Hello Melanie,

I have only taught at GCU for online classes. I know that the program they had when I came six years ago, was not as user friendly as LoudCloud. There are colleges and universities that still use that program.

The problem i find is that my students are so busy until they barely make time for the class work to be done and many will participate in the class forum the minimum time. They miss a lot of learning. They do not read the postings whether they are via technology or just posted announcements. until the students are serious about this work and do not overwork themselves with other obligations, we will not see more engagement in the classroom. They do not respond to the faith integration or CATS in a level that reaches 30 percent. or higher. They list very early on all of the obligations they have so I believe we need less busy students to move our classes where they need to be. It does not matter what you present if seventy-five percent of the class is too busy to participate.

However, I keep trying different approaches but the participation for the extra work I do has not made a difference for the larger number in the classroom. I am a progressive person, but we need to look at the root causes of our outcomes.

Thanks for facilitating this topic. I look forward to reading more.

Barbara Lee, Ed.D.

Hello Melanie, Barbara, and Others ,

This is an interesting topic.  Some universities may have a platform that will do more than LoudCloud, but there are still faculty at those universities who do not take advantage of all those capabilities.For example, I know students from other universities who have had online classes and the instructors do not utilize the discussion forum or other features.

I think that there are several best practices and mandates in place at GCU.

Barbara makes a great point that some students do the minimum participation.  This is a shame, because I believe that the discussion forum can be a very powerful part of the course.  I ask CATS questions and other questions throughout the week.  

I really would like to hold the students accountable for CATS, but in one of the on demand workshops, it said that we could not require them to answer them.  

I have considered upping the participation requirement.  I read where we could increase the requirement as long as we announced it and the change did not increase the course work load too much.

I know that I have had low enrolled classes where students would do the minimum participation posts.  It was not very reinforcing to me as an instructor.  However, I went in and did my posting as if, I had a really active class.  I tried to give them many opportunities to respond.  

I try to use my CATS and other questions as a way to teach and highlight important concepts. Some of these concepts should help them with present or future assignments in the course.  I sometimes suggest that students look at specific sections of the textbook prior to answering the question. I sometimes link them to content that they might review to help them answer the question.  When students do not answer these, they may be missing some important content.

With online learning, I think the more the student puts into the class, including the discussion, the more they will get out of it.  

Although my classes do not use Quizzes, I almost wish that we had some low stakes quizzes as a monitoring tool.  Even if we had quizzes that did not really count unless the student simply did not complete the quiz.  This is just a thought. It would be interesting to see, if students who post more substantive posts tend to have higher scores on quizzes and other assignments, 

I had a Turnitin workshop this month and the material mentioned how students are pressed for time and may not go through the writing process. They may complete assignments at the last minute.  Due to the time pressure, it is sometimes easy and tempting to cut and paste, which is one reason why students sometimes have portions of text with similarity matches in Turnitin. Sometimes they go through and change a word here and there. In addition, sometimes they do not.

When I used WebCT and BlackBoard at another school, we could check to see what students accessed and opened in the course.  It does not mean that they read it, but it does not mean that they at least opened it or accessed it.  I wish I could see whether students looked at my Announcements, read my other posts, or read peer posts.  That would be a nice feature.

Phillip Brown, Ph. D.      

Hello Malanie,

Thank you for all the great information and to add to that:

I do agree with your assertion that Loud Cloud is “the most rigid making it difficult to apply best practice based on Quality Matters” but it meets  one of the basic requirement of technology acceptance “simple and useful. It is important to note that the online education environment is marked with diverse student`s population with varied level of technology exposure, the implementation of various technologies could be overwhelming and can be distracting. The concept of designing the appropriate CATs to meet the expectations of the students is a great resource to enhance interaction and engagement in the cohorts.

I’m working on research studies on the application of web analytics and content management technologies to enhance online education experience. These technologies can enable the faculty members to predict the expectations of the students based on their online activities and behavioral data to deploy the needed CATS for the students to be successful.

It is fair to say that the existing online platform is worthy to meet the expectations of the Higher Education, but there is more room for improvement.

Dr. Amofa

Hello Colleagues,

There is an on demand online training called "Can you hear me? Can you hear me now?" By Armando D. Sotero, Jr. that is relevant to the topic.  The training provides ideas on how to supplement the existing platform with other technologies and platforms to make the courses more varied and add interest as well as encourage connectedness.

It definitely gave me a few ideas and acquainted me with a few new resources. 

Phillip Brown, Ph. D.