As faculty increase the rigor for in-class discussions and desire more collaborative projects across campuses, they search for engaging methods for bringing students and faculty together. In shared programs classrooms telepresence robots have increased the collaboration between students and faculty and have created an engaging learning environment.
Context:
Penn State University has created a robust portfolio of academic programs in a shared structure that traverse multiple campuses locations that are regionally close to one another geographically. These programs, titled Shared Programs, consist of a mix of residential courses, blended courses that connect to regional campuses via video-conferencing, and/or online courses and are geared for traditional age, residential students. By offering degree programs in a structured manner across campuses, there has been new opportunities for students who may not otherwise have had access to the degree offering or have had the ability to transfer to another campus location to complete their degree, as well as, access to a larger student and faculty community. By offering flexible program delivery consisting of a mixture of online courses and blended video-conferencing courses, the shared degree programs meet the demands of students who want more local choices and do not want to take their program entirely online.
Through Shared Programs, faculty members are able to apply to the TLT REACH Initiative (Re-imagine, Engage, Align, Change) created as a professional development / partnership program between the Office of the Vice President for Commonwealth Campuses and Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) for faculty who teach in shared programs. This opportunity brings faculty and students from other campuses together through the use of more innovative technologies.
Problem:
Although Penn State's online and blended course delivery has provided many opportunities for faculty to connect with students and bring collaboration to courses, the Shared Programs students experience distance and isolation from their faculty and peers while at their own campuses. While the development of shared academic programs brings together faculty with a wide range of experiences in instructional delivery methods and technology use, both faculty and students agreed that building a collaborative and welcoming academic environment to shared programs classrooms is essential.
As the Shared Programs faculty increase the rigor of in-class discussions and desire more collaborative projects across campuses, they search for methods to bring students and faculty "together" in a more engaging manner without letting the miles between the campuses dictate the limits. Through the TLT REACH Initiative, Shared Programs faculty collaborate with the Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) department at Penn State and an instructional designer to use innovative technologies to reimagine their course.
Approach and Results:
The TLT REACH Initiative (Re-imagine, Engage, Align, Change) was created as a professional development / partnership program between the Office of the Vice President for Commonwealth Campuses and Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) for faculty who teach in shared programs to be provided with a design team for a period of two semesters. The partnership program provides an opportunity for faculty to work with (TLT) staff in investigating centrally supported technologies and/or emerging technologies to improve the student experience and engagement in a shared course that is online or blended. The program was designed to measure student and faculty satisfaction regarding the innovative design, development, and/or delivery of a shared course that has been created using the TLT REACH Initiative. The findings will be shared with key stakeholders including other faculty.
Faculty were challenged to:
- Re-Imagine their course but not limited to:
- Identifying the strengths and the needs of their course through previous mid-semester and end of semester student feedback and faculty reflection.
- How they were currently teaching in various environments, including online, blended, blended with video conferencing, and video conferencing.
- Identify how content was being delivered.
- Engage
- Implement, practice, and evaluate engagement in their teaching practice including faculty/student, student/student, faculty/faculty, and faculty/TLT staff engagement.
- Align - Design a course that aligns with:
- the vision/mission/strategic plan of the university, shared degree programs, and TLT.
- the academic goals of the particular shared program.
- Change - Implement change of:
- the culture of a shared course environment.
- their teaching, course content, and course assignments to include innovation (doing things in an innovative way as well as allowing students the freedom to be innovative in their coursework).
Throughout the process the faculty will have developed innovative and engaging courses that are shared between campuses. The inclusion of the telepresence robot will provide students with access to peers with whom they would not have had close contact or more detailed discussions with otherwise. Faculty will have the opportunity to create a stronger connection with all students and allow more interaction and engagement between students in the classrooms. Faculty and student confidence in use will increase as more exposure with the telepresence robots continues throughout the semester.
Sources:
Tsui, K.M., Desai, M., Yanco, H.A. (2013). Design Challenges and Guidelines for Social Interaction Using Mobile Telepresence Robots. Reviews of Human Factors and Ergonomics, 9(1), 227 - 301. https://doi.org/10.1177/1557234X13502462
Tsui, K.M., Desai, M., Yanco, H. A., & Uhlik, C. (2011). Exploring use cases for telepresence robots. Proceedings from 6th International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '11). ACM, New York, NY.
Golub, E., McNally, B., Lewittes, B., Shorter, A., & The Kids of Kidsteam. 2017. Life as a Robot (at CHI): Challenges, Benefits, and Prospects for Attending Conferences via Telepresence. Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '17). ACM, New York, NY.
Kristoffersson, A., Coradeschi, S., & Loutfi, A. (2013). A Review of Mobile Robotic Telepresence. Advances in Human-Computer Interaction, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1155/2013/902316.
Session Information:
This session will focus on the use of telepresence robots in Shared Programs courses through the Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) Initiative for supporting faculty and student engagement, peer and classroom discussions, and building a collaborative learning environment across campuses. The session attendees will have an interactive experience as the presenter will model best practices for increasing engagement for geographically dispersed shared programs courses during the session.
The technologies that will be shown and/or embedded into the presentation include, but are not limited to: Beam Robot, Doceri, Sli.do, Poll Everywhere, iMovie,
By the end of the session, attendees will:
- Recall the guiding principles and rationale of the REACH initiative and Shared Programs.
- Evaluate the best practices of incorporating the use of the telepresence robot in a cross-campus classroom environment.
- Discuss and participate in dialogue of current or proposed use of telepresence robots in classrooms to determine if it is an appropriate use within their own course.
- Analyze the explanation and examples of using telepresence robots for course collaboration, student and faculty engagement, cross campus discussions, and initial results.
- Paraphrase aspects of faculty adoption, training, implementation, collaboration, engagement, and assessment.
- Engage with at least one of the interactive strategies presented during the session.
Who might benefit from the presentation?
- Indicate Institution Type: K-12, Higher Ed, Industry, Government, Other
- Indicate Audience Level: All, Expert, Intermediate, Novice