Distance Education Best Practices Greats

After reading about the best practices and how some schools put them into place, the thing that still strikes me is how far we have come in the past 10 years with distance education.  While there are still times when I hear interviews on the radio comparing a school such as University of Phoenix with a school like Villanova and the commentator saying that Villanova would win every time, I think those things are changing. I think that more and more schools are even offering students the ability to get their degree online even when they have a full on-site campus which is the case for Liberty University.  The research is proving that the online courses do not have to less than the regular brick and mortar class but can actually be better. The online class can cost a college less money because they do not have to own real estate for the students to gather and take their classes. 

Lynn Smith wrote an article for Distance Learning magazine entitled Best Practices in Distance Education and she writes about a study by R.E. Mayer (1989) that states that “on effect size differences for understanding with text alone versus text and graphics.” (Smith, 2006)  Smith also writes that “Mayer’s view is a constructivist view of learning” (Smith, 2006) Students have a need to interact with their instructor whether it is face to face, on Skype or even on video that was recorded for the student to learn from.  The distance learning classroom offers many opportunities for the learner to connect with their teacher and for the teacher to deliver their course materials in a variety of ways.

Another issue that Smith outlines is assessment stating that "online assessment must be authentic, ongoing, multideminsional and reflective to be effective in a distance environment" (Smith, 2006)

The distance classroom also should include collaboration among the classmates as this helps to keep the student from feeling isolated and disconnected from the class.  When teaching and learning in a distance learning environment the student must be disciplined and manage their time well and the teacher must be organized and teach a course that is both interesting and that grabs the students attention while helping them to learn the material.

I have attended online classes to complete the work on my undergraduate degree and now on my graduate level courses and I must say that the combinations of methods used to deliver materials works very well for my learning style. I enjoy having more responsibility for my learning and being accountable to take care of my education. I am a visual learner as well and it really helps to have various digital tools at my disposal when I am learning in the online environment.

Below are a few different articles that I read for this project.

Chen, C.-H., & Howard, B. (2010). Effect of live simulation on middle school students' attitudes and learning toward science. Educational Technology & Society, 13(1), 133+. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.liberty.edu:2048/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA221919034&v=2.1&u=vic_liberty&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w

Ion Mierlus-Mazilu, & Majercsik, L. (2010). Trends in distance education. Bucharest, Romania, Bucharest: Technical University of Civil Engineering from Bucharest. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/841118669?accountid=12085

Smith, L. M. (2006). Best practices in distance education. Distance Learning, 3(3), 59-66. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/230695897?accountid=12085

Simonson, M., Schlosser, C., & Orellana, A. (2011). Distance education research: A review of the literature. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 23(2-3), 124-142. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12528-011-9045-8

Evidence-Based Practice Webliography Week 5

The following is the chapter 3 summary, entitled Evidence-Based Practice, written by Winnie White and myself-

Chapter 3 is one of the three foundational chapters in the textbook. The chapter focuses on the importance of evidence-based practice as it relates to e-Learning courses.  Evidence-Based Practice addresses the importance of doing research on a topic that will be taught to a class.  Before a lesson can be prepared  the instructor should look at what the research has to say (Clark & Mayer 2011) research should be done to find cases where the particular lesson's subject has been taught. The chapter outlines three approaches to research on instructional effectiveness.  The main point of instruction is to be effective and to teach the learner, there are three essential questions that should be asked about the research, what works, when does it work and how does it work.  The research will answer at least one of these questions to determine the overall instructional effectiveness with the key focus being on whatever works while presenting evidence that outlines how it works and under what conditions.

Experimental comparisons must include criteria that relates to the lesson that the instructor is preparing. If the comparative research does not apply to the lesson then it has no relevancy and therefore the research is virtually useless according to chapter 3.  The research studies that are selected should be close to the lesson that is being prepared and focus on the type of instructional method and learning environment that reflects yours, if you are developing an online course, for example, the research should include e-Learners. The chapter encourages experimental comparisons as the criteria for determining whether or not the research is good.  The last point that relates to good experimental comparisons include experimental control, random assignment and appropriate measures (Mayer, 2011a).

In some studies, there is no difference that shows up in the control group and the experimental group.  There are several reasons why this could occur.  The first reason could be as simple as the treatment does not actually affect the students.  Some studies could show no difference if the study size is not big enough.  The actual test that was looking for significance might not be adequate to detect a difference. Another reason could be that the treatment was not different enough to actually make a difference in the groups. Also, if the material was easy for the groups being tested, the treatment would not be effective because there would be no need for a treatment. Researchers should be careful about confounding variables.  An example of a confounding variable would be if there were two groups and one group was stacked with learners with higher intelligence scores.  That would make a difference in the outcome. When comparing two groups, there is a control group which does not receive the treatment and the test group which does receive the treatment. To find the standard deviation of these two groups, look at the test scores and see how they are spread out. The variation of these group scores shows the standard deviation. Two statistical measures that this chapter focuses on are probability and effects size.  In looking for treatments that are considered effective, probability should be less than .05 (p<.05) and the effect size should be .5 or greater.

When trying to decide if a research is relevant, look at who the learners are. Do the learners in the research design match the learners in the experiment you are designing or are they transferable?  Make sure the study is an experimental study that has a random and control group. If the research has been replicated and results have proven to be the same, that is a good indication that it was a good research design.  If the test measures learning recall rather than application then it might not work for workforce learning goals that are application based. Always go to the results section and look to see if there is a significance score (p<.05) and an effect size of .5 or greater. One special type of research article is a meta-analysis.  A meta-analysis looks at experiment results on many studies that test the same effectiveness of the same instructional method and record the effect size for each study and compute an average effect size from across all of the studies.  

Mayer, R. & Clark, R (2011). e-Learning and the science of instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

REFLECTION:
It is important that today's educator keeps pace with what is going on within the greater education field outside of their particular school and even their district. One of the ways to keep up with what is happening within a course discipline is to read about different research that is being done. In Chapter 3 the focus is on evidence-based practices and how comparing schools and/or lessons that are similar to what the researcher is teaching can enhance their understanding of trends and when applied to their course can improve the educational process. Reflecting upon what others are doing in the middle school classroom where I teach, really helps me to plan lessons that include many of the key points important to the education of students at my grade level. I often look for research that includes technology in their lessons as this is my area of teaching.
After reading chapter 3 my thoughts about evidence-based practice was enhanced. I am encouraged now more than ever to stay as current as possible with the latest advancements in technology as it related to middle school students. When I started teaching in 1998 there were very few resources or cases that had been researched that included courses about technology or the ways that technology had affected student performance. That has changed tremendously as chapter 3 detailed, over the last 5-6 years there have been a growing number of research bases (for example, Clark, 2010, Clark & Lyons, 2011, Mayer, 2005, 2008, 2009, etc) These research studies provide the learner with a solid base to learn from.
Evidence-based research can certainly help when designing an eLearning courses about the flipped classroom as we are doing for our ISD project. The concept of the flipped classroom is new and finding examples of schools that are using it and reporting on their progress helps in our design process so that we can learn from the challenges that others have faced. By researching the flipped classroom and how other educators have used it to teach various levels of students we will have a good source of evidence to use in planning our final eLearning lesson.
My plans after graduating from Liberty University include applying for teaching positions that will utilize the new knowledge that I have acquired. I do not know for sure whether or not I will switch from the traditional classroom to working in an online environment but the research that I am doing is helping to equip me for such a step. Evidence-based practice gives me an opportunity to peek into other classrooms and will help me to make a more informed decision about which way to go after my graduating from Liberty which also coincides with my daughter's graduation from high school and my son's undergraduate graduation. This will be a transitional period for us all and the education that we will carry with us, particularly my Liberty education will advance my career greatly.

REFERENCE:
Brian, R. B., Krista, D. G., & Jennifer, C. R. (2008). A scaffolding framework to support the construction of evidence-based arguments among middle school students. Educational Technology, Research and Development, 56(4), 401-422. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/218028844?accountid=12085

Online Assessment--Week 4

Take a virtual field trip to the library databases and identify several articles to answer the following questions:

What are those revolutions?
Based on what I read in the research the online assessments can range from online tests to collaborative assignments with other students in the courses.  There are projects that can be produced by the student to demonstrate their understanding as well as the timed test that is graded immediately.

What are the challenges?
Some of the challenges that eLearning can produce in terms of assessment include the fact that many of the ways that online assessments are designed based off of the traditional brick and mortar school assessments.  These do not always translate very well for instance if the instructor chooses multiple choice questions that are graded by the computer rather than the instructor.  With the ever-increasing demand on the instructor’s time unintentional delays in supplying feedback to the student can occur to the disadvan- tage of both the student and the instructor. Often the most valuable feedback occurs at the final stages of the learning path, giving no real assistance to the student and only limited feedback to the instructor. (Farrell & Ying 2004)

 

What is current online and mobile assessment methods being used and what is there effectiveness? Currently online and mobile assessment methods include the Multiple Choice Questions format, with the addition of a mechanism to facilitate the registration of their level of confidence with their response to each of the options available. The generated students score is designed to reflect their understanding of the reviewed topic. (Farrell & Ying 2004)  

One writing program partnered college professors and high school teachers to grade students work in English.  The educators read the students' work and recorded their comments.  There was an online scoring website that the educators would use to assess the work (Griffin, et al, 2010)

Summarize what you learned.
Assessments online need to be adjusted to help students gain a better understanding of the material. The assessments must provide quick feedback to the students as well as allow the instructor time to produce the feedback.  Online presentation tools, audio recordings and video captioning can also be used to help the educator understand what the student is attempting to produce.  These methods are also used to return feedback to the students.

Then, briefly, reflect on the following:

Based on your personal theory of learning, how should online learners be assessed?
The online learner must be given feedback quite frequently. The assessment must be easy to understand and the online learners must have thorough instructions about the expectations.  The online learner can take essay based assessments as well as take timed online tests.

How is this congruent with what is understood, in the literature, about mobile and online education assessment?  Since I have taken online classes for over 5 years and have taken tests and completed assignments online and just like the articles that I read, I know that the online educational environment is here to stay.  The online educational environment is growing as people gain more access to online resources and creating different ways to evaluate the work of online students is crucial to the success of the online educational movement

References

Farrell, G., & Ying, K. L. (2004). Innovative online assessment using confidence measurement. Education and Information Technologies, 9(1), 5-19. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/B:EAIT.0000024258.29560.3c

Griffin, M., Falberg, A., & Krygier, G. (2010). Bridging the gap between college and high school teachers of writing in an online assessment community. Teaching English in the Two Year College, 37(3), 295-304. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/220965058?accountid=12085

Lawton, D., Vye, N., Bransford, J., Sanders, E., Richey, M., French, D., & Stephens, R. (2012). Online learning based on essential concepts and formative assessment. Journal of Engineering Education, 101(2), 244-287. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1016488788?accountid=12085

Fletcher, G. H. (2012). The new online assessments: what we know so far: two consortia of states are paving the way for online assessment of Common Core State Standards by 2014. Will your district be up to speed? T H E Journal [Technological Horizons In Education], 39(5), 20+. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.liberty.edu:2048/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA295058350&v=2.1&u=vic_liberty&it=r&p=ITOF&sw=w

Week 2 Behaviorism

Select one learning, distance education, or instructional design theory 

• behaviorism

You may choose one or two. 

When learning online students are required to demonstrate what they have learned.  Behaviorism is one way that this demonstration happens, this brings to mind the current movement of project based learning.  The students are not tested with standard vocabulary but they are assessed by doing different projects that will demonstrate what they have learned.

"B.F. Skinner, who had pioneered the principles of operant conditioning in the training of animals. Operant conditioning, as Skinner (1986) described it, was a metod of conditioning that reinforced an organism's spontaneous, natural behavior when it approximated a desired terminal behavior.  With continued conditioning the organism would eventually display the desired behavior consistently. Skinner became convinced that operant conditioning could be as effective when teaching human beings as it had been in the training of animals. (Skinner, 1968)." (Jason, et. el, 2005)

Jason, K. M., Stephen, C. Y., & Russell, T. O. (2005). Learning from programmed instruction:   Examining implications for modern instructional technology. Educational Technology, Research and Development, 53(2), 84-98. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/218036571?accountid=12085

Behaviorism has the various components to it such as the active learning, reinforcement, modeling and feedback.  Direct instruction approach to teaching is influencing the instructional design of today's online environment.  eLearners are expected to interact with their teacher more often and in a more detailed way then they may have been required in a traditional classroom.  It is believed that learners must be active in order to learn in the eLearning environment.  The instructional design must be such that it affords the student the ability and the space to demonstrate their engagement.

Susan, G. M., Barbara, B. L., & John, K. B. (2005). Direct instruction revisited: A key model for instructional technology.Educational Technology, Research and Development, 53(4), 41-55. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/218051643?accountid=12085

Then, summarize the key strengths (or usefulness) and weaknesses (or non- usefulness) of the theory for online or mobile course development.

Participating in discussions and completing projects does not always accurately demonstrate a students' understanding of content.  There are many different types of learning and there needs to be come cognitive understanding involved in the learning process. It is not just important to do but the student must also understand why they are doing and be able to articulate what is being done.  The student can be given feedback from their teacher and still not really be on the right track.

In a middle school environment such as the one that I teach we use a Learning Management System to help students become more engaged in their learning. They are active participants in the learning process because they are required to get their grades off the website.  They get their homework assignments there as well and they even engage their classmates and teachers in discussions online from home or from any mobile device.  This helps to build on the relationship within our small middle school community whether we are in school or at home on the weekends.  

Then, identify how you might practically apply this theory in distance education course development, or how the theory may serve as a foundation to your distance education course development.

The reason the behaviorism theory stuck out for me is because it is the way that I learn best. I deploy is within my classes quite frequently while always trying to discover ways that my students comprehend best.  We are a very hands on class and we work with computers, iPads, Lego robots and different other software to accomplish the necessary learning goals of the class. The students respond very well to the hands on components of the class and while we do not have much research there are times when they are called on to not just produce a product but to also tell how they came up with their answer.  They are required to create presentations that demonstrate the understanding and we work closely and the expectation is that as the instructor that I will give clear and positive feedback on a regular basis.

Behaviorism

1. How is behaviorism applicable to the distance education environment?  In the distance education environment is very applicable because you have to do something in order to demonstrate your understanding of whatever the topic is that you are studying.  When in the distance educational environment your answers to questions, participation in class discussions, collaboration with classmates and various other correspondence demonstrate your comprehension of the subject matter.
2. What concepts of behaviorism do I see as useful to distance education instructional design?  The practice, modeling, reinforcement and active learning are all concepts that are useful to distance education. The eLearning students have to use these different concepts to prove to the instructor that they understand the material.  The students will put into practice the lesson that is learning.  The instructor as in the case of this class which uses a very extensive web presence which contains a great deal of information to help the students succeed.  The resources are made available by the instructor and model for the student the type of distance learning environment that the instructor values and this is important.  Constant contact via email and blogs and feedback being given to the student is a way of reinforcing the concepts being taught.  Active learning involves the students in the process of engaged learning, they will have to demonstrate their understanding by producing a document that involves the lesson being taught.
3. What are some concrete examples of behaviorism (aside from the ones listed in this module?)  Concrete examples of behaviorism in this class will include as I listed above our requirement to create a blog to produce our responses.  The professor gives constructive feedback that reinforces the learning both by email and on the discussion board. The Blackboard that is used for this class is very thorough and has many different ways for students to gain access to the information being taught.  There is an audio presentation of the content and then there is also a written format so that the different types of learners can find the method that is best for them and learn in that way.

Week 2 EDUC 633

What do I believe about the following...

• How does learning occur?
• What factors influence learning?
• How should instruction be structured to facilitate learning?
• Think about how you learn. When you hear, read, or see something new, does it help to talk about it and reflect on it to better understand the new information? How about research? Does it help to do some active research on this new information?

I think that learning occurs best when the learner has a vested interest in the subject. When the student is engaged in the subject matter and they know why it will apply to their life or something that they are interested in then the student is more likely to spend extra time studying and working to understand what is being taught.  

The factors that influence learning include the level of interest that the student has in the subject or whether the topic is helping them reach their particular goal. If a student is interested in being a pediatrician for instance, then they know that the have to learn quite a bit about medicine and while all of the classes may not focus on children the overall goal will be to make them a better doctor for children.

Instruction should be structured to allow time to know the students and their objectives and goals.  This will help the instructor help the student to reach their goals. I have often heard about students who hate classes [my son] because they are not connected to the material and do not feel a part of the educational process.  This is a sure fire way to lose the students.  It takes extra effort, time and planning to engage students and get to know who is in your class but it will make for a better instructional and learning experience for all involved if it is taken into account.

I learn best by hearing the instruction and then being left along to process it.  I tend to write my answers down or type them as this helps me to organize my thoughts. I remember  when I was being taught to drive a car, we had classroom instruction and then allowed to actually drive the car with the instruction. When my mother attempted to help me, we made each other too nervous and she finally just let me take the car on my own. I still made slight mistakes when on my own but I relaxed and got the hang of what was being taught when left to process it at my own speed.

Week 1 Learning theory

This video answers the questions about learning.

My view on learning truly comes from the standpoint of being a lifelong learner myself.  I will be 50 years old in January and I can say that my happiest times in life have been when I was learning something.  I think that the thing that influences learning the most is exposure.  I know many people who don't know about things and mostly it is because they have never had an opportunity to experience it.  Today I was speaking to a colleague about skiing and how I really enjoyed it.  She is from Alabama and the thought of a sport that involves cold is not her idea of fun.  I am sure that if she goes and has the experience she would like it and get past the fact that she has to get so bundled up because after a couple of runs on the slopes she would heat up.  I think that instruction should be structured to expose students to different things. In our middle school for example our Geometry teacher takes his students to New York City to study the different structures so that they can take their math knowledge outside of the classroom and out into the real world.  I use Lego robots in my computer classes to engage students and give them a tool that they are very familiar with, Legos to teach them about the critical thinking that has to accompany basic programming. In our class we use the NXT box for programming with the Lego Mindstorm software.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pcb7XQo74KY

Hurricane Sandy

Hello everyone from Princeton, NJ

These are some of the pictures of the downed trees and utility poles from Hurricane Sandy. Our school has been closed all week and we have no power.  We have a great staff however and as a boarding school community we have all pitched in to make sure that the few students who did remain on campus are well fed, can take a shower and will not freeze.  We have made progress but we still have no power.  Prayers have gotten us through until now so if you will send some our way, we would appreciate it.

At this point I am praying to open school and get back to teaching on Monday.

LeRhonda's Introductory video

I had a tough start to this class but I think I'm making progress. I am posting this video again for those who did not get to see the edited version.  I made a few missteps but I think I've got it worked out now.

EDUC 633