Digital Natives as Learners

I am absolutely fascinated by the possibilities the internet offers to change not only how, but where and when we learn. There is no longer a compelling need to tether 30+ students to specific desks in a specific classroom in a specific school from 10:04 am to 11:15 am on Wednesday, November 16 to learn lesson 32 of Grade 11 Biology. Really, the only reasons our society continues to do so is out of habit, and perhaps because we don’t trust our teenagers to learn on their own, unsupervised at home because we’re out working. But that’s a discussion for a different blog entry.

For this entry, I’d like to examine some of the ideas presented by Palfrey and Gasser in Chapter 11 of Born Digital. They start with a brief description of how quickly internet use has progressed in Harvard Law School – not unusual changes, from my own experience. A rapid progression from no internet, to ethernet connectivity, to wireless. With a corresponding progression from total control over student  access to the internet, to partial control, to no control.

Palfrey and Gasser talk about how school administrators are wondering what students should do with classroom computers, how best to incorporate electronic devices such as SmartBoards into the learning environment, and how to regulate student access to the internet. I have experienced these growing pains as a classroom teacher. Cell phones are a significant problem: we spent a lot of time trying to regulate their use during class time, and, to my way of thinking, are losing that battle hands down. In fact, the frustration with cell phone use in my classroom was a significant contributing factor in my applying for the Master’s program at UVic. I see a huge upside for the use of cell phone technology in the classroom: we just need to figure out how to harness this power for good, instead of evil.

Digital natives, who are defined by Palfrey and Gasser as those born after 1980, learned in a much different educational environment than did I. They don’t read as much. Research is quick and easy: type the subject into Google, and hit search. The major reference used is Wikipedia, not Encyclopedia Britannica. They don’t need to memorize phone numbers: they’re stored in a contacts list. They can share answers to assignments and test questions quickly and easily. Essays can be purchased online. Video games can be played against users from all over the world, at any time of the day or night. But, they also have direct access to experts in many fields of study. They can read and share ideas through blogs and wikis. They are exposed to a variety of thoughts and ideas, at an incredibly rapid pace. Access to information is changing rapidly, and teachers and librarians are having a hard time keeping up.

Palfrey and Gasser seem a little more optimistic about how deeply digital natives are learning than Carr was. They acknowledge that digital natives learn about news differently than their parents, but that doesn’t mean that they learn less, or that their learning is superficial. Instead, they learn through “a multistep process that involves grazing, a “deep dive”, and a feedback loop” (Palfrey and Gasser, 2008, p. 241). This means that digital natives scan, delve deeply into a variety of information sources about a topic in which they are interested using a variety of web tools and social media sources, and then process what they’ve learned by blogging about it, or commenting in a wiki or discussion group. An exciting aspect of learning in the digital world is the access to primary sources: if you want to know what’s happening with the protests in Egypt, you can ask connected Egyptians directly! This was almost impossible in the analog world.

Palfrey and Gasser speak to the role institutions can play in the “deep dive” phase of a digital natives’ learning. Accurate, trustworthy information is needed, and this is a role the traditional, large newsgathering organizations can still play. However, these large organizations do need to come to terms with the decreased demand for print, the greater variety of sources available, and the need to compete for attention in the digital world if they are to stay relevant. Digital natives do not engage with information in the same way their parents did, and some of the onus lies with the parents and corporations to meet the needs of the digital natives, rather than the digital natives adopting now-outdated methods.

Problems associated with living connected in an online world are identified next. Multitasking does have an effect on attention and memory. The ways digital natives communicate and think are different, favouring short formats and eschewing grammar and spelling conventions. They are comfortable cutting and pasting content, and not as concerned about crediting the source.

Palfrey and Gasser go on to discuss ways in which schools can adapt to meet the educational needs of digital natives. I appreciate that they start from “what our goals are, as teachers and parents, and then figur[ing] out how technology can help us, and our kids, to reach those goals” (Palfrey and Gasser, 2008, p. 246). They also support the use of dialogue to support critical analysis, and point out that it is best utilized in a face-to-face setting. They emphasize that technology should be used where appropriate, and acknowledge that not all learning situations require a technological answer, even for digital natives. This is a position with which I agree.

They point out that the best way to address the digital divide is for schools to provide opportunities  whereby disadvantaged students can access digital resources, and learn how to use them effectively within the digital environment. They also argue that appropriate use of technology in schools includes harnessing the technology to facilitate students working and communicating in teams, using collaborative tools such as wikis, and perhaps even gaming. I agree that these technologies could prove to be very beneficial ways of engaging students in the near future.

Palfrey and Gasser (2008) give me some hope, when they say that:

Television didn’t transform education. Neither will the Internet. But it will be another tool for teachers to use in their effort to reach students in the classroom. It will also be a means by which students learn outside of the classroom. (p. 250)

That makes me feel like there is a role for a teacher to play in the classroom of the future. The tricky part, however, is figuring out just what that role will be.

Reference

Palfrey, J. & Gasser, U. (2008). Born digital: Understanding the first generation of digital natives. New York, NY: Basic Books.

"Don’t Make Me Think"

Interesting comparison, Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows (see previous Blog posting) to Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think. Krug is a noted expert on web usability, and writes about website design. His major tenet is that whatever a user does online, should be self-evident. Links should look like links, buttons should look like buttons, search and other features of the web page should be obvious, and words should be provided sparingly. As a user, you should always know where you are, what the most important items on a web page are, and what options you have for links.

Krug reinforces what Carr said, but comes from a very different perspective. Krug is interested in getting users to what they’re interested in as quickly as possible. He accepts that users aren’t on the web to think, and he’s OK with that: in fact, he supports it! He likens web users to people rushing by highway billboard signs at 100 km/h – they don’t have much time to process the visual message with which you’re presenting them, so you’d better make sure the page design uses a clear visual hierarchy, follows expected conventions, is broken up into clearly-defined areas, has no visual noise or distractions, and makes clickable links obvious and immediately recognizable. He knows you’re skimming for information and therefore won’t be on this site for long, and designs the site accordingly.

I am fascinated by his ideas on page design, and know from experience as both a user of the internet and a designer of web pages that they work. What appals me, however, are the assumptions upon which this line of thinking is based: users are only passing through your site on their way to somewhere else. They’ll take what they need, and then leave – likely within about 30 seconds. This, along with the ideas developed much more fully in Carr’s book, indicate to me that the web is not the best place for learning to occur.

What encourages me is that, although the web doesn’t appear to be the most effective place for learning to occur, it can be an excellent vehicle through which thought-provoking content can be delivered for consumption offline, or by which effective learner-to-learner interactions can occur. My take-home message from Krug is how to lay out my web pages to make it easy for a learner to get what they need. The message I got from Carr is that the real thinking and learning is going to have to occur offline, away from the internet. A challenge I still need to resolve: how to utilize tools available to me as an online course developer (such as synchronous discussions and wikis) to capture the rich interaction I find to be one of the best parts about the experience in the face-to-face classroom environment.

Reference

Krug, S. (2006). Don’t make me think. Berkeley, CA: New Riders Publishing.

This is Your Brain Online

“Don’t let me get too deep” (Brickell & Withrow, 1988).

Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows is a fascinating read. In Chapter Seven “The Juggler’s Brain”, he clearly, succinctly, and frighteningly (at least, for an educator planning to develop and deliver a course in an online environment), answers the question “What can science tell us about the actual effects that internet use is having on the way our minds work?” (Carr, 2010).

The bad news: Carr’s answer is that one’s brain buzzing through an online environment doesn’t work in a manner conducive to long-term learning and retention. Working within an online environment promotes “cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning” (Carr, 2010). Although visual, auditory, and sensory-somatic pathways are engaged both simultaneously and continuously, this engagement is occurring at a superficial level. Users quickly are drawn into the online environment, and, once there, often become largely oblivious to the outside world. However, although attentive to what they’re seeing in cyberspace, few users are doing anything resembling thinking. Instead, their time is spent flitting from link to link, grazing bits of data as they follow the trail of whatever happens to be of interest to them at the time.

Online, most users are easily and continually distracted. Their attention might be attracted to a kernel of information on one website, only to be sent skittering off in another direction as they follow whatever link appeared most interesting to them at the time. The presence of hyperlinks makes reading in the online world a very different experience from that of reading a book. Readers no longer have to follow a single track of words along a linear narrative, reading to understand the author’s thoughts: they can hop, skip, and jump along whichever path they choose, and never follow the same data trail twice.

It turns out that linking ideas to one another through hypertext neither promotes learning nor increases understanding. Research shows that online readers will click provided hyperlinks as they meander through the online environment. It was originally thought that the ability to interconnect data through hypertext would be a good thing, providing users with a richer, more nuanced understanding of the relationships and points of contact between related concepts. Instead, researchers have found that learners reading hyperlinked text leave the experience disoriented, confused, and with a muddled understanding of the interrelated concepts. Looking more closely at these findings, it appears that hypertext increases the cognitive load on the brain to a point at which the capacity of working memory is exceeded, resulting in decreased comprehension and understanding. This is not the way I want my learners leaving a learning interaction.

Research into memory has shown that long-term memory is not just a large storehouse of details and facts, but that information is organized into interconnected patterns of understanding called schemas. Short-term memory has a very limited capacity: it likely is not even as much as the famous 7 plus or minus 2 items proposed by George Miller in 1956. This means that very little information gets transferred from short-term memory into working memory, and without this crucial step, nothing makes it into long-term memory. When working online, information is rushing into a user’s brain at an incredible rate. The cognitive load is tremendous, which means that very little of this steady stream of information flow can be diverted from the massive data influx and transferred into long-term memory. If information doesn’t get transferred into long-term memory, schemas cannot be constructed. As a result, learning is impaired. Understanding becomes superficial, at best. Again, not how I want my learners to leave a learning interaction.

This effect appears to stem from the mechanism by which online readers process text. When asked how users read when online, noted usability expert Jakob Nielsen is quoted by Carr as saying “They don’t”. Other research supports Nielsen’s position: many studies reviewed by Carr revealed that online readers tend to skim for information, spending, on average, less than thirty seconds on each web page viewed. Analysis of post-secondary learners conducting academic research online showed a similar superficiality to their reading: even these learners tended to browse titles, tables of contents, and abstracts rather than reading and carefully analyzing entire articles. This frightens me considerably. As an instructor, I don’t want to be teaching a course full of indiscriminate hunter-gatherers: I want to teach learners who roll up their sleeves and dig into a passage of text, and who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty wrestling with the content of ideas the ideas they find there!

Carr follows this up with a description of what seems to be a fundamental change in the way users who spend a lot of time online use their brains. Quoting from a 2008 blog entry by Michael Merzenich, Carr says “When culture drives changes in the ways that we engage our brains, it creates DIFFERENT brains...HEAVY USE [of the internet] HAS NEUROLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES” (italics in original). This concerns me a great deal. Carr tells me that I cannot assume online learners will read and analyze a carefully-crafted argument or description of content. In fact, according to Nielsen, I cannot assume they will read AT ALL. As Merzenich says, their brains have been changed through long-term interaction with the internet: they expect to work quickly and superficially, and have re-wired their brains so they do just that. Obviously, this is going to pose a tremendous challenge to anyone trying to facilitate deep, retentive learning in an online environment!

References:

Carr, N. (2010). The shallows. NY, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.

Brickell, E. & Withrow, K. (1988). What I Am [Recorded by Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians]. On Shooting rubberbands at the stars [CD]. New York, NY: Geffen.

Writing for the Web

Reading Prioritizing Web Usability by Nielsen and Loranger is one of the best ways I know of to learn how to write for the web. When I was seconded to Alberta Education as a Resource Manager for the LearnAlberta project, I was asked to read this book as preparation for writing web content. Through it I learned that writing for the web is very different from other types of writing, and Nielsen and Loranger backed up what they were saying with results from studies of web users. The fact that what they said made sense to me based on my own experience using the web sealed the deal for me: I whole-heartedly adopted their recommendations.

Prioritizing Web Usability concisely outlined best practices in writing content for web delivery. With plenty of evidence to show that the experience of reading online is very different from the experience of reading offline, Nielsen and Loranger clearly explain the ways in which writing for an online audience has to be done differently. To honour their work, I present what I feel are their key findings below, written in a web-friendly format.

Layout Enhances Reading

·         short paragraphs containing concise text

·         cluster information into meaningful, easily-scanned chunks using:

o   subheadings

o   white space

o   bullet points

·         provide objective, neutral language in a clear voice

·         break content into multiple pages linked via hypertext

Writing Style

·         start with your conclusion (inverted pyramid), then gradually add detail

·         topic sentence = conclusion

·         1 idea / paragraph

·         simple sentence structure

·         avoid metaphors

·         allow users to select only those topics about which they care to read

·         1 topic / page: users don’t like to scroll

Page Title Importance

·         title is microcontent: all the user sees in a bookmark

·         be concise: 2-6 words; 40-60 characters

·         each page must have a unique title

·         information-carrying terms should be used at the beginning of the title, and should match user’s need

·         title should be a slogan for the page, and doesn’t have to be grammatically correct

Headline Use

·         should stand on its own, since often provided out of context (e.g., as search engine hit)

·         use plain language

·         avoid teasers

·         information-carrying terms should be used at the beginning of the headline

Legibility

·         black text on plain white background best

·         large font that can be resized if desired

·         stationary text (not animated)

·         left-justified by default; centred or right-justified only for effect

·         serif font is easier to read if resolution is adequate; use sans-serif such as Verdana if smaller

Follow Conventions

·         users can construct meaning more easily when the page functions in a manner to which they have become accustomed

·         unvisited hyperlinks should be indicated using blue underlined text

·         visited hyperlinks should be indicated using purple underlined text

·         avoid underlining text that is not a hyperlink, as it confuses users

·         ALT text should be provided for all images used (accessibility issue)

·         WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes should be included on all images and tables

Following these guidelines makes it easier for users to extract meaning from information delivered in an online environment.

References

Nielsen, J. & Loranger, H. (2006). Prioritizing web usability. Berkely, CA:  New Riders.

Moodle 1.9 at UVic: List and Description of Available Resources and Activities

Like many universities, the University of Victoria uses Moodle as its course management system. Moodle is actually an acronym; the letters represent Modular, Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. It is an open-source software product, originally developed by Martin Dougiamas in 1999.

Part of the work I carried out for this course was to develop an online version of the University of Victoria course EDCI 531: Critical Discourses in Curriculum Studies. To prepare the online version of the course, I first needed to familiarize myself with the various features available to use as course building blocks in Moodle 1.9, the development platform I’d be using. These features are summarized below.

1.       Resources – static items that are posted by the owner of the course. The learner is only able to read, save, and print any resources available to them.

a.       Book – write or upload an entire book, organized into chapters if desired

b.      Label – image or text that helps organize the layout of any course page

c.       Text page – plain text page

d.      Web page – page provided in HTML format (simple HTML editor provided)

e.      Hyperlink – link to a file or website

f.        Directory – display a folder in which several files are located (e.g. course readings in PDF format)

g.       IMS content package – specially formatted learning content package

2.       Activities – interactive items that are posted by the owner of the course. The learner must do something as part of the activity, and then send a product they’ve created to the owner of the course.

a.       Chat – real-time, synchronous discussion, in text form

b.      Choice – instructor poses question, to which learners respond by selecting one of the given choices

c.       Database – participants enter data into a form developed by instructor

d.      Drop Box (formerly Assignment) – instructor specifies a task; learners prepare digital content and upload it when finished. Instructor can mark assignment electronically using track changes, and email marked file back to learner.

e.      Feedback – instructor creates a survey to which learners may respond

f.        Forum – asynchronous discussion board or threaded discussion

g.       Glossary – dictionary of terms; could also be used to group resources alphabetically

h.      Hot Potatoes quiz – instructor can create a quiz using the freeware program “Hot Potatoes”

i.         Journal – allows learners to reflect on a particular topic, and refine their reflection over a specified time period

j.        Lesson – similar to a guided tutorial: information written by the instructor is presented, followed by a question. The learner’s answer to the question determines their next step (review, advance along current learning pathway, or move to an alternate learning pathway).

k.       Media Player – instructor can embed a media object for the learner to use

l.         Offline Activity – instructor provides information on an assignment to be completed outside of Moodle (e.g., in class or at home)

m.    Online Text Submission – learner directly uploads text response online, without having to upload a file. Instructor can comment within the text, if desired.

n.      Open University (OU) Blog – all members of a course can work together to create a blog

o.      Open University (OU) Wiki – after the instructor creates the starting page for a Wiki, all learners can contribute content

p.      Podcast – instructor can post an audio/video series

q.      Quiz – instructor can design or import quizzes that use multiple choice, short answer, or true-false questions. Quizzes can be self-grading and provide feedback to the learner. Quizzes also feature the ability to randomly sort both questions and distractors.

r.        Turnitin – tool that compares submitted papers to available databases to help detect plagiarism

References:

Collman, C. (2011, November 23). About moodle. Retrieved from http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/About_Moodle

Dougiamas, M. (n.d.) Martin Dougiamas (using moodle). http://moodle.org/user/view.php?id=1&course=5

Holt, D. (2011, November 13). Moodle site – basic structure. Retrieved from http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Moodle_site_-_basic_structure

Cooch, M. (2011, November 9). Resources. Retrieved from http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Resources

Cooch, M. (2011, December 14). Activities. Retrieved from http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Activities

Next Class I Teach, I’m Using a Wiki!

Last weekend I read the chapter “Wikis: Easy Collaboration for All” (Richardson, 2006). What an incredible technology! I can hardly wait to start using one with a class.

Using a textbook has always bothered me a bit. Textbooks are expensive, cumbersome, and poorly-treated by learners. As a classroom teacher, obtaining enough of them and signing them out to learners at the beginning of the semester, as well as verifying their condition upon return and then signing them back in at the end of the semester, are time-consuming processes. Many learners make it a game to ‘forget’ to bring their textbook to class. Generally, only a portion of the textbook is used. Sometimes, typos are encountered that end up confusing learners. Often, in science textbooks, examples that were once relevant become dated, or information once thought to be accurate is superseded. For all these reasons, I am not a big fan of textbooks.

Richardson has an intriguing answer for this: replace your textbook with a Wiki. What a GREAT idea! When I first started using the internet to support what I did in the classroom, my initial posting was a set of notes I made based on the course textbook. In those notes, I reduced important items to point form, supplied organizers, and provided extra, detailed explanations of concepts with which my learners tended to struggle. This methodology, however, has at least three down sides. First, I did all the work. It took a lot of time to get the notes written, proofread, and posted before we studied the topic in class. Second, I received very little feedback from my learners regarding the notes I'd posted. I’m not sure which of my learners was actually helped, or by how much. Third, I think this did little to enhance learning. Downloading, printing, and (hopefully) reading notes made by someone else doesn't tend to do much to increase one’s understanding and retention of a concept.

Most of the time, experience has shown me that the value here accrues when one makes notes for oneself. Here’s where the Wiki can help. I can split the class up and make learners responsible for creation of one section of the Wiki. They will have to work collaboratively with at least one other classmate to author their entry. This will require them to learn “how to develop and use all sorts of collaborative skills, [negotiate] with others to agree on correctness, meaning, relevance, and more. In essence, students begin to teach each other.” (Richardson, 2006, p. 65). That’s fantastic - real, meaningful learning will occur!

Another tremendous benefit of creating a Wiki to support a course is the ability to tailor the Wiki to both the needs of the course and the needs of the course participants. Relevant content can be added and explained, clearly and concisely. If content authors receive feedback that one section is hard to understand, they can go back and edit the confusing section. Content can be made interesting with the incorporation of relevant and interesting examples, current events, cutting-edge research, and oddball “Did You Know?” items. Detailed examples, accompanied by annotated, step-by-step solutions, can be provided. Summative assessment items can be used to check learner understanding. Explanations can be enhanced through interconnections made with other related topics, or by the addition of enriching content. And, at the end of it all, I foresee learners taking a great deal of pride in the finished product.

An exciting project I intend to try with my senior biology classes is an assignment I have used many times before: create a poster presentation on a disease relating to one of the organ-systems we are studying. Learners generally have little trouble finding facts about the disease, including cause, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment. However, posting it to an open Wiki allows them access to resources not normally available in the classroom: people who actually have the disease, as well as their family members. I think it would be amazing for a learner to have their facts verified by someone suffering from the disease, and for either (or both) the person with the disease and members of their family to share their story / stories with members of the class. This would make the coursework come alive for learners, and allow them access to a part of the world normally closed to them. This would be a wonderful opportunity for learning!

However, my enthusiasm for Wikis is tempered by two concerns I have regarding the use of this technology. First, I fear that monitoring the site for vandalism will be an onerous, time-consuming task. And, should vandals strike, I’m worried about how long the malicious content might be visible before it is fixed. My second concern is regarding plagiarism. It is far too easy for students to copy and paste content and pass it off as their own. I’m not sure I’ll have the time available to monitor this adequately. That said, I’m sure others who have preceded me in using Wikis can offer tips and advice regarding how to deal with these concerns. And, by trying it out, I’ll learn first-hand about the pitfalls and advantages!

Reference:
Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Learning from the Experts: Student Advice Regarding What to Do and What to Avoid in an Online Course

Recently, I interviewed two university graduate students to find out about their experience as online learners in their respective master's programs. What I heard from them reinforced some things I already knew, and also managed to surprise me. Their insight and candor was very much appreciated.

Some of what they had to say were things I expected to hear. For example, both interviewees agreed that online learning allowed them to do coursework when they had time available. They saw this as a much easier way to balance the competing priorities of family, work, school, friends, and self. Readings and assignments could be completed when time was available, and learning could take place in self-managed chunks.

However, one of the biggest surprises to me was that one of my interviewees felt that a stronger, more vibrant learning community was created in one of her online courses than in any face-to-face class in which she had participated previously. She had a far more powerful sense that she was working with and supported by her classmates in this course. She also felt that the discussions and interpersonal interactions in this particular online class very definitely added to the richness of her experience. She felt that, in this class, the quality and depth of discussion was enhanced by learners having the opportunity to read comments posted by other learners, reflect on the comments made, research as need and interest dictated, and then post a thoughtful response. As a result, she felt that her thinking was far deeper and more comprehensive than what had occurred in many of the face-to-face classrooms discussions in which she had participated.

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Throughout their interviews, both participants identified several online practices in need of improvement. These included:

1. Avoid Templating Class Discussions

One methodology employed by instructors is to create a response form for learners to follow when crafting a discussion post. It was felt that these professors wanted to ensure that learners communicated their responses in a standard format, consistently addressing specific points. My interviewee did not find this technique helpful. Her criticism was based on two problems she noted. First, she felt that her classmates tended to write overly lengthy responses to the assigned reading. When reading the posted responses, she felt that the underlying intent of her classmates was to prove that they had read the paper, rather than provide a concise, meaningful analysis of the content of the articles. Second, she felt that having to follow a pre-determined pattern of response to an article got in the way of having an authentic conversation about the topic.

Conclusion: Do not provide a template for students to follow for their discussion posts.

2. Help Students Create Learner Groups

Both interviewees found that creation of learner groups was challenging in some of their online courses. Although it is possible for learners to pair up on their own, the fact that they often didn't know their classmates well, the challenges of meeting and communicating with others in an online environment, the lack of availability of social cues in selecting partners, and the difficult logistics of communicating with classmates sometimes living several time zones distant created difficulty for people already under studying within significant time constraints. In some classes, student pairings were created randomly by the instructor. One of my interviewees found this method was more adaptable and efficient than picking her own project partners.

Conclusion: The instructor should create student groupings, especially for the first group assignment. The option of creating their own groups can be provided after the initial group assignment.

3. Enable Email Notification

While the course is in session, there potentially are a large number of postings to Forums and / or Discussion Groups. All of this information needs to be accessed, read, processed, and responded to in a timely manner. In order for all this to happen, learners need to be aware of what information is new. Moodle handles this in a couple of ways. One method has Moodle inform a learner when they login regarding what new replies and postings have been added since the last time they logged in. This method requires the learner to login regularly to check the status of the Forums and Discussion Groups to which they belong. One of my interviewees felt a far better method was for her instructor to enable the “Email Notification” feature in Moodle. In this way, she received an email whenever a new posting was added. This allowed her, with only one click, to access and read the new posting. She found this method to be far more efficient than continually logging in to her account, as it allowed her to read new posts any time she had a few minutes available during the day: for example, at coffee break or lunch time.

Conclusion: Enable email notification of new posts to Forums and Discussion Groups.

4. Follow User Interface Best Practice Guidelines

A number of design considerations impacted both interviewees' perceptions of the usability of their Moodle sites. One interviewee in particular complained of technical concerns she encountered while using the Moodle sites provided in many of her courses: many clicks were needed to access online resources, a significant amount of time was spent waiting for screens to load when trying to view resources, the amount of time it took to download an article was sometimes longer than going to a hard copy of the course readings would have been, the difficulty of organizing files in an online environment initially proved more challenging for her than doing the same in the physical world, and she found the lack of tactile sensation and feedback when handling files, folders, and documents frustrating.

However, over time, she felt that she benefitted from learning how to organize herself better in a digital environment. She stated that she now feels much more comfortable using the computer, can find needed resources more quickly, and has improved the methods she uses to organize herself, her files, and her file folders electronically.

Conclusion: Site design should provide access to needed resources within a maximum of two clicks, links to downloads should state file type and size, and provide a link to needed supports such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, and tips and training regarding how to organize resources, files, and folders on the learner’s computer should be provided as a time-of-need support.

5. Provide Meaningful Feedback

One of my interviewees noted that the instructor can add a great deal of depth to the material covered in the course through the type of questioning used. She found that some instructors added comments to Discussion Forums like “Good job!”. She felt that comments like this, while pleasant, did little to enhance the learning environment or promote analysis or critical thinking. Some of her instructors, however, made the Discussion Groups and Forums far more interesting and valuable by asking probing, thought-provoking questions that challenged the learners to think more deeply about what they were saying, or to analyze the situations they were sharing in more depth. She also found that when her instructors shared personal experiences, or, better still, added thoughts interpreting a personal experience they were sharing, resulted in the subject matter coming alive for her. She found this much easier to understand, remember, and apply to her own situation.

Conclusion: Keep the number of discussion groups and forums offered in the course to a manageable number. Doing so allows the instructor time to provide meaningful anecdotes, feedback, and thoughtful questions to their learners.

6. Clearly Delineate Communication Expectations

One interviewee noted that, at times, she felt overwhelmed by the multiple means of communication utilized in her online course. In a traditional face-to-face course, she knew that a pre-determined time was set aside each week for her class. Once there, she would be able to focus on a single mode of delivery, discussion. The discourse was structured in a predictable way, and usually predicated on her having read an article or two to both frame and stimulate the discussion.

In contrast to this, her online courses provided multimodal delivery of content: telephone, Skype, email, Forums, Discussion Groups, in person, or through shared editing of documents stored in the cloud (e.g., Google Docs). She found this to be both daunting and overwhelming. Upon further questioning, she decided that each communication method employed in her online courses did serve a useful function:

• telephone and Skype conversations were best for talking informally, building relationships between classmates, and brainstorming ideas
• Discussion Groups and Forums were effective means of having meaningful discussions. She liked it best when she was able to read a fellow learner’s posting at her own pace, pause and reflect on what her classmate wrote, research or fact-check anything of interest, think about the topic, and then respond. This slow, measured, thoughtful way of responding, she felt, produced far richer, deeper, and more scholarly communication than did most in-class discussions in which she had been involved.
• she found email only useful for notifications, i.e., check out this website or resource, I posted this to our discussion / forum, I edited this document.
• face-to-face communication, when possible, was great for building relationships with classmates and connecting with others in her learning community. She appreciated these opportunities being made available, especially since almost all of her course participants lived within a reasonable commuting distance of one another.
• she found Google Docs a fantastic method of collaboration. She felt that co-authoring papers / projects with another learner provided real-time, instant feedback, an organic feeling of the paper growing and coming together, and no worries associated with backing up or losing data.

Conclusion: Allow for a variety of methods of communication, but select the method most appropriate for both the needs of the learner and the task at hand.

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I listened carefully to my interviewees, and have already learned a great deal from them. I plan on incorporating all of the above conclusions reached into all future online courses I design. For these insights, I am grateful, as well as deeply indebted to them both!

Where I'm At Now

A little bit about my background...

I graduated with a B.Ed. from the University of Alberta's Faculty of Education in 1984. A science geek, I majored in Biological Sciences, and minored in Physical Sciences. Wherever I ended up teaching, I knew I'd be teaching science.

After a bit of a bumpy beginning to my teaching career, I finally settled in a county west of Edmonton. Hired at a community school for K-9 students, I taught science to all of the Grade 7, 8, and 9 students, as well as a computer option to the Grade 7 students. It is here that I first saw the tremendous potential for computer technology to engage and support learners.

Looking back, what I taught my students about computers wasn't well-matched to how they actually used them. The curriculum consisted of units on computer hardware, keyboarding, and programming in BASIC. Listening to their informal talk, I realized that most of my students used their home computers for gaming; only a few used them for schoolwork.

At about the same time, some of my colleagues and I started to use computers ourselves. We created spreadsheets to track and calculate student marks, typed and saved lessons, activities and tests to floppy disks, and played around a bit with the Apple Macintosh program HyperCard. I quickly saw how regular use of my new Macintosh Plus would save me time down the road, after I created and organized my teaching materials in digital format. This was going to be much better than storing paper copies of everything in a large filing cabinet!

Fast forward ten years, and I'm now teaching at a high school. At that time, high schools were not Macintosh friendly. I worked on my Mac at home, and brought activities and tests to school to be edited and then printed. However, the amount of time I was spending on format conversions was onerous. The Mac had to be replaced, if for no other reason than to save me time. As a result, I entered the world of the PC. About the same time, I started posting text-based notes for my students on the internet, through the Edmonton Freenet. I had no idea how quickly I would come to spend most of my work day on the internet...

Fast forward another ten years, and I'm no longer teaching in a public school setting. The first part of my transition came with a secondment to Alberta Education. I accepted a position managing digital learning resource development for the LearnAlberta.ca project, where my first task was to coordinate the posting of a series of simulated physics labs programmed in Java. A later project resulted in my managing the creation, acquisition and licensing of a number of digital learning resources used to support the teaching and learning of Biology 20 and 30. I was tremendously excited by the ability of the new media to clearly illustrate complex ideas, ranging from nerve impulse transmission to photosynthesis. How could students fail to be excited about their learning, using these fancy new resources?

The second part of my transition came with a subsequent move to Vancouver Island. I spent part of a year working at Vancouver Island University, teaching a biology course to adult students while I worked as an educational technologist.Through conversations with educational technologists, instructional designers, and instructors, as well as through experimenting with my class, I heard a lot about what online practices do and do not support student learning.

Now I'm attending the University of Victoria, enrolled in the M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction program. Here I plan on adding some evidence-based background regarding the use of online learning resources to support my teaching practice. I will be using this Blog to track my progress.