Establishing an Atmosphere for Critical Thinking in the Online Classroom

Ronald G. Steadman

Metacognition and critical thinking are crucial elements in the educational process. The following article examines the use of a quiz/poll classroom assessment technique (CAT) in a 100-level Christian worldview classroom (CWV-101) designed to stimulate student engagement with the course principles in a self-reflective and non-threating environment, thus establishing an atmosphere for critical thinking. The quiz/poll CAT is explained and its underlying inspiration explored to provide insight on the effectiveness of classroom assessment techniques in the online environment.

Supporting 21st-Century Teaching and Learning: The Role of Google Apps for Education (GAFE)

Lawrence J. Awuah

The future of higher education is likely to be driven by to the willingness to adapt and grow with the use of technologies in teaching, learning, and research. Google Apps for Education (GAFE) is a powerful cloud-computing solution that works for students regardless of their location, time, or the type of device being used. GAFE is used by thousands of schools and universities worldwide to make effective use of collaboration tools for students and faculties, with the primary objective of enhancing teaching and learning. In particular, GAFE tools enable users to work together virtually on documents, presentations, and projects in the cloud. GAFE is used to develop course websites, as a complement to traditional classroom instruction, with the aim of delivering coursework to students.

Discussing Active Learning from the Practitioner’s Perspective

Priscilla Bamba

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of how active learning took place in a class containing specific readings,cooperative and collaborative group work, and a writing assignment for college students at a Northern Virginia Community College campus (NVCC). Requisite knowledge, skills, learner characteristics, brain-based learning, and the active learning environment in relation to motivation and participation, as well as the transfer of learning, are also discussed from a practitioner’s stance. Learning is a process the individual actively discovers and builds on previous knowledge through a progression of carefully planned activities. The lesson model followed was that of Madeline Hunter (1994) (see Appendix A), but more current research, such as that of Dawes and Larson (2011) and Yoders (2014), is also used.

Adding to Your Teaching Repertoire: Integrating Action Research into the Lesson Plans

Matthew J. Basham | Barbara Yankowy

As today's students become more technologically savvy, social, and collaborative using social media, there are new and innovative techniques educators can use in the classroom. For example, action research is a newer technique using collaborative group processes, drawing upon the experiences of the individuals to promote positive results. This article will provide an overview of action research theory and demonstrate how action research was used to help faculty and teachers learn how to put this theory into practice by developing lesson plans in a variety of disciplines. At the 25th International Conference on Teaching and Learning in March 2014 at Jacksonville, Florida, data was collected on ways educators may use action research in the classroom for the purposes of this research paper. While other educators may use action research differently, the results here show some ways educators can use action research in the classroom.

Opportunities to Create Active Learning Techniques in the Classroom

Danielle J. Camacho | Jill M. Legare

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the growing body of research that focuses on active learning techniques. Active learning techniques require students to consider a given set of information, analyze, process, and prepare to restate what has been learned—all strategies are confirmed to improve higher order thinking skills. Active learning techniques transform complacent and apprehensive learners into active participants in the process. Group assignments and peer review scenarios establish a setting fostering the notion that students who teach one another are essentially learning to teach themselves. Technology in the 21st century allows instructors to incorporate active learning techniques such as web-based scavenger hunts, problem-based learning, cooperative learning, group discussion, and peer-reviewed and structured-learning groups into the classroom. This paper will provide a survey of existing literature and will provide examples of methods and techniques that instructors may apply in online and on-ground classrooms.

Does Small-Group Collaboration Increase the Number of Substantive Postings in Asynchronous Discussion Forums?

Pam Epler | Bruce Bennett | Rorie Ross

An asynchronous discussion forum is a tool used in courses delivered online. Many schools use discussion forums to enhance collaboration and increase interaction between students in a format in which there are no walls. Removing time constraints and allowing students to participate in classroom discussions online has a tendency to boost their motivation to learn. Traditionally, asynchronous forums are structured as whole class discussions, but research suggests that this format may discourage participation and that utilizing small group forums may be more effective.

Working the Crowd: Behavior Management through Strategic Classroom Arrangement

Jeff Martin

Every day in K-12 classrooms across the country, teachers are struggling to keep their students focused and on task during instructional time. There are hundreds of theories floating around about how to manage a classroom effectively, but nothing is as simple or as effective in engaging students as the physical presence of the teacher (Brophy, 1988). It does not matter if the teacher is six feet or four feet tall, male or female, a soft spoken person, or a forceful one because if done correctly, rarely will a word ever need to be spoken for this strategy to work. This is a strategy made famous by Fred Jones (2007), a nationally known classroom management guru, and is called “working the crowd.” There is a popular saying about the value of an ounce of prevention. Taking the time to set up a classroom properly before students ever arrive will result in in a smoothly managed classroom from the first day.

Active Learning Strategies for Complementing the Lecture Teaching Methods in Large Classes in Higher Education

Jeffrey A. Mangram | Marcelle Haddix | Moses K. Ochanji | Joanna Masingila

Massification in higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa is an ongoing reality that poses particular challenges and opportunitiesfor these nations (Mohamedbhai, 2008). Like Scott (1995), we use the term massification to refer to the rapid increase of students attending higher education institutions in the latter part of the 20th century and into the 21st century. We contend that even in large lecture hall situations, active teaching strategies can be employed to check for understanding, to engage more students in grappling with the content in deeper and more complex ways, and to model for prospective teachers on how to use these techniques to engage their future students in large classroom contexts. In this expository paper, we outline the professional development training we conducted with Kenyatta University teacher educators. We focused on teaching and modeling twelve active learning strategies that they could use in their classes, which are held in lecture halls with as many as 500 students in a class, and were useful active learning strategies regardless of the number of students in the class. By using the aforementioned active learning strategies, we believe the lecture method can be transformed into a tool that promotes active rather than passive learning. Massification does not have to mean a lower-quality learning experience despite large class sizes. Indeed, we argue that massification means a different learning experience for lecturers and students.

Teaching APA Style Documentation: Discovery Learning,Scaffolding and Procedural Knowledge

Thomas Skeen | Maria Zafonte

Students struggle with learning correct documentation style as found in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association and teachers are often at a loss for how to best instruct students in correct usage of APA style. As such, the first part of this paper discusses the current research on teaching documentation styles as well as the learning theory behind discovery learning and scaffolding and advocates for using these lenses to address student problems with APA style. The second half of this paper provides practical exercises (called microthemes), grounded in sound pedagogy, that instructors can use in both a traditional ground classroom or in online and blended instructional models. This paper is aimed at not just instructors in a composition or research methods course who regularly teach APA style to students, but also to the frustrated psychology or science teacher who finds student submissions riddled with APA errors.

From CATS to WILD HOGS: Elevating the Level of Discussion in the Online Classroom

Meredith DeCosta | Emily Bergquist | Rick Holbeck

Online education is growing at a rapid pace. To meet the increasing demand for online education, many universities have designed courses to enable the instructor to be more of a facilitator than an active participant in the classroom space (Ragan, 2009). However, building an active, student-centered learning environment in online classrooms is needed to prevent instructors from becoming stagnant and to inspire them to take on a range of roles as the students’ “guide, facilitator, and teacher” (Ragan, 2009, p. 6). One integral component of this process is to develop and test effective questioning skills and activities in the discussion forums like Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) (Angelo and Cross, 1993) and Written Intentionally for Learning Depth and Higher Order Genius questions (WILD HOGs) (Johnson, 2014). This article argues that in combination CATs and WILD HOGs help establish teacher presence, assess student learning, address areas of concern in the classroom, and, most compellingly, elevate students’ understanding of challenging concepts.

Talking Techne: Techniques to Establish An Active Online Discussion Forum

Stephanie Maher Palenque | Meredith DeCosta

Discussion forums are critically important to the online classroom, as they virtually take the place of a classroom discussion and become a stage on which active learning takes place. Active learning occurs when instructors practice certain techniques in the discussion that are carefully and thoughtfully crafted and guided. The authors propose the term “techne” to describe the specific tools and processes used by instructors who are mindful of this purposeful guidance. By implementing these techne in asynchronous discussions, and revising as needed after close observation and student feedback, a unique and productive active learning experience is shared by everyone in the online classroom. These techniques are generalizable to all online courses, regardless of subject area.

Effective Teaching Methods

Swinton Hudson

The movement from summative assessments, although still needed and used, has transitioned to a combination of summative and formative assessments. The focus in universities is no longer the successful completion of course material but the degree to which learning has occurred. Global needs, business input and demands, and generational cohorts have helped make student retention of information and practice significant. Based on empirical studies and demands, classroom assessment techniques (CATs) were developed. Thus, teaching techniques have transitioned from a memorization and regurgitation method to one of understanding concepts and theories and application. The need resulted in classroom assessment techniques, which focus on a formative assessment method. The concepts and techniques are used for all disciplines providing for a collaboration of efforts to ensure learning occurs. This paper will review the probability that CATs enhances learning and subsequently meet the business needs of critical thinking and associated skills.

Hiring, Training, and Supporting Online Faculty for Higher Student Retention Efforts

Lisa Marie Portugal

This study was a phenomenological study examining the experiences of faculty teaching in an online learning environment in order to identify the factors that could produce job burnout and stress in master’s programs in education. The challenges and related stress-producing factors were also explored to identify best practices for online faculty and attributes most suited for the demands and expectations required in the online teaching environment. The study’s insights and findings are based on perspectives from online faculty who have been teaching in the modality for three or more years. These findings may be useful to stakeholders such as administrators, faculty mentors, faculty trainers, and faculty interested in employment in the modality so that identifiable and realistic criteria may be available upon which to base future hiring standards, employment practices, training, and decisions about teaching online. Insights about procedures and practices have been identified that may be effective in helping to develop initial training programs, faculty mentor supports, administrative decisions, and on-going faculty training. Based upon the findings, institutional leaders have information that could help identify best practices for online faculty and attributes most suited for the demands and expectations required in an online teaching environment. Institutions and administration can seek out and recruit the best possible online faculty who have the necessary skills, abilities, and characteristics required in this modality rather than hiring based merely upon academic credentials that would fail to identify specific attributes necessary for online teaching. Finally, those specific characteristics can then be applied to alleviate job burnout challenges online faculty would experience. The study will help institutional leaders (a) identify faculty earlier who will be better suited to the modality; (b) identify how to offer relevant, on-going faculty supports and training practices; and (c) prevent online faculty job burnout.

Conspicuous Strategies in Teaching Expressive Writing: A Quantitative Study Comparing Two Approaches to Process Writing

Jennifer Fontenot | Karen J. Carney | Kay Hansen

A process-writing approach (BW) with novel concepts was developed by the authors to teach writing to elementary-level students. They believed the BW approach was effective but was particularly effective for special-needs students. Consequently, they decided to quantitatively test these assertions. Instead of testing students taught using the BW approach against a control with no special training, the authors chose to compare BW to a control trained using a widely-taught process-writing approach (PW). Rather than test null hypotheses that assert that BW and PW are equally effective for all students and that BW and PW were equally effective with special-needs students and general education students, the authors decided to test two alternative hypotheses: 1) The BW intervention is significantly better than the PW intervention for all students. 2) Special needs students show significantly more improvement than general-education students for both interventions but special-needs students trained with BW show more improvement than those trained with PW. The standardized Written Expression subtest of the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test II (WIAT-II), Form A, was used to quantify achievement. The WIAT was developed by Dr. David Wechsler and has been widely used to quantify academic achievement of people in many areas including written expression. The BW and PW groups were tested using the WIAT before and after being trained to write for four months using the BW and PW approaches. Student growth was analyzed for general-education and special-needs students for each intervention. Highly significant results confirmed the hypotheses regarding the effectiveness of the BW approach.

Reducing Classroom Disputes Between Faculty and Students

Ian N. Toppin | Laveda M. Pullens

Prior classroom management training makes a big difference in faculty’s ability to handle disputes with students. This type of training should be included in faculty orientation activities. The research presented in this article indicates that success in dealing with behaviorally challenging students is possible if the likely areas of dispute are prepared for in advance. This article will highlight some of the likely areas of dispute and strategies for addressing them, particularly in the following three key areas: 1) Academic reasons why disputes occur between faculty and their students; 2) Non-academic reasons why disputes occur between faculty and their students; and 3) Strategies for engaging students and reducing volatile incidences.

Integrating Technology into the Online Classroom Through Collaboration to Increase Student Motivation

Thomas Dyer | Elizabeth Larson | John Steele | Rick Holbeck

Technology is one of the most important components in the future of online learning. Instructors in online classes should lead the charge of innovation and integration of technology into the online classroom to ensure that students achieve the best learning outcomes. This article chronicles a theoretical model towards integrating technology as a best practice into the online classroom to increase student motivation, engagement and learning outcomes. Various technologies can be incorporated into the online classroom to enhance the course and meet student needs by offering differentiated instruction and activating various learning styles. This article explains how collaboration among faculty can make this task easier, more efficient and of greater benefit to the online student. It also theorizes that added technological materials equate to increased student engagement, motivation and learning outcomes in a course when a faculty collaboration diagnostic model is followed to integrate technology into the online classroom. Online education is growing at a rapid pace, which means instructors need to be more innovative to meet these demands (Allen & Seaman, 2011). Mestre (2010) noted the importance of instructors developing and utilizing online tools to meet the diverse learning needs of today’s online learning population. The traditional written lecture method used in some online courses does not meet the needs of the online student population. Research had indicated that there is a vast need for instructors to enhance the online learning environment with several methods, including visual, kinesthetic, textual and auditory delivery methods (Mestre, 2010). This theoretical essay, while qualitative in nature, will discuss the journey of integrating technology into the curriculum of an introductory class by three instructors from a small private university in the Southwest.

Employing Active Learning Strategies to Become the Facilitator, Not the Authoritarian: A Literature Review

Cheryl M. Patton

Traditional higher education instruction involves an authoritarian educator who is charged with delivering information in lecture format to passive students. Within the past few decades, a new approach has gained popularity. Active learning allows the students to become more involved in their own learning. The educator becomes more of a facilitator than an authoritarian ruler in the classroom. The purpose of this literature review is to explore the historical underpinnings of active learning, its relevance in pedagogy and contemporary research. Also examined are several active learning strategies that can be utilized in the classroom, including lecturing with pause procedures, the flipped classroom, clickers, peer review and games. At one time, the idea of the college classroom was uniformity. The educator stood at the front of the room and lectured at his or her students. That instructor was the authority, the all-knowing leader who poured wisdom to the students while they busily took notes. That was then.

Grammar Games: A Case for Instructionist Game Models to Enhance Grammar Awareness and Accuracy

Brian Raftery | Jennifer Santos

Based on our own experiences teaching grammar in developmental writing classes and classes not dedicated to writing instruction, along with a history of scholarship that indicates a need for grammar pedagogies (e.g., Dougherty, 2012), instructor-designed grammar games can likely help facilitate learning about these mechanics of writing while easing the frustrations of grammar instruction. Ultimately, the versatility of grammar games in assessing student learning (e.g., launch or review) makes them valuable tools for educators in any field that requires writing.

Wrintting Promts: Generating Engagement, Critical, Thinking and Discovery

Sandi Van Lieu

This paper focuses on a pedagogical and instructional approach to engaging students in the classroom with the specific activity of a writing prompt, which utilizes a short video about current events and trends coupled with writing and discussion. This strategy allows active student learning in which the students engage, develop critical thinking skills, discover topics that interest them, improve their writing skills, prepare to be active in class, collaborate through discussion, discover other views, relate the activity to the current course curriculum and apply the issues to their personal and professional lives. The examples given in this paper are from English composition courses, however, this method could be applied and tailored to a variety of disciplines.

Faculty Engagement as a Function of Instructional Mode and Employment Status

B. Jean Mandernach | Justin Barclay | Shanna Huslig | Christina M. Jackson

Work engagement is a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption. Employees reporting higher work engagement tend to be more satisfied, productive and show increased job longevity. As such, institutions benefit both financially and educationally—by having faculty who are engaged with the academic community. The current study examined differences in faculty engagement as a function of instructional mode (face-to-face, online or blended) and employment status (full- or part-time). A survey of 777 faculty revealed that faculty members teaching in the face-to-face classroom reported higher levels of work engagement than their online counterparts (regardless of whether employment status was full- or part-time). The discussion highlights factors that may impact faculty engagement and offers strategies for fostering engagement for those working in an online setting.