Tweeting during a movie

I sometimes show films during my face-to-face history classes and find myself challenged in a couple of ways. Of course I show something that is relevant and that I want students to learn from, but letting go of that time together makes me feel a bit insecure. If they can get the lesson from watching a film, what is my purpose?

Constitution Day and a Google Form

Today I am celebrating Constitution Day in my history class by showing one of the Schoolhouse Rock videos that covers some aspect of the Constitution. There were five:

1. Preamble to the Constitution
2. Three-ring circus structure of federal government)
3. I'm just a bill (legislative process)
4. Electoral college (how the president is elected)
5. Sufferin' till suffrage (the vote for women)

This class covers US history up to 1865 so we haven't reached the constitution-writing stage. Maybe when we get there I will watch all five in class and ask the students to compare them to the text or other sources in terms of interpreting the Constitution.

For today we'll watch just one and I will have the class decide which by using a Google Form to conduct an in-class poll. I call this my "history quickie" and got a custom bit.ly link that points to the form. I try to do this each time we meet and ask them questions like what was the hardest thing to understand in class, etc. I post the summary of results inside my learning management system so students can see them.

I reuse the same form each day so that all the results are on the same spreadsheet. I found a trick to add the new question to the form then delete the old one. This creates a new column in the spreadsheet, which makes for easier collection of results if I want to do additional analysis.

And like true American democracy, this vote will not be perfect. The only voters will be people who have a smart phone, tablet, or laptop in class. So the more perfect union that the founders envisioned does not yet exist, at least in my history class.

Citing Online Sources

What is the difference between citing a source that was found on the web and citing a source that is a web page? Some students need to learn the difference. It becomes a problem when the source-found-on-the-web is cited using a URL that includes a temporary access key. This happens with students using the online research databases they can access via our library information system, and it is something to be aware of the next time I have students finding sources online.

Thoughts on group assignments

I divide groups in a couple of different ways. For my online student success class (taught fully online), I divide the class into four groups (usually seven or eight per group) based on their grade at that point in the class (three weeks into a six-week class) to do one small assignment. I use the course grade as a means of judging ability and responsibility, so each group has students who are roughly the same in those areas. The best students are in a group together, and the worst students are in a group together. My rationale is that high-functioning people need to learn how to deal with other high-functioning people and not assume that they will automatically be the leaders of any group they are in. At the other end, someone in the free riders will have to step up and show some leadership else the group will fail. They only have a week to complete the assignment. I find generally that students appreciate the group assignment (note I did not say enjoy), though the students in that bottom quartile who do not participate generally are not interested in the class anyway. None of the students complain about having flaky peers.

In my (full term) American history class, I create groups based on shared interest. This is a face-to-face class, though the assignment would be the same for an online class and the method of dividing the groups would likely not change. The group project for the class is to create a web site that requires students to collect primary source documents, analyze them, and write a synthesis of those analyses. One of my introductory lectures for the class is to show the students that some of the questions we are asking ourselves as Americans (like what our country's place is in the world) have always been asked. I present a series of questions and show examples of how those questions were asked in the time period covered by our course and how those questions are being asked today. I tell them that throughout our class those questions will come up again and again and that those questions help us as historians make sense of all the different ways we can look at the past. After the lecture, I ask each student to tell me what he or she thinks is the most important question. I use those answers to create groups of six to eight students, and those groups are together throughout the semester and the web site. I do this in lieu of an individual research paper, and they tell me in my end-of-class survey that they feel like they learn more about the past through this assignment than they would have with a traditional research paper. I use a peer review survey to get them to share how much effort they and their group mates put in, and I use the results of that survey to adjust individual grades.

Both of these methods require a lot of work. I could divide the class randomly or let students pick their own groups, but I like to have some kind of instructional design behind what I do in class. I have been grouping by ability in my online student success class for the dozen years that I have been teaching it, and so far it has worked great. I am grouping by interest for the second time this semester, and one change I have already made is to have my students do the peer review survey three times instead of once. That way they can adjust their work ethic if necessary before they get going on the big project.

General questions about online teaching

I teach a class on how to use Blackboard for the @ONE project,  and recently a participant asked the following questions on the "Discussion Grading and Help" forum. I liked her question and decided to blog her questions and my answers:

In general, does teaching online pay the same as teaching face-to-face classes?

• In my district there is no pay differential for online teaching.

Where are good places to look for openings regarding online teaching positions?

• Almost all California community colleges offer online courses, and the best place I know to find jobs in this system is the CCC Job Registry.

Is it hard to find an online teaching position?

• The difficulty depends on the institution.

Does the @one certification cover all levels of online teaching or just college? Is there anyone out there teaching online classes other than college?

• The standards for the @ONE certification program are based on standards originally written by the International Association for K-12 Online Learning. More information is on the @ONE web site.

Do you find online teaching requires more work, less work or the same work as face-to-face classes? In what way?

• In my experience online teaching requires a lot more work initially, as there is a lot less room for error than in a face-to-face class. If I screw up in class, I can let my students know immediately (or the next time we meet) about my mistake. If I screw up online, I might alienate a student who might decide not to log in again. The efficiency gained from experience makes it less work eventually, and the freedom to schedule the time I work helps make up for the extra time required.

What are some of the things you would do differently, if you could teach your first online class again?

• I would spend more time teaching in a web enhanced or hybrid mode before teaching my first fully online class.

Do any of you do group work with your online classes?

• Yes, I teach a class on online student success and give students a group assignment to give them the experience of working on a team they do not get to see in person.

My answers are of course based on my experience, and I do not include hearsay from other colleges and districts. Many institutions make for many situations, and I expect the answers to differ in other places.

Teaching a larger class and managing enrollment

This semester I was asked if I was willing to teach a larger history class. Normally our history classes are capped at 45, but I can earn extra pay if I am willing to teach 70. The trick is the class has to reach that number, else my pay does not increase. So this class I hustled for students to enroll. I emailed the counselors asking for them to refer students, and I also emailed the other history instructors telling them to send students they could not accommodate my way. Before the cap was raised I already had a wait list of 18, so I would not have had to worry about finding students to enroll.