Blogging to Create Community
Using Blogs to Improve Student Engagement and Learning
Michelle Aebersold, Dana Tschannen, Christine Anderson from Michigan University
This duo did NOT have an LMS that had a robust discussion format/interaction and wanted to get students enrolled in the nursing program to have more dialog in discussing the nursing activities and patient rounds they were practicing. Their audience were older students 35 age and up. They compared and contrasted similar written activities between Ctools’ Discussions and Blogger Blog posts. Across the activities Blogger reigned supreme in all user happiness and interaction.
Their objectives were to create a sense of community = greater cognitive learning
Cognitive presence – construct meaning thru reflection
Social presence –ability of participants to feel connected
Teaching presence – design, facilitation and process to support learning
Posted activities to do inside the blog
- i.e. how to help unmotivated students
- find an innovative strategy
Students give advise and goes beyond just typical learning-the blogs created a relaxed atmosphere.
Data analysis
- survey about the blog
- feedback
Post Analysis
- Categorized the social, cognitive, teaching & multiple elements
- Methodology approach based on Jimoyiannis research
Comparison on Discussion Posts
- Learning Theories – describe a theory & respond to another student’s post and describe why you choose the same or different
- Clinical Evaluation –
- Critical Thinking –what critical thinking would you choose?
Social Network Analysis
- Sense of community
- Teaching the how-tos up front save time in the long run
- Course content may impact the level of creativity
- Visualization of student social networks can aid in strategically designing blog assignment to increase connectivity.
Blogs are private and instructor monitors the posts settings are so ONLY those with the URL will be able to see the blogs.
Because they are working with students, they are asked not to post the unit or patient [and private info]
Peer Review in Online Open Courses
Phu Vu & Martonia Gaskill, University of Nebraska Kearney
This session covered the results of implementing a Peer Review – grading scoring strategy where learners used a set of criteria to critique one another’s work with the purpose of improving skills. This Peer Review was done within a MOOC and the presentation was not very well communicated. However, these notes do offer some insights and confirmation on peer reviews.
Facts:
- Students who involve themselves in peer review perform better that those graded only by instructors
- Peer review is build on the notion of collaboration and shared understanding
- Peer feedback seem s to be associated with improving student academic achievement
- Students write more carefully when they know the audience includes their peers
- ESL studies suggest peer feedback exceeds instructor feedback
Concerns:
- Students are biased or not honest in giving feedback.
- Students in F2F reviews express anxiety in sharing their writing for fear of being wrong in front of their peers
- Students have difficultly giving negative feedback esp to friends and worry this exercise will damage their relationships
- Uneven quality of feedback.
What is an Open Course?
- Web based
- Open enrollment and free courses w/o enrollment caps
- Contains all the content for the course
- Low or no instructor involvement after course begins-auto pilot
Peer Review in Open Online Learning Environments
- MOOCs remain limited in ability to effectively evaluate and provide feedback in qualitative assessment [i.e. essays].
- Peer review makes the task of teaching at scale manageable for instructors
In the test course: discussions, lectures, resources, videos, delivered in Moodle LMS
Research Study.
- Compare peer feedback rating with instructor feedback
- 512 participants- all ESL teachings, not new to teaching
- 20 different countries
Methodology:
- Data collection
- Assignments audio instructions,
- Visuals
- Content
- Video presentation
- Online assessments
- Online learning materials
- Data scores went into an excel spreadsheet
- Results indicated instructors scored the assignments significantly higher than the peers.
- Critique vs. criticizes i.e. simon vs. Jennifer
- Has qualitative data- but didn’t analyze it-why would she mention this in her presentation?
Discussion
- Instructors scoring were consistently and significantly higher than peer review
- Participants peer professional teachers
- 40% completion –enrollment was low
- they didn’t try to find out ‘why’ the teachers dropped
- no cost for class
Limitations
- Qualitative peer review needs to be completed
- No extra data was collected mid-way- to determine why the completion rate was so high
- Instructor not visible in course
- Low enrollment in open course when compared to recent enrollment numbers
Need:
- MOOCs will not survive w/o feedback from instructors
- There are too many students, and students can not make connections
