Tag Archives: online teaching

Currently reading “F2F, zoom, or asynchronous learning? Higher education students’ preferences and perceived benefits and pitfalls” (Shlomo & Rosenberg-Kima, 2024)

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We often discuss teaching and learning formats, and now there is a nice study that compares face-to-face, synchronous online, and asynchronous online in the same introductory physics course: Both stated student preferences at the beginning of the semester, what they actually end up doing, and what they think benefits and pitfalls are. Very interesting!

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Throwback to the pandemic: Teaching, cognitive and social presence (Rapanta et al., 2020), and zoom fatigue (Bailenson, 2021)

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When I was teaching the emergency “how to teach online” courses online during the pandemic, I used to refer to an article by Rapanta et al. (2020) a lot, where they talk about teaching, cognitive, and social presence, which I want to link to in another post I am working on. But either I cannot find things on my own blog, or I was too stressed out to write a summary back then, so here we go.

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Currently reading about how to make instructional videos more effective (through instructor presence and embedded prompts)

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How can we make learning from instructional videos more effective? Does it help to have the instructor visible so students feel more connected and are more motivated to follow? Can we include learning prompts to support learning? Yes to both! Continue reading for my summary of two articles on those topics! Continue reading →

Currently reading Darby & Lang (2019) “Small teaching online — applying learning science in online classes”. My summary (3/x)

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This is the third part (part 1 here, part 2 here) of my notes on reading “small teaching online — applying learning science in online classes” by Darby & Lang (2019). Take it with a pinch of salt and go read the original book! These are just my two cents on the points that I find especially relevant for myself.

Part 1, chapter 3 is on “using media and technology tools”, basically saying that not all is gold that glitters, and that we need to be very deliberate in how we use technology. And then there are their tips (clearly written pre-pandemic):

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Currently reading Darby & Lang (2019) “Small teaching online — applying learning science in online classes”. My summary (2/x)

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This is the second part (part 1 here) of my notes on reading “small teaching online — applying learning science in online classes” by Darby & Lang (2019). Take it with a pinch of salt and go read the original book! These are just my two cents on the points that I find especially relevant for myself!

Part 1, chapter 2, is on “guiding learning through engagement”, basically how to scaffold learning by designing lots of small signposts and feedback opportunities throughout the duration of a course or project. And this is how they suggest we do it:

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Currently reading Darby & Lang (2019) “Small teaching online — applying learning science in online classes”. My summary (1/x)

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I absolutely loved reading the “small teaching” book by Lang (2021), so I was super excited to dig into the related “small teaching online — applying learning science in online classes” by Darby & Lang (2019), and it did not disappoint! I loved it (my only complaint: why didn’t they call it “Tiny Teaching”??? What a missed opportunity!) and — as always — I am summarizing the main points (of the part 1, chapter 1, stay tuned for future posts!) from my perspective below, but it is totally worth reading the actual book! Continue reading →

Fostering student sense of belonging in a large online class (after Lim, Atif, Farmer; 2022)

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When we talk about fostering student sense of belonging, it is easiest to think about in-person interactions. However, a lot of our teaching these days is online, and in high-enrolment courses. What can we do then? Two elements are critical: Teacher presence and interactive course design. Lim, Arif and Farmer (2022) present a case study of a learning analytics feedback intervention that I will summarize below.

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Why students cheat (after Brimble, 2016)

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Recently, one topic seemed to emerge a lot in conversations I’ve been having: Students cheating, or the fear thereof. Cheating is “easier” when exams are written online and we don’t have students directly under our noses, and to instructors it feels like cheating has increased a lot (and maybe it has!). We’ve discussed all kinds of ways to avoid cheating: Asking questions that have answers that cannot easily be googled (but caution — this tends to make things a lot more difficult than just asking for definitions!). Putting enough time pressure on students so they don’t have time to look up things they don’t know (NOT a fan of that!!!). Using many different exams in parallel where students get assigned exercises randomly so that they would at least have to make sure they are copying from someone trying to answer the same question. But one question that has been on my mind a lot is why do students cheat in the first place, and is there anything we can do as instructors to influence whether they will want to cheat?

I read the chapter “Why students cheat: an exploration of the motivators of student academic dishonesty in higher education” in the Handbook of Academic Integrity by Brimble (2016) and here are some of the points, all backed up by different studies (for references, check back to that chaper), that stood out to me:

Students are under an enormous pressure to succeed academically, yet at the same time they are real people with lives, families, responsibilities, possibly jobs, and more. Whether its because of financial considerations, expectations of parents or peers, or other reasons: Cheating might sometimes feel like it’s the only solution to survive and finish a course among competing priorities.

Since students are under such a pressure to succeed, it is important to them that the playingfield is level and others don’t get an unfair and undeserved advantage over them. If students feel like everybody else is cheating, they might feel like they have to cheat in order to keep up. Also if the workload is so high they feel like they cannot possibly manage in other ways or content is so difficult, they feel like cheating is their only way out.

Students also feel that cheating is a “victimless crime”, so no harm done, really. Especially helping other students, even if that counts in fact as cheating, isn’t perceived as doing anything wrong. Especially if courses feel irrelevant to their lives or if students don’t have a relationship with the instructor, it does not feel like they are doing anything wrong by cheating.

Also in other cases, students might not even be aware that they are cheating (for example if they are new at university, or studying in interdisciplinary programs where norms differ between programs, or in situations that are new to them (like for example in open-book online exams, where it isn’t clear what needs to be cited and what’s common knowledge?).

Students report the actions of their role models in their academic field, their instructors, are super important in forming an idea of what is right and acceptable. If instructors don’t notice that students cheat, or worse, don’t react to it by reporting and punishing such a behavior, this feels almost like encouragement to cheat more, both to the original cheater and to others who observe the situation. Students then rationalize cheating even when they know it’s wrong.

Cheating is also a repeat offense — and the more a student does it, the easier it gets.

So from reading all of that, what can we do as instructors to lower the motivation to cheat?

First: educate & involve

If students don’t know exactly what we define as cheating, they cannot be blamed if they accidentally cheat. It’s our job to help them understand what cheating means in our specific context. We can probably all be a little more explicit about what is acceptable and what is not, especially in situations where there is a grey area. Of course it’s not a fun topic, but we need to be explicit about rules and also what happens when rules aren’t adhered to.

Interestingly, apparently the more involved students are in campus culture, the more they want to protect the institution’s reputation and not cheat. So building a strong environment that includes e.g. regularly communicated honor codes that become part of the culture might be beneficial, as well as helping students identify with the course, the study program, the institution.

Second: prosecute & punish

It’s not enjoyable, but if we notice any cheating, we need to prosecute it and punish it, even though that might come at high costs to us in terms of time, conflict, admin. The literature seems to be really clear on this one: If we let things slide a little, they become acceptable.

Ideally we would know what the rules and procedures are like at our institutions if we see something that we feel is cheating, and who the people are that can support us in dealing with the situation. If not, maybe now is a good time to figure this out.

Third: engage & adapt

Cheating is more likely to occur when there are no, or only weak, instructor-student relationships. Additionally, if students don’t feel engaged in a course, if they don’t receive enough guidance by the instructor, or if a course feels irrelevant or like they aren’t learning anything anyway, students are more likely to cheat. Similarly if a course feels too difficult or too time-consuming, if the workload is too high, or if they feel treated unfairly.

So the lesson here is to build strong relationships and make the courses both engaging and relevant to students. Making sure that the learning outcomes are relevant in the curriculum and for students’ professional development is, of course, always good advice, but in the light of making students want to learn and not have them feel like they just need to tick a box (and then do it by cheating because it really doesn’t matter one way or the other). Explaining what they will be able to do once they meet the learning outcomes (both in terms of what doors the degree opens, but also what they can practically do with the skills they learned) is another common — nevertheless now particularly useful — piece of advice. And then adjusting level of difficulty and workload to something that is managable for students — again, good advice in general and now in particular!

Of course, doing all those things is not a guarantee that students won’t cheat. But to me it feels like if I’ve paid attention to all this, I did what I could do, and that then it’s on them (which makes it easier to prosecute? Hopefully?).

What do you think? Any advice on how to deal with cheating, and especially how to prevent it?

Brimble, M. (2016). Why students cheat: an exploration of the motivators of student academic dishonesty in higher education. Handbook of academic integrity, 365.

#TeachingTuesday: Some things I read about making good lecture videos

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Just imagine you had written an article on “Student Satisfaction and Learning Outcomes in Asynchronous Online Lecture Videos”, like Choe et al. (2019) did. What excellent timing to inform teaching decisions all around the world!

Choe et al. compare 8 different video styles (all of which can be watched as supplementary material to the article which is really helpful!), 6 to replace “normal lectures” and two that complement them, to investigate the influence of video style on both how much students are learning from each, and how they feel watching them.

The “normal lecure” videos were different combinations of the lecturer and information on slides/blackboards/tablets/…: a “classic classroom” where the lecturer is filmed in front of a blackboard and a screen, a “weatherman” style in front of a green screen on which the lecture slides are later imposed, a “learning glass” where the lecturer is seen writing on a board, a “pen tablet” where the lecturer can draw on the slides, a “talking head” where the lecturer is superimposed on the slides in a little window, and “slides on/off” where the video switches between showing slides or the lecturer.

And the good news: Turns out that the style you choose for your recorded video lecture doesn’t really affect student learning outcomes very much. Choe et al. did, however, deduce strengths and weaknesses of each of the lecture formats, and from that come up with a list of best practices for student engagement, which I find very helpful. Therein, they give tips for different stages of the video production, related to the roles (lecturer and director of the video), and content covered in the videos, and these are really down-to-earth, practical tips like “cooler temperatures improve speaker comfort”.  And of course all the things like “not too much text on slides” and “readable font” are mentioned, too; always a good reminder!

One thing they point out that I wasn’t so clear to me before is that it’s important that the lecturer is visible and that they maintain eye contact with the camera. Of course that adds a layer of difficulty to recording lectures — and a lot of awkward feelings and extra work in terms of what to wear and actually having to shower and stuff — but in the big scheme of things if it creates a better user experience, maybe it’s not such a big sacrifice. Going forward, I’ll definitely keep that in mind!

Especially making the distinction between the roles of “lecturer” and “director” was a really helpful way for me to think about making videos, even though I am playing both roles myself. But it reminds me of how many considerations (should) go into a video besides “just” giving the lecture! If you look at the picture above, you’ll see that I’ve started sketching out what I want to be able to show on a future video, and what that means for how many cameras I need, where to place them, and how to orient them (portrait or landscape). When I made the (german) instructions for kitchen oceanography, I filmed myself in portrait mode, thinking of posting them to my Instagram stories, but then ended up editing a landscape video for which I then needed to fill all the awkward space around the portrait movie. Would have been helpful to think about it in these terms before!

Choe et al. even include a “best practice” video in their supplementary material, which I find super helpful. Because even though in some cases it might be feasible to professionally produce lectures in a studio, but that’s not what I (or most people frantically producing video lectures) these days have access to. So seeing something that is professionally produced but that doesn’t (seem) to require incredibly complicated technology or fancy editing is reassuring. In fact, even though the lecturer appears to have been filmed in front of a green screen, I think in the end it’s not too unsimilar to what I did in the (german) instructions for kitchen oceanography mentioned above: A lecturer on one side, the slides (in a portrait format) on the other.

In addition to the six “lecture” videos, there was a “demo” video where the lecturer showed a simple demonstration, and an “interview” video, where the lecturer was answering questions that were shown on a screen (so no second person there). Those obviously can’t replace a traditional lecture, but can be very useful for specific learning outcomes!

The “demo” type video is the one I am currently most interested in, since that’s where I can best contribute my expertise in a niche where other people appreciate getting some input. Also, according to Choe at al., students found that type of video engaging, entertaining, and of high learning value. All the more reason for me to do a couple more demo videos over the next couple of days, I’m already on it!

References:

Ronny C. Choe, Zorica Scuric, Ethan Eshkol, Sean Cruser, Ava Arndt, Robert Cox, Shannon P. Toma, Casey Shapiro, Marc Levis-Fitzgerald, Greg Barnes, and H. Crosbie (2019). “Student Satisfaction and Learning Outcomes in Asynchronous Online Lecture Videos”, CBE—Life Sciences Education, Vol. 18, No. 4. Published Online: 1 Nov 2019
https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.18-08-0171

“Excursion week” in Oceanography 101 while physically distancing

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My friend’s university recently decided that “excursion week” (a week in May during which there are no lectures or exercises or anything happening at university to make time for field courses during the semester) is cancelled this year. Which is, of course, not surprising given the current situation, but it isn’t cancelled as in “go have a week of vacation”, it’s cancelled as in “one more week of lectures”. Which is putting even more of a burden on people who are already struggling to provide students with the best teaching they can in a new, online setting. To help my friend out (as well as anybody else who might be teaching intro to oceanography classes right now), I’ve collected a couple of ideas of how to fill this week in a way that’s keeping at least a bit of the spirit of exploration alive.

Learning about concepts, observations, experimentation

Of course I can’t give you a solution that perfectly replaces a field course by something that isn’t a fieldcourse. But that doesn’t mean that many of the learning outcomes usually associated with field courses can’t be had in non-fieldcourse settings.

What are the learning outcomes that you care about most? Understanding of specific concepts? Then maybe those concepts, even though most impressively seen at the location where you typically go for your field course, can be observed in other places, too, if students are guided to find them. Or learning to observe following a specific protocol? Then maybe this protocol can be followed (or mostly followed) while collecting a different type of data than it is usually used on. Here are a couple of suggestions of ways to do this:

A: Field course at home

There are two different scenarios that I think can work well here: Having students explore the world right outside their home with a focus on topics from their course, or having them explore the enormous amount of available datasets on the internet.

A.1: Exploring the neighbourhood

Assuming students are able to walk around outside their homes (as they currently are where I’m at), having them explore the neighbourhood. There are different kinds of tasks that could work depending on your learning outcomes:

A.1.1: Find examples of specific science concepts

The tasks can be very specific (“find examples of hydraulic jumps“, “observe tidal flows in a river by watching moored structures move“) or not so specific (“pick a topic related to our class and find a way to observe it”). I think this is a really nice task because it helps students discover how prevalent the concepts are in their daily lives, rather than being something that only exists in books and lectures and really far-away locations that field courses would go to. Careful, as you see with my wave watching, this can get addictive!

A.1.2: Explain something you know for sure they will be able to observe

If you know where your students currently are, you can also ask them to observe specific features and explain them (“Make a time series of positions of that moored structure in the tidal river and relate the positions to the tidal cycle“, or for tons of ideas in Bergen see #BergenWaveWatching on Elin’s blog). This is also a really nice task, again because it brings concepts from the lecture into students’ real lives. It’s also maybe a little easier to relate to the rest of your course since you have a better idea of what they will be observing and interpreting.

A.2: Exploring the interwebs

This is just a quick side note, but of course there are TONS of data available on the internet. From observations of salinity, temperature, pressure mounted on seals in Antarctica, to winds and waves observed from satellites. Many of them even come with interfaces ready to do easy plots. And I’ve been a big fan of the lovely people on Twitter (shoutout to @aida_alvera and @remi_wnd particularly, I always love your posts!) that post interesting features from recent satellite images. So much to discover! Trying that for myself has been on my to do list for quite a while. You’d think I would find time for it during Corona isolation, wouldn’t you?

A.3: Ask others for observations that students can work with

Kinda like what I do with #friendlywaves where people send me pictures of waves and I try to explain the physics I see (while dreaming that it’s me on that ship in Lofoten…). This would be so much fun if students took pictures of interesting features they saw (or went through their old pics) and then shared them and asked each other for ideas what might have happened there. Or if you asked people to take pictures for you, or accessed webcams (like this one, looking at Saltstraumen, the strongest tidal current!), took screenshots and analysed those. I’d totally be in!

[Edit 13.5.2020: Here is a cool example of a virtual field course that was done at UNIS, using videos of field sites and discussing them in groups]

B: Kitchen Oceanography

Of course, #KitchenOceanography is my solution to everything. Need to make a class more interesting? Bring some #KitchenOceanography to the classroom! Can’t teach in-person classes but want people to still have hands-on experiences? Let them do #KitchenOceanography at home! Feel down in isolation and need something to cheer you up? Do some #KitchenOceanography!

So here are a couple of ways to have students do #KitchenOceanography while physically distancing.

B.1: Following my 24 days of #KitchenOceanography

If you haven’t seen my 24 days of #KitchenOceanography yet, you might want to check it out. If you want to give your students a recipe for kitchen oceanography, there is probably something in there that works with your Oceanography 101 class! You could ask them to do one experiment that you find most relevant to your class, or pick one they find most interesting, or distribute all 24 experiments over all the students and have them report back.

And even though I’m so depriciatingly talking about “recipes” and structured activities, be assured that for most students things won’t end after they’ve done the experiment. There is ALWAYS something they observe that they still want to figure out, so there will be more experimentation going on than you expect!

B.2: Problem solving

This is a little more difficult to do if you and your students only communicate electronically and you can’t give them physical samples to investigate (but if you can place samples somewhere where students can easily and safely pick them up, you could for example give them salt water samples and ask them to figure out the sample’s salinity, or give them a fresh water and a salt water sample and ask them to figure out which one is which only using ice cubes). But there are still tons of ways problem solving can be practiced, for example by asking students to figure out ways to measure temperature, salinity and density.

B.3: Open-ended investigation

This is the most fun way to do kitchen oceanography, but depending on whether students have ever done these kinds of experiments before or not, it might be worth starting with a more guided kitchen oceanography experiment. But ultimately, this is where you ask students to figure things out in their kitchens. Currently on the list of things I want to try when I get the time (again, how is Corona isolation not the time for this kind of stuff? But somehow it isn’t): Can I actually see a change in the refraction of a spoon in a glass of very cold salt water as compared to warm fresh water? How big is that density effect? Would I be able to see the spoon bend where it goes through a density stratification in my glass? I bet you, once I start playing with this, that’s that for that evening!

C: Bonus idea: Ocean podcasts & books

There are two oceanography-themed podcasts that I really enjoy listening to (and I’m not a podcast person!): Climate Scientists and Treibholz. Both would be great to listen to interviews with super cool scientists while dreaming yourself away to expeditions to the Arctic or Antarctica. There is so much to learn from other people’s experiences in the field — why not ask students to listen to other people’s experiences with a focus on either the science, or the methods, or anything else?

And of course there are tons of books that would lend themselves to that, too, for example xplorer’s diaries. Nansen’s “Farthest North” (1897) for example fits super well if you wanted to talk about the discovery of dead water…

Bringing it all together

The big question is: Once your students have done the tasks of finding/producing and describing phenomena, what do they do with that? It might not come as a surprise, but I think that they should be encouraged to publicly share them on the internet. Both because it’s a good opportunity for them to build their scicomm profile, but also because there are surpisingly many people who get really excited about (read here how Prof. Tessa M Hill‘s student Robert Dellinger posted a video of an overturning circulation on his 70-ish follower Twitter account, and the video has, as of  April 16th, 70 retweets and 309 likes!) and that’s such a motivating feedback for them!

Of course, the sharing and excited reactions could also happen within your university’s learning management system, but honestly … no. Ask them to share it via social media! I, for one, am definitely more than happy to comment and ask questions and share my excitement there! :-)