Course Design Rubric

I have been involved in reviewing online courses recently so I needed some kind rubric to guide me. One of the industry standards is Quality Matters. One thing to make QM more relevant is that SLN is partnered with them, although I recently learned that as SLN transitions to OPEN SUNY, they will be using their own rubric, based largely off the Chico Rubric.

I first began course review using QM. The process was long because the rubric has something like 8 categories and 42 total specific benchmarks to measure when reviewing an online course. The process was even longer because I had to learn how to interpret some of the benchmarks. And some of the benchmarks only the sme would be able to measure. So I began looking for another way.

I wanted something simpler. For example when I began training faculty on how to use Angel lms when we moved from blackboard, I did go to the 6 sln training courses but my team made our own series of training courses for our faculty. Mainly because I wanted to break down the training/learning into is simplest, most basic components. I did not want to get side track, or too advanced to quickly. This was/is my approach to building my own course review rubric.

I looked at other rubrics out there to get some ideas. I sent out surveys to my faculty and students asking them what they love and hate and want more of, out of our online courses. I looked back at my own experiences as a student taking an online degree program. I looked back at what I actually learned during my online masters studies. And lastly I went through each one of our online courses, and most of our blended courses to see what faculty are and are not doing.

With that I have 9 major categories that I think are vital for any profession online course.

1. Design - the course must be uniform. It should flow, It should have due dates posted in many places, Each module should have an overview.
2. Objectives - There should be course level and module level objectives, and they should match. The readings and assignments should all be in synch with the objectives
3. Interaction - Online learning needs plenty of interaction to prevent students from feeling isolated.
4. Assessment Variety - lets use blooms taxonomy to touch on every level of learning
5. Over Communication - explain everything you expect from the students, explain how the readings and lectures they use to complete the assessments will help them meet their objectives, explain what you expect them to do for their assignments, give examples.
6. Teacher Presence - My vip of the group. Students take college courses instead of readings books so they can be guided in their learning by a pro. If the student does not feel like the pro is involved enough, guiding enough, mentoring enough, the student will feel frustrated.
7. Multimedia - student learn best using multiple formats, so lets add some audio, video, and graphics to your course
8. Reflection - have the students reflect on their learning, the changes in their thinking, the growth of their thinking, 
9. Ice Breaker Activities - to have fully engaged interaction the class must trust each other. Ice Breaker activities begin to build that trust.

 I would put teacher presence and interaction at the top of the list.

Who cares if students feel isolated in online courses?

"What do I care if they feel isolated taking my online course? They are there to learn."
This is a comment from a professor that attended one of the SLN workshops that I attended to watch the training. This one of the comments that stands out to me during my internship with SLN.

The discussion centered around the idea of having a space in your online course for the students to introduce themselves and get to know each other. This activity should be one of the first activities that take place in an online course. The reason is so you can get to know your classmates as you would in a traditional face to face classroom. In the classroom, you will say hello and introduce yourself to your neighbors. You might trade phone numbers or emails early in the semester in case you miss a class you can learn about important informatin that you missed. One of the principles of online learning is that you should mimic some things that happen in the traditional classroom. This is because many students report feeling isolated when they take an online class. So logic says the student will have a better learning experience if you make them feel less isolated.

Yet this professor in our training, new to online teaching, said who cares about feeling isolated. It was not his job to hold his students hands and make them feel warm and safe (now I am paraphrasing). His job, as the teacher is to teach and that is all.

Is this idea wrong? Immature? Or brutally honest? I do not agree with it. I think it is a teachers job ot make a student feel warm and safe if that is what is required to have that student learn more.

As I think back to all my college professors, a major one who stands out is someone who took me aside and asked me if everything was ok with my home life, with my friends. He did all this because I got a C on one of his exams. He made all his students who scored below a B- make an appointement with him during office hours to pick up your exam and talk to him. He wanted to know why you were not performing. And he cared.

Fast forward to today, while I complete all my graduate work through online classes, one thing that stands out to me is that I feel isolated. But not from the students, from the teachers. Sure they are quick to answer and email. But they seem absent from my day to day learning, most notably in online discussions. Yet they have an answer. They tell me " the research says", or that "there are two camps, I am in the camp that thinks teachers should not interupt a discussion". Learning needs to be guided.

SLN ID Certification Course Part I Pedagogy VS. Skill

The bulk of my internship has been helping out inside the ID Certification course that SLN runs as a professional development course. Rob was really excited about the high level of dialogue going on in the class and I was also pretty excited to be given the opportunity to be a fly on the wall who was able to read and write up a review of some of the discussions.

In this blog post I would like to talk about my learning while reading the discussion titled Pedagogy and Skill Development. The question posed by the instructor of the certification course was, what is the perfect mix of pedagogy and skill development during a training workshop?

My first thought, without reading the participants responses was that training is all about skill development. But in reality I think the question was a trick because most discussion participants agreed that both were equally important. It is like asking what is more important learning how to use a hammer or learning in what situations you would need to use a hammer, you really need to know both.

One discussion comment really made me think. The author wrote that no matter how small the task when developing a course there is always some form of pedagogy that should be explained. The example used was about posting a syllabus. A pretty basic part of building any online class. But the author of the post wrote about the pedagogical component, that of WHERE  to put the document and WHAT format you have the document in? It really made me realize that even the most basic aspects of course development and training cannot be overlooked, and ALL do involve pedagogy.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a faculty member the other day in regards to how he teaches his course. He teaches a transportation course and he teaches the concepts and knowledge that the student will need to use in a real job after the student graduates. The question was raised, how  do you prepare students to use the knowledge they need for the job along with teaching them the technology side of what the job market requires. The professor argued that he does not teach the technology in class because that would be easy to learn on the job. That part I did not so much agree with but the next part I do. He said if he taught the technology aspect he would have to teach less concepts. The teacher experimented with both, concepts and technology and he has found greater benefit in teaching more concepts. I wonder how this relates to training online learning concepts?

Anothe aspect of the discussion of training was that people learn best by seeing examples. An instructor can teach about discussion forums and the right way to use them and pedgagy of using them, but seeing what a good and bad discussion looks like is vital.

In this regard, the SUNY Learning Network does a great job of providing exemplar courses for those learning about teaching online to view as the standard. I also like that some online learning programs allow students to view sections of an online course before they sign up for the course.