SEPTEMBER 2012

2Extent of Faculty

Involvement in DiscussionBoards

4Use Action Research toImprove Your Online

Course

6Teaching Online WithErrol: Teaching Online:

It Can Be Great Therapy IfDone Smartly!

8Personalized Learning inthe Online Classroom

In T

his

Issue

IDEAS FOR EFFECTIVE ONLINE INSTRUCTION

Tips from the Pros

Ensure Learning Flexibility

According to a survey byNoel-Levitz, flexibility—the

ability to fit learning into busylives—is the number one reasonstudents give for taking anonline course. In a recent MagnaOnline Seminar, Barry Dahl, anonline learning consultant,offered the following suggestionsfor ensuring appropriate flexibili-ty for learners:• Inform students of any syn-chronous requirements andother time-related obliga-tions before they enroll inthe course. If students don’tfind out about time conflictsuntil the course begins, theymay need to drop the course,creating undue hassles foryou and the student.

• Consider how and when youwill conduct office hours toenable students to connectwith you.

• Provide appropriate windowsof opportunity for takingquizzes and exams and forsubmitting assignments.Students should have one tothree days to take quizzes andexams and at least three daysto submit assignments.

• Include the appropriateamount of content. “Havingtoo little or too much contentin an online course can

A MAgnA PublicAtion

VOLUME 12, NUMBER 9

Discussion Board Assignments:Alternatives to the Question-and-Answer FormatBy Rob Kelly

If you’re having trouble gettingstudents to engage in the discus-

sion forum, perhaps it’s time torethink how you use this tool.“Think of it as a place to fosterinteraction between the studentsthrough a variety of means ratherthan just asking them questions,although that’s great too,” saysChris Laney, professor of historyand geography at BerkshireCommunity College.

Laney uses the discussion forumextensively in his online courses.Participation counts for 25 to 30percent of the course grade, so thestudents feel that they need to par-ticipate. Rather than sticking to thequestion-and-answer format, Laneyuses role plays, debates, andWebQuests to engage students inthe content and with one another.

While some people may think thatthe discussion forum is not theappropriate place for these activities,Laney has good reasons for doing itthere. He tried using a blog butfound it to be “clunky,” and theinteraction was limited. “I feel thatthe discussion forum can be usedfor almost anything if it’s thought ofas an assignment feature rather

than a question-and-answer forum.… I’m very low-tech, so I don’t findmyself being drawn to a lot of thefancy gadgets every year that aresupposed to make online learningbetter. I think it keeps [the course]manageable if students are nothaving to learn some new technicalthing each time, spending all theirtime trying to figure out this newtechnology. Whether it’s role-playing, debate, or a WebQuest,they’re using the same basic tech-nology.”

Role-play

One forum activity, for example,asks students to do some researchon a person living in an urbanRoman city in the first century CE.Each student creates a characterand writes a diary entry or letterrecording what he or she did in thecourse of a day or a series of days.To do this well, students need toresearch a few things about the pro-fessions and classes that wouldhave existed. “The students end uptalking back and forth in characterin a situation like that,” Laney says.“At no point have I actually asked aquestion.”

Continued on page 3 >> Continued on page 3 >>

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ADVISORY BOARD

Randy Accetta, PhD Mentor-in-Residence, Communicationwww.entrepreneurship.arizona.edu

Toni Bellon, PhDProfessor, Middle/Secondary EducationNorth Georgia College & State Universitytbellon@northgeorgia.edu

Jennifer E. Lerner, PhDAssociate Vice President for e-LearningNorthern Virginia Community Collegejlerner@nvcc.edu

B. Jean Mandernach, PhDProfessor & Senior Research AssociateGrand Canyon UniversityJean.Mandernach@gcu.edu

John Orlando, PhDELearning Director National Lifejorlando@gmail.com

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2 Online Cl@ssroom

D I S C U S S I O N B O A R D S

By Allen D. Meyer, PhD

Responding to all or moststudent posts is not the best

approach to managing a discussionboard. Doing so can be overly time-consuming for the instructor andcould lead to the instructor unin-tentionally dominating the discus-sion.

The following are suggestions forguiding the discussion while main-taining a reasonable amount ofinstructor involvement:

1. Use a combination of responsesto individual posts and postsdirected at the entire discussiongroup. In fact, you can do bothwith essentially the same idea. Ifyou see a point made by one ofyour students that you’d likeeveryone to consider, respond asyou’d like to the individualstudent, but then also addressthe entire group, as follows:

“Dear Group: Jill in heranswer, made an excellentobservation when she said ....I’d like for all of you to considerthat idea. How would youexplain how what Jill saidapplies to …? Please respond.”

If your discussion board is setup with groups, you can also sharethat same idea with other groups, ifyou think it would benefit everyone.Doing this, in combination withyour primer, corrective, andsummary posts (Online Classroom,August 2012 “Tips from the Pros:Three Essential Instructor Inputsin Discussion Boards”), puts youwell on your way to demonstratingadequate presence in the discus-sion board but without dominatingthe discussion.

2. A second suggestion involves the“weaving” technique that onlineresearch talks about. Accordingto Mary Harris-John, “‘Weaving’involves a single reply to severalstudents based on the topic aswell as the relationships createdby students’ postings, and itaffords the instructor the oppor-tunity to influence and guide thedirection of the discussions, aswell as get to know the studentsbetter. Weaving also involvessummarizing main pointsproposed at a certain point inthe discussion, as well as posingsome pertinent questions”(Salmon, 2003, as cited inHarris-John, 2006).

The following is an example ofthis technique:

“Dear Richard, Jeffrey,Kelley, Jo Marie, and Allen:Thank you for your initialpostings to Assignment 1 on‘Principal Leadership.’ Wecertainly have a nice variety ofthoughts and ideas, which I’msure comes from all of ourvaried backgrounds! All of youhave basically addressed howthe Principal’s leadership canaffect the school, the teachers,and the students. Richardmentioned how he has beenable to assist teachers withspecific student learning issues(which is exactly what aprincipal does); Jeffrey, JoMarie, and Allen focused on theall-important concept of vision;and Kelley spoke of a positivelearning environment as well asthe Principal being the model

Extent of Faculty Involvement inDiscussion Boards

Continued on page 5 >>

3Online Cl@ssroom

The key to making these role-playassignments work is providingexplicit instructions. For each role-play assignment Laney providesabout a page-and-a-half set ofinstructions, including background,lists of reading assignments, and astep-by-step explanation of whatthey need to do. Laney posts instruc-tions within the discussion forumrather than in the syllabus or thecourse schedule, because the forumis where the assignment takes placeand students are in the forum on aregular basis. Providing instructionsin the forum instead of elsewherealso gives him the flexibility to makechanges without diverging from thesyllabus—the syllabus simply saysthat the forum continues from weekto week and makes no mention ofspecific assignments.

Debate

Debates also work well in the dis-cussion forum, Laney says. Herecently had students debatewhether democracy in the MiddleEast would result in better or worserelations with nations in the region.It’s a pretty straightforward assign-ment; however, when havingstudents debate it’s important to setclear ground rules to keep thingscordial and to avoid simplisticarguments.

The same notion applies toquestion-and-answer discussions.For example, he once had a discus-sion that asked students to comparethe democracy of fifth-centuryAthens to the current democraticsystem of the United States. Whichis more democratic? When hechecked the forum the next daythere were a bunch of messagessuch as “I hate George Bush” and

“Obama’s a socialist.” “Then I[posted], ‘This is way off topic. Themain purpose of this assignment wasto talk about Athens and learn aboutthe Athenian system,’ but by then itwas too late.”

Taking a lesson from thisincident, Laney now includes astatement that says, “Note: The mainpurpose of this is to get a handle onthe Athenian system of government,so please avoid judgmentalcomments about American politi-cians.” “If I do that up front, I don’thave redirect it a lot. We don’t tendto get off topic,” Laney says.

Discussion forums can alsoinclude audio. One of Laney’s col-leagues has students embed links toVoiceThread files they create topractice speaking in Spanish andcritique each other’s pronunciation.

WebQuest

In weeks when a major assign-ment is due, Laney gives students aless intense discussion forumassignment. Rather than carrying ona discussion over the usual two-week period, he has students do asimple WebQuest and post theirfindings without having to respondto each other. For example, he mayask students to post an image, video,or music clip from the RomanticPeriod of art in the 19th century andwrite a brief description about whyit’s considered an example ofRomanticism.

Laney has good retention rates inhis online courses—typically 75 to80 percent and sometimes higher. Heattributes these high retention ratesin part to the discussion forumassignments.

Grading

To keep the discussion forumassignments manageable, Laneyasks students to post their messages

in a single thread. In a class of 25people there may be 75 messages ina week, but having all the messagesin a single thread makes it relativelyeasy to grade. “I keep up with it so Ihave a good sense of who’s been par-ticipating actively and who has beensharing good information.”

When a discussion forum activityis over, Laney can click on an indi-vidual student’s name and at aglance assign a grade. It typicallytakes 30 minutes every two weeks tograde a 25-person discussion forum.@

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actually reduce learner flexibil-ity. Too little content and theyhave to spend a great deal oftheir time tracking downcontent that’s not provided forthem that may be important totheir learning.

“And I’ve seen cases where,because it’s online, the facultymember thinks, ‘I’ll just throweverything in the world intothis particular course,’ so thatthere are all these links toother resources. And eventhough they might be on topic,they might not be relevant tothe course …. So a studenthas to spend additional timesifting through the content tofind out what’s reallyimportant and what isn’t.”

For information about orderingan archive of this seminar,“Conventional Wisdom is Wrong!

Five Ways to Improve DEQuality,” seewww.magnapubs.com/catalog/conventional-wisdom-is-wrong!-five-ways-to-improve-de-quality/. @

<< TIPS From Page 1

By Rob Kelly

When looking to improve youronline course, you may be

tempted to do a completeredesign—start over and changenearly everything. Before you dothat, consider an incrementalapproach that uses action researchto continuously improve yourcourse. This will enable you tomake progress without discardingeffective course elements or takingon the inordinate amount of workinvolved in a redesign.

Action research is instructor-ledassessment aimed at courseimprovement and can be bothformative and summative. “It’s vitalthat the teacher is part of theprocess, and the trick is makingsure you have a formal enoughprocess that you can take out someof the instructor bias,” says JoanThomas-Spiegel, a psychologyinstructor.

In a recent interview with OnlineClassroom, Thomas-Spiegel offeredthe following advice on conductingaction research in an online course:

• Start with SLOs. Focus on thecourse’s student learningoutcomes (SLOs). To make anaction research project manage-able, start with a single SLO andlook at where in the course thatSLO is addressed and howstudents do on that particularSLO. “When I design my coursesI make sure that my designmatches the student learningoutcomes. For example, if a bigstudent learning outcome is thatthe students understand the sci-entific method and can apply itin psychology, one of my assign-ments is for the students todevelop an idea for an experi-ment and explain their method-ology, the ethics involved, and

each of the steps of the scientificprocess. And the assignments,quizzes, and discussions alignwith the SLO. I can go throughand say my SLO number one onscientific method also aligns withdiscussion four and discussionsix on ethics,” Thomas-Spiegelsays.

Considering a single SLO andhow it is addressed throughout

the course might indicate areasin the course that could beimproved. “In order to takeaction you have to do your ownresearch. It might be that youhaven’t addressed the strengthsof all your students. Somestudents have a terrible timewith reading for whateverreason. Maybe there’s a greatvideo or an interactive site youcan send them to. You can buildthese in as part of the activity forthe students. Or perhaps youcould tweak the lecture orreword your discussion toemphasize something. Ask,‘What tools did I give students toget them to the right place?’ And

that gives you your clue whereyou might tweak one thing—notthree things—to help studentsunderstand this concept a littlebetter,” Thomas-Spiegel says.

One indication of a problemarea in a course is whensemester after semester discus-sions on a particular subject gooff topic or you find studentsposting messages that are notwhat you’re looking for. “Is therea discussion where I alwaysscratch my head and wonderhow students got there? Is therea discussion that I hate gradingbecause I know that I’m going toget a lot of bizarre answers?”Thomas-Siegel asks.

• Work with colleagues. Whenlooking at one’s own course, it’sa challenge to be an objectiveresearcher. An alternative is towork with colleagues. These canbe colleagues who teach thesame course or even colleaguesfrom a different discipline. Oneissue with doing action researchis the small sample size. Byworking with colleagues teachingthe same course, you canincrease your sample size or trydifferent solutions to a commonproblem to see which works best.

A complicating factor ofworking with colleagues onaction research can be theclimate within your institution.Instructors can get defensiveabout their courses and find itdifficult to subject their courses(and themselves) to scrutinyregardless of its benign nature.Providing feedback about others’courses can be problematic aswell, particularly for adjunctinstructors “wondering if we willhave a job next semester if we

4 Online Cl@ssroom

COURSE IMPROVEMENT

Use Action Research to Improve Your Online Course

Continued on page 5 >>

“The trick is to make

tiny changes. Adding an

assignment or setting up

an extra slide in a pres-

entation is [often]

enough.”

5Online Cl@ssroom

argue with the full-time facultymember about the importance ofsome aspect of a course,”Thomas-Spiegel says. “Actionresearch can open up nonthreat-ening dialogues among faculty.”For example, a faculty membermight approach the topic bysaying something like, “Here’s anarea I would like to improve.What are you doing in yourcourse to address this?” This canlead to colleagues collecting dataand researching the samequestion, or they might simplycheck each other’s research toguard against instructor bias.

In some cases an instructormay not be aware of problems inhis or her online course thatwould be obvious to anotherinstructor. This can result fromthe instructor not rememberingwhat it’s like to experience newconcepts for the first time orsimply not being able to detecthis or her own confusing contentor overlooked omissions.

Here are some questions toask a colleague as you’re consid-ering your course: What do youthink is the most important thingthat students get out of thisclass? If you had to name onething, what would that be? Howcan you help students thinkabout that?

• Make use of data. “There’s acertain amount built into anonline classroom that isn’t in atraditional classroom settingbecause we have all our data indigital format. I can go backseveral years and ask, ‘How didstudents answer this particularquestion in their quiz or theirfinal, or how did that assignmentgo over in several semesters with

several classes?’ If I decide that Iwant to take a look at the differ-ence between how students aregrasping the concept of independ-ent and dependent variables, Ihave built-in data that’s easy tograb online. In fact, within ouronline systems, when we doquizzes we have not only the per-centage correct, but we can evensee what kinds of questions theyanswer incorrectly and the mostcommon incorrect answers. A lotof our data that’s available onlineis so easy and built into thesystem, but we don’t alwaysthink to use it,” Thomas-Spiegelsays.

One tool that is available inmost learning managementsystems is the ability to trackhow long students spend on indi-vidual pages within a course.This can give you some idea ofstudent behavior, but relyingheavily on this data can be prob-lematic because while it indicatestime spent on a page it does notindicate level of engagement oreffort.

• Implement small changes. Onceyou identify a problem, you mightbe inclined to change everythingyou think is contributing to it.Resist this temptation. You couldput in a lot of work changingmultiple elements withoutimproving learning, or you couldchange several things when onesmall modification would havebeen effective. “The trick is tomake tiny changes. Adding anassignment or setting up an extraslide in a presentation is [often]enough,” Thomas-Spiegel says.

Keep in mind that results fromchanges made to your coursemay not be apparent in a singlesemester due to a small samplesize, so you may want to gather

data across several semesters todetermine the effect of anychanges.

Dr. Joan Thomas-Spiegel has beenteaching online courses in psycholo-gy and research for 12 years. Herresearch includes college studentassessment, course progression inEnglish and math, active learning,and educational self-efficacy amongother areas. She leads groups inaction research projects along withher colleague, Dr. G. GenevievePatthey who has been teachingEnglish as a Second Language,English and linguistics courses foralmost 30 years. Joan's emailaddress is itspsych@yahoo.com. @

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for certain behaviors. If wecould all focus on the idea ofcreating a shared VISION for amoment, how would each ofyou define the role of thePrincipal in shaping the visionfor the school community?When you each post yourresponse, please be concise,responding in 1 or 2 sentences.I look forward to reading yourresponses!”—INSTRUCTOR(Harris-John, 2006) Harris-John, Mary. (2006).

Creating Meaningful OnlineDiscussion. National Council ofProfessors of EducationalAdministration (NCPEA). Retrievedfrom Connections: http://cnx.org/content/m14135/latest/.

Allen D. Meyer is a departmentchair in the Center for Counselingand Family Studies online counsel-ing program at Liberty University inLynchburg, Virginia. @

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By Errol Craig Sull

Sometimes a column grows out ofan unexpected experience, and

such is the case with this one. Mymom recently died, and while I wentthrough the expected grievingprocess and spent much time withfamily and close friends, I found myonline teaching to be not only awonderful sanctuary from otherwisenot-so-happy days but also a greatway to lift my spirits and help speedalong my reentry into normalcy. Inmy nearly eight years of writing thiscolumn I have offered many tips,strategies, information, and trickson how one can become the bestpossible online instructor, but now Iwant to share the realities ofteaching the online course when atragedy enters your life: how ourteaching online can be helpful, andwhat pitfalls we need to prevent(and how to prevent them).

By the way, after I realized howhelpful my teaching online hadbeen following my mom’s passing, Iqueried many of my online teachingcolleagues for any suggestions theycould offer—and there were many.What follows is a combination ofthese—and I learned something Ihad speculated might be true andthat my online teaching buddiesconfirmed: teaching online is aseldom-discussed but handy pick-me-up to help one during an espe-cially negative personal event, butthe teaching must also be handledsmartly.

The suggestions: Immediately inform your

supervisor of what happened. Theunexpected negative events thathappen in life can impact one’sonline teaching in numerous ways,and thus a supervisor needs to

know of the situation immediately.In the event you need to be tem-porarily absent from class or late inmeeting deadlines or unable toattend webinars, it’s important yoursupervisor know, so he or she won’tthink you’re simply not performingyour responsibilities for no apparentreason—which could have dire con-sequences.

Dive into your teaching—withgusto. Your mind needs to stayoccupied with the everyday thingsof life; dwelling too much on yoursituation will not only pull youdown into despair but also impactall those around you. Your onlineteaching is a wonderful outlet to letyour mind—and emotions—embracesomething you really enjoy; it willhelp relax and soothe you, bothmuch needed during negativeevents. Show enthusiasm andexcitement in your course: whileyou always do this in your teaching,it’s especially important now sostudents will feel a continual and

seamless teaching presence fromyou.

Remember that others aredepending on you. The concerns ofa tragedy fill our mind, and oftenfamily and other responsibilities areinvolved. But we must also keep ourattention focused on the students,for they depend on us for direc-tions, feedback, enthusiasm, clarifi-cation, and subject information.The students’ lives are not put onhold because our normal life hasbeen interrupted, thus we mustcontinue to give our students the100+ percent effort they expect fromus (and this is on a 24/7 basis,courtesy of online education). It iswhat they deserve from us … all thetime.

This is a great time to givestudents extra resources. Theonline classroom allows for manyopportunities to offer students addi-tional resources to highlight, under-score, and reinforce topics beingtaught. By making an effort to givestudents extra resources duringthis down time in your life, threepositives result: your mind is keptoccupied with something youenjoy—teaching online—and thatlifts the spirits; you are being keptbusy with something other than thetragedy that tapped you on theshoulder, important for overallhealth; and your students benefitfrom added material for a richeronline learning experience.

Be very careful in what isshared with your students aboutthe situation. Depending on yourneed to be temporarily absent fromclass or late in meeting deadlines,you may need to share with yourstudents the reason why. However,

6 Online Cl@ssroom

Teaching Online: It Can Be Great Therapy If Done Smartly!

T E A C H I N G O N L I N E W I T H E R R O L

Continued on page 7 >>

The students’ lives are

not put on hold because

our normal life has been

interrupted, thus we

must continue to give

our students the 100+

percent effort they

expect from us.

do not let your emotions spill intoyour class, do not give addeddetails, and don’t play on yourstudents’ sympathy. First, none ofthis is appropriate—these are yourstudents, not family members orbest friends. Second, what you postin an online class lives forever—andin any emotional state we often canwrite something that later we wishwe had not written. Bottom line: bethe professional you always are.

If applicable and possible, havesomeone else temporarily takeover your course(s). There aretimes when you need be away fromyour course(s)—a funeral, a familymember’s severe illness, andspending time with family members,as examples (and this also appliesto a health problem you might havethat makes it impossible for a whileto teach online)—and your studentswould best be served by havingsomeone step in to cover yourteaching duties. Ask your supervi-sor about this as soon as you feel itnecessary: it takes time to getsomeone, and you don’t want yourstudents to go a day without afaculty member in their onlineclassroom.

Watch out for becoming toopersonal in class correspondenceand grading. It could be the topic ofan assignment, an innocent email astudent sends, a discussionposting, or comments in a livechat—something might trigger animmediate and emotional responseto include something related to thedifficult time you are going through.Don’t—the students are not in classto serve as therapists or suddenfriends; they are there to be taughtby a professional educator. Youmust be especially aware of whatyou write during such a period: notonly will students have an

immediate response to yourpersonal thoughts or info, but thisis also an online environment whereeverything posted can be read allthe time.

Know the times when it is notgood for you to teach. We are notmachines; sometimes we can beovercome with so much negativeemotion that teaching is just notthe right thing to do—for ourstudents, for us. This period of notteaching could equate to simplytaking off a few hours during theday or needing to call in a sub forsome days until you can return to aframe of mind more conducive toteaching. There is nothing wrong inadmitting this has to be done—andin doing so we are acting profes-sionally and in the best interests ofour students. We must put forthevery effort in the online classroomto have our students’ learning expe-rience always be exceptional.

Use a daily schedule as achecklist of what needs beaccomplished in your classes.When any tragedy enters our lives itcan play havoc with our remember-ing what we need to do and whenwe need to do it. The onlineclassroom presents many deadlinesand teaching responsibilities, andour students and school(s) dependon us to meet these each day. Asimple yet highly effective method toensure we do this is to use dailyreminders and a checklist—whetheronline or on a pad—of what weneed to accomplish in our classeach day. This will help keep us ontrack when our mind gets a bitscrambled with suddenly personaland meaningful thoughts andresponsibilities related to our unex-pected situation.

Don’t forget that life goes on …including online teaching. Thetime will come when all facets ofour life must return to a state of

normalcy, and thus our onlineteaching once again has all ourfocus, all our time, all our dedica-tion. Certainly we know that anydevastating personal event in ourlife will interrupt our normal flow ofdaily living, but we must eventuallyallow our zest and enjoyment ofteaching online to return. Theresult of this: we will feel joyful indoing what we have a passion fordoing, and our students willcontinue receiving the excellentteaching they have come to expectfrom us.

REMEMBER: When reaching fora life preserver, be sure it’s madeof wood, not concrete.

Errol Craig Sull has been teachingonline courses for 18 years and hasa national reputation in the subject,writing and conducting workshopson distance learning, with nationalrecognition in the field of distanceeducation. He is currently putting thefinishing touches on his secondonline teaching text. Please writehim at errolcraigsull@aol.com withyour suggestions and comments—healways responds! @

7Online Cl@ssroom

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The Teaching Professor invitespresentation, panel discussion,and interactive poster sessionproposals for the 10th annualTeaching Professor Conference.For more information, seewww.teachingprofessor.com/conference/proposals. @

8 Online Cl@ssroom

By Rob Kelly

The online learning environmentenables students to be creators of

knowledge, not merely consumers ofit. It’s a paradigm shift for some, par-ticularly for adult learners. On theone hand they have expertise andinsights from their professional livesthat can add so much to a course.On the other hand, they may nothave the mind-set of youngerstudents who are comfortable usingWeb 2.0 tools to create onlinecontent.

Dorothy Cady, technology trainerand instructor in the College ofEducation and Professional Studiesat the University of CentralOklahoma, provides opportunities forher students to create personalizedlearning environments—albeit on asomewhat limited basis given theconstraints of the institution’s stan-dardized online course format.

Cady teaches two fully onlinecourses—one on fiscal managementand one on organizationaldynamics—in which she strives toprovide “the opportunity for learnersto have control and responsibility fortheir own learning, not just doingwhat the teacher tells them … but tobecome more than just consumers ofinformation that’s just handed tothem. I want them to be organizersand sharers of information and put itall together on their own based onwhat is really relevant to them.”

She does this by giving studentsindependent projects that requirethem to do their own research andshare their work in small groups tobuild an informational database thatgroup members can access and offerfeedback on.

“I give them some ideas of wherethey can go and get the information,and then I give them some choices oftechnologies they could use todevelop the information into a usableformat for others. They’re developing

personal learning environments—very limited ones, limited to a singletopic. Then they’re sharing thosethrough the learning managementsystem,” Cady says.

For example, one assignment inher fiscal management course oninternal control of businesses forfinancial accuracy and honesty givesstudents the choice of topic withinthat subject area as well as the typeof research and format for theproject. Group members decide whatthey’re going to do, and they aregiven a set of questions they need toanswer. Cady provides a list ofwebsites they can go to, and they areencouraged to use other sources aswell, such as books and interviewswith professionals who do this typeof work. They’re given some possibili-ties as to the project’s format, suchas a multimedia presentation orwebsite.

“Instead of providing them all thematerials, I provide some questionsthat they need to answer. I give themsome recommended places to go tostart their research as well as someoptions for things like setting upblogs where they can reflect on andtalk about what they’re learning anddoing in this process,” Cady says.

Each student posts his or hercontent in a space that is open toother group members, who are toreview it and discuss it via chat,blog, or discussion board. By havingstudents in groups according torelated topics, they find the contentrelevant and are able to haveinformed discussions about theseprojects.

Most of Cady’s students find thisapproach to learning interesting andengaging. In addition, in some casesit has gotten students to try newpresentation formats. “One studenttold me she always wanted to trycreating an avatar but had neverbeen brave enough or had enoughtime to try it. But since it was one of

the options I had given the studentsin the course, she chose that option.I’ve had another student say, ‘When Isaw what we were going to do I wasreally worried about being able tosucceed at it, but once we got startedit was so much fun and so interest-ing that I didn’t want to stop,’” Cadysays.

Because the content that studentscreate is based on their interests andis relevant to their careers, thesepersonal learning environments havethe potential to serve studentsbeyond the course. “Hopefully, whatthey set up is something that willencourage them to continue to growwith their personal learning environ-ment, expand it, and change it asthey grow in their careers. There isstrong potential for [this content] tobe out there for them to use in thefuture—a personal learning environ-ment that can grow and change withthem,” Cady says.

Cady offers the following sugges-tions for making this approach topersonalized learning work:• Start small. “Start with one

lesson, and ask, ‘What can I havethe students do, instead of me justpassing information on to them?How can I get them to collect theinformation they need, put it alltogether, think about it, and reflecton it?’” Cady says.

• Provide an introduction sostudents understand what they’llbe doing. “It’s not going to besomething that they’re used todoing. It’s not going to be dictatingknowledge to them. It’s going to bethem finding and sharing thatknowledge with other people,”Cady says.

• Provide proper venues forsharing projects. Although theseprojects are individual, havingopportunities to share and interactimproves learning. @

A S S I G N M E N T S

Personalized Learning in the Online Classroom