Audience Level:
All
Session Time Slot(s):
Institutional Level:
Higher Ed
Strands (Select 1 top-level strand. Then select as many tags within your strand as apply.):
Abstract:
Residential students in online courses have unique challenges: limited time management skills, intrinsic motivation, and study techniques. Learn how strategies such as branching, gamification, learning analytics, digital storytelling, and stepped peer review were incorporated for this generation of learners while leveraging the many advantages this type of student cohort provides.
Extended Abstract:
Context:
Higher education institutions have been developing new models to enable and support online/blended program delivery whether it be at a singular campus or across multiple campuses to meet the demands of students. Penn State University has created a robust portfolio of academic programs in a shared structure across regional, geographical locations. These programs consist of a mix of residential courses, blended courses that connect to regional campuses via video-conferencing, and/or online courses. Titled Shared Programs, this type of academic offering is geared for traditional age, residential students. Shared Programs gives new opportunities for students who may not otherwise have had access to the degree offering and a larger student/faculty community without transferring to another campus location. New shared academic programs have and continue to be proposed in support of University initiatives to develop strategically important programs that are projected to be growth areas in Pennsylvania.
Problem:
According to the Digital Learning Compass: Distance Education Enrollment Report 2017 "Students who are taking at least one distance education course comprise 29.7% of all higher education enrollments as of fall 2015." While many in this segment can be non-traditional learners, the report also points out that "The total number of students who are physically on campus (those not taking any distance course or taking a combination of distance and non-distance courses) dropped by almost one million students (931,317)" between 2012 and 2015.
Within Shared Programs at Penn State, most academic programs share select courses among the geographic locations by utilizing online, asynchronous courses. These online courses geared towards traditional age students present new opportunities of having tailored online content / activities to this type of demographic. They also pose potential threats in that students might not have an in-person option for select courses and might not have proper preparation / exposure to this type of coursework.
From the first few cohorts, there was informal data collection and feedback that uncovered the challenges of students despite having online orientation modules, virtual office hours, student learning resource assistance available, and other best practices. The challenges that arose included students limited time management skills, intrinsic motivation, and study techniques. This partnered with the online student body coming from different campuses / different levels of student preparedness of prerequisite knowledge have posted a unique challenge in program implementation.
Approach and Results:
Within the disciplines of Biology, Business, Business - Accounting, Corporate Communication, and Project Supply Chain Management select additional strategies were implemented based upon the needs of the faculty/students/content on a case-by-case basis.
Strategies included, but are not limited to:
- Learning analytics - Those provided within the Learning Management System (including any in beta testing), detailed video watching analytics, etc. Findings were then addressed by altering the set-up of the Learning Management System to accommodate the learner preferences of navigating the course while adding additional directions to guide students through the recommended learning pathway.
- Digital storytelling - Captured narratives of real life applications and "stories from the field" based upon the faculty members industry experience, guest interviews, and generalized stories for reliability.
- Gamification - Addition of game-based elements as part of interactive tutorials and online lessons followed by a game with a publicly available leaderboard for motivation.
- Stepped peer review approach - Within a Corporate Communication course, utilizing VoiceThread to provide a stepped approach for showing examples of good/bad press releases, guided practice to analyze and provide feedback for generalized press releases, and then peer review of each others work (including feedback on students performance of giving a peer review)
- Branching - Utilization of pre-assessment to provided various learning pathways and provide pre-requisite knowledge if applicable to ensure all students are adequately prepared for new information.
- Optional synchronous recitations - Web-based weekly offerings to meet in real-time to provide clarification, emphasis of important material, answering of questions, etc.
- Hours of equivalent instruction - Quantified the time on task for learning activities in each week of the course to determine alignment to the Penn State expectation of 9 hours / week for a 3-credit, 15-week course.
- Community of Inquiry - Focused on added engagement activities and assessed with Student Engagement Assessment adapted from Measuring Student Engagement in an Online Program by Dr. Paula Bigatel and Dr. Vicki Williams.
- Case-based learning and authentic learning - Incorporation to to increase intellectual curiosity, provide more real world applications, and make the application relevant to their current/future careers.
- Recall the unique challenges and affordances of offering online courses for traditional age, residential students.
- List strategies leveraged in tailoring online courses for traditional age, residential students and paraphrase how they were incorporated in an online course environment.
- Analyze the explanation and course application of example strategies to determine if it is an appropriate use within their own courses.
- Engage with at least one of the strategies presented during the session.
- Discuss their own experiences of creating/teaching online courses for this demographic and participate in the community of practice via dialogue and brainstorming of best practices strategies for tailoring online courses for these students.
Conference Session:
Concurrent Session 8
Session Type:
Education Session
Keywords:
Presentation link: