Meredith, Rick, and Emily,

I loved your interesting title to this work! It was refreshing. I agree, too, that formative assessments have been focused upon much more in the traditional F2F classroom than in the online learning environment, but they are needed as much if not moreso in the online classroom. Establishing and maintaining a presence by the facilitator in the online environment can be a crucial tipping point regarding student success, and higher order thinking questions and prompts can draw in and spark the interest of the students.

Formative assessments help with normative assessments as well as summative assessments. Great job!

Priscilla

Priscilla,

Thank you for your comments and feedback. It is appreciated!

Best,

Meredith

Thank you for your comments, Priscilla! Faculty presence in the classroom is very important. We are beginning to explore the concept of emotional presence as well. It is important for online students to be able to conncect with their instructors in a meaningful way.

Thank you for your paper on CATS and WILD HOGS. I found the discussion and research informative and useful to my daily teaching practice. Both techniques are valuable to teachers wanting to push students towards higher level learning opportunities. Also, your discussion about the theories behind each strategy helped me reinforce my conceptual understanding of both terms. I was unfamiliar with the acronym WILD HOGS, but your treatment of the concept made it easy for me to grasp and your nine examples give me something to work on over the next few months. I think online instructors will find the article useful and something they would recommend to others.

My only criticism concerns your abstract. I do not think it communicates the main points completely. It introduces the topic, but does not necessarily address the main purpose of your paper.

Chuck,

Thank you for your feedback. I agree that the abstract does more to set the background and not enough to communicate the main points we articulate in the paper. We look forward to making this revision. Thank you again.

Best,

Meredith

Thank you for the feedback, Dr. B. I am glad to see that the information was useful for you. I also appreciate that you mentioned the weakness of our abstract.. That is great feedback that will be addressed. Thank you for your help in this process.

Rick

This was a well written and interesting paper.The topic is timely and presented in a logical manner. It remains to be seen, however, that WILD HOGS will have a greater impact on student learning than other forms of CATS or formative assessments. I am curious to see if data would show any significant differences. Great job overall.

There are a few APA issues that need addressed. The Abstract title line is indented, which throws the word off-center. In the references, a comma is missing after Berquist, E. Otherwise, the citations were well done.

Ron Summerhill

Ron,

Thank you for your close reading of the manuscript. It is much appreciated!

Best,

Meredith

WOW! I love the title that has been chosen. The title says a lot about this reading! To be honest I decided to read this one because of the title. I was unaware what WILD HOGS stood for but now I am perfectly clear on it. Again, great job and a good read!

Misty Stone MSN RN

Misty,

Thank you for your feedback. We hoped the title would be catchy and serve as inspiration for others to read the manuscript. Have a great day!

Best,

Meredith

Hi Meredith, Rick, and Emily,

Thank you for your thorough treatment of CAT's and WILD HOG's and their value for increased student learning, analysis, and application of course principles. I appreciate your frequent references to the individuality that exists not only in students but also in the classroom. Each class has a unique dynamic that the online instructor must attempt to understand as he / she interacts with and leads student learning. Yours is a well articulated article that is of benefit to all online instructors.

Blessings,

Ron Steadman

A nicely written piece. How do you see your research here as it relates to what Dr Michael Berger did in relation to social presence cues?

Do you see this as an expansion on what he found or more along the lines of operating in conjunction with it.

Some very good and useful suggestions for improving instructor presence in the classroom. As a former principal I appreciate that the suggestions generally stated a goal but then provided direction how to achieve it.

Ron,

Thank you for your thoughtful comments. They are much appreciated.

Best,

Meredith

Wayne,

Excellent question! Although I'm not too familiar with Dr. Berger's work on social presence, it is my understanding that our article is an extension of his research, offering concrete, context-based, and research-based strategies to enhance social presence in the online classroom.

Best,

Meredith

Dr. Schmidt,

Thank you for your question. I think that any time we are trying to engage our students in more meaningful activities, it assists in raising social presence as well as emotional presence between the instructor and students. I have found in my own classes that when I use CATs and WILD HOGS, the students participate more and seem to connect better with the objectives. One important component is closing the loop so that all students receive feedback. This also helps with social and emotional presence.

Rick

To each of the writers of this article,

I enjoyed reading the article and was drawn to it based on the title. I am familiar with CATS but not aware of the WILD HOGS concepts. Strangely, the techniques described in the article are ones that I used for many years prior to the university requiring CATS to be used. What I have found is that my students are not that enthusiastic about CATS questions. Some of the feedback that I have received is that seeing the additional questions in the DQ forum is more burdening to them when they are already busy and trying to complete the work already assigned. 

In the past, I did what I called "personal CATS" questioning. Within the normal discussion threads, I would ask additional questions based on what the students were already discussing. My students seemed to respond better to those prompts than they do to the CATS post. I could be misinterpreting what you are writing about, but basically that is how I see the WILD HOG format. It allows instructors to interact more personally within the discussion.