Murano 3301
Cheryl Boncuore | Academic Director, Kendall College
Ken Sadowski | SLATE
Session explores student and faculty experiences form a variety of institutions using traditional discussion boards in online, hybrid and campus-based classes. It takes a deeper dive with an institution that implemented blogs, journals, wikis and video everywhere in order to increase engagement. Results and Reaction will be discussed.
- What Engagement Means in Online Learning
- Faculty Favorites
-examination of faculty responses positive and negative
-Status Quo Expected mandated - Beyond the Discussion Board
-Other Tools
-Tools beyond Bb
Assumptions
- DB has been around for a long time
- DB is static and students don’t like it
- Faculty bear with it because they have to
- Don’t know any other tools
- Can’t use other tools
- Forced Responses
- No real social Interaction
What the Numbers told us?
- Survey 400 people from 100 insitutions
- Return rate of 20%
-84% Faculty
-12% admin
-3% staff
1% Instructional Designers
What LMS do you use? 74% Bb Learn
How do you Primarily Teach? 36% Online, 35% on Ground, 29% equally
Age Group – Nice Mix 25 – 65 and older
How long have you been teaching – 1 – over 20
What tools do your students prefer?
- Discussion Board 52%
- Other – 24%
- Don’t know 15%
- Blog 2%
- Journal 1%
- Facebook 6%
What has happened?
- Surprised about positive comments for discussion board
- perceived mediocre yet they use it
- molded it to what they wanted it to do to fully engage students
Discussion Board got some “new” friends…
Defining Engagement –
- Connecting all institutional constituents to the activities of teh learning, discovery and the academic topics of study
- Great Engagement leads to Greater Retention
- Every class must go beyond institution walls
- Fits Mission of University
Tools of Engagement
DB – pre-developed online courses, traditional tool, what else is there?
BB Tools – Journals, blogs, wikis, surveys, video everywhere, rubrics
Web Tools – Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Skype, Big Marker(video conferencing tool – web based no java)
Don’t always look for right answer…look for group work, engagement and problem solving process.
What did we learn?
- Tools that are available to us can be used in interesting ways
- Faculty use tools that they are comfortable with
- It’s not the tool, it’s the pedagogy!
What’s Next?
- What direction are we headed?
- What should the next generation “social board” look like?
- Tell us what you think? – http://slategroup.org/discussion
eLearning Frenzy 