Abhay Parekh recently launched a new application, Flowgram, that those in the computers and writing crowd may want to check out. Think of it as Powerpoint-plus. An online screencasting program, Flowgram enables you to load URLs, images, and Powerpoints onto the web, to add layered audio, notes, and highlighting, and then to play the pages or to share them.

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Now that I’ve left schooling, it’s wonderful to explore things for teaching. Case in point: Annenberg Media / Learner.org’s A Biography of America series.  It’s an astonishingly media-rich 26-part series - count ‘em, 26 half-hour PBS episodes featuring leading US historians, plus transcripts of each episode, plus interactive maps, photos, primary sources, and more for each episode - that covers US history from pre-Columbian times to the present.  And it’s free.

(Click screenshot for full-size view, including “chapter” headings.)

Can somebody remind me why, with free online resources like this, schools are spending tens of thousands of dollars on short-shelf-life textbooks, often dumbed-down and intellectually neutered (or worse, downright propagandistic)  due to the textbook industry’s fear of alienating their biggest markets in conservative Texas and California?

[Update: I should have mentioned that the US History resources are only one example of Learner.org’s offerings. They have full-year courses in just about every subject area imaginable, k-college, plus professional development courses for teachers. Browse them here. Amazingly good use of US tax dollars at work via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.]

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12 Comments

• At June 24, 2008, ehelfant wrote:

  Thanks for passing on a great resource. We gave up History texts last year in favor or primary source documents and a database of Opposing Viewpoints. We used this online text as a reference http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/. We also bailed on teaching US history chronologically and taught it thematically. THe course and much of the student work was available online (http://micdsus.squarespace.com/)We also bailed on biology and chemistry texts although in those courses we have had text in the bookstore if a student wanted a resource. This year as we go 1:1 we did purchase a teacher created text (http://www.mpcfaculty.net/mark_bishop/default.htm) to put on chemistry students tablets as a resource.

  I'm all for teaching with materials that are readily available for free and allow teachers to be more creative, flexible, and spontaneous in response to student learning than a canned textbook curriculum. We found we could do a better job teaching relevancy, reliability, bias with online materials in lieu of traditional texts.

  Again, thanks for sharing a great resource.

• At June 24, 2008, Tom wrote:

  While it's about 13 years old (and you've probably read it), a very good answer to your question can be found in "Lies My Teacher Told Me." I even at one point devised a lesson wherein students analyze and hopefully challenge a textbook account of 9/11 vs. the actual events.

  Toms last blog post..A step in the right direction

• At June 25, 2008, M. Walker wrote:

  Clay,

  Thanks for the great resource! It does mention something on the main page about the Annenberg Channel going away October 1, but the Web resources should still be available. I'm adding this to my resources for One to One!

  M. Walkers last blog post..Revenge of the Right Brainers: Daniel Pink at the U of M

• At June 25, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  @ehelfant - Thanks so much for adding to the goodness. Look forward to checking out those links. Are they free? (Funny, though - I'm a huge believer in the chronological approach as the foundation, and the thematic approach as a layer above that. But I'm not claiming to know which has the research backing it up as better. Do you happen to know of any studies comparing the two approaches?)

  @Tom - never read the actual book, but I have used interviews with the author online to frame the entire year's study of every history class I've taught. Students love being shown that history textbooks (and all other forms of media) should be held suspect.

  Thanks for adding that.

  @M. Walker - You scared me! The web resources (including video) will indeed remain available. It's only the broadcast program of new content that is ending. Good call. (PS. You can do interesting things with Quicktime Pro and the online videos.)

• At June 25, 2008, OLDaily ~ by Stephen Downes wrote:

  [...] of his blog title and just "left schooling". -HJ Clay Burell, Beyond School, June 24, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Patents, Books, Web Logs] [...]

• At June 25, 2008, anon wrote:

  "Can somebody remind me why..."

  Because the education industry conference our decision makers attend each year hasn't had a presentation on it that included shiny objects? Because it's easier to let the schools bear the budget cuts? You've got to remember, there's the people who are getting constant professional development online, and there are the people who can't fathom that they would learn anything from an online diary by someone they don't even know in real life.

• At June 25, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  @anon - Not clear on your meaning - especially the "online diary" part. Who's talking about online diaries? The rest of the comment is fairly unclear too, if you'd care to clarify in indicative assertions instead of rhetorical questions.

• At June 25, 2008, Paul C wrote:

  Wow. I've bookmarked learner.org. I remember Kenneth Clark's Civilisation series from the early 70's. It hooked me on intellectual history for my Master's work and over the decades.

  Learner.org , for example,offers Art of the Western World: it's bound to get high school students started on their quest for meaning and beauty. What a rich resource. Thanks,

  Paul Cs last blog post..Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Beauty

• At June 30, 2008, Estelle wrote:

  Thank you for the link to this great tool. I will definitely share it with my ESL colleague who teaches Social Studies to Newcomers and will use it myself to review whenever I take my citizenship test!

• At July 1, 2008, Michelle Bourgeois wrote:

  Learner.org is a great resource for teachers of history, thanks for sharing it on your blog! Another resource I've shared with my teachers (also free) is http://hippocampus.org where you can find curriculum materials for studies in US History, Math, and Science. They're even correlated by textbook if you're still using a traditional text organization in your class.

  Michelle Bourgeoiss last blog post..Plurking your PLN

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• At July 11, 2008, ed4wb » Blog Archive » Textbook Scam wrote:

  [...] dumbed-down, controversy-free, high-fructose filler for the masses. Clay Burell points us to an example of excellent, textbook-free content. It seems like in 2008, any professor or teacher worth their [...]

After a very confusing vote on a local school bond, I’ve stepped down from my old project Blue Hampshire, to start a local information site, called Citizen Keene.

There were an number of other reasons for stepping down — as a newly promoted Director at a public college, I wanted to move away from being a prominent figure in partisan politics. Additionally, the workload of running Blue Hampshire was significant, and did not fit into my new job.

But those are more reasons for stepping down from Blue Hampshire.

The reason I started Citizen Keene is I felt the flow of local information was broken. Talking to people after the school bond failure, I found time and time again that the people who hadn’t voted, or had voted in a way that they later regretted once they learned the facts — these people were often good friends with people who had the facts.

But for whatever reason this information just was not transmitted.

And it was significant information. Almost no one understood what the rejection of the bond meant. The rejection of the bond didn’t save money — because a stay against enforcing certain code violations at the current middle school was predicated on the new school being built.

The upshot? The town will now spend $7 million dollars on band-aid fixes in the next two years, the school auditorium and industrial arts wing will close for at least three years, and current 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders will likely spend their middle school years in portable trailer.

The turnout was 16%. The bond failed by 24 votes. Now that the vote is over, there’s no end of people that didn’t vote or voted it down who believe they weren’t provided the information they needed to make the decision. No one would have voted this way had they had the facts.

It’s easy to look at that and say, well, you should have just done your homework.

But I’ve never seen that response solve anything. On the whole the amount of time that people are willing to put toward these things is constant. If you can get that information to them more efficiently you can change things. But you’re not going to shame them into spending more time to become informed. It just doesn’t work that way.

So Citizen Keene isn’t about technology, or Facebook coolness, or IPOs. It’s about the fact my 3rd grade daughter is likely to spend her middle school years in a trailer while they fix fire code issues in a school the town had been trying to move out of since 1968. And that’s going to happen because information flow is broken, and I want to fix that.

In coming days, I hope to explain why I chose the technoogy I did to build the site, and what the relation of this experiment is to academic technology and online communications. So please stay tuned, even is this doesn’t seem like it ties into the traditional subjects of this blog. It all ties in I promise, and will be useful to everybody from professors to college web editors.

But it does start with my daughter’s future, and it has a deep meaning to me. That’s step one.

This post was developed for an educational technology/professional development workshop in the College of Education at The University of Florida. Feel free to add any additional thoughts or comments as you see fit.

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 Workload Management Strategies for Online Educators 

 

In a study authored by Larry Ragan and Sara Terheggen (2003), workload management strategies were catagorized into four groups:

(1) authoring strategies,

(2) teaching strategies,

(3) course revision and improvement strategies, and

(4) institutional strategies.

For the sake of this presentation, I will focus on a selection of highly relevant strategies (1) authoring and (2) teaching strategies only. On occasion, I have pulled in one or two additional research sources to provide additional strategies relevant to designing online courses.

 

 

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AUTHORING STRATEGIES
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Start with a course development model

Define your objectives, learning outcomes, exit competencies, and an explanation of how the learning process will be evaluated.

"By developing a course development model at the begining of the course authoring process, faculty members can avoid inconsistencies in content presentation, misapplication of technologies, and confusion regarding roles and responsibilities" (Ragan & Terheggen, 2003, p. 14).

 
Provide specific instructions for assignments

Providing specific and detailed instruction significantly reduces faculty workload by reducing student queries and instructor intervention.

Examples:

(1) specify word/and or page count and qualitative expectations in assignment criteria, or

(2) establish grading rubrics and make them available to students
(Ragan & Terheggen, 2003, p. 17).

 

 Design balanced instructional activities

Examples:

(1) try using self-graded assignments for a way to review major concepts

(2) try using peer-evaluation to share assessment workload

(3) use self-evaluations

(4) limit the number of activities designed into the course
(Ragan & Terheggen, 2003, pp. 18-19).

 

 

 Finalize one module or unit before developing remainder of course

This allows early guidance and adjustment so that subsequent units follow with minimal adjustment. (Ragan & Terheggen, 2003, p. 19).

 

 

 

Develop rubrics for each graded assignment

Rubrics (formatted explanations) provide learners with the criteria they need to meet, thus reducing the number of questions an instructor might receive. Rubrics also reduce grading time by using consistent criteria accross assignments. Finally, rubrics provide an order of importnace for evaluation criteria and allow for more precise evaluation of student work. (Ragan & Terheggen, 2003, p. 20).

 

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TEACHING STRATEGIES
-----------------------------------------

 

Provide a detailed syllabus

This reduces faculty workload by limiting the number of student queries on an assortment of issues including the schedule, assignments, supplemental readings, grading, ethics, prerequisites, goals, and learning objectives. "Sometimes it is easier to create the syllabus as a final step in the course development process."
(Ragan & Terheggen, 2003, p. 22).

 

 

Define frequency of interaction

So, since your online is asynchronous, you should be available to assist students any time, day or night, right?

Hmmm.... Probably not.

Let conversations in discussion forums go on and see how they develop before jumping in with the "answers." Consider creating weekly synopsis/review posts. Point out strong points made by students and correct student generated points that are off-target. (JALN, 8, 2, p. 35)

 

 
Define operating parameters of your course

Doing so eliminates many questions surrounding the frequency, response time and quality of interactions between students/students, and students/faculty.
(Ragan & Terheggen, 2003, p. 23).

 

 

 
Establish a routine.

Establishing a routine for regular and planned interaction within the online course and with students help faculty members to remain in control of their workloads.
(Ragan & Terheggen, 2003, p. 24).

 

 

  

Establish consistent methods of communication

The use of public posting areas, discussion forums, and/or e-mail announcements for questions of general interest to the entire class reduces the need for individual e-mail responses to commonly asked questions. Students come to rely on accessing announcements posted in a general format if used consistently.

Use the right communication tool for the right task. For example, if the question requires a simple announcement, use e-mail. If the question requires discussion between the students and faculty member, use a public discussion board.
(Ragan & Terheggen, 2003, p. 27).

 

Create opportunities for self-directed learning (Conrad, 2004; Berge, 1995)

You know you're content. You can talk about your subject forever. To prevent overloading yourself with the responsibility of creating content, create situations for students to provide content (Conrad, 2004).

--Provide initial structures and the encourage learners' self-direction

 

 

 

Teaching online provides you a wonderful opportunity to rethink teaching and learning from the ground up. Here's a talk given by Alan Kay at TED 2007 that focuses on a powerful idea about teaching ideas that incorporates a number of ideas mentioned above.

 

Other workload management studies for teaching online

In 2003 Lazarus published a research paper that showed the findings associated with how much time it takes faculty members to teach a course online. She examined 3 courses of 25 students each. She asked instructors to self-monitor the amount of time it took them to complete the following activities:

(1) reading and responding to emails,

(2) reading, participating in, and grading 10 online discussions, and

(3) grading 15  assignments.

The data showed that teaching each online course required 3 to 7 hours per week, with the greatest number of emails and amount of time required to engage learners during the first and second weeks of the semester. Participation in and grading the discussions took the most time and remained steady throughout the term.

The study concludes by asserting that [if adequately designed] the time needed to teach online courses "falls within a range of reasonable expectations for teaching live or online" (Lazarus, 2003, p. 47).

Thompson (2004) conducted a study of comparative workload in the online environment. Results of her studies indicate that faculty workload for teaching online courses, as measured by time on task, was comparable to or somewhat less than that for face-to-face courses. However, a differential “chunking” of productive time contributed in some cases to a perception of increased
workload. (Thompson, 2004, p. 86)

Other workload management resources:

Faculty Satisfaction articles from Sloan-C's wiki
A collection of research articles published in the Journal for Asynchronous Learning Networks.

The Myth about Online Course Development: “A Faculty Member Can Individually Develop and Deliver an Effective Online Course” by Diana Oblinger and Brian Hawkins.
EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 41, no. 1 (January/February 2006): 14–15.
"Although the “Lone Ranger” approach to online learning has worked in the past, it does not scale well. Institutions that are sincere about providing high-quality, flexible educational experiences are finding that teams—not individuals—develop and deliver the most effective online courses."

Assessment and Rubrics:

Online Assessment Resources for Teachers-University of Wisconsin-Stout
Here you will find a hand selected index of authentic assessment resources. You are one click away from vital information about performance assessment, rubrics, negotiable contracting, and electronic portfolios. We include links to web based tools for creating your own assessments.

Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators
Assessment and Rubric resources -- a collection of assessment rubrics and graphic organizers that may be helpful to you as you design your own.

Sample Rubrics aggregated by Winona State University
Hundreds of links to a variety sample rubrics ranging from article reviews to visual technologies.

Create Your Own Rubric Tool
RubiStar is a free tool to help teachers create quality rubrics.

References:

Berge, Z. L. (1995). Facilitating computer conferencing: recommendations from the field. Educational Technology, 35(1): 22-30.

Conrad, D. (2004). University instructors' reflections on their first online teaching experiences. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 8(2): 31-44. Retrieved 26 March 2008 from http://www.sloan-c-wiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=University_Instruc

Lazarus, B. D. (2003). Teaching courses online: How much time does it take? Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 7(3): 47-54. Retrieved 24 March 2008 from http://www.sloan-c-wiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Teaching_Courses_O

Ragan, L. C. & Terheggen, S. L. (Eds.) (2003). Effective workload management strategies for the online environment. A Report Funded by a Grant from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to The Pennsylvania State University World Campus. April 15, 2003. Retrieved 24 March 2008 from http://search-results.aset.psu.edu/search?q=Effective+Workload+Management+

Thompson, M. M. (2004). Faculty self-study research project: Examining the online workload. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 8(3): 84-88.
Retrieved 24 March 2008 from http://www.sloan-c-wiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Faculty_Self-Study

It’s important sometimes to realize that while we are blazing new trails in mainstream education, we are really dealing with the dam of industrial culture finally breaking.

We’ve been paying attention enough to know why it’s breaking. We deserve credit for that.

In fact, we’ve been waiting for it to break.

But the ideas that fuel me (and I think possibly you) aren’t as new as most of my colleagues think. What we are looking at is the transference of a hacking culture to a mainstream population. That’s the revolution in a nutshell.

Educational institutions need to turn out more hackers. Because it’s the hackers, not the planners, that will save this planet.

So while the idea of the “hacker next door” might be novel to our co-workers, the culture is warmly familiar. It’s decentralized, it values recursion, iteration, intervention. It sees consumer/producer divisions as quaint. It sees five-year-plans as authoritarian and unproductive. It sees the machine as an extension of Self.

In a way, it was all so predictable.

But I went back and reread Stewart Brand today and, well, if you haven’t read his early stuff recently, treat yourself to it. It will take your breath away. The wisdom of crowds, planner vs. hackers, machines as community builders, it’s all there.

From Stewart Brand’s brilliant 1972 article in Rolling Stone on the playing and creation of SPACEWAR:

Where a few brilliantly stupid computers can wreak havoc, a host of modest computers (and some brilliant ones) serving innumerable individual purposes can be healthful, can repair havoc, feed life. (Likewise, 20 crummy speakers at once will give better sound fidelity than one excellent speaker - try it.)

Spacewar serves Earthpeace. So does any funky playing with computers or any computer-pursuit of your own peculiar goals, and especially any use of computers to offset other computers. It won’t be so hard. The price of hardware is coming down fast, and with the new CMOS chips (Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor integrated circuits) the energy-drain of major computing drops to Flashlight-battery level.

Part of the grotesqueness of American life in these latter days is a subservience to Plan that amounts to panic. What we don’t intend shouldn’t happen. What happens anyway is either blamed on our enemies or baldly ignored. In our arrogance we close our ears to voices not our rational own, we routinely reject the princely gifts of spontaneous generation.

Spacewar as a parable is almost too pat. It was the illegitimate child of the marrying of computers and graphic displays. It was part of no one’s grand scheme. It served no grand theory. It was the enthusiasm of irresponsible youngsters. It was disreputably competitive (”You killed me, Tovar!”). It was an administrative headache. It was merely delightful.

Yet Spacewar, if anyone cared to notice, was a flawless crystal ball of things to come in computer science and computer use:

1. It was intensely interactive in real time with the computer.
2. It encouraged new programming by the user.
3. It bonded human and machine through a responsive broadband interface of live graphics display.
4. It served primarily as a communication device between humans.
5. It was a game.
6. It functioned best on, stand-alone equipment (and diarupted multiple-user equipment).
7. It served human interest, not machine. (Spacewar is trivial to a computer.)
8. It was delightful.

In those days of batch processing and passive consumerism (data was something you sent to the manufacturer, like color film), Spaccwar was heresy, uninvited and unwelcome. The hackers made Spacewar, not the planners. When computers become available to everybody, the hackers take over. We are all Computer Bums, all more empowered as individuals and as co-operators. That might enhance things … like the richness and rigor of spontaneous creation and of human interaction … of sentient interaction.

Treat yourself, and go read the whole article now. It should be required reading for anybody going into learning technology.