Teaching on the Education Frontier E-Book

Kristin Kipp

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 359

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

A groundbreaking guide to facilitating online and blended courses This comprehensive resource offers teachers in grades K-12 a hands-on guide to the rapidly growing field of online and blended teaching. With clear examples and explanations, Kristin Kipp shows how to structure online and blended courses for student engagement, build relationships with online students, facilitate discussion boards, collaborate online, design online assessments, and much more. * Shows how to create a successful online or blended classroom * Illustrates the essential differences between face-to-face instruction and online teaching * Foreword by Susan Patrick of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning This is an essential handbook for learning how to teach online and improve student achievement.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

About This Book

About the Author

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter One: The Many Variables of Online and Blended Teaching

Self-Paced versus Cohort Approach

Full-Time versus Part-Time Online Students

Blended versus Fully Online Courses

Create-Your-Own versus a Purchased Curriculum

Teacher as Course Author and Organizer versus Teacher as Facilitator Only

Teacher Performance (and Perhaps Pay) Based on Course Completion versus Based on Rubric or Evaluation Systems

What Kind of Online or Blended Teaching Model Is Right for You?

Chapter Two: Course Philosophy

Connect to Content

Connect with Other Students

Connect with the Teacher

Connecting on All Three Fronts

Chapter Three: Preparing to Teach an Online Course

Course Organization

Fleshing Out the Course Information Button

Be VOCAL, an Acronym for Teacher Success

A Word to the Wise

Chapter Four: Building Relationships with Students

Starting at the Beginning

Continuing the Relationship

Hosting Face-to-Face Events

Building an Online Persona

Chapter Five: Using Announcements Effectively

Types of Announcements

Practical Considerations in Using Announcements

Incorporating Voice Elements into Announcements

Chapter Six: Discussion Board Strategies and Facilitation

Discussion Board Basics

Asking Quality Questions

Rubrics and Grading

Teaching Students to Respond in Ways That Keep the Discussion Moving

Teaching Discussion Board Etiquette

How Much to Be Involved

Types of Posts

Handing over the Reins for Student-Led Discussions

Chapter Seven: Teaching Synchronous Sessions

Basic Capabilities of Synchronous Tools

Communication Tools: Microphone, Video, Chat, and Polling

Presentation Tools: Whiteboard, Screen Sharing, and File Sharing

Time Considerations

Making Up Missed Sessions

Building a Routine

Activity Ideas

Chapter Eight: Creating and Modifying Assignments

Defining a Good Assignment

Creating Un-Googleable Assignments

Keeping Your Course Current

Using the Platform to Create Unique Experiences

Chapter Nine: Collaborating in Online Courses

Why Collaboration Is Essential

Wikis

Blogs

Google Docs

E-portfolios

Collaborative Groups

Staying Involved

Chapter Ten: Differentiating Assignments

What Is Differentiation?

Creating Choice within Assignments

Customized Path through a Session or Unit

Critical Paths

Differentiating for Special Needs Students

Chapter Eleven: Grading and Feedback

Grading in a Virtual Space

Understanding the Basics

Canned Comments and Personalizing Feedback

Rubric Grading

Word Options for Grading Student Work

File Management

Chapter Twelve: Accessibility, Communication, and Office Hours

Communicating with Digital Natives: Speaking Their Language

Office Hours and Tutoring

Communication Methods

Choosing Your Communication Method Based on Message

Chapter Thirteen: Time Management and Routines

Making the Transition

Creating a Weekly Routine

Top-Three Strategy

Managing the E-mail Monster

Using Adaptive Release

Creating a Work-Life Balance

Chapter Fourteen: Strategies for Blended Learning

Toward a New Way of Learning

Basic Blended Learning Models

Learning Variables on a Digital Scale

Example Activities for a Blended Environment

Designing Mixed Assignments

Using Online Tools to Make the Face-to-Face Classroom More Efficient

Choosing Your Tools

Chapter Fifteen: Training to Teach Online

The Process of Becoming an Online Teacher

Taking an Online Course

Online Training Courses and Professional Development Books

Teaching Part-Time Online

Taking on More Advanced Roles

What to Expect During the Transition

Finding a Mentor or Mentor Community

Avoiding Isolation and Connecting with Other Online Teachers

Appendix A: iNACOL National Standards for Quality Online Courses

Section A: Content

Section B: Instructional Design

Section C: Student Assessment

Section D: Technology

Section E: Course Evaluation and Support

Appendix B: Sample Syllabus

Appendix C: iNACOL National Standards for Quality Online Teaching

Appendix D: Frequently Asked Questions

References

Resources

iNACOL—An Excellent Professional Organization

Virtual School Symposium—Knowing You're Not Alone

Developing a Personal Learning Network

Recommended Blogs

Recommended Twitter Feeds

Twitter Hashtags Related to Online Learning

Training Courses on How to Become an Online Teacher

Books for Online Teachers

Glossary

Acknowledgments

Index

Cover design by Michael Cook

Cover image: © Kamruzzaman Ratan/iStockphoto

Copyright © 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

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ISBN 978-1-118-44977-6 (paper); ISBN 978-1-118-64652-6 (ebk.); ISBN 978-1-118-64660-1 (ebk.)

About This Book

This book provides best practices for online teachers. It is filled with strategies that I have used in my own online classroom with success as well as insights and tips from online teachers throughout the field. It will help you to set up your online classroom, design assignments, communicate with students, manage the workload, and much more. The chapters are designed to stand alone so you may read them in any order. Feel free to flip immediately to the topic that most interests you! Teachers new to online teaching may want to begin with chapters 1 through 4 for basic ideas around course philosophy, structure, and relationships. More experienced online teachers will find more advanced strategies in chapters 5 through 13. Although blended (also known as hybrid) teaching strategies are woven throughout the text through special “focus on blended learning” features, chapter 14 is specifically focused on blended learning and finding ways to use digital tools to supplement and extend the traditional classroom. The following summarizes each of the chapters in the text to help you to find the topics you're most interested in.

Chapter 1: The Many Variables of Online and Blended Teaching

This chapter considers the numerous variables inherent in online learning programs, such as whether a program is self-paced or a cohort model, whether the program has its own curriculum or a purchased curriculum, whether the students are full-time online or part-time online, and so on. Each of these variables complicates the teaching situation and affects the way that teachers present their courses on a day-by-day and week-by-week basis. This chapter explores those variables and considers instructional strategies for coping with various teaching situations.

Chapter 2: Course Philosophy

This chapter explores a basic philosophy for what makes a good online course. It operates on the premise that any good online course will have three fundamental elements: first, that students will connect to the content; second, that students will connect with each other; finally, that students will connect with the teacher. If any one of the three elements is missing, student engagement and therefore learning will suffer. The ideas in this chapter provide the teaching and learning framework for the rest of the strategies in the text.

Chapter 3: Preparing to Teach an Online Course

This chapter considers all the decisions that have to be made as you begin to set up your basic course structure. It provides recommendations for elements such as the syllabus, the course organization, pacing, and accessing student data. If the course is not organized thoughtfully from the beginning, it is doomed before it ever begins.

Chapter 4: Building Relationships with Students

This chapter considers ways to build relationships with students whom you've never met face-to-face. Through student stories and case studies, it explores ways to connect with kids and encourage them to share their stories with you. Without those connections, students are unmotivated to do their best in the online course.

Chapter 5: Using Announcements Effectively

This chapter considers how to use the announcements feature of the learning management system (LMS) to engage students as well as keep them moving in the right direction. It will also consider how to use those announcements to keep the course interesting and, at times, even funny! Also included will be options for how to include your voice in the course announcements through podcasts and vodcasts.

Chapter 6: Discussion Board Strategies and Facilitation

This chapter considers how to facilitate a discussion board. This can be one of the most daunting tasks of moving into an online or blended classroom because it's so different from the way we lead discussions face-to-face. This chapter provides recommendations on how much to be involved in the discussion and how to deepen the learning with quality posts and prompts. It also provides some tips for having students facilitate discussions.

Chapter 7: Teaching Synchronous Sessions

This chapter provides an introduction to teaching synchronous sessions or webinars. It provides an overview of what's possible in a webinar and focuses on how to move from lecture-style webinars into something that's more interactive and engaging. It also considers what the proper role is for synchronous sessions in online learning and what makes them most effective.

Chapter 8: Creating and Modifying Assignments

This chapter is aimed at teachers who have author or editor privileges in the content management system. It considers how to create engaging assignments that value critical thinking and originality. It also explains a process for looking at existing course content and deciding how to modify that content to best meet student needs.

Chapter 9: Collaborating in Online Courses

This chapter focuses on the third part of the course philosophy from chapter 3—connecting students with each other. It explores ways to use blogs, wikis, groups, and other course tools to have students working together to deepen their learning. Lots of concrete examples are included.

Chapter 10: Differentiating Assignments

This chapter explains how the online course environment can help to customize student learning. Thinking about designing thirty different learning paths for students can be overwhelming. This chapter introduces strategies to differentiate in a practical way that won't significantly increase the teacher's workload.

Chapter 11: Grading and Feedback

This chapter considers how to provide in-depth, meaningful feedback to students. It focuses on what types of feedback make a difference in student achievement and how to provide that feedback in an efficient way.

Chapter 12: Accessibility, Communication, and Office Hours

This chapter focuses on how to make yourself available as an instructor in an online class. It explores ideas such as office hours and tutoring as ways to help students understand that they are never alone and always have their teacher's support. It also discusses communication strategies via e-mail, text messaging, and phone so that students are in constant communication with the teacher.

Chapter 13: Time Management and Routines

This chapter considers how to achieve a positive work-life balance while working from home or on a flexible schedule. Basic weekly work flows and to-do lists are shared along with practical time management tips.

Chapter 14: Strategies for Blended Learning

Although any of the strategies in this text can be applied to blended learning situations, this chapter specifically focuses on how to organize a blended learning classroom. It provides criteria for deciding when a task is best completed online and when it is best completed face-to-face. It also provides some examples of blended assignments: assignments or projects in which a portion of the work is completed face-to-face and a portion is completed online.

Chapter 15: Training to Teach Online

This chapter considers various routes to teaching online and which paths are most effective for quickly learning the skills of an online facilitator. Specific resources (websites, books, blogs, and courses) are recommended.

At the end of the book I've also provided information on some of the most helpful resources out there for online teaching and learning, including blogs, wikis, and Twitter accounts that online teachers should consider following.

Teaching in the education frontier can be daunting; however, it's also incredibly fulfilling. This is a rewarding journey. Turn the page and let's begin!

About the Author

KRISTIN KIPP is a full-time online English teacher and instructional coach for Jeffco's Virtual Academy in Golden, Colorado. She was named the 2011 National Online Teacher of the Year by the International Association for K–12 Online Learning (iNACOL) and the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB). In the past she has taught eighth through twelfth grades, both virtually and in a face-to-face classroom. She presents across the country about best practices in online learning and blogs at http://www.educationfrontier.org. She lives in Evergreen, Colorado with her husband and three children.

Foreword

Ours is a world of high-tech, high-touch learning. This shift to a digital world and an increasingly knowledge-oriented society is influencing the way students and teachers interact with environments around them, how they connect with peers and experts, how they access news and information, and how they research, write, and communicate. The flexibility for students to learn from the best teachers possible in highly personalized environments, allowing them to engage with dynamic, adaptive curriculum any time, everywhere, is a reality for a growing number of young people around the globe. The same flexibility and personalization is transforming the role of the teacher and freeing time to design, implement, and adapt curriculum to work with students one-on-one, on a lesson-by-lesson basis.

Just as education must not be designed as a one-size-fits-all solution for students, teaching in a variety of online and blended learning environments is not a monolithic endeavor and requires varied approaches, strategies, and pedagogies. It is this art of teaching using online and blended learning tools and twenty-first-century strategies that is explained so clearly in this book.

Meeting every student's unique needs is important if learners are to stay on their own leading edge of learning—maximizing engagement and potential and targeting student agency based on interests and passions. Whether students are in a physical classroom guided by teachers personalizing instruction using digital content and resources or students are taking one or more classes completely online, each pedagogical approach requires reflection and integration of emerging methods of mentoring, modeling, instructing, supporting, tutoring, assessing, evaluating, and coaching kids in new learning environments.

Learning has changed dramatically in a relatively short period of time—from using a single textbook to having myriad resources at the fingertips of teachers and their students online, in apps, and through digital books. Online courses and immediate access to journals and original source materials signify the powerful shift from twentieth- to twenty-first-century tools and technologies in the learning process. A knowledge economy demands that students work in teams, problem solve, and communicate differently, and the world of online and blended learning opens up the vast potential for highly personalized, student-centered learning options that provide all with access to world-class educational opportunities.

Even as there is a great shift occurring in the education space, the cornerstone of the overall success for new models of learning, as it turns out, remains the same in online and blended learning environments as it does in traditional classes—excellent teachers who are the driving force and the gold standard for high-quality learning. Understanding the evolving roles of educators as multifaceted professionals, armed with tools for personalization, data-driven individualized instruction, and new methodologies to bring collaboration and communication into the twenty-first century is critical if we are to advance learning in the game-changing ways kids need to be successful in the modern world and workplace.

Whether in real-time, synchronous models, or flexible asynchronous learning environments, knowing and mapping each student's learning goals, performance, skills, and disposition is critical for effective instruction in new learning models.

The transition from traditional classroom teacher to leading an online or blended course comes with a learning curve attached. Teaching is not an easy profession in either case but many find that the tools available in a technology-driven learning environment are exactly what they need in order to bring them back to that original impulse to teach—one-on-one engagement with all students individually to bring them forward in their education through personalized instruction. This is an instructional model that breaks the one-size-fits-all approach to education, freeing students to go further and deeper in building knowledge and identifying the best path toward achievement and mastery of essential content, skills, and dispositions.

I can't tell you how many online and blended teachers have shared with me the sheer joy they felt at the moment they moved beyond the notion of a disconnected classroom and began to realize the power of a learning environment in which they were free to abandon “teaching to the middle” and truly work with each of their students as individuals. Those very same teachers gladly share that though they may not be in the same physical space as their students, they are able to develop stronger bonds with them than they were ever able to in a traditional classroom.

Kristin Kipp was a recipient of the SREB/iNACOL National Online Teacher of the Year award, and her commitment to excellence and to personalized learning for all teachers and students is highlighted throughout each and every section of this book. From the fundamentals of communication to the art of differentiating assignments, this guide provides a road map for new teachers, a refresher for more experienced ones, and a primer for those interested in exploring the role of teachers in the dynamic, new education models using online and blended learning emerging today.

Susan Patrick President and CEO, International Association for K–12 Online Learning

Introduction

In fall 2007 I had just begun my fifth year of teaching in a face-to-face classroom. I was teaching freshman and sophomore English in a very high-performing high school. Although I truly enjoyed my job, I was feeling an itch to try something new. I wanted to find some new ways to engage kids and take their learning deeper but I wasn't sure exactly what that looked like. When I heard about the benefits of a virtual classroom, I wanted to try it out. That was the year I wrote my first online course and began to explore what online teaching and learning was all about.

Perhaps that's where you are in your journey. You're just beginning to enter the education frontier. You want to try some new techniques for teaching online or in a blended classroom. You want to know what good online courses look like and what a good teacher should do in an online space. Or perhaps you've already taught one or more online or blended classes but you feel like you want to know how to make them more effective or engaging. This book is meant to be your guide. Its purpose is to provide an introduction to online teaching for those who are just beginning their journey as well as new strategies for experienced online teachers. I hope to help you avoid some of the pitfalls I fell into so that you can thrive as an online teacher from day one.

Online education is a significant disruption in the education field. The Speak Up report by Project Tomorrow estimates that three times as many high school students and twice as many middle school students had access to online courses in 2011 compared to 2007. By 2020, it's projected that 50 percent of all high school courses will be taught online (Christensen, Horn, & Johnson, 2009). This is a field that is growing by leaps and bounds. More and more school districts are beginning to see the value of online education for students, and online education is filling a void left in the education sector as a whole. It's providing flexible options for students and helping turn high school dropouts into high school graduates. It's important work.

At the same time, there is a lot of criticism of online education. In 2011, the New York Times and the Associated Press published multiple articles questioning the quality of online programs. They questioned whether it was too easy for students to cheat in these programs. They questioned whether online high schools are simply degree mills (Gabriel, 2011). They even questioned whether the numerous online learning corporations are simply interested in making a profit rather than serving students (Saul, 2011; Wyatt & Moreno, 2011). These are valid questions that we as an industry have to address. Now that online learning has become an option for so many students across the country, the question becomes, “How do we improve the quality of online education so that it's not just available for all students but actually improves student achievement?”

Even with the media criticism of online education, there are also signs of progress and high-quality results in online classrooms. A 2010 meta-analysis by SRI International for the US Department of Education showed that students who were learning online performed better than students in face-to-face classrooms. In fact, students who learned at least partially online scored in the 59th percentile on standardized tests as compared to the 50th percentile for students who learned solely in face-to-face classrooms (US Department of Education, 2010). There is definitely promise. The question we must address is, “How do we make that promise a reality?”

Online education is a young field. There are many issues we need to address in order to realize our potential. What does quality look like in an online classroom and how do we achieve it? I tend to agree with Susan Patrick, CEO of the iNACOL, who says that “teachers will remain the gold standard of quality in every class” (Patrick, personal e-mail). When teachers are intimately involved in an online course and in working with online students on a regular basis, quality will result. Great teaching leads to high-quality learning, whether the teacher is online or face-to-face.