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.

Games People Play: The Rules of the Game

‘That’s enough about lessons,’ the Gryphon interrupted in a very decided tone: ‘tell her something about the games now.’

- Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

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Have you ever wondered why your kids (or, based on the game requests in my Facebook feed, YOU) are willing to sit for hours playing computer games but trying to get them to sit and do their homework is like pulling teeth? Ten million people a day play Candy Crush, paying over $2,000,000 a day for the add-ons and upgrades to the free game, and the company that produces that game is worth $5.69 billion. Game makers know how to use psychological principles to motivate players to pony up a few dollars at a time to get those special boosts.

Business has taken what game makers know and applied it to boosting sales.  Have an app on your phone that gives you rewards for certain behavior? Every time you use it, you are playing their game...literally. Buy a cup of coffee and earn stars for a free cup. Make a certain combination of purchases and earn more stars. Visit twice in a week and earn 25 bonus stars, but visit three times to earn 100 stars. Each one of those activities is designed to increase the likelihood that you will buy more coffee.

What does this have to do with learning? Imagine if you could harness the power of game playing to motivate students to learn? What if you could take what the makers of Candy Crush know about making people spend $2,000,000 a day on a FREE game and use it to get your students to participate more in class? Suppose you used what Starbucks knows about motivating people to buy overpriced coffee and applied it to motivating students to study?

You can...it's called gamification, and it is based on sound, psychological principles of motivation and behavior modification. Gamification is a huge topic, so I will spend the next several weeks covering various aspects of.  Let's get started with the basics...what are the rules of gamification?

What is Gamification?

Gamification is "application of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts." [Wikipedia]. In business, this application is designed to motivate people to buy a product, to increase brand loyalty. In education, this application is designed to motivate people to learn and solve problems. Gamification is not game-based learning, however. With game-based learning, students play a game from beginning to end to learn the course objectives. Gamification is layering game elements on to the traditional learning experience to increase motivation to learn.

I'm currently taking a course in Game Design from Adobe. In that course, we learned about "flow" as applied to games, where you get so wrapped up in playing that you lose track of time. the game is hard enough to be challenging but not so hard that you get frustrated. The concept of flow applies to any task in which you become so immersed in what you are doing that it takes up all of your concentration, and you are not affected by outside distractions.

When I saw that, I immediately thought of Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal development. According to Vygotsky, learning takes place in that sweet spot where learners can achieve a skill with the help of a teacher or peer, but not on their own. If the task at hand is too hard, they cannot achieve it, and they become anxious. If the task is to easy, they can already achieve it on their own, and they become bored.

To me, there couldn't be a clearer parallel between game-playing and learning!

But it gets better.  In the live class, there was a discussion of flow in gaming and how you design games to optimize flow. A game with optimal flow would have:

• Clear goals
• Chance of completing task
• Immediate feedback
• Continuously challenging
• No distractions

Again, I was struck by the parallel between gaming and learning.  A well-designed learning experience has clear goals, lies within that zone of proximal development to make it possible for the learner to complete it with the teacher's guidance, provides feedback the learner can use, and is challenging enough to make it interesting...and provides no extraneous information to distract the learner.

The idea behind gamification in learning is to take what we know about making people want to play games and apply that to making them want to learn, that layering of game elements onto learning to help them get into the "flow" of learning.  I'll go into details about what those game elements are and how to apply them to learning in future posts, but for now, let's look at the two major categories of elements.

Game Mechanics vs. Game Dynamics

In simplest terms, the game mechanics are the rules and the rewards.  What are you supposed to do, and what do you get if you do it? Buy a cup of coffee and you earn a star is an example of a rule and a reward. String together enough of these rules and rewards, and apply them consistently or with a specific schedule, and you will get people to keep buying coffee.

But why they keep coming back is part of the game dynamics. Game dynamics are those parts of the game that adjust or modify based on different players preferences. People are individuals, and not everyone is motivated by the same thing all the time, so you need to change up your game once in a while.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, my coffee example is Starbucks.  Every time I get my triple shot nonfat raspberry mocha, I earn something like ten stars.  That's nice, but it isn't why I buy a triple shot nonfat raspberry mocha, so I won't make a special trip across town to get one just for the stars.  But once in a while, Starbucks sends me a special offer, where I can earn 100 stars if I buy my mocha and, say, a breakfast sandwich. I'm all over that, because I usually get a breakfast sandwich when I get my mocha anyway, so I will make sure to stop when that particular offer is in effect.

However, once in a while they offer bonus stars for making multiple visits in a week, 25 stars for two visits but 100 stars if you make three visits.  I don't think I have ever taken advantage of that offer, because I rarely visit Starbucks more than once a week, because it's on the other side of town, and it makes me later than usual for work (I am so not a morning person..). The reward for doing something I wouldn't normally do has to be pretty big to get me to do it, while the reward to do something I already have a tendency to do can be smaller.Taking advantage of the relationship between inclination and incentive is part of the game dynamics; what the inclination and incentive are would be mechanics.

(Starbucks is the master of gamification. That special reward for buying a breakfast sandwich doesn't just happen to be for the non-coffee menu item I buy most often, they track my purchases on my Starbucks app...and they were one of the first to let you pay with your phone. Getting a reward buying a sandwich is game mechanics; knowing what sandwich I'm inclined to buy is game dynamics. And making it easy to pay with my phone is just genius.)

So that's the difference between game mechanics and game dynamics - the mechanics is the what and the dynamics is the why. The tough part comes in understanding what will make some people do what you want them to and why, and for that you need to understand some psychology...which will be the subject of the next post.

(If you want to see what I have been learning in my Games Design class, check out my learning journal. You don't want to know how many hours I spent tweaking that volcano...talk about flow!)

You might be a correspondence course if....

'I think I should understand that better,' Alice said very politely, 'if I had it written down: but I can't quite follow it as you say it.'

- Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

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This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education popped up on my Facebook feed recently.

Western Governors U. Might Have to Repay $700 Million in Student Aid

$700 MILLION! Why?

I did a little searching, and found this article from Inside Higher Education that had a little more information.

Federal Audit Challenges Faculty Role at WGU

In essence, what the report found was that WGU's online course offerings lacked "regular and substantive interaction between students and their instructors" rule for online courses. Instead, their courses were considered "correspondence courses." If an institution offers more than 50% of its courses as correspondence courses, it is ineligible for Title IV financial aid funds.

While WGU was under scrutiny for its competency-based education model, the "regular and substantive interaction" rule was put in place when distance education courses became eligible for federal financial aid. Financial aid was limited for correspondence or "telecourses" because of the rampant fraud that became widespread when GIs returned from war with GI Bill education money available, but little time to take traditional college courses. In the early 90's, Congress limited the amount of aid available to students taking correspondence courses; to do so, they had to define what a correspondence course was:

Correspondence course: (1) A course provided by an institution under which the institution provides instructional materials, by mail or electronic transmission, including examinations on the materials, to students who are separated from the instructor. Interaction between the instructor and student is limited, is not regular and substantive, and is primarily initiated by the student. Correspondence courses are typically self-paced.

Fairly recently, distance education was defined as:

Distance education means education that uses one or more of the technologies listed in paragraphs through (4) of this definition to deliver instruction to students who are separated from the instructor and to support regular and substantive interaction between the students and the instructor, either synchronously or asynchronously. The technologies may include -
(1) The Internet;
(2) One-way and two-way transmissions through open broadcast, closed circuit, cable, microwave, broadband lines, fiber optics, satellite, or wireless communications devices;
(3) Audio conferencing; or
(4) Video cassettes, DVDs, and CD-ROMs, if the cassettes, DVDs, or CD-ROMs are used in a course in conjunction with any of the technologies listed in paragraphs (1) through (3) of this definition. 

The primary difference between these two definitions is the phrase, "regular and substantive interaction between the students and the instructor." While the definition of distance education requires the use of technology for content delivery and communication, there is nothing in the definition or correspondence courses that precludes its use.

In terms of financial aid, this isn't a big issue for us (the DOE has many bigger fish to worry about there), but it is in terms of accreditation. Middle States clearly states in its distance education guidelines that "Course design and delivery supports student-student and faculty-student interaction." While they don't say in what format or how frequently that interaction occurs, if students can make it through your online class without any contact from you - or without you ever seeing any work they do - then your course doesn't meet that criterion. It might be a correspondence course...

Definitions

What constitutes "regular and substantive interaction?" A key concept to remember in trying to interpret distance education requirements is the general purpose: to ensure that students enrolled in distance education classes get an educational experience equivalent (not equal) to that which they receive in the traditional classroom. According to a presentation by representatives of the Department of Education, "regular and substantive interaction" should meet the following criteria at a minimum:

Regular:

You interact with your students in the classroom on a regular basis, so you need to interact with your online students on a regular basis.  Students also need to know when they are expected to interact with you or with each other and that interaction must be required, not optional. That doesn't mean the interaction needs to be face-to-face (equal) or even in real-time. It does need to occur at regularly scheduled intervals; since classroom courses meet a minimum of once a week, you should interact with your online students at least once a week. It should also require some sort of response from the student to make it an interaction, not just an action on your part. These interactions also need to be initiated by the instructor; students asking for help or clarification, for example, do not meet this criteria.

Substantive:

To be substantive, it has to be detailed and related to the academic content.  A grade is not substantive.  Providing individualized feedback to an assignment is substantive. Answering a technical question about the course is not substantive; answering a question to explain specific course content is.  An auto-graded quiz is not substantive, even if students receive automatic feedback on each question, because they are not interacting with the instructor, just the technology.

Sample Activities

What sorts of activities can you include in your course to meet this? Anything that you initiate, students respond to, and you respond back meets the criteria.  Usually these activities will require students to write something that you respond to, rather than just answer multiple choice questions. Here are just a few examples:

Discussions

This is the most obvious way to meet this requirement. You can include a weekly discussion topic in which students are required to participate and in which you participate as well.  You should require not only an initial posting, but define a minimum number of responses students need to make.

You don't need to respond to every posting, but you should monitor the discussion two or three times a week, and respond to at least some of the postings.  You might answer questions students have or steep the conversation in a specific direction so students consider alternative viewpoints.

You can make this a graded discussion and use a rubric to streamline the grading process.  This is another way to meet that "substantive" portion of the requirement, because it gives you another opportunity to provide individualized feedback to students and to tell them how to improve their performance in the course.

I use discussions to move beyond the textbook into less concrete topics.  Sample discussions in my astronomy course include space exploration funding (should it be public or private), sexism and racism in science, what part of the Solar System should we explore next, and will we find signs of life elsewhere in the universe in our life time. These are all topics that don't have a right or wrong answer and give students a chance to look beyond the hard facts of a topic and form and support an opinion.

Blogs

Similar to discussion, blogs can be weekly requirement.  However, instead of a "back and forth" exchange like a discussion, blogs are a single posting with comments.  Again, like discussions, you need to define for students the required level of a participation, and you need to read an comment on student blogs as well.  You can use rubrics to grade blog participation as well.

I've used an "In the News Blog" assignment for several years.  I give students a specific topic, and they need to find an online news article (with very loose definitions of "news") to blog about.  The blog has a specific format, with requirements for format and summarizing, and students must comment on at least two postings from their classmates. As with discussions, you should respond to blog postings a couple of times a week by posting your own comments; you could even post your own blog as an exemplar for student work.

A key part of this assignment is the requirement for students to include a question they still have after reading their article. I can answer the question by commenting on the blog or in the feedback when I grade the blog assignment. This allows me to meet the substantive portion of the interaction requirement.

Written Assignments

Rather than relying solely on auto-graded assignments (which do not meet the substantive portion of the interaction requirement, since they provide only a grade and not specific feedback from you as the instructor), include written assignments as well.  These could be essay questions on chapter quiz or separate assignments that require more in depth writing.

I include weekly virtual labs or critical thinking assignment in my courses.  Students need to answer specific questions, submit their assignment as Word document attachment, and I provide specific feedback when grading.

Collaborate Sessions

Every faculty member who uses Blackboard Learn has access to Blackboard Collaborate, Blackboard's web-based conferencing tool.  You can use Collaborate to run a real-time lectures or discussions with students online. The challenge for using it to meet the regular and substantive interaction requirement is requiring students to attend the session.  It is difficult to find a time when all online students are available to meet online; most online students take online courses because of time flexibility. However, if participation is NOT required, it doesn't meet the regular and substantive interaction requirement.

You can get around this in a couple of ways.  You could offer the same session twice, for example, in order to give students more options. If you make this time requirement known to students upfront (through information in WebAdvisor or on the Online Course Request form), students will know that they need to schedule their time appropriate.  You can also record the session, and require students to watch the video and complete some written activity to which you respond based on the recording.

While holding online office hours is an excellent use of Collaborate, and one all faculty should employ, they don't meet the "regular and substantive interaction requirement." Just like office hours don't meet the requirements for class time in determining credit hours, online office hours are not considered regular and substantive interaction. Students are not required to attend office hours, so while you may offer regular office hours, student participation is not considered to be regular.

Looking Ahead

These aren't the only activities that can meet the "regular and substantive interaction" requirement. I would love to hear about any examples you might have; please post them in the comments. As long as they:

• are initiated by the instructor
• require a student response
• occur at regular, relatively frequent intervals
• relate to academic content
• allow you to provide a response or individualized feedback to the student

they can meet this requirement.

Again, we are not in danger of having to return financial aid money like Western Governors University, but our next Middle States accreditation visit is just around the corner. You should implementing activities in your online courses now to meet the regular and substantive interaction requirement before we are forced to do so in order to be able to continue to offer online course and programs and maintain accreditation. Even one activity a week that meets these criteria will improve our chances of meeting accreditation requirements, and more importantly, improve our online courses.

Learning to Love (not Loathe) Layers

‘You don’t know much,’ said the Duchess; ‘and that’s a fact.’

- Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

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So, I had a bit of an "Ah-ha!" moment this morning. Bear with me for a moment while I set the stage...

As I mentioned before, in the past year or so, I have taken several free, online courses to learn how to use Adobe products to create visual learning experiences for my online students. One of the cool things about Adobe software is you learn about something in one product and it generally applies to others.  That's usually a good thing.

Except for layers.  Layers have been the bane of my existence. Now, layers sound like really cool things.  Every shape you draw in Illustrator, every object you animate in After Effects, every track you add in Premiere, every mask you create in Photoshop resides on a separate layer.  You can group layers and ungroup them, you can turn them on and off, you move them around, which is important since whatever is in the top layer is what you see...unless you change the layer's opacity or you turn it off. You can isolate an object to modify it by selecting its layer. You can duplicate an object by duplicating its layer. You can even nest layers within layers creating levels of sublayers.

Layers are pretty fundamental to the effective and efficient use of this software. In fact, they are so fundamental, that I never really learned about them in these courses.  Or rather, I was never taught about layers.  I was taught how to do things, and in that process, saw how layers aided that process, but at no point was there a lesson about layers and how they work.  Most of what I know about layers involved a lot trial and error and fair amount of swearing.

I understand the rational behind this; my situation of having zero, zip, nada, niente, nichts experience with Adobe software as well as no graphic design background when I started taking these courses is pretty unique, something I quickly realized from the very start. There may be a bit of self-selection going on there though. Since these are free courses, and there is no penalty for not finishing (*cough*UX to UI *cough*)(*cough*twice*cough*)(*cough*3rd time's the charm*cough*), someone who feels they don't have the background knowledge may drop out early.

I know not everyone is as persistent as I am.  Those of you who know me might say stubborn. Those of who know me really well might say pig-headed.

But I had a big problem I wanted to solve, and so I was willing to put up with a whole lot of discomfort to work on solving that. I would have liked to have a LITTLE more information to start with, but that's the challenge of teaching people with a variety of background skills, balancing teaching the lowest levels without boring the higher ones.  It's also part of the expert-novice dichotomy; experts often forget all the little bits and pieces they had to learn to become experts (that's why newly-learned are sometimes better teachers for true novices than experts, which is the subject for another post...)

OK, we're almost to the Ah-Ha! moment.

One of the first Adobe apps I learned to use was Illustrator, and I use it a lot.  In fact, I probably use it more than anything else. I often use it to draw images like those to the right that show a process over a period of time...like the evolution of stars in a cluster over 10 billion years.  These images are all the same except for two things; the time frame and the position of the stars. The way I created these was to do the first one, save it, save a copy, modify the time and the star pattern on that, save it, save a copy, modify the time and star pattern on that, and repeat three more times. That worked, but it left me with six versions of the same illustration...six versions which I had to fix when I realized I had a typo in the word Luminosity.

I used Illustrator for MONTHS before I realized it used layers. Then I decided to learn Character Animator, and I had to learn how to use layers in Illustrator.  It was painful. Productive...but painful.

This morning, I was working on another project that involved making a change to something I created in one app (an animation in After Effects) which automatically updated in a project in which I used it in another app (a movie in Premiere Pro).  As I was marvelling over that, I thought how cool it would be if I made a change in one version of an Illustrator project - like fixing a typo in Luminosity - it would automatically update in all versions.

And then I had my Ah-Ha! moment. Those of you who know me know it was more like a "Karen, you idiot" moment.  Those of you know know me really well know it was more like a "Karen, you dumbf---" moment.

I realized I could have used layers.  I could have created one project, grouped the time and star pattern, duplicated that group five times, changing the time span and star pattern in each group. Then when I export the image as a PNG to use it in my interactive lectures, I can hide each group in turn to get my sequence of main sequence turn-off images for a stellar cluster.

And then I realized I could have used it in this image where I created multiple versions of this one to teach the breakout of the four fundamental forces after the Big Bang.

 Or this one I where I used multiple versions to teach the major epochs in the timeline of the universe from the Big Bang to present day.

Or these that show the different possible fates of the universe.

And don't even get me started on this one.  I must have a dozen different versions of this - which I will need to completely redo if they discover Planet 9, which would be a trans-Neptunian planet, of which there currently are none in the Solar System

That Ah-Ha! moment is when the light bulb goes off.  Its when all those higher order thinking skills finally come together. You have analyzed your learning and evaluated its usefulness and created  your own understanding of how something works or how it relates to your world. In the words of American Idol, you've made it your own.

This is important because it makes for deeper and more meaningful learning.  Earlier in my Adobe journey someone could have made that suggestion, and I would have understood it, but I would not have internalized it as much.  I would not have had that moment where suddenly it all came together and finally made sense - to me, not to someone else.

That is hard to do in a classroom.  As teachers, our first instinct is to explain, to direct, to guide to the correct path. Sometimes it's because it takes more time than we have to wait for that understanding to occur naturally in each student. Sometimes it's because we assume a student won't get to that point, and we want to help them. Sometimes it's just a natural instinct to fix a problem.

But maybe the next time you see a student struggling, take a moment to let them work it out on their own.  If they ask for help, give them guidance on how to figure out the answer rather than guiding them to the answer. Work on their problem solving skills instead of solving the problem for them. It may take longer to get there, but in the end they will learn more and better.

I now have a grudging respect for layers.  I may not actually love them, but I no longer loathe them...much.  I have my Ah-Ha! understanding of them and how they can make what I do easier.  That's the sort of learning moment we should want our students to experience at some point, rather than feel like we need to explain everything. It's a powerful moment.

I still hate Photoshop, though.