Capstone Showcase @ONE Advanced Certificate in Online Teaching Principles
From 2018-2020, @ONE offered an Advanced Certificate in Online Teaching Principles, which poised faculty to facilitate equitable, humanized online courses that support the diverse needs of community college students. To earn this certificate, California Community College faculty completed a professional development program consisting of four online courses and a capstone project. The program was aligned with the five @ONE Principles for Quality Online Teaching. The capstone project was the creation of a public website comprised of reflections and examples from one's online course that demonstrate growth and development in the five principles. Below are links to the capstone projects created by the 45 certificate recipients.
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.
These principles are designed to meet the needs of the diverse students that we serve in the California community college system.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Teaching Matters
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!
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.
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.”
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.
Learning is a social process. That's why active learning has long been touted as an exemplary instructional approach for college classes -- whether they're taught in a traditional classroom or online. It's also why student-student interactions are part of the CVC-OEI Online Course Design Rubric and are now part of the Title 5 Education Code for California Community College Distance Education courses (Instructor Contact, Section 55204). Peer-to-peer interaction is foundational to developing a sense of community in your online courses. But meaningful interactions don't just happen; they are fostered through effective course design and teaching.
Neuroscientists like Antonio Demasio have shown that thinking and feeling are not distinct processes. Rather, feelings directly impact human reasoning and behavior. Thinking and feeling are inseparable from one another. And if you apply that to the way you teach, you'll notice big shifts in your students' engagement. Research shows that online classes can make some students feel more isolated, which can further exacerbate the feelings of stress and marginalization that many community college students experience. Throughout their lives, many of our students have been informed through the media and other messages that they're not cut out for college. It's your job to let them know, "I believe in you. You've got this." Just like in your face-to-face classes, validating your online students and establishing that your class is a safe place are the first steps to establishing a sense of belonging for your students (Rendón, 1994).
Providing low-stake opportunities that enable students to draw upon the wealth of experiences they bring to your class is also key. Doing so demonstrates that you value your students' diverse experiences and perspectives, as noted in the Peralta Equity Rubric. As students share what's meaningful to themselves, they will feel more included in your class and will also recognize things they have in common with their peers. When names on a screen begin to transform into human beings with rich stories, your class is on its way to becoming a community.
To support you in your efforts to foster student-student interactions and build community in your online courses, CVC-OEI/@ONE has developed a Student-Student Interactions Professional Development Guide, which you'll find embedded at the top of this page. We've shared the guide with a Creative Commons-Attribution (CC-BY) license and provided it in Google Slides format to make it easy for you to copy, adapt, and re-use as you'd like. In the guide, you'll find:
References to research that will help guide meaningful conversations with your faculty peers about the recent Title 5 change,
Recommended CVC-OEI/@ONE courses and PocketPD,
Video tours of online courses showcasing assignments in Canvas,
A collection of assignment ideas, shared by California Community College faculty
Leave a comment below to let us know what you think and how you plan to use the guide or share your favorite strategy for fostering meaningful interaction in your online course.
Present at Can•Innovate 2019 - no travel required!
Fabiola Torres presenting online at Can•Innovate 2018.
Can•Innovate 2019 is scheduled for October 25, 2019, and we're ready to make this year's event bigger and better than last year but we need your help! Can•Innovate, a free, one-day conference supporting faculty and staff at the 114 California Community Colleges that use Canvas (registration is also open to the general public). Last year, more than 1,100 people joined in for a collaborative day of sharing and learning. Participants have the option to attend online from anywhere or on-campus from a group viewing room so mark your calendar today and start preparing your proposal.
The Call for Proposals for Can•Innovate is now open -- here's your chance to reach inside your bag of tricks and share a course design or teaching practice in a brief Lightning Round or a more detailed Share Showcase. All sessions are delivered online so there's no need for travel funding -- or a suitcase! Take a peek at last year's program for a little inspiration.
Kona Jones, Director of Online Learning at Richland Community College will kick off our program with an inspirational presentation, Integrating Compassion into Your Teaching. Kona is responsible for the development of faculty and student technology training materials, provides instructional design support to faculty, oversees the assessment of online courses, and facilitates faculty professional development. Kona loves teaching and is an adjunct instructor of statistics and developmental psychology. Her passion is student success and in 2019 she was awarded Adjunct Faculty of the Year. Kona is also a Canvas Coach and Canvassador, contributing extensively in the online Canvas Community and elsewhere.
Registration will open in September when the full program is announced. If you have any questions about Can•Innovate, let us know!
One year ago, CVC-OEI/@ONE held our first free, online conference, CCC Digital Learning Day. On February 28, 2019, this event was held for a second time. Our move away from individual webinars to full day, online conferences has yielded many benefits, summarized here.
CCC Digital Learning Day (CCCDLDay) 2019 was the California Community College's celebration of Digital Learning Day, an international educational event comprised of pop-up programs around the world. Our program, guided by a systemwide advisory committee, was designed around the theme of exploring digital literacies across the curriculum. CCCDLDay is distinct from our annual fall online conference, Can•Innovate, which focuses on supporting the use of Canvas across the California Community College system. For CCCDLDay, we aim to bring educators into a mindful consideration of the many opportunities and challenges that digital learning brings to our mission to prepare students for a successful life. This year, the program was designed to be provocative and raise questions that don't always have answers. And, like all of our conferences, we strived to ensure student voices remained at the center of our inquiry.
The Highlights
The 2019 program included 15 speakers including a keynote presentation, Create: Igniting Our Collective Imagination, by Bonni Stachowiak, host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. A full day of sessions followed, featuring the teaching and learning innovations of CCC faculty and students, including an inspirational student panel moderated by professor Fabiola Torres from Glendale Community College. Matt Mooney, History Professor at Santa Barbara Community College, presented with his former online student, Amber Greene. In Making Creativity SPARKle, the two reflected on the impact of Matt's choice to transform a summative assessment in the course into a student-generated video about a historical topic. Donna Caldwell, from Adobe, shared a demo of Adobe Spark, providing attendees with the how-to knowledge for Matt's innovative practice. Librarians, Cynthia Orozco of East Los Angeles College and Aloha Sargent of Cabrillo College, examined the need for information literacy to be embedded in Canvas courses and shared examples of open educational resources available for use in Canvas. The day wrapped up with two sessions that took us back outside of Canvas and invited participants to join in on "Create" challenges. Chelsea Cohen of Laney College and Gena Estep from Folsom Lake College demonstrated creative uses of Twitter that engage students in networked, global learning. Last, but not least, Liz du Plessis from Barstow Community College and the California Online Community College presented alongside Mayra Avila, one of Liz's online students, and shared how she uses Google Maps to foster collaborative, contextual learning of historical content -- and everyone in the audience had a chance to drop their own pin on a map too. Search the Canvas Commons with "CCCDLDay" and discover a few golden nuggets shared during the day!
The Growth
We saw significant growth from last year in many areas.
4,445 online session registrations, 138% growth from 2018
3,010 attendances, 83% more than last year
791 attendees (unduplicated headcount), a 49% growth from last year
100 CCCs were represented at the event, up from 85 in 2018
78% people attended online
CCC attendees were comprised of 40.8 percent full-time faculty, 37.6 percent adjunct, 11.3 percent classified, 4.6 percent administrators, and .8 percent students.
Attendees rated their overall experience 4.7 out of 5 stars (based on the completion of an attendee survey, n=103).
Thank you for making CCC Digital Learning Day a success. Mark your calendars for Can•Innovate, our next free online conference, on Friday, October 25, 2019. The Call for Proposals opens next week!
Incentivize! Don’t Penalize: Revisiting Late Policies for Online Students
Coming from a culture of storytellers,
I’d like to share a story that inspired this post.
I was at my local supermarket in the northeast side of Los Angeles when a former student, Ignacio (Nacho), recognized me and approached me. “Are you Ms. Fabi?” He then reminded me of who he was. I also met his Mama. His Mama started to tell me in Spanish what a good son Nacho is and how proud she is of him. I felt confused because, as I recall, he had dropped my class. As I listened to Nacho, there in the store, the reason he dropped hit me hard. He dropped the class because his mother had lost her job and he needed to work more hours to take care of his family. This caused him to struggle with time management. Nacho had a formative assessment due in my class and he couldn’t complete it by the due date. So, he dropped the class. Of course, I said, "Why didn't you tell me?" He said, "Well you were very clear about late papers. You set your rule and I broke it.” To him, talking to me meant asking for help, and he didn't want to ask for a favor. A “favor” was not an option for him. I could even see it in the eyes of his mother. She stood by his decision. “Se porta bien” – He behaves.
Like many working class immigrant households, we were raised to be proud, which meant not breaking the rules. Since many of our parents lived in fear of breaking rules in the US, the goal of behaving was instilled in us. Good behavior builds character. Character becomes more important than achievement. Nacho was the epitome of character. He was a good son of a single-family household, an Army Reserve Serviceman (another environment requiring good behavior) and a college student. Yet my policy became a barrier. I did not set up an environment to encourage communication and support him to succeed.
The next
semester, Nacho registered for my course again.
I learned he was a hard worker who also learned how to advocate for
himself when he needed to. He never took advantage of my kindness and
appreciated my personalized feedback. After all, I had met his Mama. Nacho
earned an A, completed his bachelors at a Cal State, and is now a college
recruiter. After Nacho, my journey as an online instructor was forever changed.
When I started teaching online, I struggled with late policies. I remember a colleague telling me I needed to be strict with deadlines to "show them how it will be in the real world." I learned my lesson after my Nacho encounter. After that, I began to imagine a learning environment where submitting late assignments could still be a method to encourage student effort and communicate that I believe in my students’ abilities. I have wondered how this change might remove barriers for students and foster a more equitable learning experience.
What Students Want
Our goal should not be to translate our face-to-face
learning environments into our online courses. Both are unique and should be
designed to leverage the characteristics of the modality. Also, our students
have reasons for choosing to take an online vs. a face-to-face course. Kelly
Ann Gleason, a student at Cuesta College, stated during the student panel for
Digital Learning Day 2019, “We are taking online classes because we have life
outside the classroom, so the very reason that we are taking this [an online
class] communicates what we expect.” And
what do they expect? Flexibility. Today,
more than 24% of enrollments in the California Community College system are
from online courses. Most of these students are blending their schedules with a
mix of face-to-face and online courses to develop a flexible schedule that
allows them to advance their academic goals while also fulfilling their work
and life responsibilities. To put it another way, being on campus full-time is
a privilege that many students do not have.
The student panelists who participated with Kelly Ann
continued to advocate the need to respect faculty and their time, yet they want
to see online faculty design an online environment where students are given a
fair chance to submit quality work when time management becomes
challenging. As Henry Fan, a student
from Foothill College, stated, “Not all time is created equal.”
Equity means ensuring each student has what they need to succeed. Is it equitable to apply the same late policy to every student in every situation? It is our responsibility to measure the quality of student learning rather than how punctual an assignment is. And if it’s not punctual, how can we use that as an opportunity to understand our students’ realities and encourage them to keep going?
Here are some suggestions to incentivize responsibility
by placing a culture of excellence and care on your end.
Spend time in preparing and designing Canvas Assignments. Make sure every student is clear about what to do and how to do it. Students might need models, templates or deeper explanations before they are ready. Include a rubric so your expectations are clearly communicated. Embed a video encouraging excellence within the Assignment page.
Use Canvas Announcements to nudge students on upcoming deadlines. We know some students struggle with deadlines and it would be irresponsible as a teacher to not act upon that knowledge before it’s too late.
Monitor submissions throughout the week. As the due date approaches, use the Grades area of Canvas to send a personal message to students who have not yet submitted. Ask if they are OK. Encourage them to talk to you if they need to.
For students who do not submit by the deadline, use the Canvas Inboxto message these students and ask if they are OK. Provide them an opportunity to negotiate. If a response is still missing, send your campus’ Distance Education policy language on Last Day of Attendance (LDA) for online courses. Be sure they know the last date they have to withdraw and receive a W, as it is better than an F.
Grade and provide comments in a timely manner so you reciprocate your culture of responsibility by providing meaningful feedback.
Plan your life around knowing you will always receive late submissions. So, when you don’t, you will feel happy and spend extra time with your loved ones.
We are content specialists. Not life specialists. Yet we can create an equitable culture of excellence, so all students can achieve academic excellence.
My
Submission Policy:
Plan on submitting work on
time.I immediately review work and provide meaningful feedback with
in 48-72 hours.
Because time management is
challenging, deadlines might not be met. But, you’re in luck. I’m on your
side. Late submissions will be accepted
with a penalty. Assignments submitted after the deadline may receive a 10%
grade point deduction for each day following the due date and time.
Don’t want the penalty? Here’s
an incentive.
If you recognize a due date
might be a problem, advocate for your success by following these steps:
Identify the problem
Contact me to propose a
solution
Let's negotiate
Do you have a submission policy you’d
like to share? I warmly invite you to leave a reply below to keep the
conversation going!
Zooming to New Heights of Student Engagement
I was a college student during the Stone Age of online education…you remember it, right? The age of mile-long content pages where, if you were lucky your professor would include a link back to the top at the half-mile marker on the page! Well, online education has changed a lot since then and there are now more ways to improve our students’ experiences. For California Community College (CCC) faculty, one way is to “zoom” to new heights by using ConferZoom in Canvas.
ConferZoom is the CCC-branded version of Zoom, an easy-to-use video conferencing tool that is provided at no cost to CCC educators by CCCTechConnect. Using ConferZoom changed the dynamic of my online Nutrition & Health courses by providing a way for my students to interact more organically with me and each other. We know that retention rates increase when students feel connected to their professor and/or classmates. Zoom provides a way for this connection to occur. Since I started using ConferZoom, I have observed increased student-student and student-instructor interactions, which are key to supporting students to complete the course successfully.
What do I do?
At the start of the course, I have an orientation or klatch meeting, a term I adopted from my favorite online CVC-OEI/@ONE instructor, Greg Beyrer.
In my welcome letter I invite students to my klatch online Zoom meeting and provide three meeting times from which they choose one to attend: one meeting time during the weekend prior to the first day of class and two meeting times on the first day of classes. What I have found is that some students will attend more than one of the meetings. The icing on the cake is that the klatch fulfills Section B: Interaction - Instructor Contact and Student-to-Student Contact of the CVC-OEI Course Design Rubric.
Want to give it a try?
Follow these steps:
Send out your welcome letter before your class begins.
Include the dates and times of the orientation meetings. It is important to let students know attending one session is mandatory and they will get credit. (My orientation is worth 20 points, more than any other week one assignment.)
In your message, encourage students to join from a computer with a webcam or a mobile device so you can see and hear one another. If you are aware that a student requires live captioning as an accommodation, contact ConferZoom support in advance of your meeting.
When orientation day arrives, have your klatch meeting from a computer with a webcam.
Launch Zoom and share your desktop.
Meet and greet your students in real time!
Take your students step-by-step through the basics of your course’s navigation.
You have now demonstrated to your students how useful klatch meetings will be going forward. In a coming blog post I will share how I use the recording feature to Zoom it up a notch!
Laying out the welcome mat
UsingConferZoom for my course orientation not only sets the table for my students to get a taste of what’s to come, but it also allows me to more easily create learner-centered content throughout the term, as students can ask questions and let me know what they’d like to learn about. Their input helps me guide the klatch in the direction the students deem necessary, as opposed to being completely instructor led. I also fulfill regular and effective contact in a more substantive way.
Since personal bonds are developed through shared experiences, we can easily see the significance of bringing students together live as they are entering your virtual classroom. Ensuring the session is meaningful and provides opportunities for social connections is essential. I want my students to know that I am here and available to them, both now and going forward. I also want my students to know that we are on this virtual nutrition or health “journey” together.
ConferZoom empowers me to take the anxious feelings that online students have at the start of a course and turn them into a promise of a shared learning experience. Through this experience, students are more likely to relate to me as their guide, mentor, and comforter. They also relate on a personal level with their peers. Thanks to ConferZoom, we have faces and personalities for the names we see on the screen and our shared journey toward a healthier life.
Register Now for CCC Digital Learning Day: Free, Online Conference
In October, more than 1,100 educators across California's community colleges and beyond joined us for Can•Innovate. We are happy to announce that our next free, online conference, CCC Digital Learning Day is now open for registration!
#CCCDLDay, brought to you by CVC-OEI/@ONE, is the California Community College's contribution to the national Digital Learning Day effort. Our theme for 2019 is Exploring Digital Literacies Across the Curriculum. The program has been crafted to engage you and your peers in a day of experimentation and creation, as we rethink and refocus our traditional notions of literacy and imagine how we might teach new digital literacies in all disciplines. You'll see teaching innovations that use Adobe Spark Video, Twitter, and Google Maps and Tour Builder to assess student learning, make relevant connections with content, and engage students in meaningful dialogue. Our day also includes a session led by librarians about information literacy and 3 sessions that include student speakers (hooray!).
Register for one or two sessions or join us for the entire day -- from anywhere. All sessions are delivered online in Zoom so you don't have to worry about traveling!
Program Overview
Our event kicks off on Thursday, February 28, 2019 at 9am PT with a keynote presentation, Create: Igniting our Collective Imagination, by Bonni Stachowiak, host of the popular podcast, Teaching in Higher Ed, and Director of the Institute for Faculty Development at Vanguard University.
The remainder of our morning program includes two sessions that will take you on a deep dive of Adobe Spark Video, a free, easy-to-use video creation tool. At 10:00 Matt Mooney, faculty at Santa Barbara Community College, will join us with one of his students, Amber Greene, to share how he is using Spark Video to transform his tests from drab to dazzle! After Matt and Amber's session, you'll have the opportunity to see a demo of Adobe Spark Video by Donna Caldwell, from Adobe Education. Donna will entice you to participate in our CCCDLDay Create Challenge too. Join in for a chance to win a cool prize from Adobe! We've intentionally left the lunch hour open to encourage you to dabble with Adobe Spark Video and get started on your video creation.
Our afternoon program kicks off with a student panel at 1pm, hosted by Fabiola Torres from Glendale College. Student panels are always the highlight of any event so we're considering this a must attend session for everyone! At 2pm, we're joined by Cynthia Mari Orozco, from East Los Angeles College, and Aloha Sargent, of Cabrillo College, two librarians who will present, Scaffolding Information Literacy in Canvas.
Our final two presentations feature more teaching and learning innovations and one more student too! At 3pm, Chelsea Cohen of Laney College and Gena Estep of Folsom Lake College will showcase how they are each using Twitter for Networked Global Learning. Their examples will redefine formative assessment as you know it and illuminate a whole new way to think about hashtags and brief messages. Finally, at 4pm, Liz du Plessis, from Barstow College and the California Online College, and her student, Mayra Avila, will be our guides for Mapping Content and Contexts with My Maps and Tour Builder by Google. That's right! Google Maps can do a lot more than help you get to your next destination. It can also foster real-world connections in your courses.
If your college is not yet hosting an on-campus viewing room for CCC Digital Learning Day, sign up now! Viewing sessions and creating content with your peers is an awesome way to learn and grow. But if you aren't on campus, no worries. #CCCDLDay is designed to support you no matter where you are.
When I signed up for the @ONE suite of courses for the Advanced Certificate in Online Teaching Principles, I didn’t expect they would help me to improve my on-campus classes. The Advanced Certificate in Online Teaching Principles courses are about teaching online, right? Right. Yet I discovered these courses would help me become a better face-to-face teacher, too.
Sometimes,
modality doesn’t matter.
Take, for example, creating a
more equitable classroom. I thought I had this nailed. I teach from the heart.
I get to know my students’ names, interests, and majors. My motto is “Reach
students where they are,” and this motto informs my teaching.
Looking back, I realize now that
I wasn’t providing opportunities for my students to be wholly present in spite
of my best efforts to engage them. I had not designed assignments that would
allow students to draw upon their cultural strengths or heritage, and I kept my
own heritage and personal experience out of the classroom. My syllabus was
professional and complete but devoid of personality and probably a little
off-putting.
As the instructor, I was also
the concierge. I would provide every text up until the research essay. I had
hundreds. I would provide the answers. I had hundreds of those, too.
After the first week of class
and the icebreakers were in the past, it was full speed ahead. There was little
time to pause and ask students to reflect. There was little group work.
There
was room to improve my on-campus classes, too.
It’s clear to see that these
practices had the potential to be counterproductive if they weren’t already
undermining my good intentions to create a welcoming learning community—whether
that community sat ten feet in front of me or across the internet.
But that’s with the benefit of hindsight—hindsight gained after completing the Advanced Certificate in Online Teaching Principles courses: Equity & Culturally Responsive Teaching, Humanizing Online Teaching & Learning, Dynamic Online Teaching, and Digital Citizenship. These courses helped me to improve my online courses and, bonus, my on-campus classes, too.
The
principles espoused in the @ONE courses cross the lines of modality.
As I reflect on what I’ve
learned, here are some key improvements I made:
My syllabus is more student-centered and, I think, more welcoming. It’s also readily available online using mobile or desktop browsers. I continue to improve it.
I designed more activities that draw upon what my students already know and make reflection a key step of the learning process.
I gave up my role as the concierge. Well, almost. I still rely on a key OER text or two, but now, my students are increasingly responsible for locating and creating texts as they strengthen their digital and information literacy.
I ask more questions. My students start collaborating in groups from the beginning of the course until the end, and I’ve seen this work pay off in more ways than one.
I’m still learning and improving both my online and on-campus classes, and the Advanced Certificate in Online Teaching Principles courses continue to inform my practice. In hindsight, I shouldn’t be surprised that regardless of modality, the principles of effective teaching and learning are the same. Welcome students and empower them as learner-explorers. Give them guidance and plenty of opportunities for fearless practice. Connect them with each other. These principles help create a stronger learning community—online or on-campus. Completing the Advanced Certificate in Online Teaching Principles courses reinforced these principles and helped me to see new ways I can put them into effect regardless of teaching modality.
In November, a group of five college students representing the California Community Colleges and California State University systems participated in a virtual panel at the annual Directors of Educational Technology in California Higher Education (DET/CHE) conference. Projected on a screen in front of hundreds of educators, students shared their candid reflections and experiences with technology in teaching and learning.
I had the honor of moderating the panel with support from J.P. Bayard, Director for System-Wide Learning Technologies and Program Services at the CSU Chancellor's Office. As always, listening to student experiences inspired me and reconnected me with the reasons I do what I do. As technology plays a more expansive role in teaching and learning, we must make efforts to center what we do around the real experiences of the humans at the other end of the screen. I also find myself reflecting on the courage it took these students to volunteer to participate and be candid about their experiences. And that is also something all of us can learn from.
I hope you listen to the 30-minute recording and let the students' messages inform your practices as you start the new term ahead. Leave us a comment below and share a takeaway -- we'd love to hear from you!
https://youtu.be/tjEf6SDtvqk
30-Minute Archive of a student panel from the 2018 DET/CHE Conference.
Quick Links
Don't have 30 minutes to listen? Here are the 5 questions the students were asked and a video quick link to their responses.
3:28 Reflect on your experiences as a college student and answer this question, "I wish my teachers would _____________. "
8:08 If your instructor gave you the choice for a test to: write a paper, create a video, or create a verbal presentation, how would you feel about having that choice? Which option would you choose and why?
18:03 How are you using mobile devices to access the resources and services provided by your instructors and college?
20:25 Why did you choose to take an online class? What makes an online class a good learning experience?"
