Week 11: Continuing Forward

Week 11
Image Credit: @snapsurveys

Wow... I cannot believe it is week 11 of the course and we are completing our 11th reflection. Time moves so fast. While it is the 11th week of the course, I feel like I have very little to report on this week. It's not that I have not been doing anything... on the contrary... I have been busy. It's just that all my work and experiences this week are a snapshot of things that I have discussed in previous weeks. In essence, it has been a standard week answering questions, grading, and providing support for all my students. Nevertheless, I am going to provide an update on where we are in the course and then provide a short reflection on a few things that occurred this week.

Goodbye Module 4, Welcome to module 5

Sunday marked the end of module 4 and Monday started the class on a new journey. This is actually my favorite time in this course. We move on from background information on the immune system and identifying and classifying microbes and move into the diseases caused by microbes and how they effect each system of the body. This is the part of the term that students really love as well. I love talking about infectious disease and all the "gross" stuff that happens. This is also the time when students feel a stronger connection to the material. This is the part of the course where they learn symptoms of various infections and how they will diagnose or treat these infections in their future careers. I have designed this course to be taught and set up by "body system". There are two ways microbiology can be taught: "by disease" or "by body system". When I was a professor at Lenoir Rhyne, I first taught the course by disease. I soon realized that it really helped students if the material is presented by body system. There are many reasons for this, but one of the main reasons is that they are taught Anatomy and Physiology by body system and it helps if this class is set up like A&P as well. I learned, early on, that many of my students are taking this class along with A&P 2 (students cannot take this class unless they pass A&P 1 or General Bio 1). So, I learned very quickly that this class should resemble other medical courses they are taking. 

Examples of Different Body Systems
Image Credit:  @wisegeek

While students are learning the same information, presenting it in a different way really helps them progress through the material. I think some of the courses in the OTID program have demonstrated this concept as well. Many of the assignments in the courses build from one course to another and many of the projects overlap. While I know this happens in science, it is great to see it in other programs. Seeing how it is done in the OTID program has helped me understand other ways at organizing course information. I may be a child of two different fields, but I can use aspects of these two fields to build upon each other. So, Module 5 marks the intro to disease by body system. We start with the integumentary system and move into the nervous system.  This helps the students keep in line with what they learn in the A&P courses and continues to let them learn with a similar mindset. 

A light-hearted look at grading.
Image Credit: @PhDComics

More Grading

Since it is the beginning of a module, it means another module just ended and much of my time is spent grading. While grading seems like a never ending job, the end of the modules are loaded with grading. While the comic at the left is just a funny comic about teaching and grading, it is important to note that grading is an intense and serious activity. I feel like I spend lots of my time grading. I will say, this program has changed the way I approach grading. Since starting this program, I have been more detailed and even encouraging in my grading. After taking a few courses in the OTID program, I now make sure to point out some things students did really well. Before, I focused on the areas where students needed to improve. Now, I realize it is important to point out to the students where they really shined and succeeded. I still also point out where and how they can improve, but I make sure to point out some strengths as well. I think that has helped the relationship I have with my students. While this is a personal opinion, I feel like students talk to me more now that I have improved my feedback. My guess is that it makes the students more comfortable with me. I want to make the learning experience a positive one (if I can) and I feel this has helped me improve my interaction with my students.

Now on to week 12. I hope to have enough responses from my midterm survey to be able to report on those next week. :D

Week 10: Small(ish) Improvements

Image Credit: Wikimediacommons 

Wow... I cannot believe we are on the 10th reflection of the semester. It is both a good time and busy time. A lot of my time is spent grading and answering student messages. It really is a never-ending job. This program has provided a lot of information for me to take away. One big thing that I am glad this program has reinforced is that teaching online courses is a constant work in progress. I always strive for perfection in my courses and I used to get personally flustered when something in my courses did not work correctly (such as technology issues, links, or other random issues that can pop up). I also would get frustrated when I found gaps in instruction that could have been better. While I would always fix these issues, it would personally upset me. This program provided me the tools and the understanding to realize that online courses are always being updated and are always works in progress.

With all of that, I have spent a good portion of my time making some small changes and updates to the course this week (outside of my normal daily work for the course).

Updating and Incorporating Learning Outcomes

Image Credit: @thepeakperformance

One of my tasks this semester is working to incorporate learning outcomes in a more clear and connected way. My class is currently in Module 4 of the semester and I worked to incorporate the learning outcomes in Module 5. While this task was identified at the beginning of this practicum, I decided to go in and modify some of those outcomes to better "build" off of previous outcomes. In science, so much of the material in one module (or chapter in the traditional setting) builds on previous information. I realized, that while I had lots of great learning outcomes, I needed to have a more tiered approach to those outcomes. It is something that needs to build throughout the semester. I am not sure why I never thought about that aspect before (with regard to the learning outcomes). So, I decided to take some time to look over the outcomes and build them from previous outcomes. Basically, the same outcomes, just reworded using language from previous learning outcomes. 

Here is an example...

In module 4, a couple of the learning outcomes contained information dealing with specific terms students had to understand in order to understand material from Module 5. 

Example of outcomes from Module 4...

• Compare and contrast the terms infection, disease, morbidity, pathogenicity, and virulence. 
• Contrast symptoms, signs, and syndromes.
• Contrast incidence and prevalence.
• Define epidemiology. 

While incorporating outcomes I noticed in Module 5 that students were having to identify pathogens and how they cause harm in particular body systems. I realized that I need to make sure that I am using the terms found in module 4 learning outcomes in the specific learning outcomes for Module 5. While some of them already did this, I realized I could do a better job at connecting the modules by using all the terms from Module 4 within the learning outcomes for Module 5. 

Examples of  Learning Outcomes in Module 5
Image Credit: P. Williams 

Here are some updated learning outcomes for Module 5...

• Describe the actions of six virulence factors of Streptococcus pyogenes. 
• Describe the pathogenesis, epidemiology, diagnosis, and treatment of necrotizing fasciitis.
• Discuss the virulence factors of Staphylococcus that enable it to be pathogenic, contrasting the virulence of S. aureus with that of S. epidermidis. 

While this is only a small sample, I am working to connect the terminology within the modules. I think this will help students make better connections with the current material and previous material. One of the biggest goals I have for my students is for them to see connections between the material and why it is important in everyday life. I think this is a big step in that process. I hope that rephrasing and adding connecting terminology will help each of my students.

On top of connecting all the terminology, I am still working through making connections within each module as I started at the beginning of the semester. That process has been going smoothly so far and I am getting ready to start working on Module 6 Learning Outcomes. So... I am getting close to making it to the end and working through each module. I will feel very accomplished once I get through all of that work.

General Day-to-Day Tasks

Examples of Announcements in Microbiology
Image Credit: P Williams

As always, part of my reflection from this week is really a repeat of every other weekly reflection. A lot of what I do daily are the same tasks with just different information in different modules. My week has been working to contact students about individual needs, checking in on students who have not started working on the current module to make sure they are okay or checking to see if they need help. Also, a few small glitches occurred with VoiceThread which did not allow students to click the blue "submit assignment" button on some posts. I had students contacting me concerned about how to submit that assignment. While it has been resolved, it took a lot of time contacting VoiceThread to see what was wrong (apparently there was a problem when students tried to submit in the mobile app). Just keeping up with day-to-day tasks takes a lot of time. As always, I enjoy crafting fun announcements to grab students attention. Funny thing... I wished all my students a Happy Vernal Equinox and I got a couple of messages asking what that was. At least that shows me some students are reading the announcement. haha

Looking forward to the next post... on to the 11th reflection. 

Week 9: Troubleshooting 3rd-Party Software

Image Credit: @successrebellion 

Well... I guess it is that time of the semester when most of my time is spent fixing problems. Such is the life of an online instructor. I have learned over the years that no matter how hard you work to make sure everything works properly, something will go wrong. I always feel bad for students when they hit these unexpected bumps. I really work hard try and find solutions for students, but much of the time, the third-party software issues are out of my hands. So, during the week, there was a strange glitch with the virtual lab program that I use in the course. It is developed and managed by a publishing company that has nothing to do with my college.

Where is the Problem? 

Something that I have learned that takes much more time than I ever thought it would is just simply finding out what the problem is. Is the problem something the student is doing? Is it me because my instructions were not clear? Is it internet connections, software, or even 3rd party problems? Establishing the cause of the problem in the online setting can be more time consuming than it really should be. The online instructor must really pay attention to what is going on.

In this situation, the first student contacted me saying that they were shut out of working on the lab. Basically, she was working on the lab and it just shut down. The student wanted to know what to do. So, I did a quick check of the virtual lab program and it worked fine for me when I logged in. So, after making that check, my conclusion was that she must of had an internet issue from her provider. So, I addressed the student on what to do. But, then, I started getting more questions from students about similar issues at different points in the virtual lab. So, now it is a pattern. Something is not right, but when I log in, it is perfectly fine on my end and everything works. At this point, I contact the support in the virtual lab. Their response is that everything is fine.

Image Credit: 9gag

Well... what do you do in this case. Everything is fine on my end. Everything is fine on the 3rd party side of things. But.. clearly students (about 10%) are having issues. This is something that does not occur a lot, but as online instructors we really need to think about it and be prepared for it. One of the things this program has taught me is not to worry about "glitches" or "issues". We take is one day at a time and one problem at a time. I posted an announcement asking students to report any issues they have to me and to the virtual lab support. My thought is.. if they contact me... I have a running tally of the issues so I can look for possible patterns. Also, if they report these issues to the virtual lab site... the company has the information to look for the issues on their end. I asked students to report to me what the issue was, what browser they were using (even though all the browsers typically work) and various other information if they had issues.

To make a long story short, the 3rd party software did have an issue, but the issue was intermittent and on the side of the student accounts (not on the faculty and administrator side of the virtual lab). So, to all those people who serve as the "checks and balances" of the programs were not having the issues.

This is an example of where a group of people have to come together to find where the problem is. If I, as the instructor, did not try several things and ask for extra information, I could just have assumed the issue was the internet connection of the individual students and just told them to try again.

I decided to discuss this as the main aspect of my reflection this week, not only because it took a lot of my time (unexpectedly), but to point out a couple of other things...

• No matter how prepared we are, we still need to be on top of everything we do. We must check in on all aspects of our online courses and make sure things are properly working. Checking link and resources at the beginning of the semester is not enough. We must work constantly and with our students... checking and double checking. No one, that actually taught an online class, has ever said the job was easy. :D 

• Even when we do all the things we need to, things will unexpectedly happen and we need to take care of those things. It is important we stay caught up on our work and responsibilities, so that if the unexpected happens, we can still deal with the problems while still be ahead of schedule.

• We must also seek more information than we think we may need. We (my class and myself) were able to identify a problem because we all asked questions and collected more data than we thought we needed to find out if there was a problem. This solved the problem for our class as well as others who may be using the program in other classes and at other schools. 

• By involving my students, we got to be analytical about the situation. Almost like we were applying some steps of the scientific method to the problem. Obviously it is not "real science" but in the end it allowed the students to apply some scientific approaches to finding a solution. And... guess what... that is one of my learning outcomes for the course. haha. Students got a little extra "experience" for that and it was totally unplanned. I guess this is my attempt at trying to find the good in everything.

While all of this may seem very trivial to the reader, it took up a lot of my time and my students time to figure out the issues with the technology. It was such a large component of my week, I just thought I would reflect on it. 

The Course

Comic Added to an Announcement to Remind Students of the Upcoming Due Date.
Image Credit: P. Williams - made with ToonDoo

As for the course itself, everything is moving a long smoothly (other than the bump we discussed above). We are finishing up the second week of the third module. Students are doing really well in the course and I am pleased with their hard work. I am still posting announcements and general messages of encouragement. Starting with the next module, I will be sending out a class survey. This survey will give the students an opportunity to provide me with feedback on things that are going well or not going so well. They will also be able to tell me if there is anything they need from me or if I need to provide something I am not already providing. I look forward to sharing what the students say... but that will be in two or three reflections from this one. 

Wow... on to Week 10. 

Week 8: Reflection on the Completion of Module 2 and the Beginning of Module 3

How I envision Charlie Brown grading student work.
Image credit: Charles M. Schulz 

The semester is moving along very smoothly. In the practicum course (EDU-670) we have hit midterms. In the course I am teaching for this practicum, however, we still have a few weeks until the midpoint of the semester.  I believe this blog post may be fairly short due to being a very quiet week (other than grading). Much of my time has been spent grading, providing feedback, following up with students, and flagging a couple of students for non attendance or academic concerns.

Grading / Feedback

The week of grading after each module is a time where I can barely keep up with all my work. While it is a very stressful time, I believe it is important to provide timely feedback to students. Throughout this program, I have learned a lot about the importance of feedback and that has made me even more dedicated to keeping up with grading and providing feedback in a timely manner. It is just something I make sure to do, no matter what is going on in my life or work responsibilities. I am also not very sympathetic when students do not do things in a timely manner and therefore I think timely feedback sets a good example for students in their own work. I have zero-tolerance for late work (which is a common policy in collegiate settings). Because this is a policy, I have always felt I should model that behavior with my students. So, I make sure to provide feedback ahead of my set time-frame. So far, I have found that students respond well to this and have had students report that my feedback helps them on their next set of work that is due. So, I will always strive to provide feedback in a timely manner.

The Module Breakdown / Resource Addition

Word cloud of module 3 info provided to students.
Image Credit: P Williams; made with Wordle 

As for the courses progression, everything is moving forward smoothly. At the beginning of each module, I like to provide a breakdown of the work that is going to be completed during the module and a brief intro to the material. I do this to help keep the students  moving forward and to keep them up-to-date on the material as they are working through the modules.

Students have a challenge this week to work through 3 chapters dealing with classification of microbes. While the material is not difficult, it is a lot of memorizing and figuring out correct pronunciations of the names of a large variety of biological species. This is a challenge in the online environment. While students can hear me say the names in the lecture recordings, the student really must rely on resources to get the information. In a face-to-face class, they are able to hear me say the names of the organisms in a variety of different contexts. In the online environment, it is harder to say them in different contexts (at least as much as in a face-to-face setting). This is a challenge I have started to work at this semester. In order to help the students, I have directed them to several useful websites that have recordings of all the different microbial names they need to know. They can listen to the names and classifications outside of my lectures and resources. I believe this gives them an extra set of tools to really help them hear things in different settings and in different contexts. I look forward to hearing if this is helping students or not. Since I just provided this resource this module, I may not hear feedback until a few weeks down the road.

Personal Contact

Aside from providing resources and grading, I have also been going through student participation in the course and checking in with individual students. For students that seem to be struggling, I look through the "evaluation data" found in blackboard and see what resources they are (or in some cases... are not using). I then craft a blackboard message to the student with encouraging words as well as helpful hints to help them through the material. If the student has not been utilizing a resource, I refer the student to the resource (ex. animations, videos, lectures) and tell them how they can use them to help them through the material. This takes some time and is really difficult to do along with grading, but I always want to make a point of contact with students. I usually see improvement in scores after I do this. I think, sometimes, students need to be pointed in the right direction or just given some encouragement to help them move forward. As long as it helps and I can see improvement, I will keep doing it no mater how much time it takes. If the student continues to struggle, I can then flag them in our advising system to see if there is anything the college can help them with things that I have not been able to provide. I think this works well and I like to make sure the student feels connected to the content, the course, and to me as their instructor.

Wrap Up

Image Credit: Group Therapy Associates

While my reflection is a little shorter this week, I have spent a lot of time working within the course to keep the course running and to check in on the students. I find this time to be a very busy time within my courses and there is very little time for much else. On top of this, I have other courses I am teaching in the face-to-face setting that I am also responsible for. So, with all of that said, I am looking forward to a little rest this weekend and will be taking Saturday and Sunday off from my online courses. I always inform my students when I will be away from checking in for a few days and have posted an announcement to make them aware of my weekend absence. My general policy is I do not spend a lot of time in my online courses on the weekend, but I end up doing a lot of work anyway. So... this weekend will be technology free (at least from the standpoint of my online courses). I make sure to tell students ahead of time so they can get any questions to me that they may have ahead of time. I also encourage students to do this themselves (so long as all their work is completed on time / ahead of time). I do not take a break or time off unless all my work is completed and ahead of schedule. While I am always ahead and on time... this is the time I am going to take some family time. It is important to take some time to relax and break away from the busy aspect of teaching. We all need a recharge from time to time... and this weekend is my time.

I also have a conference I am attending on biology and online learning this Thursday and Friday... so this post will be posted a day ahead of my normal posting schedule due to other commitments in my work/school/personal life. 

Looking forward to next week. Here's to week 9.