Teaching a MOOC

I've been thinking about you all and about the many posts in my head that don't quite make it onto the computer. A couple of weeks ago, I was walking through a relatively empty airport in Texas around 11PM, listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Slate's Culture Gabfest, when a poetry professor came on and started talking about his love affair with teaching a MOOC (massive open online class).  

He started out expressing his complete disdain for anything that would put any distance between he and his students and teaching online was clearly in that camp. Then, by some miracle, he started working with some technologists that he respected and before he knew it, he was teaching poetry to 10,000 people and it totally changed the way he thought about teaching. Very compelling listening - I recommend it to you.

On the MOOC note, I should say that this week, Canvas announced its new Canvas Network that will make MOOCs more possible for smaller colleges like Seattle Central. Indeed, we are one of the Canvas Network pilot colleges and will be sharing our US History II as a free self paced course.

Resources

• Slate's Culture Gabfest -http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/culturegabfest.html
• The Culture Gabfest You Big MOOC edition - start listening around 21:25 to jump right to the MOOC conversation.
• Canvas Network -https://www.canvas.net/ 
• Splash page for US History II on the Canvas Network - 

QM Conference and Modules

I'm at the Quality Matters conference in Tucson, AZ. As is often the case, the best part of the conference is the people I get to talk to between the sessions. 

Today, I sat down with George Guba, an instructional designer from North Carolina.  as we were talking course design, he talked about the challenges in persuading faculty to change their ways to more pedagogically sound practices, like getting away from weekly work.  I was aghast. I always use weekly modules.  I stopped him mid sentence - why would I want to stop using weekly organization and what would I go to instead?  He suggested that the research supported a two week module as being a better fit for adult learners who are learning online.  As he explained it, I could see his point -easier to get in the small nuggets of learning that are better than large chunks, easier to arrange around busy lives, etc. I could also see how this would work better in a 15 week semester than a 10 week quarter. I tossed that issue into the mix. He still advocated for two week units.

Now, this is especially relevant for me because my American Government class did not start 2 weeks ago. We decided very last minute (like the first day of the quarter) to turn it into a late start compressed class. So, the class begins on Monday, Oct 8.  I need to cram my 15 modules into 8 weeks.  I need to completely rethink the organization of the class.  I've been so perplexed by the best way to do this that I have put it off, hoping that clarity would come to me. Well, perhaps it has, in the voice of George.  I promised myself that I wasn't going to bed tonight without having this finished, so I'll let you know how it goes.

I also talked with Jo Ann Monroe from Tacoma Community College. I learn something new every time I talk to her - she's great.  Today we were talking at lunch about our Canvas pilots.  She talked about one challenge of Canvas being that it was very easy for students to skip (intentionally or unintentionally) important but non-assessed parts of the class, like lectures and readings, and just go straight to the assignments.  Jo said she took care of this by having the course open straight to the modules and requiring they be completed in order.  This would certainly achieve the goal of getting the student to move through the materials properly, but it also seems really big brother to me.

However, yesterday in a session on universal design (QM Standard 8), the presenters talked about cognitive load and course design. Should the student's mental energy go towards figuring out where stuff was and how to accomplish the work? Or is it better spent learning the material? Well the answer to that is a no-brainer - of course I want the energy going towards learning content. So, I am seriously planning to make those modules more linear and required.  Again, I'll figure this out today and let you know.

Resources:
Nuts and Bolts: Brain Bandwidth - Cognitive Load Theory and Instructional Design by Jane Bozarth

Mobile Statement

I'm back from the Canvas InstructureCon and raring to go. Good thing too, because it's crunch time - class starts in 10 days and I am really not ready.

I attended a great session on thinking about mobile access for classes. Canvas has a great mobile app for the iOS.  The presenter clarified that when he said "mobile" he really meant iOS, specifically iPads.  He said he really didn't think people wanted to or actually did engage in course work on their mobile phones, the screen was too small. I totally disagree - especially since you can record submissions, freeing one up for typing.  Anyway, he was restricting his thinking to tablet computing.

Then he said that android tablets were not really relevant in this discussion. He asked how many people in the room had an android tablet with them in the room. No one raised their hands. I have a Kindle Fire, but I'd left it at home.  He then asked how many people had iPads with them in the room. Dozens of people raised their hands, including me. Point made.

He recommended that, if you were making your course mobile friendly, you should put a mobile statement in your syllabus so students know what specifically they can do on what devices.  I have crafted one that I still need to test out, but its a start:

Mobile Access - This class is mobile friendly. Using the browser on your mobile device, you should be able to do the following activities:

• Access course readings
• participate in discussion
• take quizzes

You can also download the Canvas App on your Apple iOS device (iPad, iPhone, Touch) and have access to even more features.

Two things missing from this list are viewing course videos and submitting assignments. Both require some work arounds or the Canvas App. On the Canvas App page, a note at the bottom states that the App functionality is only available to Canvas customers, so I don't think you can use it with the free for teachers access. But I'll test it out and see.
 
Resources:
Canvas Mobile - includes a little video on what you can do with the Canvas mobile app.
My Global Studies Syllabus

Canvas Pre-conferences

Today was the first day of the Canvas conference, with AM and PM pre-conference sessions. The AM session was Getting Started with Canvas, which ended up being unsatisfactory in several ways. We started by learning the student view of Canvas. Unfortunately for the presenter, everyone in the room was very eager to learn how to design their own Canvas space and had little patience with learning the student view. It made the whole first part of the session rather chaotic.

The second part of the workshop, on the instructor view, was better done.  We built a simple course and had time to play with some of the tools.  But, even though I feel like an absolute beginner with Canvas, I don't feel like I learned a lot more than I already knew.  This could be because Canvas is supposed to be so incredibly easy to learn that even the little I know is a lot.  I'll know more about that by the end of the Conference.

In the afternoon, I did a pre-session on Canvas Collaboration tools. There are a lot of them.  Most are integrations of third party products like Google Docs, Scribd and Big Blue Button.  Sadly, during the workshop, most of the tools didn't work the way they were supposed to. Also, the organization of the workshop was also rather chaotic.

My takeaway message on the collaboration tools was to be very deliberate with my use of the collaboration tools and make sure I support students fully in their use.  The best piece of advice from the presenter was to give students adequate time to "play" with the tools, otherwise they would turn the first assignment into a play session and things might not turn out as hoped. So, first assign something fun using the tool and then move on to the real work.

Still, despite the chaos, I felt like it was a good day. I met some really interesting people and exchanged some great ideas.  It's been nice to talk to people at colleges that have used Canvas for a few years. We spend a lot of time amongst ourselves in Washington and it is delightful to talk to people from other places in the country.

Assessment & Measurement

Today I am looking at my Global Studies course through the lens of Quality Matters Standard 3 on Assessment and Measurement.


First, I realized, I should have this course organized on a course map. Since I already have all of the course and module level outcomes written out in the course, I just copied and pasted them into a table.  I also thought this would be easier since I repeat the exact same assignments during each week of the quarter. The next step will be to make sure everything maps, per Standard 3.1.  This standard requires that the assessments measure the learning objectives and are consistent with the course objectives.


So, as I fill in this chart, I am putting the specifics of each assignment in and making sure everything maps to the course outcomes.  So this is draft 1 and later on I will post the final version.  If something doesn't map properly, I can either adjust the assignment so that it does map or I can create something new that will map.  


I am also planning on using the LMS to map my outcomes, something I have never done. You can do this in ANGEL and in Canvas.  I will be teaching in ANGEL this summer, so I'll be using its its outcome mapping feature. I will show it to you in this little Jing video.  


Standard 3.2 requires a clear course grading policy, which I have in my syllabus, in my course orientation and in my rubrics.  I always have to check that things add up properly, since when I change stuff, the calculations always seem to get a bit messed up. When we do Quality Matters reviews, that is one place we often see small problems.


Standard 3.3 makes sure that specific and descriptive criteria are provided for the evaluation of student work and that they are tied to the grading. Again, this is in my rubrics.  I make heavy use of ANGEL's rubric tool. I understand that Canvas has a nice rubric tool as well, so I'm looking forward to learning that.


Standard 3.4 makes sure assessments are sequenced, varied and appropriate for the level of the class. Although I have the same assignments throughout the class (ie. 10 essays), all of the work get more complex as the class goes along. I add variety also through the activities attached to the discussion. I always have them do something, like look for invasive species in their neighborhoods, and then discuss the activity on the discussion board.  The thing you don't want to do here is have a midterm and a final.  That is pretty much the opposite of sequenced and varied.


Finally, Standard 3.5 gives students multiple chances to measure their own learning. This is the standard that, in my experience, people most often fail to meet. The commentary in the rubric notes that this can be met through self tests, interactive games with feedback built in, peer reviews and model papers. I have model papers, but that used to be it. To add more opportunities, I added a second chance on my weekly quiz. Now, instead of getting to take the quiz once, they can take it twice, making the first time a self test. They get the highest of the two scores.  Students LOVE this, it makes them very happy and it was really very easy for me to do. Talk about win/win.


Reference:
Mapping Outcomes in ANGEL in 3 minutes - http://youtu.be/wE3SkSqckk0
Using Rubrics in ANGEL - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL1SZmbcuLc - from Centralia's amazing Kathy Brooks.
Using Rubrics in Canvas - http://guides.instructure.com/s/2204/m/4210/l/40813-what-are-rubrics-in-canvas-video 
See the links in the Navigation bar for links to my class, the Quality Matters Rubric and more.

Experimenting with Canvas

Here in Washington, the community colleges are preparing for a presumed move from our ANGEL learning management system to Canvas. This is in its very early stages and it will be several months before eLearning departments will have access to Canvas classrooms to play around with. 


In the meantime, my colleague, Renee Carney from Lower Columbia Community College, told me that you can get a free for teachers Canvas account from the Instructure website.  I'm going to give it a shot and see if it will work as a staging place for my course while I wait for our real access to Canvas to begin.


Sign up was easy and, while waiting for the confirmation email, I watched the 5 minute overview video. I set up my course, added an assignment and one student.  It was all terribly simple yet robust.  As soon as I get some content in there, I'll give you a log in to check it out. In the meantime, you might want to get your own Free for Teachers account with Canvas.


Resources:
 a free for teachers Canvas account from the Instructure website