Mjakubec's Blog

CeLC Conference: 2009

mjakubec — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:57:44 +0000

Very interesting keynote this morning by Barbara Ganley. Check out her blog “(The New) BGBlogging” and Digital Explorations website. Lots about making connections and breaking down barriers within institutions. Listening confirmed for me that we have made a good choice in sending our daughters to a learning through the arts school as the subjects are integrated and the children are encouraged to be creative throughout their learning. The last podshare involved a play that the Grade 3 class had written collaboratively together and then performed for their parents and the school. Also, there is an interestingly large number of presentations about courses not in CMS but though blogs, especially WordPress. Must check out wiki.ubc.ca/BlogBasics

The Irving K. Barber Learning Cente is also an amazing building. They’ve actually built a new building around the old Library, so a beautiful combination of new and old. We’re in a computer lab that was once part of the original library. Beautiful old light fixtures and wooden beams.

Module 7 Reflections

mjakubec — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 03:50:25 +0000

My original assumptions about the role of the online tutor were mainly from my own prior experience in online courses, my reading in the area of e-learning (Paloff and Pratt; Salmon), and my experience with tutors in my role as an instructional designer. As a result, I realized that a tutor’s role could vary greatly from that of assessor/marker to developer and facilitator and many variations in between.
However, through this course my understanding of the role expanded even more, particularly through the examination of the different models: Salmon’s, Berge’s, Hootstein’s and Morton, Flate, Paulsen’s. When developing the e-facilitator job description, I was surprised by how the role expanded to areas of program delivery, student support and administration which I hadn’t really considered as my institution has specific areas for these tasks.
When I first became an instructional designer, I had many years of face to face teaching experience and some courses in online learning; however, I had no formal education in educational technology or instructional design. I read on my own some books by Paloff and Pratt and Salmon to gain more knowledge about the field but have found my prior experience and training as an ESL teacher very hepful in instructional design. Similarly, I found that my experience and understanding of the role of the face to face facilitator very helpful in understanding the role and tasks of the online facilitator.
However, I came to appreciate even more the workload issues surrounding online facilitation. In a classroom situation, the teacher can’t possibly monitor and/or assess all the simultaneous discussions and is unlikely to record them, so his or her facilitation and feedback is naturally limited. In fact, when I did this in the past, I would listen to one discussion at a time if I was assessing and ensure the roles were understood so that the other groups were operating independently. In an online forum, these discussions are all there for the tutor to read, monitor, respond to, and evaluate, so other strategies must to employed to make this workload manageable. This is a key point that will influence my own e-facilitation in the future should I have that opportunity and has already had an impact on how I design courses.
The strategies for the pedagogic use of chat sessions were also very informative and I would definitely use these in the future were I to be facilitating chats for a formal or educational purpose. I also feel these strategies may also help level the playing field for those who don’t have exceptional keyboarding skills.
I also found the Collison et al. (2000) chapter “Critical-Thinking Strategies” interesting and commented in my blog on June 7 “I was intrigued by the examples provides, and a bit overwhelmed by all of the detailed and varied strategies described. I found a contradiction between the clear, analyzed examples and the density of the prose and explanation that preceded each. Perhaps, an overall summary table would help readers see the big picture.“ I was also intrigued by the Textweaver software Feenberg and Xin discuss and it’s similarity in ways to discourse analysis, and the possibility of using it in the future.
Many of the tasks in this course were challenging. I particularly enjoyed and dreaded the scenario-based tasks as they were very practical and yet demanded a lot of synthesis of information and skills. It was particularly difficult to get the tone right in e-mails and weaving. The weaving scenario was very useful. One of the challenges was also working team tasks around individual participants’ schedules. The advantage of setting timelines within a task and anticipating “absences” became very apparent and when our teams did this proactively there was a much greater chance of ensuring all members had an opportunity to fully participate which is equally important to the learning of the group and the assessment of the individual.
As I worked through the weaving scenario, I realized that the e-facilitator by weaving together individual’s comments and their feedback is in fact providing a cohesive narrative to the course and made this connection with George Siemen’s keynote at the CNIE conference which I reflected on in my blog on June 4:
[George Seimens] comments on the lack of coherence in how we now access information (accessing fragmented pieces on the internet rather than reading entire newspapers, for example) made me consider the importance of providing a coherent narrative in courses whether they be delivered online or face to face. In other words, it’s the work of the teacher, e-facilitator and/or instructional designer to develop a narrative that binds together the fragmented pieces of information that make up a learning object.
Perhaps this is the key to constructing knowledge, learners and teachers constructing individual and group narratives as they reflect on information and make it part of their own stories.

Practice Your Weaving Skills

mjakubec — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 03:49:27 +0000

Theresa, you did a great job of pulling all your team’s ideas together into the final advice to Maki. Well done. The team has written Maki with a helpful and understanding tone, assuring her that “We are all struggling with the same issues” and that “it has been very helpful to think about possible problem areas and solutions as a team,” modelling the suggestions you’ve given her for the course.
Maxine was keen and started you off with an introduction to the letter to Maki, pointing out the positives of the students using the forums while acknowledging that she must be feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of posts. She also identified that many of the problems Maki is facing may be a result of the design of the course, a key factor which you all recognized in the following discussion. What do we mean by course design in this situation? Later discussion focused on the need for the task itself to be redesigned: interesting, open ended and challenging (Theresa and Darshana); relevant to the real world to encourage participation especially with Susan and Steve (Darshana); collaborative (Peter); and with assigned roles (Dhiraj). These are all important points which if addressed would help reduce the demands on the e-facilitator Maki.
Maxine also brought attention to the lack of clarity in the instructions, a point which Theresa expanded on, providing specific strategies and suggestions for Maki on how to improve them: “rewrite the instructions, breaking down each step and then testing them on a colleague who knows nothing about the course – just the learning outcomes. A checklist of activities that make up that particular task will also help the students keep on track, particularly if you tie them into a deadline.” These suggestions would certainly reduce the number of questions Maki fields, allow students to be more independent in the collaborative work as they managed their own time and lesson Sam’s uncertainty.
While you all felt the peer assessment was problematic, there was some initial disagreement about how best to address this situation. Peter initially suggested Maki assess the quantity and quality of the postings, but Maxine noted that this type of assessment is difficult to accomplish. Dhirah suggested a strategy which gained the group’s approval: “Why not let the students select what they think is their best posting. Then they are not only critically reflecting on what they have posted but also narrowing down the field for the tutor without causing conflict. They could also pick what they think are the three best postings from others, contributing to a form of peer assessment but again in a non-contentious way.” This suggestion also encourages the students’ critical thinking and extends their own learning in a way that pure peer evaluation would not.
Theresa refocused your attention to a couple of outstanding issues: Maki replying to most messages and Anne’s dominant behaviour. She noted that the bullying was likely discouraging participation and identified the need for the roles and ground rules for team work to be laid out at the start. Theresa also pointed out the need for “clear guidelines on netiquette.” Luta recognized that Anne had taken on the role of the tutor and emphasized the need for Maki to assert her role “with some carefully crafted postings.” Dhiraj also suggested some strategies for encouraging participating through general postings. These are all valid strategies for addressing the behavioural issues. The netiquette reminder did not make its way into the final team output and you may want to consider this further.
One idea that seemed to get lost in this discussion was the issue of Maki’s overwhelmed state as a result of attempting to reply to all messages. Rather, we have added even more messages to her to do list. Perhaps, we’ve missed an opportunity to advise her on the value of weaving feedback rather than responding to individuals as a means of not only managing her workload but furthering the learning in the course.
Once the draft letter was posted, Darshana, Luta, Maxine and Dhiraj all expressed gratitude for Theresa’s skilful summary of the group’s discussion and work as presenter. Great! Dhiraj wondered, “We could make it a bit shorter because there is some overlap between issues in the email, but I’m not sure if we need to bother.”
I appreciate the time constraints of the team task, but it is important to consider the draft carefully, provide feedback and then consider the feedback. Have we missed an opportunity here? How could the message have been reorganized to eliminate the overlap? In Maki’s overwhelmed state, is there value in simplifying and clarifying the advice? You’ve provided Maki with a lot of ideas, but she may get lost in the details. I also wonder if it’s really true that the problems with the design of the course “are easily fixed.” While Maki may be able to change some of the course design the next round, she may be limited in what she can change at the moment as the discussion is in swing and she is teaching. It could be difficult for her to “get the horse back in the barn” so to speak now that the task has begun. It may be useful to provide “now” advice and “later” advice, focusing on strategies to allow her to cope and gain control of the situation (forum postings, weaving, netiquette, individual e-mails).
All in all, good team work. You’ve certainly demonstrated an understanding of the effect of design issues on the tutor workload. Hope you enjoyed the task and got some ideas that will help you in your own work situations.

Self-Facilitated Groups?

mjakubec — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 14:11:01 +0000

In reading through Collinson et al’s description of critical-thinking strategies, I found it interesting to note the areas where our facilitators have used these strategies throughout the course, but also where we have unknowingly, perhaps instinctively, used these same strategies throughout our own discussions with each other in team tasks.

I wonder if this pragmatic discourse would occur so naturally in a different group, or does our being graduate level students in a course related to online instruction facilitate this. Would an e-facilitator struggle more with getting groups to moderate themselves to some extent and to construct learning in a different subject area or at a different level? This would be an interesting question to pursue.

Thoughts on Critical Thinking

mjakubec — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 14:05:56 +0000

Collinson et al’s chapter on “Critical-Thinking Strategies” is a very detailed analysis of strategies used in online faciliation to “sharpen the focus of the dialogue” and “help participants dig deeper into the dialogue” (p. 127). Reading this chapter, I was intrigued by the examples provides, and a bit overwhelmed by all of the detailed and varied strategies described. I found a contradiction between the clear, analyzed examples and the density of the prose and explanation that preceded each. Perhaps, an overall summary table would help readers see the big picture. Perhaps this is in another chapter. I plan to seek out the book as I want to understand more about the different roles or tones alluded to in this chapter.

Reflections on CNIE

mjakubec — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:24:39 +0000

I recently attended the CNIE (Canadian Network for Innovation in Education) conference in Ottawa, ON. There George Siemens gave a very thought provoking and interesting keynote which may be found at http://prezi.com/63944/view/#61. Siemens argued that the notion that we need to change education for the new digital learners may be founded on a shifting foundation and pop science. These younger learners are not the largest group of I Phone users, for example. He did note that our relationship to information has changed and become more fragmented and that we are missing the opportunity to restructure educational institutions in this light. He provided some diagrams illustrating how this could be visualized and urged educational technologists to be the architect of the future of education.

Siemens’ talk seemed to highlight the importance of instructional design and education in the process and the need not to use technology or alter educational principles based on technology applications. His comments on the lack of coherence in how we now access information (accessing fragmented pieces on the internet rather than reading entire newspapers, for example) made me consider the importance of providing a coherent narrative in courses whether they be delivered online or face to face. In other words, it’s the work of the teacher, e-facilitator and/or instructional designer to develop a narrative that binds together the fragmented pieces of information that make up a learning object.

I also attended a very interesting presentation by Patrick Devey of Concordia University called Survivor Online. Devey had taken the research methods applied to reach cancer survival rates to attrition rates in online courses. The conclusions seemed to me to be very much common sense, but it was interesting to see them substantiated by quantitative research. Devey found that the students dropped courses around where assignments were due and that if students invested in an assignment early in the course they were less likely to withdraw. This was interesting in its implications for instructional design and I’ve kept this notion in mind when designing a course currently, providing a team project in the first two weeks so that students would invest time and then get feedback early in the course.

The Facilitator’s Workload

mjakubec — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:51:17 +0000

In HLTH 363: Clinical Decision Making, a course in the Registered Nurse Return to Practice Certificate, the following learning objective is identified in Module 3:
• to apply basic epidemiology and use epidemiological and other empirical evidence to make decisions about prevention or preventive measures
The corresponding learning activity drafted by the subject matter expert is copied below:
Group Work
In small groups, you will explore the PRO and CON position of a particular prevention issue. This group work represents the second of the two group assignments that is evaluated for course marks. Your course tutor will assign you to a group (maximum 5 students) and indicate whether the group represents either the PRO or CON side for one of the topics listed below:
• Flu shots? Yes or No
• Distribution of Folic Acid to Prevent Neural Tube Defects?
• Gardisil Vaccines Yes or No
• Ban Cell phone use when driving the car?
• Mandatory Helmets for skiers to prevent head injuries
NOTE: Students may suggest another topic but abortion is too controversial and is off limits.
In Preparation: Individual Work
You are responsible for doing some background research about the prevention issue by considering the Epidemiologic Triangle:
a) What is the known natural history or progress of a particular disease, adverse health event, or illness that relates to a selected prevention issue?
b) What epidemiological data exists in relation to this issue? Morbidity & mortality statistics? Prevalence and incident rates?
c) What other empirical evidence could strengthen your debate position? PRO or CON?

Prepare your own debate position statement that consists of two points substantiated by at least three different sources of epidemiological or empirical evidence. When you prepare this position statement, it is important to consider your professional and ethical obligations. You are encouraged to review course content from HLTH 361 and HLTH 362 that address topics like nursing code of ethics, caring relationships, advocacy, and social justice. Each student’s debate position is double spaced, maximum 2 pages. A copy is sent to every group member.

Potential resources include:
Government websites:
• Health Canada
• BC Ministry of Health.
Professional and non-profit organizations:
• BCNU
• RNAO
• CRNBC
• CNA
Searchable Scientific Literature Databases & Sources:
• CINAHL
• Medline
• Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
• National Guideline Clearinghouse
• PubMed
Debate Facilitation
The group members amongst themselves decide who will be the debate facilitator, whose responsibilities are described below.
The First Task: Create a timeline about the individual, task-related work. Each student is responsible to identify 2 debate points and two resources (a nursing article, an internet resource, or course text information that identifies evidence and applicable figures, tables, and/or location by page numbers in the selected text). Draft the debate group’s position statement based on the information contributed by all of the different group members.
The Second Task: Draft the position statement that includes three main concerns that are well substantiated by empirical evidence, especially epidemiological data. This draft position is shared with the other two students who are responsible to make sure the focus of the PRO or CON debate position is in relation to either the benefits or risks of a selected level of prevention, or proposed preventive measures.
The Third Task. Post online final draft debate position that includes 3 selected resources used to substantiate this position.
Individual Course Portfolio–Reflection on Group Work
For this particular group work reflection, there are two parts that contribute to a total of 15 marks.
Part 1: Your contribution to the group process (5 marks)

Analyze your contribution by considering
a) What did you do to facilitate the first task of each group member completing the individual in preparation work?
b) What did you do to help facilitate the development of the group’s debate position?
c) What did you do to facilitate group morale given the online format for this process?
d) What question(s) did you pose to facilitate critical thinking about the relevance of primary, secondary, tertiary prevention, or the potential hazards of proposed prevention measures?
e) Prepare a summary about your contribution based on your above analysis.
Part 2: Your knowledge development in relation to applying epidemiology to make practice decisions about prevention (10 marks)
Would you propose a different final draft of the debate position? If yes, substantiate your proposed changes that better reflect your original debate position. If no, substantiate your reasons to keep the group’s debate position the same. Other thoughts about the contribution of doing this group work to advance making evidence-informed practice decisions to promote health and disease prevention may be included in this part of your individual reflection. For example, what did you learn when you considered both the PRO and CON positions of the prevention issue?
Maximum 2 pages or 500 words. Value of marks per section based on depth quality, clarity, and conciseness when addressing assignment criteria.
Workload Issues
There are many workload issues associated with facilitating this activity. First, the activity requires the facilitator to assign teams and topics, as well as presenters. In addition, by giving the learners the option of proposing a different topic, the facilitator has the possibility of each group suggesting a topic that the facilitator would then have to approve or deny and then perhaps reassign to a different group so that the groups could in the end debate each other. By having the groups each examine an issue from the pro or con side, each group is dependent upon another group for the actual debate portion of the activity and is also limiting their own understanding of the issue to only one viewpoint.
In addition, the group activity in itself is far too convoluted and complicated. The instructions are not clear and alternate between the second and third person, thereby creating even more confusion and distance between the learners and the course materials and each other. The individual instructions are given first and then later the debate facilitator is directed to establish a timeline for these instructions. Individuals are assigned different tasks instead of being asked to work together to reach a common goal. I think the facilitator would have to intervene and clarify many times during this task and that with several groups this could take a lot of time.
The follow up individual portfolio assessment is also problematic. A clear rubric or marking scheme is not provided for the facilitator. The facilitator would have to review many postings and potentially research many prevention issues to provide an assessment. The learners are asked to consider what they learned by considering the pro and con sides of an issue, but this step wasn’t actually a part of the group work. In fact, there was no debate.
Solutions
I would revise the activity to make it a collaborative team activity where the team was required to complete a debate table, so that each team contained its own debate within itself, and making this distinctly separate from the portfolio assignment to be evaluated. I would eliminate the option of suggesting an additional topic as well, thereby limiting the areas for which the facilitator would have to be knowledgeable. I would have the facilitator assign each group a presenter who managed the timelines and the final team debate table. I would also make the instructions very clear to the learners, setting up an introduction and step-by-step instructions for the team task. I would also advise learners to review other teams’ debate tables to increase their understanding of prevention issues, thereby extending the learning. I would also provide a graphic for completion for the groups so that they have a clear and visual representation of the required team output.
In the assignment, I would make the requirements clear and identify the points allotted to each section so that both learners and the facilitator have a clear assessment tool by which to judge the portfolio assignments. I believe the increased clarity in both instructions and requirements will reduce the time the facilitator spends on the activity and responding to learners’ questions during the process. The individual assignments should also take less time to mark as they require the learner’s to provide specific evidence of their contributions, so that the facilitator will not be required to go back and review all of the groups’ discussions in order to assess the portfolio assignment. The revised Team Task and Portfolio Assignment are copied below.
My approach is similar in some ways to the approach taken by my team in Team Task 4. In both cases, the redesigned activities involve a collaborative team component and the activity now limits the options or possible topics that the facilitator needs to be able to assess (regions in the team task and prevention measures in my activity). I linked the activity to an assessment which the team task did not. In both cases, the resulting outputs were made more specific: in the team task we provided a word limit and reduced the examples to one of the law working and failing in each region and in my activity I required a table in point form, an outline of which I provided. In the team task, the group decided to provide a word limit rather than a graphic, but I chose to include a graphic to help those visual learners and reflect the two sides of the issue in the task itself. In both cases, the need for clear instructions was obvious in reducing the facilitator’s workload by reducing learner confusion and as a result the number of questions fielded by the facilitator. With the revised activity, the facilitator should only need to set up the activity by assigning groups and prevention measures and then answer questions as needed as the team’s progress, but hopefully this will be minimal as the instructions and resulting output have been clearly laid out.
On May 20, I posted the following to the discussion forum for this team task:
I support redesigning this as a team task with 10 teams of six. Good idea to assign regions and repeat regions to cut down on the amount of research the facilitator has to do. Might also be a good idea to provide some resources for each team. If two teams are assigned the same region, this will cut down on the facilitator’s feedback. I must confess I peeked at the feedback given to the other team on our last task and found a lot of overlap.
I think we also need to make the description of the required output more specific and clear – provide two examples of where the law is working well and two examples of where it may be failing. Provide a word limit – perhaps 500 words. This will help the facilitator have some control over what he or she is receiving from students.
Assign roles to the students in the teams, particularly presenter and timekeeper. I don’t believe it’s necessary to design a quiz as this is essentially a task that we need to redesign rather than a unit. There may be a quiz on the principles of environmental law attached to this activity, but I don’t think we need to look into that. If we redesign this activity as a collaborative one, with a repetition of regions and some resources suggested, a very specific description of the output (I might be tempted to provide a table to be completed) it will significantly cut down on the facilitator’s workload.
Many of these ideas made it into the resulting wiki redesign of the activity. On May 22, I added,
It might be helpful to set a word limit or alternately provide a graphic for the team to fill in (Table with the specific law at top, working well on one side, failing on the other) and perhaps a word limit for a short paragraph for the group to not only provide an example but provide their explanation of why it’s working well and why it’s not. Also might be a good idea for them to limit themselves to one environmental law in the region. I’m not sure about the debate option. They aren’t examining only one side of the issue, so I think that the debate will be built into their discussions of the region as they decide which examples show the law working and which show it failing. Adding a level of debate may confuse the learning activity and add to the facilitator’s workload.
As a result, the debate option was dropped and a word limit was added to the activity. These contributions add to the amount of control the facilitator now had over the redesigned activity and decreases the workload of this particular activity.
Three Interesting Citations
One of the most interesting comments for me was in the course resource “Managing your Workload,” which states “Considering course design and course delivery separately is an essential breakdown in workload discussions.” This struck me as very true and caused me to reflect on my own situation as an instructional designer. Our instructional development group is quite separate from our delivery group, yet our design of courses is limited by the delivery model. If the course is to be tutored, the tutor will only mark assignments and answer learners’ questions. There is no opportunity for discussion or facilitation. We are moving toward a more activity-based, problem-based learning model, so this has necessitated negotiation with the tutor union to establish a new delivery model and pay structure, which will allow more freedom in course design.
Another interesting statement is that “Managing collaboration between online learners requires a clear design and facilitation strategy that includes learners’ roles and clear descriptions of goals and expectations.” This statement intrigued me because I believe that this is also true in a face to face teaching situation. If I were to provide my class with a collaborative task or problem-solving activity but did not provide a clear explanation of their roles and the expectation for the product, I would spend a lot of the class intervening and redirecting group’s efforts. However, if I modelled the task at the beginning and assigned clear roles, the group work went smoothly, allowing me to be the “guide on the side” that was intended in the lesson plan.
I was also struck by Conrad & Donaldson’s (2004) statement, “It is vital that a team activity requires an interweaving of thoughts and not simply be a result of individual thoughts and actions” (p. 62). This comment clarified for me some of my frustration with some of the team work we have engaged in and the importance of timelines within the task. Because of individual team member’s schedules and other commitments, it is not always possible, but it is definitely preferred to start discussion from a common place at the same time. If a team member provides a solution before the options are openly discussed within the group, the result can be from individual’s thoughts and actions and not a true collaboration. However, if a specific time is allotted for background preparation and then the group discusses and decides on an approach and then the group works together to achieve the task, the end result will be even stronger and will be the result of this interweaving of thoughts.

Revised Activity
A. Team Task 3: Considering Prevention Issues
Introduction
For the following activity you will work in teams assigned by your online tutor to consider both sides of a prevention measure from an epidemiologic perspective. Your online tutor will assign each team a presenter for this task. Your online tutor will also assign each group a prevention measure. Examples of such prevention measures include flu immunizations, the distribution of folic acid to prevent neural tube defects, Gardasil vaccines, the banning of cell phone use while driving, and mandatory helmets for skiers. You will reflect on this team task in Assignment 4: Portfolio Reflection on Team Task 3.
Presenters help to facilitate team work. Their responsibilities include:
• assigning roles to team members
• moderating discussions, if necessary
• making sure team members stay on task
• posting the final team output to the plenary discussion forum
If your team is working well together, the presenter should not have to do a lot of extra work. Please support each other as much as possible.

By doing this activity, you will apply basic epidemiology and use epidemiological and other empirical evidence to make decisions about prevention or preventive measures. Potential resources include:

Government websites:
Health Canada
BC Ministry of Health

Professional and non-profit organizations:
BCNU
RNAO
CRNBC
CNA

Searchable Scientific Literature Databases & Sources:
CINAHL
Medline
Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
National Guideline Clearinghouse
PubMed
Instructions
1. Formulate both pro and con position statements on the prevention issue you have been assigned. These statements should be in relation to either the benefits or risks of a selected level of prevention, or proposed preventive measures. As you prepare these position statements, consider your professional and ethical obligations. You are encouraged to review topics like the nursing code of ethics, caring relationships, advocacy, and social justice.
2. Next, each member of your team will do some background research about the prevention measure by considering the Epidemiologic Triangle. You may want to have half of your team research the pro side while the other half researches the con position.
a) What is the known natural history or progress of a particular disease, adverse health event, or illness that relates to the prevention measure?
b) What epidemiological data exists in relation to this issue? Morbidity & mortality statistics? Prevalence and incident rates?
c) What other empirical evidence supports either the pro or con position of the issue?
3. Work together to complete this debate table [link to Debate Table.doc]. You may want to divide up the work, but as a team will have to agree on the final table. You must have at least three points for each side, substantiated by at least two pieces of empirical evidence, especially epidemiological data. These sources may be a nursing article, an internet resource, or course text information that identifies evidence and applicable figures, tables, and/or location by page numbers in the selected text.
4. When your team has agreed on your final debate table, post this to the discussion forum for this team task, entitled “Team Task 3: Considering Prevention Issues.”
5. Take the time to review the other team’s debate tables. By doing so, you will gain a greater understanding of the complexity of these prevention issues, as well as the available empirical and epidemiological evidence.
Prevention Issue Debate Table
Pro Position Statement Con Position Statement
1. Supporting Point
a. Evidence: Empirical or Epidemiological
b. Evidence: Empirical or Epidemiological
c. Evidence: Empirical or Epidemiological 1. Supporting Point
a. Evidence: Empirical or Epidemiological
b. Evidence: Empirical or Epidemiological
c. Evidence: Empirical or Epidemiological
2. Supporting Point
a. Evidence: Empirical or Epidemiological
b. Evidence: Empirical or Epidemiological
c. Evidence: Empirical or Epidemiological 2. Supporting Point
a. Evidence: Empirical or Epidemiological
b. Evidence: Empirical or Epidemiological
c. Evidence: Empirical or Epidemiological
3. Supporting Point
a. Evidence: Empirical or Epidemiological
b. Evidence: Empirical or Epidemiological
c. Evidence: Empirical or Epidemiological 3. Supporting Point
a. Evidence: Empirical or Epidemiological
b. Evidence: Empirical or Epidemiological
c. Evidence: Empirical or Epidemiological

Assignment 4: Portfolio Reflection on Team Task 3 (10%)
1. In Team Task 3: Considering Prevention Issues, you worked together to investigate a prevention measure and then formulated both pro and con statements on the prevention issue chosen. You then agreed on three points for each of the pro and con sides of the issue and provided at least two pieces of empirical evidence for each, especially epidemiological data.
2. In your portfolio, copy your team’s final debate table. (3 marks)
3. Write a reflection on this activity of approximately 300 words, which includes the following:
a. Comment on your contribution to the team task. Include quotes from two of your own contributions to the team discussion forum that exemplify how you influenced the debate table your group developed. In particular, choose at least one quote which illustrates which question(s) you posed to facilitate critical thinking about the relevance of primary, secondary, tertiary prevention, or the potential hazards of proposed prevention measures? Identify the postings by date. (3 marks)
b. Is there anything you would change in the debate table? If so, what would you add or change and why. If not, why would you leave the group work unchanged? ( 1 mark)
c. Now that you’ve considered both sides of the prevention measure, which side do you support and why? (2 marks)
d. Is there anything you would do differently in a following team task? If yes, describe. Also, include any comments you have about how this group work advances your ability to make evidence-informed practice decisions to promote health and disease prevention. (1 mark)

References
Conrad, R., & Donaldson, J. (2004). Engaging the Online Learner. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Open Polytechnic of New Zealand. “Managing your Workload.” Retrieved May 2, 2009 from http://campus.openpolytechnic.ac.nz/omol/38126/5096-moodle/Mod5-130.html

Monitoring Tools

mjakubec — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:50:38 +0000

After exploring the monitoring tools in the ‘Comm1-Workplace Communications’ practice course, I could quickly see many ways in which the monitoring tools could be used to support learners while facilitating an online course. The difficulty is choosing only one to talk about in this blog. In my previous experience as a face to face ESL teacher, I used WebCT to supplement my classes and found it very useful to check and see if students had accessed the course site after absences. It was a good way of communicating with students who had missed class for one reason or another and making sure that they were able to keep up while ill or away for a family emergency so that they could return and successfully complete the class. In an online class, the monitoring and reporting tools are even more critical and would provide even more information on a student’s progress.
The monitoring tool I would choose is the ability to click on participants, choose a specific student and then view all the forum posts made by that student. This tool provides a quick way of viewing a student’s level of involvement in the discussion and team work in a course. For formative purposes, the e-facilitator could read a student’s posts and then provide them with specific suggestions for improvement if they were perhaps only commenting on others’ contributions while adding little to the discussion of their own. I could also see this monitoring tool as an important indicator of the level at which a student was engaging and interacting with the course resources and a source of information to then personally respond to the student asking if they had any questions or concerns, were keeping up, finding the course materials interesting or whatever else appeared to be an issue from the posts. When marking assessments, the collection of all of a student’s forum posts would also be useful in providing summative evaluation. In one of our previous blog entries for this course, I completed the task before we were advised not to worry about including a quote from a resource in our post so I had already chosen a post which wasn’t necessarily my best contribution to the team task. Anouk was aware of this and able to then look at all of my posts and factor some of that into her assessment. Of course, it is difficult to consider this monitoring tool separately, as I believe you would use information gained from the other monitoring tools (those that show views of each activity and times when the course is accessed) to inform actions taken and communication with specific individuals.
The reporting tool that I could immediately see application for is the activity report. In this report, you can choose a specific activity and then run a report to provide the results of the activity. Here you can see the class’ activity for each specific course resource or activity. I think this would be particularly useful in regard to quizzes as you can click on that activity and get a report of everyone’s score on the entire quiz and then the responses for each question. As a result, as the e-facilitator, I could identify those questions which caused particular difficulty for the class and provide some additional feedback, resources, or tasks to mediate that challenge for them. You can also see how long each student took to complete the quiz and consider a bar graph of the students’ results for the quiz. At a glance, then one can identify the weaker students and difficult questions. I could also use the report on the quiz to determine future revisions to the quiz. If all students had trouble with a specific question, perhaps the issue is with the question. I could rework or change the question and analyze the results with a future class. The results can be exported to excel or document form so you can use them in other areas and keep a record after the course is complete. I could also look at each students quiz and add a personalized comment for each question if I thought it would be helpful. I could also override the grade on the question if it appeared problematic or unfair after the quiz had been taken. I could also run an item analysis and see how many attempts it took for a student to get a question right.
Overall, there is a lot of potential information in the monitoring and reporting tools that a teacher can use to improve teaching and students’ performance. I only wish I could use the participant forum monitoring tool for this course as it would simplify the process of choosing quotes for our blogs.

Chat Session and Critique

mjakubec — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:50:04 +0000

Copy of Chat Session
13:46 Melissa Ellen: Ooops, I guess that means it;s on to me. Do we open a nw chat or keep this one going. I guess we keep it going and cut and paste later.
13:47 Jill Keri: Does anyone want to have a time keeper for the other sessions? I set my clock so that helped.
13:47 Kenneth Campbell: Sorry, I seemed to get stuck. Had to exit anr re-enter. My reply is yes, a strusture is needeed.
13:47 Karen Lynne: not sure keep this one going?
13:47 Melissa Ellen: That happened to me too Ken.
13:47 Melissa Ellen: Sure, then we can save it all in the chat log or whatever.
13:48 Melissa Ellen: Okay, I wanted us to focus on the cultural issues. Perhaps, if we could look at Lin first and consider what issues she’s facing.
13:48 Kenneth Campbell: Shall we try q4?
13:48 Melissa Ellen: Now I’m confused.
13:48 Kenneth Campbell: Lin, fine
13:49 Karen Lynne: Not sure how you would deal with students like Lin in an online course?
13:49 Jill Keri: Scenario shows Lin doing lots of extra work – very common in ESL students. In my experience they put as many hours into their language as they do to their actual course.
13:50 Melissa Ellen: She seems to be struggling primarily with language issues.
13:50 Kenneth Campbell: I’d try the telephone if poss.
13:50 Karen Lynne: yes and I have not experienced a student with these issues in an online course before but has anyone else?
13:50 Jill Keri: Most ESL students recognise the challenges they face, and the motivated ones will do what’s required to keep up. I think that’s what’s happening with Lin.
13:50 Melissa Ellen: I very much agree with Jill. Telephone may not be the best option though as listening is one skill cannot be controlled and lack of visual cues make it very difficult for understanding.
13:51 Melissa Ellen: I wonder if we couldn’t direct her to an online writing center or offer as the tutor to help her with her writing before she posts her ideas.
13:51 Jill Keri: The danger with Lin (as an ESL example) is that other students don’t seem to bother including them in interactions (this can be f2f as well as online).
13:51 Karen Lynne: is that practical though in reality – my concern was like Jill how do you include her
13:51 Kenneth Campbell: Sounds very labour-intesive, Melissa.
13:52 Melissa Ellen: I like the idea of a more personal contact with Lin is good but wonder if f2f is a possibility.
13:52 Jill Keri: My idea was to ask a couple of the student leaders in her team to help a little
13:52 Karen Lynne: I liked your draft idea you just posted it as I was typing
13:52 Melissa Ellen: Yes, it is labour intensive, I agree. If there is a peer source that would be good.
13:52 Karen Lynne: that was meant for Jill sorry
13:52 Jill Keri: I know that the students aren’t supposed to be facilitators – but maybe if a course was working really well then the actual facilitator should not have to do so much work
13:53 Melissa Ellen: Maybe a message needs to also go to the group to include her in the interaction.
13:53 Melissa Ellen: Time does fly once you start, doesn’t it?
13:53 Jill Keri: I think just identify a couple of the natural leaders… then hopefully they’ll promote better inclusion for Lin & other studnets will follow?
13:54 Melissa Ellen: Maybe e should talk as well about the other cultural issues.
13:54 Jill Keri: Great – how do you want to cover that?
13:54 Melissa Ellen: While the language issue is the most obvious one with Lin, I can’t help wondering if other cultural biases are causing difficulties for her and Pirirpe.
13:55 Karen Lynne: thats an interesting thought I never really considered cultural bias in an online environmment
13:55 Melissa Ellen: Some of this might be in the design. The article on Maori and e-learning talks abvout need for colurful and interactive material. Graphic organizers and visuals are also really helpful for ESOL.
13:56 Melissa Ellen: Maybe some of the activities/topics could ask for cutural sharing.
13:56 Kenneth Campbell: Yes, I see the merit if graphic here.
13:56 Jill Keri: Hard to say if Piripi’s issues are cultural – he was participating well earlier in the course. Pania however would definitely be a cultural issue. Her g’ma died – if she’s Maori as we think, their funeral traditions are very different from Pakeha (white NZ). We’d definitely need to be sensitive to that.
13:56 Melissa Ellen: I wonder if the facilitator could hold an online video conference to help with the overall group communicatino.
13:57 Melissa Ellen: Would help get that f2f feel and visual (non-linguistic) component that helps the Maori and probably Lin as well.
13:57 Kenneth Campbell: I agree, Melissa
13:57 Melissa Ellen: Jill, Karen?
13:58 Jill Keri: Though with Lin she may be even less inclined to share verbally if she’s really struggling?
13:58 Melissa Ellen: oops sorry, see a message back now.
13:58 Melissa Ellen: Good point re: Pania.
13:59 Melissa Ellen: I agree Piripi was active earlier but though he’s logging in he’s not contributing. Maybe he doesn’t feel like part of thegroup?
13:59 Karen Lynne: sorry got interrupted
13:59 Melissa Ellen: Maybe we could cnsider the video conference as a general overall approach to team building in this group.
13:59 Jill Keri: Piripi’s in Sophie’s group – almost nyone would be scared off!
13:59 Karen Lynne: or maybe Piripi likes to be a silent learner?
14:00 Melissa Ellen: guess that leads us on to the lurker page.
14:00 Jill Keri: thing again with Piripi is that he’s changed. He was great, now lurking. Something must have happened & we can surely help him get back on track?
14:00 Melissa Ellen: It’s my own bias as an ESOL teacher that wants to find a cultural solution.
14:00 Melissa Ellen: I think my time may be up now.
14:00 Melissa Ellen: fOH, so tru about Sophie! I’m sorry my typing is deteriorating.

14:01 Melissa Ellen: I think we’ve got a good start on these issues and can reflect and discuss further in the discussion forums?

Critique
There were many challenging aspects to the chat session, perhaps the first chat session I had participated in with a specific focus or task rather than a social purpose. As I anticipated, it was difficult to keep the flow of the conversation going and I believe some initial discussion of turn-taking strategies would have helped. I had thought this was one of the initial topics of a chat from our pre-planning but it didn’t turn out to be so and I didn’t want to push as a reluctance to adopt these conventions had already been expressed in the discussion forum. However, I did attempt to use some of the strategies myself such as breaking up longer thoughts so people weren’t waiting while I composed lengthy posts as suggested by Smith in “Synchronous Discussion in Online Courses: A Pedagogical Strategy for Taking the Chat Beast.”
I believe I prepared well for the chat, setting the questions in advance and distributing them to my team members by the agreed upon time. This allowed the chat to focus on a specific task and make the best of the time we had. However, I think I set too many and too specific questions, so at times the chat felt too rushed as I felt the need for us to reach a conclusion. I think another time, I would set a more general discussion question, perhaps the general approach to the task rather than individual students’ issues. Another positive aspect of my chat is that I had prepared for the questions and was interested and enthusiastic about the topic. However, there is a danger in this as there might be a tendency to dominate the chat, which I tried not to do but I can see how it might easily happen.
Another time, and especially with my own class, I would set norms first and establish turn taking practices like using . . . to indicate the idea wasn’t finished and /// to show that I was continuing a thread. I believe this would allow the thread of the chat to be followed more easily. As the chat leader, I would also attempt to apply some of the skills I would use face to face in an online situation, including paraphrasing, clarifying and summarizing as the discussion progressed. I believe there just wasn’t time in the 10-15 minutes we were each allotted to do as much of this as I would have liked. It’s also quite difficult for typing to keep up with thoughts and the chat itself. I type about 70 wpm so don’t find this as challenging, but I found it was hard to equally include all in the group discussion as it is not an equal playing field like talking. Those who are less adept at keyboarding are definitely at a disadvantage in this online environment over which they have no control over the speed, much like a second language speaker in a listening environment.
In conclusion, moderating the chat session had many challenges but was definitely a good learning experience as I quickly identified some strategies that could be used in the future to improve my facilitation and make the experience more inclusive for those involved.
References
Smith, Craig W. “Synchronous Discussion in Online Courses: A Pedagogical Strategy for Taking the Chat Beast.” Innovate 2(5), retrieved April 4, 2009 from http://www.innovateonline.info.index.php?view=article&id=246&action=article
Coghlan, M. (2001). “eModeration – Managing a new language.” Retrieved April 6, 2009 from http://users.sa.chariot.net.au/~michaelc/nw2001/emod_newlang.htm

Practising your E-Facilitation Skills

mjakubec — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:42:25 +0000

The most challenging aspect of writing the team messages to the course participants in the scenario was getting the tone right while including all of the relevant information, particularly in e-mails that required more delicacy, including those to Pania, Sophie, Lin, Brian and Vanessa. Another challenging aspect of the task was coordinating the actual teamwork, as Karen was away travelling for much of the team task. Because of her own deadline, Karen posted draft e-mails to each participant before we’d had much pre-discussion. This could have potentially shut down the discussion, but on April 7 Jill tactfully suggested, “I wonder if we could back up just a little and look at an approach to the various issues and individual students before putting final writing touches on the messages Chris is going to write?” Unfortunately, as a result of timing, Karen was excluded from much of this and at times Ken was also “absent,” so Jill and I ended up making most of the contributions while attempting not to dominate. Karen was able to return just before the wiki was finalized and, as we had assigned specific e-mails to team members, she was still able to fully contribute to the wiki.
For the most part, during our discussion of the issues taking place in the class, we usually agreed on the individual’s who needed messages and the general content and approach. I found some of the team members were far more likely to take a more direct approach by phoning a participant than sending an e-mail but Anouk reminded us of the need to communicate by e-mail for this specific task.
We easily agreed on the need for forum postings to all participants to introduce Chris to the group as the new e-facilitator for the course, to remind the group of netiquette, to re-state the team task and expected participant roles and responsibilities, and to encourage mutuality by asking the group to recall past team successes, as well as the need for a personal introduction in the coffee shop to encourage community. With regards to the coffee shop message, on April 13 I suggested this include a “welcome to the course [stating] I’m not sure if this happened previously and this seems to be an important aspect of Maori takanga (perhaps explains the warm welcome in our courses) that I think would be appreciated by all cultures.” I suggested this because of the reading I’d done about the Maori culture and e-learning, but also because my past experience as a face to face teacher has always confirmed the importance of the personal connection between a teacher and student; in reality, we don’t teach subjects, but people.
The individual e-mails were the subject of much more debate within the group. I believe these e-mails were more challenging as they centered around more personal areas such as family loss and death (Pania), learning styles (Peter), personality and appropriate behaviour (Sophie, Vanessa), language skills (Lin), and effort and availability (Brian, Pippa, Mark, Steve, Chen, Max). Because of the personal nature of these e-mails, attention had to be paid to not only what to say but how to say it. With regard to Pania, on April 13, I commented on the “Need to acknowledge [the] importance of participating in cultural rites related to grandma’s death (see story on p. 19 of “Critical Success Factors”) while ensuring can also contribute to team task. Perhaps a message to group suggesting work around Pania’s schedule, establish a plan of attack, much like we did around Karen’s honeymoon, my trip to Victoria, etc. Flexible so she can be included.” This contribution brought in some of the theory and issues raised in Critical Success Factors for Effective use of E-learning with Maori Learners.
We also used our chat session to discuss issues with individual learners, particularly Lin and Max. Karen was quite interested in Lin’s issues. There were some differences of opinion about Lin, with some team members wanting to appoint a course participant to support Lin with her language. I suggested referring her to an online writing center or offering personal assistance as the e-facilitator as these options would allow her to save face, an important factor for Asian learners, while not placing an undue burden on another member of the course. We also had some differences in our approach to Max, with some team members feeling he had literacy issues that were causing his posts to be short and difficult to understand. On April 13, I suggested that “his problem isn’t language or literacy (his syntax is okay) but keyboarding. Still a good idea to compose offline. May also suggest some keyboarding programs or if really can’t, Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software could really help his participation.” This comment came from my experience with low literacy students as well as ESOL speakers, which enabled me to recognize that his errors were not those typically made by these groups but common keyboarding mistakes. With those students whose participation could be improved in various ways, I tried to be very specific in identifying strategies that would help them, such as providing Pippa with a suggested schedule for catching up (an idea from my experience with a course I’m developing) and advising Max, who appears overwhelmed, to unsubscribe from the other team’s forums.
My desire to provide very specific suggestions and feedback comes from my many years of teaching ESL students who require specific direction and advice when working to improve their language and assignments. I found myself resisting a suggested CRC (commend-recommend-commend) method of feedback as I felt it was too indirect and perhaps lengthy for an online forum. If the specific suggestions for improvement were sandwiched between positive comments, they might lose emphasis and become lost to the intended audience. I also thought it might be good to point out to Sophie that her comments were sexist and offensive, but my other team members thought this was too strong an approach. Perhaps with more discussion we may have reached a way of gently pointing out the specific problems with Sophie’s communication.
One team member commented on the number of “justs” in our messages. This was interesting as I initially defended the “justs,” feeling that they softened tone, but when I went back and reread the messages I deleted some of my own “justs.” This illustrates just how easily we can take online communication personally and how important tone is in this forum.
References
Institute of Technology and Polytechnics of New Zealand. (2004). “Critical success factors for effective use of e-Learning with Maori learners.” Retrieved April 1, 2009 from http://akoaotearoa.ac.nz/mi/node/345