This blog post is an Instructor Spotlight authored by Xiaohui Chang. Xiaohui is an Associate Professor of Business Analytics in the College of Business.

Introduction

Teaching an online course can feel like a solitary experience, and it can be isolating for students as well. Don’t we all wish we could get to know our students better? In this post, I’ll share some of my teaching practices that help me connect, support, and engage our online students.

First, a little background about my teaching, especially online teaching. I have been heavily involved in undergraduate and graduate teaching since 2014 and have taught more than 2000 students (2047 to be exact) under a variety of teaching modalities including traditional face-to-face classes, online courses with Ecampus, synchronous class sessions due to COVID-19. The courses I teach are mostly quantitative, including business statistics and business analytics. Since my first online class in Summer 2017, I have delivered 8 online classes with 347 students in total. Besides my extensive online teaching experience, I have attended many workshops to improve my skills, had numerous productive conversations with colleagues and Ecampus instructional designers, and acquired knowledge in theory and practice from books and websites. Most importantly in the past several years after developing the tricks and practices described below, I have put them to the test in my online classes.

Most of my practices revolve around one key idea: provide proactive support to students, which is also advocated by Ecampus in their Online Teaching Principles. The two principles that touch on this type of proactive support are (1) Reach out and (2) Refer and Cultivate Inclusion.

What does this look like in action? In this post, I will share some examples of how I apply these principles to demonstrate care, connect with students, and proactively support those that may be struggling. My hope is that other instructors will find methods that resonate and work for your students as well.

Employ Empathy Statements in Email and Other Communications

Empathetic emails and other communications are essential in establishing supportive interactions with students but they don’t get the amount of attention and effort that they truly deserve. First of all, emails are undoubtedly the most popular tool used by students to connect with faculty. On a 5-point Likert-type (1=never, 2=sometimes, 3=about half the time, 4=most of the time, 5=always), emails are rated 3.53 which is the highest among all tools used. Online instructors spend hours responding to student emails every day. I receive an email like the following anywhere between once a week to a few times each week.

“I am sorry for reaching you so late … I just realized this issue now with all of my classes. I might have been distracted by … at the moment, causing me to lose certain grades, but I am trying to be more attentive moving forward … Is there any way I could still get points for my missing assignments? Thank you for your understanding, and I’m sorry again for the trouble.”
Quote from student email

In face-to-face interactions, I try to be straightforward. My natural response to an email like this would simply be a description of the student’s missed assignments and a discussion of the late penalty policy in this course. After drafting a response email, I try to pause for a while, re-read the student’s email, and try to put myself in their shoes.

After teaching at OSU for a few years, I noticed that many of our students are shouldering multiple roles and responsibilities while attending school full time. According to the 2020 OSU survey collected from a total of 1,190 students, close to 47% of the students are working full time, 20% are working part-time, and 29% are caregivers to a child or a family member. A few of my students have been serving in Afghanistan while taking my online classes. Students’ commitments outside of class increased even more during this unprecedented COVID era. I doubt I would do a better job than my students who are wearing multiple hats in staying focused in all of these courses and keeping track of tens of due dates every week. I strongly believe that getting into an empathetic mindset not only helps me relate to them, listen to their stories, and feel their frustration, but also makes students feel that they are not just another number. In my final response to the aforementioned email, I start my reply with a paragraph like the following and discuss the missed assignments and late penalties in the second paragraph.

“Sorry to hear that you’ve been distracted by …. I understand that it can get quite difficult to stay on top of everything at the moment. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or the Ecampus academic and student support services if we can be of any help to you. We are here to support all of our students to succeed.”
Instructor email response

This additional paragraph takes very little time to write but carries a long way to foster a supportive online learning environment. Some of my students shared this feedback in my teaching evaluations.

“For someone that is off-campus, this was a great feeling that I wasn’t just another student, I almost felt as if I was her only student, that’s what that little note meant.”
Quote from student evaluation

I highly recommend all online instructors to consider using empathy statements in their emails and other communications with their students. They mean more to your students than you believe. You can find more information about empathy in online instruction via Michelle Pacansky-Brock’s Humanizing Infographic and in the Humanizing Online Learning blog post by Tianhong Shi.

Restructure Office Hours – “Ask Me Anything Hours”

Research studies have shown that high-quality student-faculty interactions are linked with many benefits ranging from academic success to student retention (Kuh et al. 2010, Tinto 1997).

For online classes, besides email messages, virtual office hours are another useful way to engage student and faculty interactions. Nevertheless, in the 2020 OSU Survey, when asked which tools they use to communicate with faculty, the average score for emails was 3.53, compared to a mere 1.59 for virtual office hours. Smith et al. (2017) recommends that faculty and higher education institutions “make it explicit what students might get out of office hours”, “create nurturing classroom environments by promoting friendly and dedicate attitudes toward teaching among faculty,” and “openly and proactively promote office hours.” Because many online students are not aware of the purpose of office hours, following the suggestions from my colleague, Dr. Jason Stornelli, I have renamed all my office hours to “Ask Me Anything Hours” to make the sessions informative and inviting. I have also tried to proactively promote these sessions through Canvas announcements, groups emails, and one-on-one emails. The student attendance rate has gone up since then. This further cultivates a supportive and welcoming environment for the students, inciting responses such as the following:

I never got to take advantage of the office hours, but I’ve never had an online instructor who encouraged visiting them so much, which felt very inviting. I always felt like I had a voice and was cared about.
Quote from student evaluation

Provide Constructive and Personal Feedback for Students to Reflect and Improve Upon

Many of my students also appreciate the personal feedback they received after the exams and some important assignments. Modern technologies including grading rubric and speed graders in Canvas have expedited grading significantly, but may limit the personal and constructive feedback from the instructors. For online classes, personal feedback is particularly important because it provides learners with valuable feedback in which to inform, reflect, and adjust their learning. In my classes, I first organize all exam questions according to their modules. After students complete the exam, I go through every student’s exam and identify their individual points of weakness, i.e., the modules and the types of questions that they would need to improve upon. I also offer an extra credit assignment for students to make up some lost points from the exams; this will not change students’ grades substantially but offers an opportunity and an incentive for students to practice and learn from their mistakes.

I have never had a teacher email me personal feedback about one of my midterms. I went over the modules you said I should work on, and it really helped me on the final. The extra practice problems were very useful in not only raising my grades but also grasping the subject better.
Quote from student evaluation

Periodically Check in with Students Who Are Behind

Checking in with students who may be struggling in the class throughout the term plays a critical role in supporting our students. This has been made easier than ever by Canvas LMS. Under the Canvas gradebook, for each assignment, we can email those students who failed to submit an assignment or scored less than a specific score. For online classes with many assignments due every week, it becomes challenging to keep track of all the due dates even with the assistance of automatic to-do reminders from Canvas. In my emails, I also encourage students who are falling behind to seek assistance either from me, our Teaching Assistant, a private tutor, or TutorMe, which is an online tutoring platform for currently enrolled OSU Ecampus students, and connects them with live tutors in under 30 seconds and 24/7. Sometimes students are not aware or just forget about the many assistance and resources offered in this class.

Online students often feel invisible and insignificant. They need to be seen and valued by instructors. Many of the practices outlined above can be easily done and are essential in fostering a supportive learning culture and ensuring the success of students. I hope you try out some of these practices in your online classes and find at least one of them helpful for you and your students.

*Infographic created by Brittni Racek via Venngage*

Feel free to contact me at Xiaohui.Chang@oregonstate.edu as I am always eager to hear your feedback and suggestions. Let us connect with and support each other in this online teaching journey as much as we do with our students.

Sources

Kuh, G. D., Kinzie, J., Schuh, J. H., & Whitt, E. J. (2010). Student success in college: Creating conditions that matter. United States: John Wiley & Sons.
Smith, M., Chen, Y., Berndtson, R., Burson, K. M., & Griffin, W. (2017). Office Hours are Kind of Weird”: Reclaiming a Resource to Foster Student-Faculty Interaction, InSight: A Journal of Scholarly Teaching, 12, 14–29.
Tinto, V. (1997). Classrooms as communities: Exploring the educational character of student persistence. Journal of Higher Education, 68, 599–623.
2020 OSU Ecampus Annual Student Survey Report.
Ecampus Online Teaching Principles. The Oregon State University Ecampus Online Teaching Principles are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International license.

A group of instructional designers at Ecampus participated in a book club reading “Ungrading” (Kohn & Blum, 2020). We learned many creative ways of designing assessments through participation in this book club. If you happen to be searching for ideas on designing or re-designing assessments in your teaching, we would highly recommend this book!

The idea of “Ungrading” may sound radical to many of us. Yet instructors at all types of educational institutions have tried ungrading in many different courses, ranging from humanity courses, to STEM courses, and from primary education to higher education. Starr Sackstein (author of Chapter 4 “Shifting the Grading Mindset” of the book) encourages educators to consider “ways to adjust small things in the classroom that will lead to important growth for students”. And this suggestion of starting small is coherent with what James Lang proposes in his book “Small Teaching” (Lang, 2016) and Thomas Tobin’s +1 strategy for implementing new teaching and learning strategies (Tobin & Behling, 2018). Sackstein provides a table comparing the grades vocabulary that focuses on judgement or criticism, with the non-grade vocabulary focusing on assessing and opportunity for improvement.

In chapter 5, Arthur Chiaravalli proposed a way for teaching without grades: Descriptive Grading Criteria, such as A for outstanding, B for Good, C for Satisfactory and I for Incomplete. Do you remember elementary school report cards that use E for Excellent, S for Satisfactory, and NI for Need Improvement type of categories? I think that is exactly what descriptive grading criteria represent.

In chapter 7, Christina Katopodis and Cathy Davidson offer a new approach to start a new term/semester by asking students:” What is Success in this class for you? And How can I help you achieve it?” (p. 107) Katopodis and Davidson also remind us the importance of explaining why when you challenge your students to take their own learning seriously and give students opportunities for metacognitive reflections about the learning activities themselves. Katopodis and Davidson also offer a model of contract grading for Twenty-First Century Literacies and a model of collaborative peer evaluation. Students’ grades in the course come from self-and-peer evaluations using detailed evaluation forms.

In chapter 8, Christopher Riesbeck described his critique-driven learning and assessment design of do-review-redo submission process for his intermediate-level programming course. I have used similar approach in my own teaching before and it works very well for any course with manageable number of students. The advantage for this approach is every one of your students can improve their first submissions based on feedback they receive from the instructor. The disadvantage for this approach is the potentially extended time instructors may spend on providing the feedback and reviewing the submissions and re-submissions. The key to this assessment method is making sure that the workload of providing feedback and reviewing revisions is manageable. In chapter 9, Clarissa Sorensen-Unruh provided her experience of using ungrading in her organic chemistry II course, giving students opportunities to practice evaluating their own work.

And that is only snippets of what I took away from a few chapters from this book. Many resources about ungrading outside the book were shared during our book club meetings, such as two-stage exams, group exams and public exams. To answer a common question that ungrading practices may fit humanity courses more easily, Cyndie McCarley shared “Grading for Growth” blog written and maintained by two math instructors Robert Talbert and David Clark. To learn about all the creative assessment design methods introduced in this book, read it yourself either through library ebook or get a hard copy and enjoy reading, designing and experimenting!

References

Kohn, A. and Blum, S. (2020). Ungrading. West Virginia University Press.

Lang, J. (2016). Small Teaching. Jossey-Bass.

Tobin, T.J. and Behling, K.T. (2018). Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone. West Virginia University Press.

“Annotation provides information, making knowledge more accessible. Annotation shares commentary, making both expert opinion and everyday perspective more transparent. Annotation sparks conversation, making our dialogue – about art, religion, culture, politics, and research – more interactive. Annotation expresses power, making civic life more robust and participatory. And annotation aids learning, augmenting our intellect, cognition, and collaboration. This is why annotation matters.”

-Kalir and Garcia

Annotation

When you think back to your early college years, you may remember your professor assigning a text to annotate. Annotating a text has long been a common task in higher education, one that ideally promotes deeper reading, interaction with, and comprehension of important texts. Annotation assignments vary widely but the traditional paper-based type of annotation asks readers to respond to a text as it is read, physically marking or highlighting the text itself and perhaps writing in the margins. This approach allows students to enter into a dialogue with the text by recording their responses to the text, adding reflections or critiques, and anchoring those reactions to a specific place in the text. When students annotate a text, they are working their way through skills that span the levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, from remembering to predicting, connecting, analysing, and evaluating. Annotation, at its best, encourages active engagement with a text beyond the surface level, promoting deeper critical thinking and stronger retention of concepts.

While this is, of course, fantastic individual practice, the nature of traditional annotation assignments is primarily solitary. Today’s classrooms place more of an emphasis on 21st century skills such as group and collaborative study, and new digital tools have been developed that have revolutionized what, how, and with whom we can annotate. So-called social annotation has picked up speed with the growing popularity of two major players, Perusall and Hypothes.is, bolstered by the sudden shift to remote learning in 2020. Online instructors seeking ways to replicate the back and forth, robust discussion of a face-to-face class have found these tools a fitting substitute, and the asynchronous format of the discussion means these tools have a place in all modalities.

Equity, Inclusion, & Community

“As a teaching method, critical social annotation allows for equitable conversations to unfold in-line with the knowledge being presented in course texts. In this way, it can potentially subvert or even redress instances of inequity in course content.”

– Brown and Croft

Social annotation platforms increase equity and inclusion in a course in several ways. Digital annotation platforms offer students a variety of ways to connect with material, allowing students to post links, images, video, and more in response to the text, their peers, and other annotators. By putting students’ ideas front and center, social annotation can empower learners to take initiative and experience more feelings of control over their educational process. Unlike the fast paced back and forth of traditional face-to-face discussions, the nature of digital social annotation allows students more time to engage with the text and to take as long as they need to post and respond (within the assignment boundaries). Additionally, the major platforms discussed in this post feature easy-to-use controls that require little technical expertise to use. They also boast comprehensive accessibility features that combine to provide inclusivity to a wide range of student needs.

Social Annotation as Collective Construction of Meaning

One major difference between today’s digital social annotation and traditional solitary practice is that when students in a particular class collectively annotate a text using one of the digital platforms available today, they are actively building knowledge and understanding as a group. By sharing the document for collective annotation, the act of annotating itself becomes a social activity and contributes to the interaction of individuals within the group. Socially annotating a text is one of the best ways to encourage close and active reading skills, with many studies reporting higher levels of student comprehension of socially annotated materials. Students who collectively annotate a text are entering into an exchange of questions, opinions, perspectives, and reactions to a text, engaging in a discourse with their peers (and facilitator, usually) and by extension learning from and with them. The process of a social annotation assignment allows students to see knowledge creation in action and become co-creators.

Use of social annotation in asynchronous online courses can also increase sociability within an otherwise geographically remote, disparate group of students. Asynchronous instructors sometimes struggle to provide opportunities for real social interaction and building of community given the limits of the modality. An often unstated goal of higher education is to socialize students to academic community norms, and social annotation allows students to experience and practice some of these. For example, students annotating collectively learn appropriate language for responding to peers’ ideas and criticisms, develop online academic social identities, and gain experience with navigating power dynamics within the higher education classroom.

Ready to Try It Out?

Adding social annotation to a course involves matching the task to your learning outcomes, deciding which readings would be best suited to annotation, and choosing your online annotation platform.

Assignments can be tailored to meet a variety of instructional purposes and goals:

Recognizing formatting of various documents
Providing background or contextual information
Learning academic norms for responding to peers- supporting, agreeing, disagreeing
Drafting questions and responses that are rigorous and meaningful
Determining main points vs. supporting details
Distinguishing fact from opinion
Identifying themes, tone, biases, author’s purpose, rhetorical devices, etc.
Learning and practicing discipline-specific writing and reading conventions
Connecting the material to the field of study, to their own practice, or to other course materials
Developing evaluative and analytical skills
Considering differing perspectives and viewpoints in constructing knowledge
Facilitating a deeper understanding of difficult passages

Some best practices to consider when using collective annotation online:

Remind students that they have already practiced annotation in their everyday lives (reading and making your own notes in your inherited cookbook, reading your teacher’s remarks on your essay, leaving comments on a colleague’s report)
Model annotation with a fun text first
Seed the reading with your own comments, questions, and notes to help guide students
Situate the social annotation assignment within the context of the course and make clear the intentions you have for the activity
If the activity is to be graded, be sure students know the grading criteria, preferably by providing a rubric
Annotation assignments are ideal for small group activities, and some platforms automatically create groups
Be prepared to provide guidelines for behavior and etiquette among students and to need to enforce these guidelines if students step out of line
Monitor the discussion and provide nudges, likes, upvotes, or validations, and otherwise engage with the dialogue throughout the assignment
If the platform allows tagging, do so- students get notified when someone responds to their post or asks a question, a convenience which increases the likelihood of them returning to the assignment for further interaction

Social Annotation Tools: The Major Players

Perusall (stand-alone site/integrated into various LMS, including canvas)

Perusall is a collective annotation platform developed by Harvard University following a major research initiative into online collective annotation. Perusall offers free accounts for teachers and students at the basic level with options for institutions to integrate the tool into their LMS. The platform allows educators to use Perusall directly for stand-alone courses and upload their own materials for annotation as well as partner with their textbook catalog to purchase and annotate textbooks directly. For integrated LMS users, Perusall offers seamless grade pass back and options for pass/no pass grading as well as a robust automatic AI grading system that saves time and effort. Some instructors have also used Perusall for peer review to great effect using student-uploaded documents. *recommended tool for Ecampus courses

Hypothes.is (Google Chrome browser extension)

Hypothes.is is a groundbreaking new tool that bypasses restrictions of the classroom and enables anyone anywhere to annotate any webpage via a unique delivery system- as a browser extension that creates a layer over any webpage. This open source, free tool can revolutionize how we view and interact with web pages as well as texts by allowing us to save our annotations privately as well as publicly, inviting the world at large to socially annotate with us. Hypothes.is is also available as an integrated tool in most LMSs. The company also hosts the AnnotatED community, a group of users that hosts events, studies, and conferences to learn best practices for the tool. *recommended tool for research with a wider audience.

Hypothes.is Introduction Video

Sources

Adapting to Disciplinary Literacy Conventions – Open English @ SLCC

Home : Hypothesis

Innovation | Cégep Vanier College

Kalir, Remi H., and Garcia, Antero. Annotation. United States, MIT Press, 2021.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Annotation/ejoiEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

Pedagogy | ANNOTATION TOOLS

Perusall

Social Annotation | Center for Teaching Innovation

Social Annotation – Pedagogical Support and Innovation Pedagogical Support and

Social Annotation and an Inclusive Praxis for Open Pedagogy in the College Classroom

Tools for Social Annotation in the Digital Age

How it Begins

As an instructional designer one of my most important tasks is to hold an initial meeting with an instructor, or subject matter expert (SME). During that first opportunity to collaborate on an online course design project the conversation typically focuses on key course design elements. Commonly we discuss the broad approach to the course, anticipated assignments, narrated lecture needs, assessment, video production and support, the mechanics of the development process and more. Rarely does art come up in the conversation.

Chasing Images

Now, that may seem obvious why art is not outwardly discussed. However in the first meeting we do address the topic of look and feel for the course, and images for course banners and any special subject matter art that may need to be displayed. So, visual images are addressed as a way of supporting the learning focus for the course. Finding images that are copyright free and support the general course topic are fairly easy to find in the more obvious online image repositories like Unsplash.com, Pixabay.com, and Pexels.com.

For courses with education, agriculture, forestry, medicine, and other more general themes finding usable images is pretty straight forward. If your institution also owns licensing for GettyImages.com, the largest stock image collection in the world, you have really nice access to images. Even so, sometimes we don’t have access to the right images for the right course.

In those cases I have found myself chasing down images or building visual metaphors using multiple images to create one image that communicates the theme, unique message, or topic of a given course. Scrambling to create images that support a course can be a challenge for instructional designers. We can do it, but it is not ideal.

For those courses where stock images are not helpful there is a need to re-imagine the image sourcing process. Key to this is recognizing two important factors that will influence your new thinking; 1)The need to find images that do not require copyright clearance or purchase and 2) the need to have images that reflect the unique theme required for the course. How might this be done?

Asking the Question

Sometimes the answer to finding the right image for a course is not about the image but the artist who made it. Every college community has dozens of artist who produce many pieces of art. Some might just be what you need for your course. If you found the right artist would you be willing to invite them to contribute their artistic creations to your course? Would you ask an artist to be part of your course design?

That question came up while working with a course instructor, Dr. Mark Edwards, on the development of his sociology course addressing welfare and social services in 2019. In addressing this issue we knew finding stock art for this topic would be difficult and perhaps inappropriate. During our discussion the instructor said he had seen some examples online of street art addressing homelessness that he though might fit the course. I asked him if he would be willing to reach out to the artist and ask him if we could get permission to use his art in the course. Dr. Edwards said yes.

To our surprise and delight the artist responded positively by granting written permission to use photographs of his art in the course (see Figure 1. below). The artist participated knowing the art would be used for this particular course and would be behind a password protected site in Canvas. We also agreed to credit his work and link back to his art source page.

Figure 1. Banner image from SOC 439/539 featuring art from Michael Aaron Williams.

Course Artist-in Residence

Asking an artist to share their work in this way may be a challenging ask on both ends of the question. We did not know what the outcome would be. Some artists vigorously and rightly protect their work. Some correctly want compensation. Some artists see their work differently and are willing to share their creative efforts in the right circumstance or to support the right cause. In this case, I felt it was best for the instructor to make the ask as he could best communicate how the art might dovetail with the outcomes of the course. So, in this sociology course example the ask worked.

In the summer of 2021 I collaborated again with Dr. Edwards. His new course was a graduate course on research methods in the public policy program. At our first meeting he shared that he had already been in discussion with a colleague in Equador who was a chef and artist. The instructor thought about using images from a series of bread baking images from the chef /photographer for the course. The course theme was organized around the analogy of baking bread as a way to explain the art and science of social research methods. We would use the images (see Figure 2. below) to spur and reinforce understanding about what students were learning.

Figure 2. Dropdown content featuring Course AIR photographs and instructor comments.

With the development of this second course the concept of a course artist-in-residence became intentional. There are a number of benefits and also limits that come along with this approach to image sourcing and use (see Figure 3.).

Figure 3: Benefits and limitations of a Course AIR approach.

Traditionally artist-in residence (AIR) programs are a way for artists to find a place and unfettered time to extend their creative efforts. There are hundreds of such art programs throughout the country and many can be found listed at the Artist Communities Alliance. A wide variety of artists are served by these program.

The Course AIR described here is quite different from traditional AIR programs. Where an AIR participant might create a piece of art as part of their AIR experience the Course AIR is intentionally sharing artistic creations within a course space to help foster the objectives of the course. Depending upon the level of integration of the art with the course activities the role of the Course AIR may vary from contributor to collaborator.

Final Thoughts

The role of an instructional designer in this process is to first assist the instructor in vetting art appropriate for the course. Secondly, the instructional designer helps shape the application or use of the art in the course then designs course pages to showcase and compliment the artist-course connection.

The Course AIR concept has been a happy accident that holds interesting potential. Art comes in various form and is experienced through various senses. What music, photographs, video, illustrations, or other types of art might be just right for your next online course?

Would a Course Artis-in-Residence contribute to achieving the course learning outcomes for a course you are developing? If our experience is any type of guide you will never know unless you ask the question and invite art into the online course design.

Recognition

A special thanks to Dr. Mark Edwards for his work on the courses, willingness to make the ask, and support for this post. Thank you also to my colleague Chris Lindberg for his contributions to this post.

Each year, the Oregon State University Ecampus Research Unit funds projects, up to $20,000 each, to support the research, development and scholarship efforts of faculty and/or departments in the area of online education through the OSU Ecampus Research Fellows program.

This program aims to:

Fund research that is actionable and impacts student online learning
Provide resources and support for research leading to external grant applications
Promote effective assessment of online learning
Encourage the development of a robust research pipeline on online teaching and learning at Oregon State

Fellows program applications are due Nov. 1 each year. If you are interested in submitting an application, reach out to Naomi Aguiar, the OSU Ecampus assistant director of research. Research Unit staff are available to help you design a quality research project and maximize your potential for funding.

Many Oregon State colleagues have had transformative experiences in this program. A Fellows study funded in 2020 highlights the ways in which these projects have advanced research in online/hybrid education, as well as Fellows’ programs of research.

Fellows program highlight

Funding recipients expand the inclusivity mindset of computer science students

Lara Letaw, an experienced online instructor and lead researcher from Oregon State’s School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, partnered with Heather Garcia, an OSU Ecampus inclusive instructional designer on a research study called “Impacting the Inclusivity Mindset of Online Computer Science Students.”

Together with their team, Letaw and Garcia implemented an intervention that was designed to improve feelings of gender inclusivity among online computer science students and to train these students to develop more gender-inclusive software applications.

In this intervention, online computer science students experienced new curriculum developed by Letaw and Garcia’s team. The curriculum was based on GenderMag, a software inspection method for identifying and correcting gender biases in software. Curriculum for teaching GenderMag concepts can be found on the GenderMag Teach website. Students completed a set of assignments and, if they chose to participate in the research study, questionnaires about inclusivity climate, both in the course and in the computer science major. Students’ software design work was also evaluated for the use of gender-inclusive principles.

The image below shows examples of the cognitive facet values people (e.g., Letaw and Garcia) bring to their use of software, shown across the spectra of GenderMag facets (information processing style, learning style, motivations, attitude toward risk, and computer self-efficacy).

examples of the cognitive facet values people (e.g., Letaw and Garcia) bring to their use of software, shown across the spectra of GenderMag facets (information processing style, learning style, motivations, attitude toward risk, and computer self-efficacy).

Computer science students in the Ecampus courses Letaw and Garcia modified learned about their own cognitive styles and those of their teammates. They also built software that supports the cognitive diversity of software users. One student reflected, “Identifying my facet values was tremendously helpful [for articulating what had] been abstract… I feel much more confident.”

The results of their study showed that, overall, students felt included by the GenderMag curriculum (nobody felt excluded by it), it increased their interest in computer science, and it had positive effects on their team dynamics and self-acceptance. Students who completed the GenderMag intervention were also more effective in developing gender-inclusive software designs, and they reported greater recognition and respect for the diversity of software users.

The image below highlights what students considered when designing a software user interface before (left) and after (right) learning GenderMag concepts. As one student put it, “Now when I think of users using a piece of software I don’t picture them … just jumping in and tinkering … I am more aware that there are [people whose] interests in using a software … might not align with mine.”

As a result of this project, Letaw and Garcia published a paper in the ACM’s International Computing Education Research conference proceedings in 2021. This project contributed to a $300,000 National Science Foundation grant awarded to Oregon State’s Margaret Burnett, Letaw, and Kean University. With this funding from the NSF, they will partner on a project entitled, “Embedding Equitable Design through Undergraduate Computing Curricula.”

This Fellows project has also provided research opportunities for two female Ecampus computer science students (Rosalinda Garcia and Aishwarya Vellanki), a group that is typically underrepresented in STEM fields. Rosalinda Garcia successfully defended her honors thesis with these data in the spring of 2021, and Vellanki is currently working on her own.

Join the Ecampus Research Fellows Program

Learn more about the Fellows Program and what materials are needed to prepare your proposal.

At a recent faculty professional development workshop series, I became aware of faculty’s concerns about addressing the learning needs of students from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Students with multilingual and multicultural identities are oftentimes perceived as deficient (Almon, 2014; Flores & Rosa, 2015) and might feel they hold an outsider status (Merryfield, 2000). In my personal experience navigating multiple identities that intersect culture and language, and in my work supporting faculty in their learning design and instructional decisions, I began examining ways in which blended and online learning spaces can offer more welcoming opportunities for students. One of these ways is using a cultural lens and mindset towards inclusive learning design.

Culturally Responsive Approaches

There have been several culturally responsive approaches to teaching and learning. By and large these approaches advocate for the recognition of students’ cultural backgrounds as critical to their learning success (Gay, 2013; Ladson-Bilings, 1994). In fact, a culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) aims to promote the integration of students’ culture to support their learning experiences. In blended and online learning, this pedagogy can create an environment that “acknowledges, celebrates, and builds upon the cultural capital that learners and teachers bring to the online classroom” (Woodley, Hernandez, Parra, & Nagash, 2017, p.1).

For students whose first language is not English, we first should focus on their strengths and not their deficiencies. These students bring their cultural backgrounds, values, experiences, and language diversity with them to the online learning environment. It is important to recognize that culture is central to teaching and learning; therefore, advancing online and blended learning design should be grounded on dimensions for cultural sensitivity where students’ diverse identities, cultures, languages, and backgrounds are seen through an asset-based lens. This means, recognizing the value in the cultural backgrounds, experiences, and languages of students; and embracing these students’ traits as assets. This asset-base approach can be the first step in developing a mindset for designing and teaching in ways that promote social, academic, and emotional learning for these and ALL students.

Culturally responsive approaches have been mapped out to the three principles of Universal Design for Learning to offer (1) multiple means of engagement, (2) multiple means of representation, and (3) multiple means of action and expression (UDL, n.d.). UDL and CRP can help instructors amplify the opportunities for students from different cultural backgrounds to demonstrate their knowledge when given strategies that incorporate multiple perspectives, experiences, connections to the real world, and choices (Bass & Lawrence-Riddell, 2020; Kieran & Anderson, 2018)

The connection of UDL and CRP offers consideration to inform instructional design choices. Yet, these considerations appear to be adds-on to the design of the learning experience. How can we expand the UDL and CRP connection to embrace a mindset to move towards an inclusive learning design where the cultural and linguistic traits of students are seen from an asset-based perspective? A few dimensions from research and praxis would get us started to help achieve this goal.

Dimensions for Learning Design

The following dimensions for learning design, that expand the connections between UDL and CRP, should be considered whenever possible in the design of blended or online learning experiences. Following are the six dimensions.

Dimensions of Culturally Responsive Leraning Design — Dimensions for Culturally Responsive Learning Design

Instructor’s reflection
Visual design
Linguistic domain
Content
Interaction
Technology

Identity and Experience

Instructor identity and experience relates to the practice reflection –inner analysis to reveal assumptions about teaching and learning (Jaramillo Cherrez & Jin, 2020). Through these reflections, instructors can identify ways to humanize the learning experience. Instructional designers (IDs) can help instructors engage in a (self) dialogue to explore how the instructor’s identity informs or impacts their teaching and instructional decisions, how they respond to students’ cultural differences and embrace them as strengths, and how instructors could also learn from students.

Design

The visual design of the course and learning materials can have a profound impact on students’ learning experience (Hedberg & Brown, 2002). For students whose first language is other than English in particular, it is important to be aware that these students may come from different cultures and social groups, and thus, visual representations may have positive or negative consequences to their success in the course. Visuals should be carefully chosen because the variety of images, colors, and symbols may affect the message students receive in the class. When using images from pop culture, it is helpful to add context to give more clarity to the instructional purpose. The visual design also relates to the readability of the content and how it is presented and structured. Asking a colleague or friend to read the instructions and descriptions of assignments can help clarify expectations and requirements for students. Bear in mind that what is clear to one is not always clear to others, especially when using complex sentences and terminology of a discipline.

Linguistic Variability

Many students might have a first language different from English. Also, keep in mind that different cultures may have different ways of writing, usually influenced by rhetorical and social contexts (Almuhailib, 2019). There may also be linguistic and cognitive differences in the way that students interpret the information given to them. For some cultures, direct descriptions are fine, whereas for others the context is important before addressing a specific perspective. Some cultures may characterize themselves for being more individualistic and others more holistic, and students, including those whose first language is other than English, can find themselves moving along that continuum. In designing culturally responsive blended or online courses, language matters because of the transactional distance characteristic of asynchronous spaces. Many students may already be pressured to demonstrate “good”, “academic”, “professional” English. One way to be aware of linguistic diversity is to be more explicit with instructions. For example, indicate clearly the use of naming conventions, abbreviations, acronyms, and descriptors in activities and assignments.

Content

The fourth consideration is content. The main suggestion is to try to diversify the curriculum with resources from around the world (e.g., content from scholars from diverse cultures and linguistic backgrounds). Allow students to see themselves represented in the materials. Create activities and assignments that help students explore the concepts in connection to their own backgrounds and communities(e.g., linguistic, cultural) and experiences, and that allow students to move from low to high cognitive tasks (e.g., staged projects). Yet, diversifying the curriculum goes far from bringing into the course content perspectives that are commonly ignored. It involves explicit acknowledgement of the value of the different perspectives and modes of knowledge.

Interaction

Interaction also can benefit from a culturally responsive mindset in that instructors can vary the modes of interaction by using audio/video communication(e.g., assignment feedback, DB, announcements). It is also important to guide and scaffold group activities with resources such as guidelines, group contracts, teamwork guidelines, group rapport activities, conflict resolution resources). Particularly for teamwork, instructors can build group activities early in the course to promote collaborative learning. For online discussions, instructors could allow students to select the tools that they feel more comfortable with using, bearing in mind that many students from different cultural backgrounds might not be familiar or have experience participating in discussion activities. Another suggestion is to promote student-led discussions to help students move from the individual task to the group task. This will allow to vary the cognitive demands that can foster meaningful knowledge construction and organization while also addressing different audiences, styles of writing and analysis, and communication modes.

Technology

It is important to recognize that technology is not neutral. Clearly, it is important to select tools and evaluate them for intended and unintended consequences for students, such as the cost, the technical support, the pedagogical affordances, and the availability in other geographic areas. It will be helpful to consider the different levels of technology skills that students may have and plan on developing guidelines and technical resources (e.g., links to providers, manuals, accessibility and privacy policies) that can help students. Additionally, in considering digital tools it is important to review whether the affordances the tools offer are available to all students, in the different browsers and devices (e.g., tablets, smart phones, browsers). In using digital tools, careful attention should be given to the kinds of data that the tools require students and instructors to share. It is important to read carefully the terms of use, data privacy, and the information that is being collected as a way to understand how the users can trust the tools and their procedures for sharing or not with others the data collected.

These dimensions underscore the need to approach learning design with a mindset that not only acknowledges student multilingual and multicultural identities, but also catalyzes these identities to help students be valued and successful. I consider these dimensions in my instructional design work, and I would like to invite you to consider them next time you design an online or blended learning experience.

Sources

Almon, C. (2015). College persistence and engagement in light of a mature English language learner (ELL) student’s voice. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 39(5), 461-472.

Almuhailib, B. (2019). Analyzing Cross-Cultural Writing Differences using Contrastive Rhetoric: A Critical Review. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 10(2), 102-106.

Bass, G., & Lawrence-Riddell, M. (2020). Culturally Responsive Teaching and UDL. Faculty Focus. https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/equality-inclusion-and-diversity/culturally-responsive-teaching-and-udl/

Dougherty, E. (2012). Assignments matter: Making the connections that help students meet standards. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Kieran, L., & Anderson, C. (2019). Connecting universal design for learning with culturally responsive teaching. Education and Urban Society, 51(9), 1202-1216.

Gay, G. (2013). Teaching to and through cultural diversity. Curriculum Inquiry, 43(1), 48-70.

Hedberg, J. G., & Brown, I. (2002). Understanding cross-cultural meaning through visual media. Educational Media International, 39(1), 23-30.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1994). What we can learn from multicultural education research. Educational Leadership, 51(8), 22-26.

Merryfield, M. M. (2000). Why aren’t teachers being prepared to teach for diversity, equity, and global interconnectedness? A study of lived experiences in the making of multicultural and global educators. Teaching and Teacher Education, 16(4), 429-443.

Flores, N., & Rosa, J. (2015). Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 149-171.

Universal Design for Learning (n.d.). The UDL Guidelines [Website]. https://udlguidelines.cast.org/

Woodley, X., Hernandez, C., Parra, J., & Negash, B. (2017). Celebrating difference: Best practices in culturally responsive teaching online. TechTrends, 61(5), 470-478.

Last fall, my colleague featured the Ecampus Research Fellows (ECRF) program in her blog post. The ECRF program, which began in 2016, funds OSU faculty-led research on online and hybrid education. Each year, approximately five projects are selected to receive funding. One unique aspect of the program is that, in the past few years, 1-2 members of the Ecampus Course Development and Training (CDT) team are paired with the faculty on funded research projects. The CDT team includes instructional designers and media developers. These professionals have expressed interest in conducting research, but in most cases, have had few opportunities to engage in formal research projects. Similar to faculty, CDT fellows have to apply to the ECRF program.

For this blog post, I’d like to share some takeaways from my experience as a CDT research fellow, as well as some takeaways my CDT colleagues have shared with me. I will also share some feedback from faculty fellows who have had CDT colleagues join their research teams. But before I dig into these valuable takeaways from past participants, let me first address the importance of this program for instructional designers and related disciplines.

In 2017, the Ecampus Research Unit published a report titled “Research Preparation and Engagement of Instructional Designers in U.S. Higher Education.” This report was the result of a national study of instructional designers working in higher education environments. Among the many findings of this study, one compelling finding was that more than half (55%) of respondents indicated that instructional designers need more training in research methods to fulfill their role. Instructional designers also indicated why they think it is important to gain more experience in research. Among the reasons, respondents indicated that research skill development would allow them to grow professionally, further their discipline, better understand the needs of students and faculty, and collaborate with faculty.

The Ecampus Research Unit (ECRU) answers this call through their CDT research fellows program.

In the summer of 2020 at the NWeLearn conference, three CDT fellows reflected upon their participation in the program, sharing valuable insights and experience. I, Heather Garcia, was one of them. The other participants were Susan Fein and Tianhong Shi. The full recording can be viewed on YouTube at this link, but I’ll summarize some highlights from the session in the following paragraphs.

The projects undertaken by CDT research fellows in partnership with faculty spanned disciplines from computer science to field-based courses.

When asked why they were interested in being research fellows, all three participants indicated that they were pursuing additional graduate education at the time they applied. One participant also indicated that acquiring more knowledge and experience with research would allow faculty to see course design suggestions as “more convincing and easily accepted,” giving her additional credibility when recommending new design approaches to faculty.

The fellows also shared details about their contributions to the research projects they were working on. All of the instructional designers spoke to ways their existing expertise was valued by the researchers. They gave examples of the expertise they offered, which ranged from reviewing course design and educational technologies to designing surveys to offering a fresh perspective and a critical eye. In addition to contributing their design expertise to the research projects, CDT research fellows contributed to the research processes as well, through data analysis and research paper writing and reviewing.

All of the CDT research fellows indicated that they learned a lot from their experiences partnering with faculty on research. One particular highlight in this area is that fellows learned that they contribute diverse perspectives to the research process; they have different backgrounds, experiences, and areas of expertise, and everyone on the team contributes something valuable. CDT fellows also indicated that they learned about the IRB process and the importance of asking questions. Perhaps most importantly, they learned that their expertise is valuable to research teams.

Faculty fellows were also given the opportunity to share how having a CDT fellow on their research team enhanced the research experience, and their feedback was shared in the conference session. They expressed many positive sentiments about the experience including the following:

“Our research team started as a group of inspired but like-minded computer scientists wanting to make better online classrooms for diverse students. After she joined the team as an instructional design fellow, the work became credentialed, interdisciplinary, and stronger. She brings expertise and sees what we miss—she not only makes us better able to serve the students we hope to, she makes our team better by adding diversity of thought.”
“The combined knowledge and experience of teaching faculty and an instructional designer is incredibly powerful.”
“She viewed the scope of the research and content of the courses involved through a different lens than I did.”
“The instructional designer provided valuable input on areas of my project merging the instructional design with the research.”
“My work with the instructional designer let me explore very practical logistic issues that are often not included in the literature.”

Altogether, it becomes clear that many instructional designers are eager to participate on research projects and they are valuable contributors to the research process. The questions I have now are: How can we continue these partnerships into the future? And, how can we create more research partnership opportunities for other instructional designers and teaching and learning professionals, who aren’t traditionally involved in research?

References

Dello Stritto, M.E., Fein, S., Garcia, H., Shi, T. (2020). Instructional Designers and Faculty Partnerships in Online Teaching Research. NWeLearn 2020 Conference.

Linder, K. & Dello Stritto, M.E. (2017). Research Preparation and Engagement of Instructional Designers in U.S. Higher Education. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Ecampus Research Unit.

Loftin, D. (2020). Ecampus Research Fellows Program. Ecampus CDT Blog.

reflection of hot air balloon over water (image from pxfuel.com)

Reflection assignments as an active learning strategy are commonly seen in humanities courses. The purpose of this writing is to share an example of how simple reflection activities can make a huge impact in two math courses.

MTH 251 Differential Calculus covers five units, with one exam for each unit, counting 14% of the final grade. Before students attempt to take the unit exam, they are assigned to read textbook readings, watch instructor-created lecture videos, work on Canvas-based homework assignment and Adaptive Learning based practice assignments in Knewton Lab online platform. After assignment due date expires, students are assigned to complete a weekly written homework reflection. The weekly homework and the weekly homework reflection together count for 14% of final grade in this course, weighing the same as each of the unit exams.

MTH 341 Linear Algebra I has ten weekly modules. Each week, students read textbook assigned readings, watch lecture videos created by the instructor (Dr. ), complete post-reading questions in quiz format, work on graded group discussion questions to solve math problems in small groups, complete written homework individually, and in the following week, complete a written homework response activity individually in discussion format.

The written homework reflection in MATH 251 and the written homework response in MATH 341 are both reflection activities designed to optimize student learning success, through comparing their own homework solutions with answer keys and evaluate whether they did it correctly or incorrectly and analyze where they did it wrong and how to get it right. The purpose of such weekly reflection is to help students develop meta-cognitive skills related to their learning. By looking back at students’ own work and learning from their mistakes, they develop an understanding of what is the proper way to solve a problem and what is not the proper way for solving a particular math problem. It also prompts students to plan for proper action in the future and exercises students’ executive functioning skills (CAST, 2018).

Here is what the instructions for the weekly reflection look like:
1. First answer the weekly prompt: Reflecting on the Unit 1 module, which topics did you struggle with the most?
2. Download the written homework solutions PDF: (Solution for each written homework in pdf format is attached here.)
3. Look over the solutions and compare to your submitted homework. Look for any problems where your solution differs from the posted solution.

- If your solutions had one or more incorrect problems then in the discussion board please discuss the following:
  - why you struggled with certain problems
  - why each solution makes sense now
  - what your misunderstanding was
  - what will you do in the future when solving problems similar to these?
  - what strategies will help you?
  - what did you learn by making a mistake?
  - what did you learn from looking at the solutions?
- If you are still confused about a problem, ask a question. DO NOT simply list which problems you got wrong.
- If your solutions are all correct then in the discussion board please discuss the problem that you found the most challenging. Describe what specific tasks helped you to complete that problem. Be as detailed as you can about your solution process.

Students not only posted their own reflections, but they also comment on or answer other students’ reflections as well. Additionally, the instructor and the four TAs in the course responded actively to students’ reflections, which makes the reflection more valuable since students get encouragement, praises, or corrections from the instructor and teaching assistants. Again, feedback from experts is critical in the success of a reflection activity (Vandenbussche, 2018)

What Reflection Usually looks like and what reflection should look like

Image 1: How reflection usually looks like and How reflection should look like (Image Source)

Many students were reflecting on what they did wrong and asked for help. Some were reflecting on their time management in completing the homework assignments. And we were glad to see students completing homework, evaluating their own work, analyzing where they did wrong, and planning for future improvement. Overall, the purpose of this assignment is accomplished!

goal 1 complete

(Image by Dave_Here)

A great benefit that comes from these weekly reflection activities is increased or sustained homework completion rate. For MTH 251 winter 2021 week 1 to week 7, over 85% of students completed the weekly homework and the reflection activity on average. For MTH 341 Fall 20 week 1 to week 7, over 90% of students on average completed the weekly homework and the reflection assignments. All math teachers love to see their students practice with homework assignments before they attempt to take the quizzes or exams! And evidence-based research tells us that deliberate practice with targeted feedback promotes mastery learning (Ambrose et al., 2010).

So, if it works in math courses, it will work in Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Engineering and other STEM courses too! If you’re interested in implementing this technique in your teaching and have questions about setting it up, feel free to contact us. We’d love to help you figure out the easiest way to set it up in your course.

References

Ambrose, S.A., Bridges, M.W., DiPietro, M., Lovettt, M.C. , Norman, M.K., & The Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence at Carnegie Mellon University. (2010). How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

CAST. (2018). UDL Guidelines. Retrieved from https://udlguidelines.cast.org/

Vandenbussche, B. (2018). Reflecting for learning. Retrieved from https://educationaltoolsportal.eu/en/tools-for-learning/reflecting-learning

Instructors and course designers often use quizzes or forms for assessment, retrieval practice, self-checks, or collecting information from students. Did you know that Qualtrics surveys can take your interaction game to an even higher level of sophistication?

Qualtrics surveys can easily be linked to or embedded in a page in your Learning Management System. They can also be added as an assignment through the LTI integration.

The LTI integration has recently become an available feature for Oregon State University Canvas users. The integration links the survey to the student’s LMS account and is useful for awarding points automatically for completing the survey. In addition, several types of questions can be scored; thus, a survey can be used as a quiz and the integration tool will send the points to the gradebook.

If your LMS doesn’t have a Qualtrics LTI integration, or you don’t want to go through all the steps of setting it up, you can still use Qualtrics activities, but you will have to add any points manually in your gradebook.

Ideas for Qualtrics activities

Here are a few ways to use a Qualtrics survey:

Self-check activity / formative assessment / quiz: design a survey to increase active learning or assess content. Qualtrics can be your tool of choice because:
- It’s more versatile than a quiz or Google form (e.g. more types of questions, complex branching possible based on answer).
- It can be customized with different colors, fonts, and backgrounds.
- The instructor can access student answers and use this information to provide individualized support or improve course materials.
Class pulse: Send a survey during the term to ask students how they are doing.
Suggestion box: Have a permanent page in your course where students can submit suggestions.
Voting ballot / poll: Create a survey to allow students to vote on a topic, favorite presentation, meeting time, etc. or to answer a poll.
Topic selection tool: Provide an easy way for students to claim their topic through a survey that eliminates an option once it’s chosen.
Muddiest point survey: Gather students’ input on the week’s materials: which concepts were unclear? Which information was particularly compelling?
Team member evaluation: In group work, it can be a good idea to have students evaluate their team members, to increase accountability and make sure that everyone is pulling their weight. You can create a survey asking students to rate their peers on specific criteria and provide comments on performance.

How to create a survey

Creating a survey in Qualtrics is very straightforward. Log into your account and create a new project. You can choose from a variety of question types, including multiple choice, ranking, slider, matrix, etc. Make sure to check which questions are accessible to screen-reading programs. If you’d like to track or manage the time a student spends on a page, you can use a timing question.

For Oregon State University users, the default look is the OSU theme. Through the Look and Feel menu section, you can choose a different theme or customize the layout, style, background, colors and text size to fit your needs and your course aesthetic.

How to link a survey

Linking to a survey is the easiest way to include it in your course. In your survey, go to Distributions and choose the Anonymous link. If you need the student’s identification information, make sure to add a question asking for their name or email.

How to embed a survey

Embedding a survey instead of linking it can make for a smoother learning experience by integrating the questions with other learning material on that page. To embed a survey on a page, use a simple iframe like this: <iframe src=”insert survey link here” width=”1000px” height=”500px”></iframe> and adjust the dimensions or style it as desired.

How to integrate a survey via LTI

Integrating via LTI is a bit more complex and will depend on your LMS and your organization’s settings. For Oregon State University users, instructions are provided in this article: Use Qualtrics in Canvas.

Conclusion

Qualtrics is a useful tool for adding more interactivity into your course. Setting up the surveys can be very simple or more involved depending on the task. Watch out for future posts in which we will give examples and details on how to design and create some of the more complex types of Qualtrics activities.

This post was written in collaboration by Deborah Mundorff and Dana Simionescu.

Part I: Role of Course Developer as Media Curator

This post is Part I of a two-part series on video selection and use in online courses. Part I provides the reasoning behind understanding course videos selection by course developers as a curatorial process. Part II will explore video curation in practice in course development and provide a course design perspective on video presentation and management issues.

Recent Video Use Trends

In September of 2020 the enterprise video company Kaltura Inc. conducted its seventh annual State of Video in Education 2020 report. The report included responses from across the education system spectrum with higher education institutions making up 53% of all respondents (Figure 1.).

Chart showing percentages of educator sectors in response to Kaltura survey. — Figure 1. Percentage of respondents to video survey by education sector.

This report described how remote teaching-driven course changes impacted video adoption and use in education. Remote teaching and learning was the most common use of video (83% of respondents). Lecture captured as video was used by 69% of the responding institutions.

The executive summary identified a number of key insights and trends related to changes in video use in education. A select few can be seen below:

Use of video for remote teaching and learning grew by 28% over 2019.
Video use is viewed as positive. Respondents (84%) saw video as having a positive impact on student satisfaction, 73% seeing video increase student achievements and 76% believe it increased instructor satisfaction.
Students as creators of video increased by 13% from 2019 to 2020.
In higher education there was rising video use for remote teaching, lecture capture, and flipping the classroom.
Actual growth in the use of video for remote teaching and learning grew by 28%.
A majority of respondents (68%) want to continue to blend traditional teaching with today’s virtual innovations; such as video.

In some ways this is not surprising. This past year forced many instructors in higher education to convert face-to-face courses to remote instruction. Much of that transition was accomplished with synchronous sessions via ZOOM or some other video conferencing program. Live video conference sessions, if recorded, also served as a support resource for students. In response to the challenges of the past year both live and recorded video were adopted to make remote learning doable. Fully online courses do not have this live element as they are asynchronous and did not have to adapt in this way.

In asynchronous courses at Oregon State University our Ecampus course developers utilize video differently. Video is as a key media element in delivering course content to learners, promoting faculty presence, and to build depth into projects and assignments. Video content may be produced internally by course developers (e.g., instructors) and used in courses via an enterprise video system (e.g., Kaltura). Video content may also be sourced from external video-based social media sites (e.g., YouTube and Vimeo) or educational and commercial collections (e.g., Kanopy or Amazon) and via syndicated video sources (e.g., podcasts and Twitter).

Given the plethora of video available and a trend toward increased video integration into instruction the challenge to course developers is the selecting, managing, and presenting video content to support and compliment course learning outcomes. Ultimately this also becomes a course design challenge for instructional designers who must adapt to manage the integration of increasing levels of video in the course in a way that makes sense from a pedagogical perspective as well as visual design aesthetic.

Course Developers as Media Curators

What is a Curator?

The growing value of video in the experience of a course suggests that course developers (e.g., instructors) consider a new way of thinking about how video is selected, managed and presented. In essence, I am suggesting that for a given course the course developer serves as a curator of video content.

But what is curator? Should a course developer really think like a curator? How might curated media shape course development and instructional design?

In order to explore this notion of course developers as media curators a bit more I would like to share the definition of what a curator is from the American Alliance of Museum (AAM) Curators Committee (2009). The preamble to the curator core competencies of a curator defined the term curator as:

Curators are highly knowledgeable, experienced, or educated
in a discipline relevant to the museum’s purpose or mission.

Curators are further described as having nine core competencies and related applied skills. The competencies are:

Collection planning Scholary Research Exhibition Development
Collecting Object Research Education
Collection Care Applied Research Outreach & Advocacy

In Figure 2. we see these same foundational roles expressed by the AAM coupled with a definition of curator and description of the work of a curator. Also included is the domain of the work. Those domains are preservation, research, and communication. The global context of curation is, in this definition, a museum. The more discrete context is the exhibition, or exhibit application. Yet it is all part of a curator’s work.

Curator defined with context. — Figure 2. Definition of the term curator and select context example.

What we see in this definition in Figure 2. is the premise that curators select, gather, care for, and prepare presentations of single items that in aggregate make up a curated collection. That collection becomes a resource and object of education, outreach, advocacy and presentation.

This makes the act of curatorship a scholarly and creative practice that is deeply intentional and based upon the definitional parameters of the organization doing the work.

Course Developers – Curators of Video Collections

Now let us think about what an online course developer is and what they do. At Ecampus course developers collaborate with instructional designers to plan an online course. Instructional designers advise and take content selected by the course developer and build that content into Canvas, our learning management system. The created courses are then shared with students. Course developers are considered content experts much like museum curators are. Let’s look at that a bit more closely.

In Figure 3. below we can see a comparison between the definitional role and duties of a museum curator and course developer. There are striking parallels between these roles. So much so that it would seem reasonable to think about what a course developer does as also a curatorial practice. A practice focused on the learning content, including video, for a given course.

Perhaps the greatest difference between these to two curatorial practices is the context of each. In asynchronous course development it is not uncommon for instructors to perform many of these same functions as museum curators but on a more discrete scale. The scope and context of their focus is obviously different.

In essence a course developer actively gathers and in may cases, creates unique course elements that form the curated media collection for a course. That collection of texts (readings), images, web resources and video is then used for education, research, and perhaps outreach with a constant eye on student access to media. Ultimately a course media collection is intended to permit the course developer to fulfill the purpose of the course and guide students in achieving the course learning outcomes.

The physical design of the course, with its media collection, is the domain of the instructional designer. The collaboration between the course developer and instructional designer are key in preparing the course as an “education exhibition” of sorts that has clear learning outcomes.

Course Video Selection: The Art of Curatorship

We began this discussion with the importance of video in online course development and design. With that in mind it is logical that video curation is an important element of course-wide media collection identification.

Video collection, cataloging, arranging and assembling for display in a course fits quite well within the parameters of curating. Any curation is also about a level of storying, opportunities for engagement, information sharing and perspective sharing (Potter, 2017). In course development these processes as applied to course media, and in particular video, have the potential to create and shape the nature, experience, and associated learning in an online course.

In making decisions about video use in online courses, a course developer would apply their knowledge and expertise to curate the selections. Clear learning outcomes provide a pedagogical and content structure to the video curation process. Once a video collection is established other decisions may come into play that reference an aesthetic for the collection. This is the art of curatorship.

The art of curatorship has been viewed as closely aligned to a design process (Shuey, 2014) and may be guided by an interpretation of the universal visual design principles as conceptual guides to the education exhibition that is the online course. In this sense the curator is not thinking as much about the collection items per se but more about how the collection fits together to provide and support a narrative, flow, or education scaffolding for the course.

Thinking Like A Curator

As an exercise in curatorial thinking let’s take some re-interpreted concepts of visual design and see if they help us think through how we curate not only individual videos but also a video collection. This brief list includes accompanying questions that are informed by the identified principle and may shape the curation of video. In these examples found videos are outside video sources where created videos are those made by the course developer.

Balance: What is the intended balance between: Created and found curated videos? Permanent video and temporary (single-use) video content?
Emphasis: How does found video reinforce or extend created video? Is there a particular focus or intention of video use?
Movement: Is there a scaffolding of curated video that matches the scaffolding of the course progression? How does the video curation contribute to that progression?
Pattern: Is curated content focused, more general in nature, or quite diverse in source, topic or message?
Rhythm: Does video use and viewing support or promote a rhythm of engagement for the course that compliments course objectives?
Repetition: Are curated videos reinforcing similar ideas or concepts? Are videos used consistently for certain aspects of the course (i.e., narrated lectures)?
Proportion: Does the video collection time commitment fit within the time expectations for the course? What is the ideal proportion of video to text, image, and other course media?
Variety: Are curated videos from different content sources and types? What is the ideal balance for the course?
Unity: Does the video collection promote a sense of wholeness to the course? Could the video collection, on its own, communicate identifiable ideas, patterns of ideas, or a range of perspectives on a topic?
Does video accessibility contribute to the overall course accessibility?

In working through this exercise, we begin to move beyond video collecting by subject toward a more complete analysis of video collection selection and use that includes intertwined pedagogic and aesthetic considerations. This helps create a video collection that is intentional in its item selection, organization and use.

Final Thoughts

Recent research by Kaltura Inc. indicates that video use in education is on the rise in the past year. A continued growth of access to video and ability to create video coupled with an interest in integrating video in education efforts suggests course developers have a challenging task regarding media selection and use.

This article presents the idea that course developers, whether obvious or not, are actively engaged in a curatorial process regarding media selection and use. In addition, because of the importance and prevalence of video, its curation is presented as a key element of the larger course media curation effort. Lastly, we have explored how video collections contribute to academic and aesthetic value of a course and provided some key considerations based upon extending classic visual design principles to a curatorial practice.

It is interesting that the term curation has Latin roots in the verb curare; which means to take care of. Course developers conducting intentional video curation contribute to meaningful media curation for a course. This engagement in the practice of a curator is truly a professional act of caring about the quality of course development and the impact on student learning.

In Part II of this series we will address the practice of video curation in the context of an online course and explore instructional design considerations for video use that balance and complement a sample course video collection.

References

American Alliance of Museums. (2009). Curators Committee (CurCom): Curator’s core competencies. https://www.aam-us.org/professional-networks/curators-committee/

Kaltura Inc. (2020) The state of video in education 2020: Insights and trends [seventh edition].
https: //corp.kaltura.com/resources/the-state-of-video-in-education-2020/

Potter, J. (2017). Curation. In K. Peppler (Ed.), The SAGE encyclopedia of out of school learning (pp. 4-6). SAGE Publications Inc., Thousand Oaks, CA.

Shuey, G. (2014, October 21). The art of content curation. RELEVANCE.
https: //www.relevance.com/the-art-of-content-curation/

Wikipedia (n.d.). Definition of term collection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collection_(artwork)

Wikipedia (n.d.). Definition of term curator.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curator

Video Resources

Special thanks for the following individuals for their contributions to this article.

Chris Lindberg, Instructional Design Specialist, Oregon State University, Ecampus, Corvallis, Oregon.
Cody Rademacher, Curator, Holocaust Museum & Cohen Education Center. Naples, Florida.

Introduction

Employ Empathy Statements in Email and Other Communications

Restructure Office Hours – “Ask Me Anything Hours”

Provide Constructive and Personal Feedback for Students to Reflect and Improve Upon

Periodically Check in with Students Who Are Behind

Sources

Annotation

Equity, Inclusion, & Community

Social Annotation as Collective Construction of Meaning

Ready to Try It Out?

Assignments can be tailored to meet a variety of instructional purposes and goals:

Some best practices to consider when using collective annotation online:

Social Annotation Tools: The Major Players

Sources

How it Begins

Chasing Images

Asking the Question

Course Artist-in Residence

Final Thoughts

Recognition

Fellows program highlight

Funding recipients expand the inclusivity mindset of computer science students

Join the Ecampus Research Fellows Program

Culturally Responsive Approaches

Dimensions for Learning Design

Identity and Experience

Design

Linguistic Variability

Content

Interaction

Technology

Sources

Ideas for Qualtrics activities

How to create a survey

How to link a survey

How to embed a survey

How to integrate a survey via LTI

Conclusion

Part I: Role of Course Developer as Media Curator

Recent Video Use Trends

Course Developers as Media Curators

Course Video Selection: The Art of Curatorship

Thinking Like A Curator

Final Thoughts

References

Contact Info