That Ning Thing

A number of years ago I took a great class from Yavapai College's TeLS staff, ENG255, and in that class I found a tool that I thought would transform the online experience for my students. Its name: NING. Also, I was so glad that I got the domain I wanted: Thinkingcritically.ning.com .

For years all of the ENG140 students created their own pages here. Students had access to Critical Thinking videos, pictures of charts for the Elements of Thought, Intellectual Standards, and Intellectual Traits. Students also had a link to Richard Paul and Linda Elder's Critical Thinking site where they could see even more electronic tools to help grasp the concepts for critical thinking, download further books, and have access to other material available to instructors.

One day Ning decided that FREE wasn't going to continue. Ning decided to charge for this service. Suddenly FREE was converted to $2.95 per month. Along came Pearson who decided to pick up the tab for deserving educators. I was one of the blessed. For the next few years, Pearson paid the fee for Thinkingcritically.Ning.com as well as a number of other educators' sites to remain up for the students.

And then it happened. Out of the blue I was sent a message that I had a bill of $5.90, and that I would be turned over to the creditors if I didn't pay. I was informed that I had been sent a number of bills and reminders, and that I needed to pay up. A few days later, ZAP, right after the students posted their pages for the semester, Thinkingcritically.Ning.com went down.

In the next few weeks, I pondered what to do. During the last few months, not only had I NOT been told that Pearson had pulled its funding, but at the same time, I was getting bombarded with all kinds of requests for all kinds of people with weird email addresses and addresses from around the globe, literally, to join the site.

Seriously, I did not want a bad credit rating, but would anyone deny loaning me money to buy a car just because I hadn't paid a $5.90 bill for Ning??? Seriously??? And how could they do that anyway since I hadn't agreed to anything personally.

I talked to Todd about it since he also had a Ning account, and I found out he was having a similar situation. Previously, he had told me how to change the settings to the account to limit the visibility of my site, so I had already taken care of that issue. No new strange people were sending me requests, which was in fact becoming a burden to this online instructor who gets plenty of email every day anyway, especially at the beginning of the semester. I would personally rather focus on my students.

Since his previous advice had worked, I asked for more. Todd encouraged me to talk with Dean Holbrook, which I decided to do. Dean was gracious and is covering the $5.90 previously billed along with the $2.95 through December so my current students can enjoy their Ning site. Yeah! No more threats of destroying my credit, and my students can see their site again! However, at the end of the year, the site will go down permanently, and all of the students who have taken the class all of these past years will lose access to all of this information. Their pages will go away.

So what. Really. Did the students actually go use the site after class ended? Did they ever go in and look up old classmates and reconnect? Did the students taking the class find it useful? Honestly, I didn't do the research. It just seemed like a great idea at the time. It was a great way to preserve some of the learning we did as a class, which was shared with later classes. And it was awesome to have something left of my students after the class was over.

The best part of all is that students had a place to post images of themselves, their families, anything they wanted to share so we learned more about each other than just a name in a Blackboard shell. Was the Ning thing worth all of my time and effort, and that of the students? You decide.

Signing off. Tina

Constructivist Theory and Web 2.0 Technologies

Constructivist Theory (http://tip.psychology.org/bruner.html) focuses on a way of learning where students construct meaning by going beyond what they are taught. The new Web 2.0 technologies that are emerging today certainly can  facilitate constructivist thinking and learning. The students and teachers are responsible to create this reality for themselves and their classrooms respectively. Learning will not likely take place regardless of the learning tool without desire, discipline, and dedication. Each of the Web 2.0 tools we read about in Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning by George Siemens and Peter Tittenberger create the connectivity to allow for better teaching in hybrid, online and the face to face environments.

Social learning can be greatly enhanced when using Wikis. Barb Davis created a vocabulary Wiki for her class last semester. The students chose their own words they came upon while reading The Kite Runner and loaded them into this Wiki. At the end of the semester, the instructor used these words for the Vocabulary Final Exam. Matt Pearcy created a Facebook account to give his students a creative way to access him throughout the semester. I created the http://thinkingcritically.ning.com/ site to allow students to access diverse resources to support learning the Critical Thinking terms and concepts from Richard Paul and Linda Elder's materials. Since this information is housed at Ning, it continues to be accessible after Blackboard closes its doors for the semester.

Situated learning can be enhanced using YouTube videos. Many instructors create these videos to demonstrate how to complete assignments. Artists can show students how to paint, draw, sculpt, and so on. English teachers can show students how to write various types of papers, and math teachers can demonstrate solving various math equations. Tegrity and Camtasia are other video tools that have even greater potential since the students can view the demonstration as well as a slideshow to narrate the main ideas.

Reflective learning is another benefit of Web 2.0 technologies. I have personally polled my own students asking them how they feel about using discussions in college online courses, and the majority prefer these over face to face discussions. The more quiet students have the time to think and reflect on what they want to say without being in “competition” with those for whom words come quickly and easily. Many students feel they have more time to give a well considered response and to listen to their peers. Very few students actually would confess to preferring the classroom situation where they can jump in and “monopolize” the discussion.

Multi-faceted learning relates to Multiple Intelligence Theory where proponents believe the more options instructors give students to access curriculum, the more likely students are to gain understanding of the material. When we add the visual aspect of video and other computer-based graphical interfaces, the aural aspect of recorded messages and text readers, and the kinesthetic aspect of interacting with a computer through the keyboard, mouse, and various drawing and selection tools, we can only increase the likelihood that students will engage in the material being presented. How much more interesting is it to study and learn while watching, listening, and keying into a computer device over reading a textbook! Oh, did I really say that?

I have purposefully created this learning situation in the GED classroom. Students would come into the room and work out of textbooks for part of the class time, listen to a short lecture, and then participate in groups. Finally, students would get onto a local computer to study through software programs, computer math games, and more. Students who were mostly playing with their pencil during the first part of the class period still found the program worthwhile because they knew that more engaging activities would follow. Students who preferred working in the book often returned to the book refreshed after the various activities as well. Indeed emerging technologies deserve our attention as serious tools to enhance learning for students of the 21st Century.

Contacting Students by Phone

Call me, don't be afraid, you can call me. Maybe it's late, but just call me. Tell me and I'll be around. Okay, so as faculty, we're not Nancy. Yet, students tell me over and over again how glad they are that I called them when I haven't seen them in class or heard from them in awhile.

One time in the semester students appreciate a phone call is the first week of class. Especially in the online classes, students are out there struggling to get their textbooks, to learn how to receive college email, and more importantly figure out how to navigate our Blackboard courses. Each one of us has a different set up, and that frustrates some of them. So why not call a student who has not logged in yet or sent in an assignment?

After reaching students on the phone, often I will hear them say that they are okay and will log in by the end of the day to get started. But many others will tell me that they can't figure out what to do. "How do I send in an assignment?" is one of the most repeated phrases not only via email, but also on the phone. It only takes a few minutes to have them get to a computer, follow along with phone instructions, and achieve success.

So what about all of the videos we create in YouTube and/or Jing to help them learn how to do this on their own? These are great for most of the students, but for the students who need a helping hand, the phone and email responses are still necessary. Let's face it. Some students haven't taken the time to locate the Announcements tab, and perhaps that isn't obvious to them either.

If you wonder why I take the time to call students, I have taught GED in the past, and part of the job was to call any student who missed class for a week to check up on them and encourage them. When I moved into this faculty position, I still find myself working with the newer students to campus and feel the same treatment serves to support the students and improve retention. Oakton Community College Research agrees.

So what effect has calling students had? I have had students who were dealing with death in the family tell me what was going on. Then I was able to work out a plan for them to catch up. Another student had a child in the hospital in Phoenix in a life or death situation for a few weeks. She realized that someone out there in cyberspace from Yavapai College actually cared and wanted to work with her. The student did finish the course. Other students have been overwhelmed with work, life, and other situations. Just calling them gave them motivation to carry on.

Okay, enough of the emotional reasons, right! It is just plain good personal relations for the college to call our students. When we capture the moment when a student is trying to decide if s/he should continue in the class, we can retain that student. Then we will have more students moving on to further semesters here at the college filling the higher level courses as well. We will also create a more supportive, positive atmosphere on our campus, and students will likewise share about us as a college that we are a more supportive, positive place to go to school. And we know that students have choices. Let's encourage them to come here, and to stay.

Effects of New Student Orientation

Each decision a college makes effects change within the institution. Some have profound effects that can be seen immediately. Others take years to realize. Last year the Developmental Education committee studied research and learned that new student orientations often make no real difference. Although students stated that they felt more prepared for college, these same students had the same drop out rate and did no better in the long run.

But then our college sent a group of advisers and faculty to the First Year Experience conference in Florida. Experts there claimed that new student orientations do make a difference. Our Student Services director became excited about the concept as well as the others who had gone. The director also was able to share statistics with positive outcomes to administration, and they likewise supported college involvement in these new orientations.

Realize that this does not mean that our college has never offered orientations. We have. But now we have decided to blend faculty and staff involvement to create a stronger support for the students. Student Services also decided to coin the phrase "mandatory for students success" as part of the launch. Although the orientations would not be mandatory, we felt all students would desire success.

So this summer a larger group of staff and faculty developed a series of orientations to be held at various locations across the county. Faculty and student services personnel met weekly and designed a general session, three concurrently running breakout sessions, and set up resource tables for students to browse between sessions. The cost to organize and run these orientations are as follows: weekly or biweekly staff meetings, faculty giving up personal time without compensation, office space and utilities expense, prizes and packets.

The rewards measured so far include: over 300 new students came to these orientations voluntarily, anecdotal reports exist of students coming to class the first day on time. Some classes actually had all students in their seats ready to learn the first day of class. In my online classes, I actually had more students logging in and getting busy at the beginning of the first week.

Can all of this positive change be due to the new student orientations? Or are other factors involved? One that occurs to me is that the college has better management of financial aid fraud. Perhaps we have more motivated students. Either way, it appears that new student orientations will be mandatory next year, and then we will be better able to measure the value of this new shift in the environment here at Yavapai College.