humanizing is the antidote that will support the success of our most vulnerable students and help you feel more connected and appreciated too.

What is humanizing?

Humanizing starts with cultivating your human presence online to asynchronously welcome and greet your students when they log into Canvas, setting up intentional strategies to get to know your individual students as more than names on a screen, identifying those who will benefit from your high touch the most, and adapting your asynchronous online teaching accordingly. Once you've established a relationship anchored in care and trust, you are poised to become a "warm demander" (Kleinfeld, 1975) and support the cognitive development of all your students. When a human knows another human believes in them, it is our nature to lean in and try not to let that person down. That is why humanizing is the single most essential requirement in designing a fall online course.

With that context in mind, we invite you to explore the newest CVC-OEI/@ONE Pocket PD Guide: Humanizing Online Teaching & Learning, embedded below. The guide, intended to support asynchronous online teaching, will introduce you to the research and theoretical frameworks that underpin humanizing, stress the pedagogy of culturally responsive teaching that fuels humanizing, and provide you with a few concrete practices to humanize your online course. And, of course, you'll also find a few friendly faces in the guide to support you including Tracy Schaelen of Southwestern College; Fabiola Torres of Glendale Community College; and Sarah Williams of Foothill College.

This PocketPD Guide is created with Google Sites and has a handy button on the first slide that allows you to create your own copy of the slide deck. We’ve shared it with a Creative Commons-Attribution (CC-BY) license so you are free to adapt and re-use it with attribution to CVC-OEI. Sharing is caring!

References:
Kleinfeld, J. (1975). Effective teachers of Eskimo and Indian students. School Review, 83, 301–344.