Faces or Fingers

Author(s):  
Cynthia D. Kilpatrick

The use of synchronous sessions in online teaching is rising. In many online courses, students attend webinars, live lectures, and other audio/video sessions built to enhance course content. As more classes move online, there is a need for research that shows the effectiveness of synchronous sessions in both content mastery and community building. This chapter compares student participation in synchronous sessions in an online TESOL methods course in an effort to build community among class members. The synchronous methods compared include video webinars through Blackboard Collaborate (face chats), events in a private Facebook group (finger chats), and synchronous instant messaging (finger chats). Discussion focuses on interaction and community building in the different modes of synchronous chat. The chapter concludes with some suggestions for best practices that can benefit teachers who are looking for ways to enhance participation and build community in synchronous sessions in online courses.

Author(s):  
Chao Lee

As stated in the discussion of the ADDIE model in the last chapter, implementation and evaluation are part of the development process. Once online course materials are developed, the next task is to deploy the course materials to students. The first topic of this chapter will deal with the issues related to the deployment of online course materials. In this chapter, we will discuss the tasks such as planning and training involved in the deployment process. Once the online course materials have been deployed, there will be a large number of requests from the students for help on technology and course content related issues. To keep the online teaching/learning system running successfully, we need a strong technical support team including experienced computer service personnel, instructors, and fellow students. This chapter will deal with the issues related to technical support. We will discuss various ways to provide technical support services.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Meina Zhu ◽  
Curtis J Bonk ◽  
Annisa R Sari

As massive open online courses (MOOCs) increase, the large scale and heterogeneity of MOOC participants bring myriad significant design challenges. This mixed methods study explores 143 MOOC instructors’ considerations and challenges in designing MOOCs; 12 of whom were interviewed and had their courses analyzed. The survey, interview, and course review data revealed a variety of considerations and challenges in MOOC design in terms of pedagogy, resources, and logistics. Pedagogical considerations included learning objectives, assessment methods, course length, course content, flexibility, and collaborative learning support. Resource considerations included the affordance of MOOC platforms, support from the host institution and the platform, and the available intellectual and hardware resources. Logistical considerations included the amount of time instructors spent designing the MOOC. The obstacles included pedagogical challenges (engaging students, increasing student interaction, and limited assessment methods), resource challenge (i.e., limitations associated with the affordances of the platform), and logistical challenge (time limitations for designing and developing MOOCs). To address these challenges, the instructors often relied on reviewing other MOOCs. They also sought help from colleagues, their universities, and supporters of the platforms.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. p9
Author(s):  
Bernice Y. Sanchez

The expansion of modern technology has vastly changed and continues to change the way we learn, communicate, and connect with one another. Institutions of higher learning including Community Colleges and Universities, traditionally known for their face-to-face courses, have had to reconsider programmatic and delivery mode over the years to transfer their face-to-face courses into online courses based on the growing demand. With this transition, comes reflective reevaluation of curriculum and programmatic structure of courses. These programmatic courses must provide instructional experiences that are meaningful and purposeful for graduate students in higher education and prepare them in the same manner and level of quality as face-to-face courses. There is a need for pedagogical research to assist faculty and instructors to make this transition to online teaching. The following paper examines 1) the historical context of distance education 2) research on face-to-face instruction in comparison to online instruction 3) a modern framework for scaffolding graduate courses and graduate course content.


2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Schrenk ◽  
Kelly Alves ◽  
Brianne Schrenk ◽  
Drew Van Dam

When the novel coronavirus 2019 caused many schools to immediately go online in March 2020, many instructors had significant training and experience teaching residentially but little to no experience teaching online courses. All classes were immediately converted to online, and some schools are still uncertain as to when they will return to full traditional classroom settings. Regardless of online experience, all instructors were needed to learn to adapt to online teaching immediately. This change created a need for all faculty members to receive the training and support necessary to make the online process as smooth and effective as possible. In this Best Practices perspective, we identified useful and successful practices to help students learn in the online courses. With the knowledge of data driven support and awareness of effective online teaching strategies, instructors can make the most of online teaching sessions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 288-301
Author(s):  
T. O. Omotehinwa ◽  
A. A. Adeniyi ◽  
T. S. Adenegan

This study examined the perception of lecturers and students of Achievers University, Owo, Nigeria, about the use of social media for teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study, was carried out on 123 lecturers and 487 students from the 4 existing colleges through 5-point Likert scale questionnaires administered online. Data collected were analyzed using t-test and ANOVA in addition to the descriptive statistics. The findings of this study show that, social media was perceived to be useful for teaching by lecturers while students have a negative perception about its usefulness and ease of use. The study recommends that lecturers must be exposed through seminars and conferences to the best practices for developing and delivering online courses to make online teaching very productive and enjoyable for both lecturers and students


2021 ◽  
pp. 002224372110163
Author(s):  
Ali Goli ◽  
Pradeep K. Chintagunta ◽  
S. Sriram

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have the potential to democratize education by improving access. Although retention and completion rates for non-paying users have not been promising, these statistics are much brighter for users who pay to receive a certificate upon completing the course. We investigate whether paying for the certificate option can increase engagement with course content. In particular, we consider two such effects: (a) the certificate effect, which is the boost in motivation to stay engaged in order to receive the certificate; and (b) the sunk-cost effect, which arises solely because the user paid for the course. We use data from over 70 courses offered on the Coursera platform and study the engagement of individual participants at different milestones within each course. The panel nature of the data enables us to include controls for intrinsic differences between non-paying and paying users in terms of their desire to stay engaged. We find evidence that the certificate and sunk-cost effects increase user engagement by approximately 8%-9%, and 17%-20%, respectively. However, whereas the sunk-cost effect is transient and lasts only for a few weeks after payment, the certificate effect lasts until the participant reaches the grade required to be eligible to receive the certificate. We discuss the implications of our findings for how platforms and content creators may want to design course milestones and schedule the payment of course fees. Given that greater engagement tends to improve learning outcomes, our study serves as an important first step in understanding the role of prices and payment in enabling MOOCs to realize their full potential.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jia-Xuan Han ◽  
Min-Yuan Ma

With the rapid development of online courses, digital learning has become a global trend. In this context, this study analyzed the high intake population of online courses for online affective cognition, and explored what the user’s attraction factors for online courses are. The key factors that affect consumers’ usage of online courses and the weights of impact relations are presented, aiming to provide guidance for future improvement of online courses. This study was conducted through the evaluation grid method of Miryoku engineering. In order to make the charm factors more accurate and representative, this study summarized the charm elements using the Kawakita Jiro (KJ) method, and then quantified the factors in the form of a questionnaire. Through the statistical analysis of the questionnaire and quantification theory type I, the correlation between the charm feeling and the online course as well as the weight of each item (original evaluation item) and category (specific evaluation item) were calculated. Through the research and discussion on the charm factors of online teaching, the results analyzed and integrated in this paper could give more substantive suggestions and help to the education industry.


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Stathakarou ◽  
Nabil Zary ◽  
Andrzej A. Kononowicz

Background: Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are an emerging method of online teaching. However in the field of healthcare education their technology is not adopted yet. Reaching beyond the xMOOC type of courses in order to foster interactivity in the healthcare education requires domain specific software. Virtual Patients (VPs) have been integrated in the past with Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) but extending MOOCs with VPs has not yet been discussed. Objective: To investigate the technical possibilities of integrating VPs with MOOCs for the purpose of discovering a pragmatic basis were the potential pedagogical benefits can be later studied. Methods: We selected OpenEdx and Open Labyrinth as examples of a MOOC platform and of a VP system. We conducted a literature review to identify technical requirements and e-learning standards apt for the integration. One fundamental requirement was prototyped and verified by use cases. Results: A Single–Sign on mechanism connecting Open Labyrinth with OpenEdx, employing the IMS LTI standard, has been successfully implemented and verified. Conclusion: We investigated the technical perspective of integrating VPs in MOOCs, aiming to set a base for future investigation on the topic. The results point out new opportunities arising from the infrastructure of MOOCs for integrating specialized software aiming to support the healthcare education.


2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivans Kigwana ◽  
H. S Venter

Some institutions provide online courses to students to ease the courses’ workload. Online courses can also be convenient because the online course content management software conducts marking of tests and examinations. However, a few students could be willing to exploit such a system’s weaknesses in a bid to cheat in online examinations because invigilators are absent. Proactive measures are needed and measures have to be implemented in order to thwart unacceptable behaviour in situations where there is little control of students’ conduct. Digital Forensic Readiness (DFR) employs a proactive approach for an organisation to be forensically prepared for situations where there is little control over people. This can be achieved by gathering, storing and handling incident response data, with the aim of reducing the time and cost that would otherwise be spent in a post-event response process. The problem this paper addresses is that, at the time of writing this paper, there existed no known DFR architecture that can be used to collect relevant information for DFR purposes, specifically in the course of an online examination, as described in the standard published by the International Standards Organisation (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) (ISO/IEC 27043:2015) for incident investigation principles and processes. Due to the lack of DFR architecture, the authors propose an Online Examination Digital Forensic Readiness Architecture (OEDFRA) that can be used to achieve DFR when online examinations are conducted. This architecture employs already existing DFR techniques, discussed in the study, to help educational institutions achieve DFR in online examinations. This architecture, (OEDFRA), when implemented, will be tested in future research in order to confirm its contribution to the field of DFR.


Author(s):  
José Carlos Paiva ◽  
José Paulo Leal ◽  
Ricardo Alexandre Peixoto de Queirós

This chapter presents the architecture and design of Enki, an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for learning programming languages on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). This environment can be used as a tool by a Learning Management System (LMS) and a typical LMS such as Moodle can launch it using the Learning Tool Interoperability (LTI) API. Student authentication tokens are passed via LTI, thus integrating Enki in the single sign-on domain of the academic institution. The proposed tool has a web user interface similar to those of reference IDEs, where the learner has access to different integrated tools, from viewing tutorial videos, to solving programming exercises that are automatically evaluated. Enki uses several gamification strategies to engage learners, including generic gamifications services provided by Odin and the sequencing of educational resources. The course content (videos, PDFs, programming exercises) is progressively disclosed to the learner as he successfully completes exercises. This is similar to what happens in a game, where new levels are unlocked as the previous are completed, thus contributing to the sense of achievement.


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