Connecting Students and Learning:

1. Connecting Students and Learning: • Enhancing Student Engagement and Persistence

2. •Welcome to AFC Convention and our Workshop •Who are you? •Your Presenters •Dr. Kimberly Batty-Herbert •Melanie Jackson •Teaching Philosophy Our job is not just to teach our students Communications, Education or Computer Science, but to teach them how to learn about learning. (Developing lifelong learners)

3. Strategies/Tools to Engage Students Discussion Boards Dropboxes Surveys Quizzes Ease of Navigation Diversity of Materials Alternative Assessment Adding Visual Appeal

4. Proven Success in our Online Courses with this Increased Engagement Course Design

5. Discussion Boards The First Days of School by Harry Wong, great book on teaching! Main point-whatever you are going to tell students, tell them on Day 1. Share with students-rubrics on quality posts and points Share points for quantity of posts Require students to post and reply to someone else’s posting Use conceptual questions Post new question(s) weekly (students choose question?) Include some aspect on next exam Make part of class participation grade

6. Discussions Continued Mandate WHO students must reply to Person above and person below Thus every student’s posting gets a response They can still reply to other student’s postings Weekly posting are the best Use consistent dates/times (Wed 8:00 am) Include a reminder on D2L Calendar Example of “Question of the week” for Educational Technology students next screen

7. Question of the Week for EductnlTechnogy

8. Discussion in a Communications Course

9. Required Reply’s to Other’s Posts

10. Discussions Outside the LMS (D2L ) • Try VoiceThread(www.voicethread.com) and choose “learn how” for more engaging and interactive student experience • Students can post: Video response, Audio response (mp3), Written response, and more • VoiceThreadis a totally web-based application that allows you to place collections of media like images, videos, documents, and presentations at the center of an asynchronous conversation. A VoiceThread allows people to have conversations and to make comments using any mix of text, a microphone, a web cam, a telephone, or uploaded audio file. VoiceThread runs inside your web browser, so there is no software to download, install, or update.

11. Drop Box • Use the “Feedback” tool and link to the Gradebook for ease of feedback to student • Require students post a personal self-reflection to the Dropbox several times during the term • Provides opportunity for students to reflect on their progress and for me to provide one-on-one virtual counseling • Examples: How do you think you are doing in this course? What actions do you need to start doing to improve your grade in this course?

12. Chat • Do your faculty long for “virtual office hours”? Use the chat tool! • Hold weekly chats on a certain day and time available to all (Extra Credit to those that participate live) • Can discuss topics recently covered or what is coming up next week • Could use as a “test review” chat • Can “archive” via cut and paste into Word or HTML page to post in content area

13. Survey • Get immediate feedback and suggestions from students • Don’t have to wait for end-of-the-term student evaluation results • Incentivize by giving bonus points on next exam • This allows you to make changes immediately in your course and address real student learning needs • Could do at anytime in the course • Could make anonymous

14. Example Survey Questions • How effective was……? • Would you recommend this course? • What was your most favorite section? • What was your least favorite section? • What things should be changed? • What things should stay the same? • Has this class made you think differently about math?

15. Survey-Outside D2L • Survey Monkey (www.surveymonkey.com ) • Free and easy to use survey tool • Will not interfere with online SEIs • Wide selection of question types: • Multiple Choice • Matrix of Choices • Rating Scale • Text Boxes • Demographics • Can do up to 10 questions for free • Very Professional look and feel • Easy to set up and administer

16. Ease of Navigation • Maximum of two clicks to get to anything • Chunk your info-no more than 3 scrolls on a page • Use hyperlinks for quick links • Maximum six minutes to read/listen • Use video – don’t worry about quality • Don’t make things due on weekends (Wednesdays seem ideal) • Strive to make learning fun, engaging, and relevant

17. Individualized Quizzing • Use D2L’s random variable capability in quizzes • All students work on the same problem but everyone has different numerical values • Improves conceptual understanding and confidence • Students end up solving each other problems to verify their solution! • Great use of the “Arithmetic Question” feature

18. Example of Quizzing Feature for Physics

19. Use a Diversity of Materials • Traditional lectures do NOT engage students and thus don’t work well online • PowerPointsand mini-lectures are good but are best presented in “nuggets” • Integrate external multimedia resources to enhance conceptual learning • YouTube, NYTimes.com, NPR.org, PBS.org

20. Alternative Assessments • Often traditional multiple choice tests are not the only or best method • Augment high-stakes exams with alternative assessment assignments that enable students to demonstrate learning • (Projects, Presentations, Videos, Identify Real Life Applications, etc…) • Enable sustained effort to count towards final grade • Students could create a PowerPoint, web page, video, OR • A Preziwww.prezi.com free for educators and students • Glogster-Poster yourself http://www.glogster.com/

21. Add Rich Multimedia • Rather than hyperlink to a website, use an embed code to insert a video Looks very inviting, adds personality, and looks professional! • Find the Icon in your LMS that allows you to insert or embed

22. Add Visual Appeal-Textbook Cover

23. PUSH info with News Items

24. A picture is worth 1,000 words

25. Set your Text apart by Bolding!

26. Change Font SIZE

27. How about a little Color? • http://htmlcolorcodes.org/

28. PUSH Weekly Assignments

29. Personalize Learning With a “Replace String”

30. Feedback is essential • Research tells us • immediate feedback keeps students engaged and more likely to be retained in the course • Increases student learning • Deans hear the good and bad…Top complaint to the dean • Grade updates are essential • Students expect this coming from K-12 with progress reports and more school systems employing online gradebooks for students and parents to view • Aids students in realizing what they are missing early

31. Give Dimension to your Discussion! 1.Visit http://www.wordle.net/ 2.Choose “create” 3.Capture as many words as possible as students shout them out (repetition is okay) separate words by a comma and space 4.When the talking has died down, choose “go” 5.Your Wordle will appear on the screen for you to save, print, etc. Assess your course! • Use the Free Quality Matters Rubric • SFSC Verision Handout

32. Other Cool Tools!

33. QUESTIONS?  Dr. Kimberly Batty-Herbert, battyhek@southflorida.edu , 863-784-7329  Melanie Jackson, jacksonm@southflorida.edu 863-784-7017 Thanks!