Effective e-Learning

Well book started online class bringing secrets to teaching online I think the key premise of the book is a lot of people teach online but don't really get the classes set up right it's really critical that the classes in an online environment be set up in structured right up front you have to put the time in upfront to do that so really the book as a result of my studies of what makes an online class truly effective why do some work and why don't some work with sort of my research question when I started the book and what I set out to do is figure out what what makes them work what you need to do the little things that you need to do to make a class work but but a lot of things are really to make sure you create content on one hand it really is focused on the online classroom and an online classroom you have an opportunity to bring in resources for lots and lots of different places it's important that the instructor who creates that curates that information he doesn't just he or she doesn't just randomly bring it together say oh here's a YouTube video here's this here's that he really goes to the effort to create that information and bring it together in a cohesive fashion like it's like it's designed for the class the second piece would be that you want to take when you take that information you want to take that and make sure that any new content you bring into that class is really truly content designed for an online classroom it's not designed it wasn't a recording of your lecture to the lecture hall in hey we'll just play it for you and you can learn from my lecture because that doesn't work you want the students to feel that it what the students to buy in because it was designed specifically for them and you want to spend a time to actually design something for the online classroom which means certain different technology deliveries you can't just stand in front of the room at lecture to an online class so they're not going to listen to you they have an attention span of five minutes ten minutes on a video you need to have activities that you need to have content in a class in its active that they are students to go do something go explore something go find something go interview somebody go talk to somebody go solve a problem go do something it's active once you do that activity go talk to people about that activity through your discussions you don't want to ask discussion questions at our technical very often still you know you'll put it that little question what would our five key points in chapter 5 well what's the first student answers and second student answers that's pretty much it so you want it takes okay well let's take the five key points in chapter 5 and which one do you feel most important can you take one of those points and apply it in your place of business how would that have related to you in your life what if we had points which one do you think is the most important to solving this particular problem something like that where you ask Ashley ask them to take the material and the catch is with the material to make them actively read the material if I just ask you to excite at you inside it you forget it if I ask you to read the material then you have to say okay now which one is let me think about that for a moment and you said there's okay well i think the fourth one is really important let me take that fourth point and write about it at that point you understand what that material is you you've now written about that point you truly understand what that material is so you've actively engaged the learner in the process the other thing you really want to do is make sure that you structure the class in such a way that the students come back to the classroom a big problem i go to facebook i can go to LinkedIn Twitter that type of thing i can go to that i can go to those particular sources and i go to those places frequently because it's constantly new material the online classroom needs to be structured in a way where there's an incentive for me to student to go to that class multiple times during a particular period us every weekly session if there's nothing new I go once if there's going to be something new to professor's posting things on Tuesday I'll go back with you what the professor had to say oh my colleagues of posting things here you want the people to be actively engaged and constantly coming back because it's like Facebook there's new material you need constantly engaging content debris which your construction replace its probable the contents transferable the presentation in and how its presented in online class who needs to be well thought out it's really question taking structural designers can help you do that just in terms of how it's presented it's important I think for the instructor to understand a little bit about how the online plans and works and what the students are doing and sort of look at how to think about how they interact online what they do online what they would find boring what they would find interesting and as you couple that with the lesson of autism people about what might be too much how I booking about let's talk to some people about how things might work talk to people talk to the instructional designers talk to others about what they've done to bring those students into the conversation that's really critical and then the other element that I really think is to make sure that the students understand the rules and it agree to adhere to rules and it you adhere to the rules as well if you've committed to grade papers by Tuesday grade papers by Tuesday's you commit to respond to phone calls by you know 24 hours respond to phone calls for 24 hours and things like that so it's critical to do that but but it's it's you have them in earlier the content expert all you're doing is presenting it in a different way it's like being a you know you can present you can present your materials like sure you can materials a book if you had somebody came up to you and said you want to make a documentary you could present material as a documentary that all three would convey the message you're the same person you're interviewing me here and presenting it verbally instead of in the written word but that's basically the way to do it it's really critical to get your hands around and figure out how to best way to present it and if lots of people that colleges have generally that can help you do that the first thing I would say was make sure you want Andrew class I'm a teacher who comes in the first time you know typically will get hired at very short notice and have the opportunity to teach a class that's all prepared for them but isn't in fact that's very typical is will tell you the class is ready and you'll discovered it it's about eighty percent complete the other pieces kind of got left by the prior instructor that's really typical with a class that's typical in any class but it shows up online so you have to make sure your class is set up you just have to make sure you spend the time to understand what's in the class and where it's going in the direction of it and that means a little bit more than just looking at the syllabus it means really dealing with the in-depth content of week five or something like that so you have to certainly be a couple weeks ahead of the students in your class and that that would be a key piece of advice the next piece of advice is really to make sure you're monitoring what's going on and trying to figure out if the students are in fact engaged or if they are passive they're doing assignments because the assignment is due but they're not really engaged and if did not really engage you as instructor have to make sure you go back and say okay how do I get these guys involved in my book I talk about an example of an economics professor who truly engaged students in it in his traditional classroom and fell totally overwhelmed by the students in the online classroom and and it was because of the way the class was structured it didn't ask engaging questions it didn't ask questions that will allow you to have a conversation so if you're finding it you know if you're finding it students aren't engaged take a look at what you're asking them to do and see if you're asking them to recite or if you ask them to engage are you asking you to think or you're asking to repeat if you're actually repeat it's not going to work are you giving them questions it gives them a chance to talk yeah the first secret that we talked about by presenting a session was the technology is really secondary I mean to deliver an online class it really depends on the course structure and a facilitation and I think that's really what people are seeking that's sort of the the hidden technology that's the hidden detail I can integrate all the technology in the world like an it you know give you the latest greatest computers latest creative servers latest greatest learners management system i can hit yes i can this offer and of that software how am i using it does instructor understand how to bring student into that process and it's no different than really trying to bring somebody into a conversation it's not all perfect i think everybody's learning everybody learns every time because by the time you you know it may take 5 years 10 years 20 years to acquire the knowledge and in it you have to acquire new knowledge it's the same thing is working in a crescent if your tradition working in classroom working in a church or something like that you know you give a minister or priest or something gives a speech gives it gives his sermon one day it doesn't go over big next time he just a sermon based on what he learned about this congregation that day next probably does it a little bit differently if the teacher brings a classroom in they they bring this information together they kept doing now five years from now that students are different those students have had a different experience I mean one of the hard things that we see is the students come in with different experiences you know I see that I'm old you know I grew up without computers and iPads and things like that students now grown up with cellphones students never all but iPad step students now children now touch a you know a picture screen and expected to move to other pictures like you do on an iPad so you have to constantly revise what you're doing no matter where you're doing it and the technology is a tool but it's not it's not the only tool the tool is is the the knowledge the instructor the facilitators knowledge and designers knowledge the program heads knowledge to say we need to be able to take this information that we're getting and use it in a way that can help us educate the students my last point in the presentation was elected teachers teach that teachers are experts you have to let those teachers take their knowledge what they learn from doing the class once and apply it to teaching at the second time applying it to teach at the third time applying it to dealing with that difficult student they have to be able to improvise perhaps use their skills experience there they're artists they're not technicians and I think that everyone thinks it's perfect is treating it like a technician if you treat it like a technician you're going to discover it very quickly you can have an out-of-date product well there's two ways to do it one is aside time to work on it so in other words you work on it it you know I tend to work on the course material early in the morning and perhaps late in a day and tend to if you will shut off all email you know not shuttle shut it off completely but don't deal with the nuances that could annoy they come up you know a student did he shouldn't have her in justins asked questions early rather than later that could submit some questions five minutes before the assignment is due with eleven o'clock on sunday night is not going to get an answer because you know the instructor needs some vampire too so you want to structure it in a way that you manage your time but the second thing is to if you stay and monitor what's happening with class so if one student asks a question about a clarification or an assignment and you say oh my goodness yes I can see how you might not understand that so then you take the answer to that question and you post it to the class and say hey John just ask this really interesting question about this the assignment may not be as clear as I thought it was this is what I mean and post that answer to the class so you perhaps knocked off two or three other people who might have had that question I mean I think that's critical to understand if I ask that question they're not just it's not just one student it's probably many students and I need to presenting a set of many students in a classroom I presenting answer to many students in the online classroom i present it one on one if i present it one-on-one four times that doesn't help the remaining students in the basics of money management systems are constantly evolving I mean it better than he were a few years ago some of the major ones are worse than they are a few years ago I think I personally think a lot of learning management systems have lousy reporting capabilities as an instructor I can't monitor what I really want to monitor I can't yet do that I'm an old systems guys I said well he just could write a report that would monitor this that would be really good but they don't get there so so I think that learning management systems constantly evolve and it's two or three of per minute that are highly highly you know valuable and dual culprits I think that's important that you have no decent decent delivery with that the other thing I think with the tools is just to constantly be on a lookout for new tool to do something you don't have to be on the forefront you don't have to be the first person to use a product but you have to understand that that tool you use six months ago doesn't necessarily work anymore you know I'm big on no I will record in my office on a mac and mac with a camera in it and I use a couple features of of that and it's really simple to just sit there and record a quick video takes five minutes to record the video you know I've learned over time how to manipulate the video and things like that to make it work better but that's not necessary because a lot of times just a simple simple tools thereafter information they're used to reading watching band videos on youtube or something like that they're after the information they want to humanize they want to know you're human and I think that's really important with the class as long as they stink the instructor is a human which you can humanize yourself with a video with an audio with audio comments to the student hey John this is what's what's wrong with this I understand what you're trying to do but you really need to go a different direction where they consider this particular point they'll go okay as opposed to saying well you're just wrong I mean it's just simple things like communication it's the humanizing tools which are you get to do them electronically instead of in person but it's the same results you

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