Week 5 Overview, Readings and Resources

Overview

During this final week, we'll be looking back and looking forward, revisiting key topics and themes with some experience behind us, and a mind to the future and applying what we've learned.

This includes:

• considering the assessment of online participation and the role of rubrics
• engaging in reflective practice - what that looks like, what tools we might use to be reflective practitioners
• re-visiting some key themes of the course from our (now) more informed and experienced perspective: facilitation strategies, online presence, and online participation

There are two activities this week:

1.  Mini-Session: Assessing Participation

Mini-session overview:

Why is there such a focus on encouraging, monitoring and assessing participation in online learning? We know that students learn more effectively when they are engaged with the subject matter and with their fellow learners. So, how do we ensure that students visit the online course environment, read or view the materials and participate in activities and discussions that will enable them to deepen their understanding and think critically about core topics? How can we, as online facilitators, encourage participation and evaluate fairly without being overwhelmed with a system of assessment that is too rigorous and overly detailed?

The readings for this week illuminate these issues and suggest solutions or discuss related issues. You should also reflect on your weekly self-assessment of your participation in the FLO. What was your experience of the assessment method you chose and the challenge of assessing participation consistently? 

Your mini-session facilitators will provide more detailed instructions at the beginning of the week. 

2.  Looking Back, Looking Forward

This is a reflective activity facilitated by your FLO facilitators. The goal of this activity is to help you engage in and share your reflective practice by taking stock of your learning in FLO and making concrete plans for next steps. Details will be posted in the forum. 

Mini-sessions - Introduction

1. Assessing Participation

This mini-session will consider various perspectives on the value and fairness of assessing (and grading?) student participation online. The rubric used to self-assess participation throughout the workshop will be discussed and evaluated.

Goals of this mini-session:

• Discuss / debate issues around assessing participation in online courses

Tasks for participants

• Review the readings and resources; reflect on experiences.
• Discuss issues surrounding assessment of student participation in online courses.
• Create a summary of issues and responses.
• Provide constructive feedback (in the Feedback forum) when the session is complete

Tasks for facilitators

• Lead the participants through this process (how / where) within the time allowed (Mon-WED). Please note: Week 5 is a short week. Make sure you consider timelines in your planning and keep instructions straightforward.
• Remind participants to provide feedback at end of the session.
• Complete the FLIF (final reflective survey) .

2. Looking Back / Looking Forward

This mini-session is a summative, reflective learning activity. It is typically facilitated by FLO facilitators along with an open invitation for volunteer to lead or assist. It's a great way to continue to practice you online facilitation skills!

Goals of this mini-session

• Help you engage in and share your reflective practice by taking stock of your learning in FLO and making concrete plans for next steps. Details will be posted in the forum.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Online Presence

Looking back on your experiences in ISWo as a participant and facilitator, and watching others facilitate, do you have any new ideas for establishing and maintaining your online presence? What seemed to work well? What didn't?

Successful online facilitators will tell you they have devised strategies for being there, without always having to be there (online, 24/7). Much of this has to do with understanding, anticipating and responding - in advance - to the needs of adult online learners.

Facilitators can establish and maintain presence in a number of ways, including:

• post regular updates and notices to the class. Often, instructors post a weekly update on a Sunday evening, perhaps commenting on high points from the last week and setting up expectations and reminders for the coming week. Even though this information (the schedule, the list of tasks and readings) is in the course, it's good to demonstrate that you're moving through the course with them.
• note particularly interesting developments in the forums
• ask provocative questions
• send individual emails
• make references in assignment feedback or forums to notable postings a student has made
• make all instructions very, very clear (i.e., anticipate needs)
• use synchronous technologies at strategic points in the course, e.g., hold a Collaborate session, and record it for those who can't attend. some good times are:
• at the beginning, to introduce yourself and establish expectations
• at mid-point, to check in and see how students are doing (in many courses at RRU there is a mid-point survey too, which gives formative feedback while there is time to adjust strategies before the end of the course
• before a complex or challenging team or individual assignment
• as a way to prepare and review for the final exam
• Use audio, video, and images to show and tell things to the students, including your course introduction
• and last but never least, make it personal to the extent that works for you (e.g., using humour, sharing relevant anecdotes/stories from your professional experience, etc)

Making regular contributions to the course in a variety of ways assures students that you are present and attentive.

If you didn't already watch the "instructor presence" videos that we featured in the beginning of this course, now might be a good time to go back and view them (or view them again!).

Assessing Online Participation

An extensive exploration of evaluation and assessment is outside the scope of ISWo, but we will explore one aspect of online assessment in this unit:  assessing online participation.

Online instructors are often bound by guidelines around assessment that are intended to achieve some consistency in grading across courses in a program (e.g., many program areas at RRU have minimum/maximums for participation, team, and exam grades).

Evaluating online participation is a special concern for online facilitators (it could be argued that a paper is a paper, but learners participate differently online than they do face-to-face). This week's readings include some resources to help you explore the challenges and consider solutions to assessing online participation.

Reflective Practice

One goal of this unit to explore the notion of being a reflective practitioner. This will have different meanings to everyone; our ways of accessing self-awareness and conducting self-study will be very individualized. You may also find formal or informal processes at your workplace that invites or supports reflection (e.g., course evaluations, quarterly meetings, workshops, retreats, annual performance reviews, corridor chats, or even working with an instructional designer on a course re-design )

In a way, this whole course has been an exercise in reflective practice. All along, we have:

• reflected on and discussed our teaching practices
• participated in activities, reflected on them, and given/received feedback on facilitation
• reflected on our own facilitation/mini-session, and submitted a reflection piece (FLIF) about it
• kept a blog (which is simply a way to engage and share in reflective practice)

In the Fifth Discipline Fieldbook Senge et al. (1996) describe reflecting as:

…becoming an observer of your own thinking and acting. This phase might start with a postmortem about a previous action: How well did it go? What were we thinking and feeling during the process? What underlying beliefs (what "theories in use") seemed to affect the way we handled it? Do we see our goals differently now? (p. 60)

These kinds of questions help develop a deeper understanding of experiences and identify situations and/or aspects of themselves that can be improved.

Reflective practitioners reflect on the "what, why, how and when" of their experiences. The crucial element is the individual's willingness to honestly examine an experience, his or her part in it, and what decisions need to be made as a result.

Goloboy's (2003) article on the “Top Ten Secrets of Successful Online Educators” serves as a summary of some of the key points we've covered in this course. As well, it is a helpful article that can be used to stimulate reflecting thinking.

How do (or will) you build in time for reflective practice?

Video: Doug Hamilton (1:37)

Video: Jen Walinga (1:39)

Video: Alicia Wilkes (1:11)

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Read

Assessing Participation

Choose one.  Note: The facilitation team for this mini-session may choose to assign specific readings - check announcement or contact mini-session facilitators.

• Baran, E. & Correia, A. (2009). Student-led facilitation strategies in online discussions. Distance Education, 30(3), 339-361.
• Liu, Shijuan. (2007). Assessing Online Asynchronous Discussion in Online Courses: An Empirical Study. Technology, Colleges and Community 2007 Proceedings, pp 24-31.
• Ragan, Larry. (2007). Assess Messages in Online Discussions, Best Practices in Online Teaching, OpenStax CNX.
• Roberts, Tracy. (2010, April). Assessing Online Participation: Exploring the Problem & Possible Solutions (.docx). (White paper)

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Mike Thompson (:38)

Work-Life Balance

Insights from experienced faculty...

Doug Hamilton (3:53)

Alicia Wilkes (1:19)

Jen Walinga (1:07)

Mike Thompson (:38)