Three Compliments

Today my students complemented me in three different ways. We have not met for a couple of weeks because of the Veterans' Day holiday, and one of them said she felt like it had been a long time since we last met. A second expressed surprise that we were so close to the end of the semester (one more meeting after today). The third said he was worried about taking a three-hour class but that each day he felt like it flies by.

Wikipedia and History

Ask students to research how current events affect Wikipedia's coverage of historical events compared to how those events are covered in a text as well as primary sources from the time.

Connecting current events to the past

Assignment idea for a recent history course: each week or topic the students find a news article on a similar topic and compare what happened in the past to what is going on now. Submit a short, sourced document that answers a few basic questions:

1. What can today's agents learn from the past?
2. What is something today that yesterday's actors did not face?

Fix the rubric for writing

More weight should be given to the response to argument, and the levels should be made so it is easier to give a satisfactory grade.

Nighttime on the quad

I was up late one night grading and decided to take a look at the classlist to see if anyone else was awake. To my surprise, at two o'clock more than a dozen of my students had the green dots indicating they were logged on to our learning management system. It could be that they did not log out when they finished earlier in the evening, and even if active they could have been in another course offering.

In my sleepy haze I had a vision of another place and time, where we were all together in a small, residential college located in a rural area. In my vision I was up late grading (of course) and decided to take a walk through the college quad. I looked up at the dorms to see several lights on in windows, and I wondered if those students were studying, socializing, or had left the lights on when they fell asleep.

Midterm Multiple Choice Questions

So this semester I faced a challenged on the midterm exam. Since every student was asked the same 20 questions on the chapter quizzes, how was I to select the 8 per chapter for the midterm? I started by selecting questions at random, but then I saw that some of them were a bit obscure and had been missed by a majority of students when they were asked on the chapter quiz. Instead I decided to ask the 8 that the students did best on from the chapter quizzes. That should help them do better on the midterm. I also made sure not to include any questions that referred to maps in the textbook.

Quiz changes

Some of the better students said they did not like how the quizzes were set up, and I could tell the scores were getting lower over the first three chapters. I made a change and set it up so that the questions are no longer in random order and that they are in the same order as the text. Hopefully the class will do better on the next chapter.

I also changed the submission view so that they could see the other answers to the questions after the quiz due date. The midterm and then final will have a subset of the questions so they will need to study all of them anyway.

Discussion extra credit

This semester I changed the way I encourage students to communicate with each other on the discussion board. They still get extra credit for writing to each other, but I tightened the criteria to earn points and placed a limit on the points possible.

I also changed how I record the grade data. Last semester I included the points with the grade item for each chapter topic, but this skewed the stats for discussion points. I also felt the need to break out the score for each chapter topic to show each part of the score (original post, replies to others, and replies from others).

This semester I have one grade item for all chapter topic discussion extra credit, and the comments for that only list the total extra credit points for each topic. After the first grading session, it feels more manageable.

A student's thoughts on testing

Lopez, Teresa (2011, September 10). What are we achieving in our testing [Msg 2469894]? Message posted to https://d2l.losrios.edu/d2l/lms/discussions/messageLists/frame.d2l?isShared=False&fid=57732&tid=105159&ou=178235

Teresa Lopez, 10 September 2011 (HCD320 discussion, message ID 2469894, https://d2l.losrios.edu/d2l/lp/homepage/home.d2l?ou=178235
Fall 2011, Discussion topic "Testing in an Online Class")

What are we achieving in our testing?

This is my first semester with online classes, so online testing is new to me.

I have taken a few tests already, and as Christina said, my teacher expected for me to use my notes/text... but there was a time limit on the test, so if I hadn't been very familiar with the material, looking it up would have been futile in getting a good grade.

It would have taken me too long to access the answers if I didn't know the material to a good extent.

The teacher also makes the students use the LockDown Browser which prevents the test taker from using the computer they are testing on to do any searches, etc.

Christina also made the good point that the tests that are done in person will eventually reveal if we are learning what we need to.

When it comes down to it... for the online part we could have a brainiac do all the work for us and we would get incredible grades.... but WHY are we taking the class in the first place?

Certainly, some of our classes are to fulfill requirements and, at least at first, are of little interest to us.  But we should realize the incredible blessing we have in being able to take ANY class and learn ANYTHING.

We are living in an incredible time and country where we are ABLE to take classes and learn.

WOW !

I think that we too often forget that for THOUSANDS of years (and even now in the greater percentage of populations around the world... even some here in poor areas) people COULDN'T take classes and learn what is served to us on a "silver platter."

If we take online classes and cheat, we cheat OURSELVES out of the incredible gift of learning and growing..... and for what?

A grade on a piece of paper?

Knowledge and personal growth is SO MUCH MORE than that.

I see online testing as a HELP to ME.

It is to help me see how I am doing and to adjust my work accordingly so I can get all I can from my classes... so I can learn and grow as much as possible.

I look at tests as I look at going to the dentist.

The dentist is helping ME.

I don't want her to find any cavities (I don't want to have any),

BUT if I DO have cavities, I WANT her to find them.

If she doesn't they will only get worse, and that is worse than getting the needed filling.

Tests are there to help me too.

Would I really want to loose that help by cheating?

No, I would not.  :)

Anonymous feedback

I created a Google form to collect anonymous feedback from students, and one used it to ask that I extend the deadline for assignments from 9pm to 11:59pm. They are due the night before our class. I picked that time for a couple of reasons. For one, I am awake at 9pm and therefore could be active on email or otherwise available should a student have a problem. Also I wanted them to get some sleep before class.

In reality, I do not check my email around 9pm Thursdays when assignments are due, and the technology we use is pretty reliable. Also, I remember being a student and getting work done during the wee hours of a due date. So I changed the deadlines on all assignments to 9am on Fridays, which is when our class begins. I posted a class announcement about this and will share the news in person with them this Friday. I will use a poll to ask them if they noticed the change before I make an announcement about it in class.

Time on roll

Today I spent a long time taking role, as I commented on one answer from each of the students' "Meet Me in 20 Questions" worksheet from last week. I think they appreciated the extra time, and after the first few I joked with the remainders that they were worried about what I would ask them when I got to their turn. I am not sure if it will help me remember their names, which is one of the reasons for doing the activity. The other is to help them feel a sense of connection, and I hope that it does.

Classroom time management

I like some of the student-skills and other activities for class and I sometimes have a hard time planning material to fit a course period precisely. I will try to develop a toolbox of these activities to use when needed to fill out a class meeting time.

Making up for missed class

Since this class only meets once a week attendance is important, so for the first time I award points for showing up. I found a good justification for awarding points online, as I have hesitated to do so in the past. I also want to give students an opportunity to make up for missed class, and I am doing the following this semester:

• 2 points awarded for being there when I take roll at the beginning of class.
• 8 points awarded for being there after the break (I may take roll again or have an in-class written assignment).
• 3 missed classes (whatever reason) and the student will be dropped.
• A student who misses class can earn up to 7 points by completing a written assignment. 
• 3 dropbox folders are created within the class, and students are added to them only as they ask for missed points
• question to be answered is from the publisher's test bank of essay questions
• 3-paragraph response is good, with quotes and page numbers from the text only
• full credit awarded if the question is answered, half credit without quotes, and 0 points if plagiarism detection is above 50%
• Student athletes who miss because of a scheduled event can earn 10 points for completing the same written assignment.
• If I decide not to drop a student after a third absence, no points can be earned for completing that assignment.
• Any points awarded are posted to the attendance grade item

It seems like a lot of work but does include accountability for attending class.

Twitter in the classroom and audience response

Friday I conducted my first use of an audience response system in my history class. I am using a system called Poll Everywhere, which allows me to post multiple choice or open-ended questions. I display a web page with the question and how to answer. Students can participate using Twitter, a smartphone-enabled web page, or via text message. The page updates with their answers in real time.

I am using the free version, which allows up to 40 responses per question and does not allow me to track how individuals respond. I asked two questions on the first day: how long will it take Professor Beyrer to respond to an email, and which course theme interests you the most.

I liked the interaction and my students appeared to enjoy participating. This week I plan on asking which of a set of terms they feel most comfortable explaining to another person, and I will tell them that the term with the largest number of responses will be on the list of terms to identify as part of our midterm exam. The same question will let me know which term(s) might need some additional explanation.

A couple of concerns came up for me. Not all of my students bring a cellphone or computer to class, and I do not want to disable a student just because of lack of means. That reason is why I use a service like this and avoid the use of a handheld clicker system (for my uses, I do not think the extra cost for students is worth it). I also keep the answers anonymous and in aggregate, so the fact that some do not participate is less of an issue. Since I have more than 40 students in my class, even if all of them could participate and chose to, not all would be able to. Finally, I stress that it is voluntary and tell them why I am using it (to help me get a quick assessment of their learning). I could pay for an upgrade that would allow me to track individual students, but to me the gain in data integrity is outweighed by the despair of those who do not feel able to invest in a cellphone.

Also I am a bit concerned that if I use the open-ended question I might get some inappropriate responses. For example, I thought of asking them to share a word or two describing how Congress treated President Johnson during the period known as Congressional Reconstruction. (In case you are wondering, they impeached him.) It is a great question and gets to the heart of the interpretive nature of the discipline, but it is possible that some of the budding historians in the class might not use words fit for public consumption. Poll Everywhere has a paid option that would allow me to moderate answers to open-ended questions, but I cannot see doing that in the middle of class. So I only ask multiple choice questions.

For the other uses of Twitter mentioned in the article, I would be concerned about the public nature of Twitter feeds. In that channel we leave the environment where students are able to develop their intellect guided by the caring hands of an instructor and enter a realm where they are subject to the rough grasp of uninformed and anonymous public opinion.

An instructor certainly could tweet and encourage students to follow, which might be a nice change from posting the same information within the walled garden offered by our learning management system. For student-to-student interaction, the discussion board provides a documented way for an instructor to assess how well students are doing, whether their course-related information is accurate, etc. Tweets are a bit too hasty for my taste, even if they sometimes are delicious.

I heard the following “tweetable” review of the album The Beatles on NPR:

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is a really really really really really really really really really really good song. There are others.

Student information sheet

I found an activity on collecting student information sheets and tried it in my first class. I created an activity called "Meet Me in 20 Questions." I gave each student a sheet with 20 numbered lines on it and asked a series of questions of each. I displayed the questions on the screen and answered them as I read them, sharing a little bit about myself during the process. The students handed them in and now I have a stack of papers with some interesting information. I posted my answers online as well as some aggregate data.

The next time I take roll I will spend a few seconds interacting with each student by highlighting something on their sheet. I will also try to make connections with the students later on as I cover particular topics, and I will ask them the question again about the most important event during our time period.

Welcoming new students

Mirroring something I do in the spring semester, on the first day of class in the fall I asked all those who were brand new to college to stand and the rest of us welcomed them to college with a round of applause. I hope all of them appreciated the gesture.

Poll Everywhere for audience response

On the first day of class I did two audience response questions. The first took a couple of minutes to explain and set up, and I was confused about how it worked joining a group of questions. I believe I will be able to use the same initial join code the whole semester, which means my students will be able to send a very short code (two digits) for each of the questions. It worked well, and they seemed to enjoy the task. I like breaking up lectures with questions and will keep in going.

Things to work on include how to involve those students who do not have cell phones or text plans. If I do something where I am trying to get feedback (muddiest point questions) I will likely include a paper instead so all students can participate.

Also, how often should I use a question in a long lecture? Every twenty minutes or so would be good, but it is hard to predict how many slides will take me that long.

Notes on updating - discussion descriptions with course file quicklinks

I am teaching the same prep this semester as last, so a lot of the content is ready for re-use. I notice that the quicklinks to course files within the description of a discussion topic did not get updated when I copied the material from last semester, so initially I had to re-do those. I decided to switch and make those files content topics to save myself from having to edit all those descriptions again.

Teaching from the Cloud

This semester I am going to try to teach as much as possible from the cloud. All documents will be google docs and presentations. I want it to help me keep my class content organized better.

Enhanced podcast options

I created podcasts for my course and showed images during lectures, and after the semester ended I looked into converting those into movies or enhanced podcasts. Making a movie was easy enough with iMovie, but the file sizes were pretty large. I estimated it would have been about 16GB total for the whole semester for large movies. The enhanced podcasts were smaller - the 5.4MB audio-only file became a 6.5MB file when images were added. However, the quality of the images meant they were much less useful. Since I already make the images available via a published Google Presentation, I think I ended up doing it the best way. Students can subscribe to the audio podcast and get the audio, and they can navigate through the images at their own pace. I will try to add an audio cue when I switch images so it will be a bit easier for students who are listening to the recording.

Congratulating successful students

Today was the final lecture day for my class, and I started by asking my students if any of them were either graduating this semester or transferring in the fall to a four-year college. A few did, and I had them stand up and I and the rest of the class gave them a round of applause for their success. I think they appreciated the recognition.

Missed the Spanish Civil War

I was so focused on a balanced lecture between the origins of war in Europe and Asia that I forgot to mention the Spanish Civil War. I used to show Picasso's Guernica as part of that lecture and include some art history. Next time I will try to remember it.

Plagiarism and the discussion board

I discovered a student who copied text directly from Wikipedia and submitted it as his entry for a chapter commentary discussion topic. The student submitted an attached file instead of putting text in the Message box. I downloaded the file to read it and opened it using Mac's preview function to read the text. Some of the words were underlined in blue and I hovered my mouse over them and found they were links to wikipedia.org and about.com.

I did not have a specific note regarding plagiarism on the discussion board (I have it for the written assignments) but my instructions for the chapter commentaries mention providing evidence from the text and citing page numbers for direct quotes. I will need to start including that in the future.

It is too bad that our system's integration with Turnitin.com does not include the discussion board.

I am glad I discovered this after my last class before spring break, as I now have more than a week to recover from my disappointment.

The Economist in class

Each week bring in an article (especially a leader) and read out loud to class to show the connection between the past and present, especially if an issue seems new today but confronted America in the past. What is the source of the quote attributed to Mark Twain: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme"?

Rubrics and writing grading

Use the rubric to calculate the grade for a writing assignment. Each criterion is worth some percentage of the grade and then each can be graded separately. Also connect it to the SLO.

Multiple mind maps

Mind maps can have a couple of uses in class. Doing one on the first day on all of the things going on in students' lives will help me get to know them better. I would do this by leading by example on the whiteboard in the classroom and have students do their own mind maps on paper.

Another day-one mind map could be on the class topic. What do my students know about what we are going to learn in the class? After doing the personal mind map they could draw one based on the most important events, people, and changes that occurred during the period covered by the class. This could then be repeated at the end of the class to see how their perspectives changed.

And mind maps can work for individual topics or lectures, even assignments.

Grading discussion extra credit

When someone replies to a student's post there should be only one point per reply per author regardless of the quality; otherwise the initial student might find out the score awarded to the other student ("courtesy point for 'I agree' posts").

Replies to the original need a scale:

• 6 points for quality paragraph with quotes and page numbers
• 4 points for quality paragraph without citations
• 2 points for "I like that you mentioned x"
• 1 point for "I like your attention to detail"

Searching Google for images

I found an unofficial Google blog entry with information on how to search images that are available for sharing under a Creative Commons license. It includes information on public domain images.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/06/find-creative-commons-images-in-google.html

Attendance without excuses

Or try awarding 10 points per day of attendance for the weekly writing assignment and 5 (6? 7?) points for the discussion makeup for those who miss. Extra credit to all for their responses above this requirement.

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For students who miss class regardless of the reason, give them an assignment on the discussion board to make up for that lost time. For example, write a two-paragraph commentary on the topic covered in class that day. The commentary would be due within a week of the missed class date, and it would have to meet the standards for a quality discussion post to count.

This requires strict enforcement of attendance policy. Points could be awarded for attendance to provide a value for each day. How would that fit into the competencies of the class?

Any student could reply to one of these messages with a comment to earn extra credit.

Competency-based grades

Does a passing grade (C) in a class mean achieving all of the course's competencies or student learning outcomes? If so, the grades above C become reflections of how well a student did in exceeding the basic achievement of those competencies. The instructor demonstrates the relative weight of each competency by assigning the class grades accordingly. Or the instructor could let the course grade come from the assignments, as usual, and not worry about whether a passing grade represents achieving all competencies.

Once a student has demonstrated a competency, that student could choose not to complete any additional assignments associated with that competency and accept a C grade on each. This requires each assignment to be tied to a single competency.

iPhone for podcasting

I record my lecture audio with the Voice Memos app on my iPhone, and I use the 3CRSS service to host a podcast using those files. I waited until the end of March to start cleaning up the files on my phone as they are in two places - on the 3CRSS server and on my local computer. Starting my next lecture I will rename the memo immediately so I can see a better name than the date and time on my phone. It will make cleanup a lot easier.

Grading a dropbox

I found using the Turnitin.com plagiarism detection service to have a nice side effect when grading. I can navigate among submissions within the Turnitin.com interface, which already opens in a new browser window. So I can open an originality report in one window and open the feedback page for that student in another window. This makes it important for students to include their names as part of the filename or somewhere in the text of the paper so I can easily identify whose paper is in the Turnitin.com window. Turnitin.com assigns a user number  but there is no easy way (if any) to match that to the student ID number or name.

Discussion setup

I have one discussion topic per chapter and the assignment is for students to write a two-paragraph commentary on the chapter. To help them get started I provide several prompts and say they could choose to respond to one of those. To encourage peer interaction I give extra credit for replies:

• Original author: 16 points possible for the original post
  2 points per quality reply
  1 point per courtesy reply
• Reply author: 8 points for a quality reply that is properly supported (quotes and page nos.)
  4 points for a quality reply
  1 point for a courtesy reply

I do not limit extra credit, and some enterprising students are testing how far they can go, so I added the following additional rules:

• No points for additional posts by the original author in the same thread
• Only the highest quality post gets graded for reply authors in the same thread

For the next time I teach with this, I will add the additional rule:

• Only the highest quality post gets graded for reply authors on the same specific topic anywhere in that chapter discussion topic (all those original authors still get extra credit for writing a post that inspires a reply)

Too much grading!

This class has too much grading of writing: six document analyses, nine discussion topics, and a research paper. I was a week late in grading a chapter discussion and I will end up a week late in grading a document analysis. A full-time colleague told me today it would be okay to drop an assignment, and I think I will do that. I am sure my students will be happy.

Discussion prompts

I had all of the discussion topics due before the midterm listed at the beginning, and the topic description includes the prompts that students can choose to answer. I decided to make the prompts a link from the topic description after the topic is locked. This should make the discussion topics less obtrusive and not require as much scrolling, especially toward the end of the semester.

Grading a dropbox folder

I discovered an efficiency in using the plagiarism detection tool for grading. The originality report is grouped by folder, so I open that in one browser window and the list of students with submissions in another browser window. The Turnitin window has navigation controls to move from one file to another, so using this navigation means I can provide feedback without having to download all the files. I do need to encourage students to provide their names in the text of the file or the filename, as otherwise I have to do some sleuthing to match the submission to the student.

Teaching with video - The Donner Party

I found an activity for analyzing the story of the Donner party by using the PBS video as testimony in a trial and then asking the student to write evidence as they watch the video. The trial is who is to blame for the disaster: the members of the Donner party themselves or Lansford Hastings, who told them about the tragic shortcut.

The video was spread over two class meetings and I wish I had more than ten minutes for discussion, but the students were interested in the video and the discussion was lively. I broke up the class into groups of three to five and had them discuss the evidence they collected and vote on a verdict. I then asked each for its verdict and for the strongest piece of supporting evidence. I liked it, and they were obviously interested in the video and the discussion.

Though it is from an eighth-grade history teacher, the worksheet and activity also did well in my lower-division class.

Wordle and discussion

I use the Wordle tool for each chapter's discussion topic to do a couple of things. It creates an interesting image that is generated by the words my students type in their discussion entries. It also highlights the words that were most commonly used, which helps me assess what interests them and write questions for exams.

I try to come up with a color scheme that matches the chapter in some way, and Adobe's Kuler web site is a great way to generate color values from an important image for that chapter. Wordle's settings I use include mostly horizontal, rounder edges, and maximum 75 words. I also leave the words as spelled and remove numbers. I open the Java applet in its own window and capture the screen at about 1300 x 800 pixels. On my Mac this makes a PNG file, which I upload as a new content item in Desire2Learn.

We'll see if my students appreciate it.

http://www.wordle.net/
http://kuler.adobe.com/

Turning off the rich text editor for commenting

I find that turning off the rich text editor makes commenting on assessment items (discussion and dropbox) a lot more efficient. Comments usually do not need formatting, and the page loads faster if the rich text software does not have to load.

Student-led creation of midterm study guide

I finished a lecture earlier than expected and had some time to spare, so I tried an activity I read about and had the students create their own study guide for the topic I just finished. Each student wrote his name on a piece of paper and then wrote one or two words to describe an important topic. The student then handed the paper to a classmate who wrote a different idea on the same sheet. They did this two more times and then returned the document to the original student. I then asked them for the ideas that were written on their papers and tallied the number of people who wrote each idea. We ended up with six or seven items on the white board, which I photographed and told them would be included in the study guide for the midterm.

Next time it would work better if I collected the papers by row and redistributed them for each item. This would reduce the confusion for those students who did not know where to send the papers. At the end, I would ask them to find the student whose name is on the paper, which would get them to talk and move around a bit.

Sharing campus info with students

Periodically I get emails about campus events that might interest my students. Instead of announcing these in class or forwarding the emails to my students, I decided to post the information inside my LMS course accounts using the News widget.

Then I thought of the implications. First, I would need to post these items in each of my course offerings. Also, my students might miss the class-related news items if those items are surrounded by non-class items.

To solve these problems, I created a blog just for campus events and posted a feed of that blog on my course account home pages. Now all I need to do is update the blog with each email and the information is there for my students automatically.

Taking roll with web app

Today I used the web app I created to take roll. It may have taken a few more minutes that just calling out names, but I was able to recognize a few faces. I went student by student instead of down the list, and I ended up missing a student somehow. The web page generates an email I send to myself, and I now have to decide how to record the attendance over the semester. I decided to create an attendance register inside our course offering, so I have to transcribe the attendance data after each class. At least I can apply a status to everyone and then change the status for individual students.

Frustrating LMS

Our learning management system felt like it was being overloaded the first day of the semester, and I was able to log in but not access my course. I wanted to show it to my students, and also inside were some images on web pages I wanted to share. So instead I talked through the LMS features and said I would do it again Thursday. The pages with images I was able to access via another source.

Cell phones in class

Here is a first-day stunt that did not work out so well: I set an alarm so my phone would ring in the middle of my lecture. I was talking about the syllabus and it rang, and I proceded to answer it and have a short conversation. I said that I thought everyone was looking at me and hung up, and then I stepped out of character and told the class to take calls outside and not disrupt class. Ten minutes later my phone "rang" again - I hit the snooze button instead of turning off the alarm. ;-)

Taking roll the first day

I used a Flip video camera to record my students' faces as I took roll today. I want to get to know their names, and it was mildly entertaining to them as I did it. Not everyone was easy to see. A better way to do it would have been to walk up and down the rows, asking each to say his or her name into the camera.

It was the most efficient to use QuickTime Pro to watch the video and then pause and export for each student. The problem was the files were in a .pct format, which I then had to open with the QuickTime Picture Viewer before I could export as a .jpg. The Flip software does not have a still export that I could find and anyway was not working on my desktop computer. The other video programs did not have still export. Next time I might just take screen captures and work with MS Picture Manager, as I still have to crop each file.

Cropping was not so bad. I opened MS Picture Manager and selected the crop tool and was able to do each picture in turn. The web page took a little bit of work to create. I created a form with a radio group yes/no for each student and added each picture to the page. I included the code

<meta name = "viewport" content = "width = device-width">

to make the page fit my iPhone well, and it works! So I can take roll with my iPhone and record the results in a spreadsheet and get an email.