What Do Online Students Want?

A recent survey of 1500 "past, present, and prospective fully online college students" revealed some interesting trends in what online students want. The report covered general information about the types of programs and services online students need, but the part that interested me was about teaching the online student.

The good news is almost all  of the online students thought their online learning experience was as good as (48%) if not better than (37%) similar college classroom learning experiences. Roughly the same percentages thought that the lifetime value of their online program equaled (54%) or exceeded (32%) its cost.  Students see the value and efficacy on online learning.

The survey asked the students to rate various online learning activities according to how helpful they were to their learning or success in the course or program.

The number one activity according to students? Videos created by their instructor. These could be any type of video that has an instructor presence.  I have talked in the past about several different types of videos, from preplanned course introduction videos or narrated PowerPoints saved as videos, to quick, simple videos to explain something that comes up during the semester. Clearly students appreciate the educational value of these videos, even more so than other videos, like those provided by publishers or that you might find on YouTube. 58% of students found instructor-created videos very helpful, while only 37% found third-party videos helpful.

I also found it interesting that students found instructor-created videos more helpful than the textbook. Again, while the textbook is a good resource, there is power in visual learning. Narrated videos make use of dual channel encoding, where information learned with both verbal and visual cues, making learning more meaningful and enhances later recall of information.

While the survey didn't ask why students found these activities helpful, if you think about it, it only make sense.  You are the content expert; that is why you teach a course.  You don't go into a classroom and teach by having students read a textbook and watch videos someone else made.  You put your own spin on the content when you lecture in the classroom, so you should do that online, too.  Students clearly see value in it.

Another thing I found interesting was students found more learning value in written assignments than in quizzes - not much, but a little. Again, we can only speculate why, but I can think of a couple of reasons.  One might be that students see value in the more complex, higher order thinking skills required of most written assignments. While it is possible to assess those skills with multiple choice questions, it is much easier to assess the lower level skills of knowledge, comprehension, and application.  Publisher test banks will tend to use those lower level questions that are easier to write.

Another reason might be the availability of publisher test banks themselves. If they are available to faculty, someone will put them online for students to "study," and once they are online, anyone can find them.  A recent study suggested that nearly half of students use publisher test banks, either to practice the course content or, more frequently, to memorize the responses.  This is a problem in both online and classroom courses, and students know it.  So the ones who don't cheat may find little value in quizzes they know their classmates cheat on, and the ones who do cheat, realize they aren't learning from those activities.

NOTE: When I got my Master's degree, all graduate students in the College of Education had to take EdPsy 400, an introductory statistics course.  This was in the early 80's, so it was pre-Internet, but the instructor did put past tests on reserve in the library so students could practice working the problems. The number of TEACHERS who just chose to memorize the answers on all of the tests rather than use them as they were intended astounded me.  If their students did the same thing, they would accuse them of cheating...and if they had spent the time they spent memorizing a couple hundred answers actually learning statistics, well....

Although not rated as high as other activities, the majority of students do find discussions to be at least somewhat helpful. this is important, because students who are engaged in their learning tend to be more successful in their learning with higher retention and completion rates.

To increase the effectiveness of discussions, you need to understand the different reasons for having discussions. Discussions help learners use those higher order thinking skills I keep going on about. When the instructor participates in the discussion, students feel more connected to the course and may become more engaged in their learning - you show interest in their learning, and they will show interest in their learning. As with all online learning activities, it takes some effort to design effective discussions, but student do view them as valuable when done well.

The final bit I found interesting in this survey is the number of students who complete their course work on mobile devices, either cell phones or tablets. 20% said they completed all course related activities on a mobile device, while another 47% said they completed at least some of their activities online. That means 2/3 of online students completed at least some of their online coursework using a mobile device. Reading course material and communicating with their instructor or other students were the top activities completed on mobile devices, with completing research and assignments next.  Viewing required lectures was the activity completed the least on mobile devices, but there is no information on how many of their courses actually have required online lectures.

What's interesting about these numbers is how little they have changed over the last two years.  The same survey was conducted in 2016 and 2017, but the distribution of students who use mobile technology has not changed much. However, it is still high enough that mobile device usage should be considered in at least the most popular activities. For example, I use ebooks in my classes that can be read on a mobile device, and I use Blackboard Learn for all written assignments, quizzes and discussions, since I know it is mobile compatible; publisher LMSs may not be. Although students may not CHOOSE to use mobile devices when completing their courses, you never know when they may be stuck at a doctor's office with a sick child or called out of town on a business trip at the last minute.  Making sure they have the OPTION to complete work "on the go" is important.

The report also covers other interesting topics, like how online students can be recruited and what services they need.  I suggest everyone take a few minutes and look it over, so you can make sure you are meeting the needs of your online students.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Rethinking the Essay

I just finished YAFAOC (Yet Another Free Adobe Online Course), this time on Visual Reports and Essays. For the assignments in this course, I had to create a visual report and a visual essay.

For the report, I wrote about visual learning:

For millennia, humans have told stories with pictures. Early written languages used pictographs, symbols that represent words. These evolved into the modern logographic languages of today.

Why do we communicate so well with pictures? Cognitive psychologists estimate that half the human brain is used directly or indirectly in processing visual information. In comparison, the areas of the brain used primarily to process language are quite small. We also process visual information very quickly. For example, people can determine in as little as 100 milliseconds whether a picture contains an image of an animal or not. That's about as fast as a blink of an eye.

Does this affect how we learn? Given a list of words to memorize, children find them hard to recall if they only repeat the words. But tell them to picture the items the words describe, their recall increases greatly, especially if the image they create is unusual. 

Is a picture really worth a thousand words? You tell me. There are about 250 words on this page, but less than 20 pictures. Which will you remember tomorrow? 

For the essay, I used one of the essay questions from the final exam in my PSY 102 class, and based the essay on a response from one of my students last semester. In my online classes, the midterm and final exam are all essay questions, and students have the question at the beginning of the course.  This gives them lots of time to work on thoughtful responses:

What types or events or circumstances cause you stress? Can you identify specific stressors? Why do you think those stressors create stress for you? 

There are three types of stressors, cataclysmic, personal and background. The flooding we had a few years ago was an example of a cataclysmic stressor. It affected lots of people, but we knew it would be over soon. I buried my father at a young age, lost several other loved ones. Those are examples of personal stressors. They were very stressful when they happened, but eventually, the level of stress gradually tapered off. On the other hand, background stressors always seem to be there. One major background stressor for me is financial security, i.e. money. Unlike dealing with death, the need for money has no end. 

I think that much of the financial stress I endure is a result of my childhood, when I observed my parents always being concerned about money. I am by no means poverty stricken, but I am not yet affluent either. 

Pick one item that causes you stress, and describe one emotion-focused coping response and one problem-focused coping response you could try to use to lower your stress. 

One emotion-focused way I could deal with financial stress would be to talk it over with my wife instead of pretending it isn't a problem. She might be able to help me think more rationally about money, pointing out all the things we have and can do instead of stressing out about things we don't have. 

One problem-focused coping response that I use is when I feel stressed about my finances, I engage in activities that are free or inexpensive, such as staying home for dinner instead of going out.

In both cases, I tried to convey my message as much with images as possible, using the text to support the visuals. What I found was I thought about the message I wanted to convey much more deeply when I conveyed it with both words and pictures than I did with words alone. For example, as I write this blog, it is very easy to keep adding more words to try to express my thoughts. But to try to find an image to get the same message across takes effort and requires that I actually think deeply about what I want to say...or show.

By HikingArtist [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

Most students will not have any experience creating a visual essay, but that can be a good thing.  Anything that is novel can gain someone's attention, so offering a novel way to write an essay just must inspire them to spend more effort on it. The downside is they might need instruction on how to create a visual essay. However, the format is the same as a regular essay, and there are free tools like Adobe Spark to handle the technical aspects easily.

Visual reports and essays will never take the place of the traditional written report or essay.  Students will still need to construct an essay appropriately and be able to communicate in writing, as well as do and cite the necessary research.  When most communication was in print, that was particularly important.

But now, visual communication skills are becoming more important, particularly in business. Whether it is a web site, social media posts, or even printed brochures, we encounter increasing amounts of visual information every day. We should start encouraging the use of the skills in our assessment of student learning.

Only the Lonely: The Student Side of Regular and Substantive Interaction

‘And here poor Alice began to cry again, for she felt very lonely and low-spirited.’

- Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

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A few days ago I received this email from a student in my online psychology course:

I've talked about the importance of regular and substantive interaction from an accreditation perspective, but the first line in this email made me think about it from a student success perspective. The student saying the feedback I gave her made her less lonely struck a chord with me.

This is a good student.  She is doing very well in the course, gets her work done on time, and, most importantly, asks questions of me when she is confused by something.  She has taken only one other online course, and that one is entirely autograded. She mentioned in one of her critical thinking assignments that when she didn't understand something in that course, she searched for videos on the Internet she could watch, which she used to get additional help when she didn't understand something.

But she didn't ask for help from her professor.

When an online course lacks that regular and substantive student-professor interaction, students are less likely to ask questions of the professor, because they don't have any regular contact with that instructor.  After an initial welcome message, they are often on their own to try to figure out any problems they may have. For a student like this one, that is not a problem, because she is inherently a "good" student - she persists in the face of an obstacle in order to over come it.

But what if she wasn't a "good" student? What if, in the face of an obstacle, she gave up if she didn't find a quick answer? At the community college level, this tends to be the rule, not the exception. Online students at community college tend to earn lower grades in online courses and fail them at a higher rate than traditional classroom courses. However, online students at community colleges are more likely to complete their degree if they take online courses, because of the convenience of online courses. Online students tend to be older, with family and job obligations that prevent them from taking traditional classroom courses, but they are also the ones who may be most harmed by the lack of interaction in online courses. If they lack that regular and substantive interaction with a professor, they may not feel the connection they need in order to ask the questions they need to have answered in order to succeed.

Autograded assignments will not provide that connection.  You need to include regular assignments (not just a few over the course of the semester) which you grade and provide feedback to every week.  Even if the student does well on an assignment, give them an "attaboy/girl" to make sure they know you are reading their work.  That's what the comments this student mentions were about.  In one, she talked about being classically conditioned to run to answer the phone when she was young, and I mentioned running for the Good Humor ice cream truck when that bell rang.  For her blog on problem solving, she found an article about the problem solving abilities of squirrels in finding food, to which I commented "Now I'm going to look at squirrels and wonder if they are plotting against me." Silly little comments that take just a minute or two to make, but that increase the likelihood that when she has a problem, she will ask for help.

Another student I have is also an adult student, who had some academic difficulty the prior semester. She had a slow start to the course, but I kept emailing her to tell her what work she was missing, and to give her specific help on how to get everything done. It turns out she was having technical difficulties with the publisher's web site, but I kept encouraging her to get caught up on everything else, while she worked that out.  Because I allow students to submit work late without penalty (giving them bonuses for getting work done on time), she got all caught up, and now has a B in the course. Without that constant interaction early in the semester, she would not be as successful in the course as she currently is. She may have given up completely.

My experience and the research shows that early, frequent interaction between students and professors improves student success.  Just a little time investment on your part - the time you would spend in the classroom for a traditional course - can make the difference to those students who might otherwise give up if they think they are interacting only with a computer.

Games People Play: Mind Games, Part 1: How to Toilet Train Your Toddler

The idea behind gamification is to use game design elements to, well, manipulate people into doing what you want them to do, whether that is buying coffee or crushing candy...or turning homework in on time or attending class. As I said, the tough part comes in understanding what will make people do what you want them to and why, and for that you need to understand some psychology.

Behavior Modification

Gamification uses behavior modification to change a person's behavior. Behavior modification focuses only on behavior, not on knowledge or understanding. It views the mind as a black box which a stimulus goes into and a response comes out of, and learning is just getting a person to provide the right response. This is based on behavioral learning theory as described by psychologists like B. F. Skinner. Skinner developed the concept of operant conditioning, in which a system of reinforcements or punishments that came after a specific behavior either increased or decreased the likelihood of that behavior reoccurring in the future.

Reinforcements and Punishments

In general, reinforcement is more effective than punishment in making long-term behavior changes.  A reinforcement, by definition, increases the likelihood of a behavior reoccurring in the future.  A friend of mine used the reinforcement of mini Tootsie Rolls to potty train his son; every time the boy pooped in the toilet, he got a mini Tootsie Roll.

There are two types of reinforcements, positive and negative. A positive reinforcement is like a reward, where you are given something you desire in order to behave that way again.   The candy was a positive reinforcement, because it was something the boy was given to increase the likelihood that he would poop in the toilet in the future.

A negative reinforcement is also an incentive, but in this case it involves taking something undesirable away. Think of negative reinforcement as relief from something you don't like. In college, my general psychology professor gave a quiz every Friday in this 8:00 class.  In order to get us to read the textbook (a behavior), he said anyone who had an A average at the end of the semester wouldn't need to take the final (a relief from the exam).  The quizzes covered content in the textbook while the final covered the lecture.  So I studied the textbook every week and got an A on every quiz, which meant I could skip the final exam (and every Monday and Wednesday class, but that's another story...).

Punishment, on the other hand, is designed to reduce the likelihood that a behavior is repeated.  A punishment or a penalty is given after undesirable behavior to discourage that behavior. One of the problems, though, is making sure the punishment is more odious than giving up the behavior you are trying to discourage.

Punishment comes in positive and negative flavors, too, but they are even harder to understand than positive or negative reinforcement. A positive punishment (which sounds like an oxymoron) is giving something the person doesn't want after the undesirable behavior, like making a child sit in the corner after misbehaving, Negative punishment is like a penalty, where you take away something they do want, like taking away a child's Xbox after they don't do what you tell them to do.

Let's apply these to a behavior you might want to encourage in your class - submitting work on time. Positive reinforcement would be giving students bonus points for turning work in on time (giving something desirable).  Negative reinforcement would be dropping their lowest grade (taking away something undesirable) if they submit all of their work on time.  Positive punishment would be giving a harder or longer assignment (giving something undesirable) is they fail to submit as assignment on time, while negative punishment would be taking points off or just not accepting late work (taking away something desirable).

For a variety of reasons, reinforcement is almost always more effective than punishment. The simplest reason is when you punish bad behavior, the person still doesn't know what the desirable behavior is, but when you reinforce that desirable behavior, they automatically know what it is they are supposed to do.  Punish a child for pooping in their diaper instead of in the potty, and they still don't understand where they are supposed to poop. People are also generally willing to work harder to earn something than they are to avoid losing something in the future. That's why in gamification, reinforcement is used for behavior modification instead of punishment. You earn points for buying coffee but you don't lose points for not buying any.

One challenge in using reinforcement in behavior modification is to make sure the reinforcement given, whether positive or negative, is sufficiently enticing to make people want to change their behavior.  It is hard to change behavior, particularly when that behavior is something the person doesn't want to do, or that prevents the person from doing something they do want to do. Another challenge is trying to reinforce the desired behavior every time it occurs. That's called continuous reinforcement, and when you do that, you find the reinforcement become less effective the more you use it.  That's why we use a schedule of reinforcement instead.

Schedules of Reinforcement

When you use schedules of reinforcement, you don't reinforce the behavior every time, but rather you reinforce after a certain number of behaviors (a rate or ratio schedule) or after a certain time period of exhibiting the behavior (an interval schedule).

Ratio Schedules

A fixed ratio schedule results in a reinforcement after a specific number of behaviors.  Getting a free cup of coffee after buying four cups of coffee is a fixed ratio. On a fixed ratio schedule, the person's rate of exhibiting the behavior increases the closer they get to the reward - once they buy three cups of coffee, they tend to buy the fourth more quickly to get the reward. Fixed ratio schedules result in a fairly high rate of behavior on average, because they have a known outcome, and the outcome relies on what the person does, but that rate is unsteady and increases the closer they get to the reward.  However, if you stop giving the reward, the behavior quickly stops.

A variable ratio results in a reinforcement after a random number of behaviors. This is the slot machine schedule.  On a slot machine, you get the payout (reinforcement) after a random number of pulls of the handle.  This schedule also results in a high rate of behavior, but it is much steadier than the fixed ratio, because the person doesn't know which behavior will result in the reward. This means you can reward fewer behaviors on average than in the fixed ratio schedule.  If you reinforcement after a random number of cups of coffee, for example, you might be able to give a free cup of coffee after every ten cups on average and still get the same (or higher) rate of coffee buying as you do reinforcing every after every four cups bought. If you use a variable rate schedule and you end up stopping the reinforcement, the behavior tends to continue longer than with a fixed rate schedule, because the person still thinks the next behavior will be the one to get the random reward.

Interval Schedules

A fixed interval schedule relies on giving reinforcement after a certain time period, rather than after a certain number of behaviors, as long as the behavior occurs in that interval.  In the classroom, exams are generally on a fixed interval, because they usually occur after a fixed amount of time.  Students tend to increase their study time right before the exam in order to get the reward of a good grade, and then their studying slacks off until the next exam comes around, when it increases again. As long as they study enough (and appropriately) within that time period, they will get the reinforcement of a good grade, and it doesn't matter if that studying is spread out over the entire time interval or all occurs at the end.

Finally, a variable ratio interval as the reinforcement coming after a random time period.  If exams are examples of fixed intervals, pop quizzes are examples of variable intervals.  Again, they can occur at any time, or at variable intervals. Just as a a variable ratio schedule results in a steadier rate of behavior than a fixed ratio, a variable interval results in a steadier level of behavior than a fixed interval.  Because students don't know when a quiz will occur, they are more likely to study every week rather than just before exams.

Gamifying Behavior Modification

Getting students to submit work on time in my online courses has always been a challenge. For many years while teaching online, I took points off for late work.  This penalty was a negative punishment - I took something away (points) to lessen the likelihood of a behavior reoccurring (turning work in late). It is a common and rather traditional way to handle late work. Then, I took my MOOC journey, which included a course in Virtual Performance Assessment. In that course, we discussed the issue of handling late work, and one participant said something that flipped my thinking on its head.

"If you deduct points for work being late, you are grading them on their ability to follow the rules, not on learning the material."

He was right.  Assigning A work a B grade just because it was late gives false feedback to the student. I had already been dissatisfied with the point deduction approach.  For one thing, it always leads to pleas for extension, some of which are valid when you are dealing with adult learners with multiple responsibilities.  For another, it didn't work very well.

So I stopped deducting points for late work and decided to gamify the submission of timely work. Now, instead of students losing points for late work, they earn a badge when they complete all of the work for a week, and if they earn that badge by the due date, they earn points - points and badges are game elements.

Giving them a badge and bonus points is a positive reinforcement, and reinforcement works better than punishment.  Giving it on a weekly basis if they complete that week's work on time is a fixed interval reinforcement schedule, which means the reinforcement doesn't occur after every behavior, but after a fixed time period if the behavior occurred. To avoid the problem of a reinforcement losing its incentive over time, for every week in a row they get their work in on time, their bonus increases - half a point the first week, one point the second, one and a half the third, two the fourth, etc.  If they miss a week, the next time they get the work done on time, the bonus starts over at a half a point. They still earn their badge, however, no matter when they get it done.

This approach has greatly increased on time work - and no one has to ask for an extension. As with any fixed interval, there is a flurry of activity right before the reinforcement is scheduled to occur, and most people do their work Sunday evening.  For most assignments, that's OK. If they choose to do all of the work in one sitting (like a class that meets once a week), that's their choice.

However, each week they need to interact with their classmates in a blog or discussion, and waiting until the last minute to do that, is not conducive to the interaction I want to encourage, so I need to come up with a way to reinforce doing their blog or discussion early in the week. Maybe I'll try a negative reinforcement - the first student to do their blog doesn't have to comment on any other blog, and the student who posts second, has to respond to only one other blog.  All other students would need to meet the assignment requirement of two comments. The problem with that, though is only a few students would benefit, when I want to get all students to complete the social activity early.

I'm going to try something that is done in the online courses I take from Adobe, the weekly winner.  The rules for who gets the weekly winner award are never really defined, which is interesting. I earned this award three times (which, considering the sheer number of weeks of these classes I've taken, isn't surprising). Once was for the actual assignment I did, and another was for what I wrote about my assignment. This was the third, which I got for several reasons...including fessing up to watching Lethal Weapon instead of paying attention to the live online class, thus learning how important it was to pay attention in class. However, even the many times I didn't win influenced my behavior, because I looked at the work another winner did and tried to model that work in the future.

Since I can make up the rules for the weekly winner as I go, I can reinforce whatever I want.  The first few weeks I will reinforce the behaviors on their social activities that encourage early but thoughtful submissions. Even though  only one student can win each week, it can still reinforce behaviors in other students as they observe why the award was given. That's a concept called social learning, where seeing someone else's behavior being reinforced actually reinforces the behavior in the observer as well - and I'll talk about that more in the next blog.