What factors facilitate learning for the student
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A Primer for College Professors teaching Online
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The Associate in General Education Certificate (AGEC)
The biggest challenge to the Junior College Teacher or Professor within many College Districts where online teaching the norm, is the all inclusive, mixed ability, mixed age and backgrounds of the student demographic. Students are between the ages of 14 and 80. Students come without a high school diploma, with one, with a Bachelors, or upwards to a Doctorate. Some are native English speakers, others are ESL. Distance Learning Classes can and often do, incorporate individuals from all over the world. Some students will come into your global classroom lacking in many areas, and yet it’s been my experience, that they are prepared to go that extra distance in order to make their educational experience successful. I maintain and keep on my hard drive, a wide variety of useful helps or tools in a variety of diverse areas, which I often forward to students in need of some remedial/additional assistance. Many of these kinds of helps are also found at our College Student Services Website.
Within my Syllabi I always include as the first Lesson an Introduction, for one and all. I ask each student to write about themselves, who are they, where they live, what they do, why are they taking this class, what do they expect from their efforts?
I ask that this be posted to the web board with a picture and I include the instructions on how to post a picture (modest please). I think it makes sense in a Distance Learning environment to take these steps in bringing about some unity, some comradeship, some esprit de coups, a sense, as to who we are as a class. It is consistent with most student expectations based upon prior school experience
Students are human and as such, they learn and often they lean, grow and mature in your class. I watch for this metamorphosis within my Students, I encourage breaking away from the pack and making a run ahead, if that student needs the challenge, and excels through it, then I have done my job. Those freshmen, freed of the fetters of the traditional High School often over prescribe in writing themselves into too many classes via the joy, the jubilation of the total freedom of choice in College. This is especially true for gifted students held back by the Traditionalist Educator within both the Primary and Secondary Education arenas.
Student Faculty Contact: In the classroom, the Instructor needs to be present before and after class to answer questions. Some students are reticent to do so openly, in front of friends and classmates, so posted Office hours both on the Bulletin board and in the Syllabus are important. In Distance Learning environments, I have specific times posted in the Syllabus, when students can contact me via Messenger or Skype and my E-Mail address is posted too. Sunday through Thursday during the school year I am on line with students daily. I am equipped with a colour camera, voice and whiteboard, although most students seem to prefer typing within Messenger to the more complex technologies.
Active and Participative learning: Make the student learn, rather than just sit and listen to a lesson, with or without note taking. At the conclusion of the first week of School, take every student in the last row of seats and stick them in the front row. You would be amazed at how active they get when you move them! In Online Educational delivery we have the lurkers who are in the cyber classroom but prefer non-participation. We need to know who they are and to place them with active learners to help them overcome whatever handicaps may be keeping them back. Too often this is the result of bad experiences in the traditional Classroom.
Active Classrooms work: I have collected some 20 plays that I use during the class. In Astronomy 101 I have three plays and I assign 5 students to each play and put them into a chat room to practice. They then practice on their own, and later for the benefit of the whole class with microphones open they perform the play online. These plays are about the real lives of three Astronomers; Nicholas Copernicus, Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton. They are factual and teach real Science. Physics, Biology, Mathematics, History and English Literature come alive for them with the Plays.
Hands On: We make hands on exhibits, objects that express certain ideas, props that promote an interest in the subject matter of the lesson plan. Have the students become active in their own education.
Respecting Diverse Talents and Different ways of learning: In our classroom, be it traditional, or Distance Learning each student brings, with them, certain assets and deficiencies. The good Teacher recognizes these factors and addresses them within the lesson plan or modifies the lesson plan to incorporate those learning modalities that best address the student’s condition.
Instructional Sequence: Present the teaching material in a logical order with clear and concise definitions and/or benchmarks. Save the complicated and/or scientific names for the classroom textbook or the hand outs. Use the common names and terms within the Syllabus. Students taking a class in one of the Sciences may be scared off by “Class, Order, Phylum, Genus, Species” within a Syllabi, when “ In Unit 3 we will be studying the Classification system developed by Carolus Linnaeus” a Swedish Naturalist in 1658" is even better or at least it will do just as well.
Frequent Practice: Provide opportunities for demonstrating the lessons learned and then, by repetition in application, make the use of the material, second nature. This is especially true in Mathematics, Logic and some Sciences. Supplement the questions and quizzes found in the Instructional material with your own when you feel it will help with learning retention. Many Textbook companies such as Thomson - Wadsworth offer companion web sites to their most popular Textbooks with “InfoTrac” and other research tools. These supplements often include “Flash Cards”, puzzles, games mind maps, and brain teasers to keep the student engaged by a diverse list of helps and in many cases this includes some form of FAQ or even Tutoring. I always provide for a second Class session each week and I try to match the students who are the wiz kids with those that need help. I see that Rio Salado College and several other Schools are using Professional Tutoring firms, to outsource the Tutoring function and this is improving student performance, well done!
Respecting Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning: Different Student Learning styles, require broad based teaching styles to match the students style with the material. Application of “4MAT” (note) teaching assessments along with some individualized help, keeps the attention of those students with learning differences (not necessarily disabilities). I never speak with students about their “learning Disabilities” they can still learn, just differently and thus we have some “Learning Differences” to deal with, in helping the challenged student learn the material. (Note: Teaching Online a Practical Guide by Susan Ko and Steve Rossen, page 182 Problems related to learning style and online communications, Houghton Mifflin Co, Publishers, New York 2004)
4MAT is the essential ingredient in online education: It spells out the four ways that we humans learn. I first saw the dynamics of 4MAT in action in a Mathematics Teaching Program produced by Academic Systems. This was a fully automated Math teaching Software package. It was unique in that when the student had a problem they clicked on the tutor icon, and four different tutors appeared on the screen. Each of the four tutors represented one of the four ways that students learn. What the statistics showed was consistent with 4MAT in that once the student finished the first two chapters, they would consistently pick the same Tutor. This innovative award winning program was about 96% successful in teaching math from the simplicity of Addition and Subtraction on to College level Algebra. The use of this program allowed the class size to increase to 90 (ninety) students per teacher. with better results and higher scores on testing, than one on one problem solving/tutoring, astounding! This allowed the Teacher to refocus on providing more one on one assistance to Students with real learning disabilities. I saw students who had failed math twice pull ahead and finish the class with 80% a fantastic result! Math would never be the same again….. Read the whole story of 4MAT by Susan Morris & Bernice McCarthy, ISBN 0-9608992-5-1, now in two volumes.
Cooperation among students: Breaking the class into smaller groups or working within the “Study Buddy” system of student supported learning is a quick and efficient way of including the “learning wallflowers” in the mainstream of the class as it moves though the material. An intelligent remix of the “study buddy” groups when the class reaches an important benchmark will help to level the playing field through its diversity of student to student support. Within Distance Learning applications, Student “Study Buddy” pairs can often be involved in short duration assignments and the team approach to the Web board postings in pairs. This can be enhanced with chat room web boards incorporated into the learning platform, just as within the traditional classroom we break the class into 5 to 7 student study groups. Using odd number student groups builds a deadlock breaking facilitator within the Classroom design model.
Feedback and Reinforcement: Provide the students with full time feedback as to their work. Each assignment deserves some attention, what was right and what was wrong? Students also need encouragement and I always find something within any assignment (no matter how poorly they may have done on the test material, itself) that I can compliment the student on.
Contact is important: In the Distance Learning environment, I call the Student on the phone (Skype or equivalent) at least once at the beginning of the Class and once again before the final to give them confidence and support. There are other reasons for my two call rule, there are a few, who would try to cheat the system, by having someone else take the class and/or the test on their behalf. My approach to this is that every student is honorable until I have a reason to believe something else. This telephone call, prior to the final is also a ad hoc standing examination of the material covered in the class. No, I don’t call it a test, but I do gently lead the student into the material, in enough depth that I am comfortable with the level of knowledge at the other end of the phone. See my Class Syllabus for further details.
The 4MAT System: 4MAT allows the Teacher to build into the class tools to meet the needs of a variety of student learning characteristics: After reading up on 4MAT you will want to review your Syllabi and Lesson Plans to make sure that you incorporate the eight steps. So with a list or drawing I will verify what I need to add and then I will design and formulate a way to incorporate the steps. There are two books I recommend: The 4MAT System by Bernice McCarthy and 4MAT in Action, Sample Lesson Plans by Bernice McCarthy and Susan Morris. There may be others by the time you are reading this report.
4MAT Testimonial: “Bob my third grade science student has failed the cloud identification test three times, there must be a problem here…. My 2nd grade student Ruth has problems understanding that the world is round… The solution to both students’ problems came the day I was introduced to 4MAT and understood that Bob and Ruth both had a learning style that required three dimensional models. The following week I helped Bob make some clouds from cotton wool and borrowed a round globe of the earth from the library. Both students did well on retesting and I started applying 4MAT to all my lesson plans…” The application of 4MAT at Rio Salado College resulted in the creation of kits that are now mailed out to our students around the world.
4MAT Website: One of the features of this site allows the student and more importantly the Teacher to use the online assessment program to discover the learner type.
Lifelong Learning: The working world we live in has changed over the last fifty years and demands of us a change in how we think about ourselves and our working environment. The Boys that came home from world war two were told to expect a home, two cars in the garage and a turkey in the oven. The average male head of household once hired and trained stayed on the job for 21.2 years on average. Some changed jobs sooner, but more often the worker stayed considerably longer. By 1955 this started to change and the rate of retention increased to a peak in 1963 before normalizing thereafter. Much of this was the result of a fundamental change in the loss of heavy industry such as iron, steel and other metals, that migrated out of the “Industrialized Nations” and followed the shift in Automobile production to Japan, Korea and now to China.
The Industrialized Nations of 1955 are all moving in the direction of a Service based economies as the “third world Nations” of 1955 move in the direction of Industrialization at an accelerated rate unknown in world history. Case in point: China is building and placing online one coal fired electric generating station every two weeks! As a result the average head of household male now has a job retention average of 7,3 years before making a change in employment, and this rate continues to decline!
You don’t need to be a genius to know that in the competition for stable employment it’s the Employee who is up to date and who takes the time to improve his value to the Employer that is retained when work cuts come. It also seems evident that keeping up to date by Lifelong Learning keeps your abilities honed and broadens your abilities opening the door to new and exciting Employment opportunities.
Associate in General Education Certificate (AGEC)
The Associate in General Education Certificate program is designed for individuals wishing to broaden their education, with emphasis on personal interest, growth and development. This is a twelve month or a two-year AGEC program that provides students the opportunity to study English, literature, fine arts, philosophy, social science, science and mathematics all at the college entry level. All courses in the program are college-level courses. Many of the courses are equivalent to college transfer courses; however, the program is not principally designed for college transfer. Colleges and Universities grade on the curve and this means that the student who is not working at the Freshman level may well fail the first year, closing the door to advancement due to limited space in most of the College programs.
Many adults who want to begin or return to College are not academically ready to compete with their classmates, who may be fresh out of High School and well prepared. Working adults may have been out of High School for years and need this kind of program to get their skills honed in preparation for moving ahead with that College Degree. This program is for you!
What’s so great about the AGEC: T.S. Eliot said it best “It is in fact a part of the function of education to help us escape, not from our own time -- for we are bound by that -- but from the intellectual and emotional limitations of our time” Amen!
The real benefit to the Student is not, so much as to what it does as to increased employability, but rather the doors it opens for you to fully understand the world around you. Suddenly, things you always wondered about become clear, self-evident. Every part of your life becomes illuminated, visible, knowable, and complete. Suddenly the daily newspaper can be fully understood, motivations defined, falsehoods exposed.
Liberal Arts Degree: In the United States and the United Kingdom the Liberal Arts Degree is standard. This is also called a “Classical Education” and it means that the instruction includes cultivation of intellectual knowledge and abilities.
Thank you for reading this final report to my Faculty Advisors upon completing my recertification to teach online. This was a one year course that included Electronic Web Based Library Services and several of the more popular web based Educational Delivery Programs.
Contact Information: Professorsnidecor@gmail.com
Sources:
The following list of books have been used as sources for this paper, its attachments and for those pages on the web site:
1) Teaching Online by William A. Draves, ISBN 1-57722-016-1 Published by LERN Books.
2) Teaching and Learning Online, by John Stephenson, ISBN 07494 3511 9 Published by Biddles Ltd. Guildford and Kings Lynn (England).
3) E-Moderating by Gilly Salmon ISBN 07494 3110 5 published by Clays Ltd, Saint Ives, plc.
4) Online Learning and Teaching with Technology by David Murphy, Rob Walker and Graham Webb. ISBN 07494 3520 8 published by Biddles Ltd. Guildford and Kings Lynn (England).
5) How to make money Teaching online with your Camcorder and PC by Anne Hart ISBN 0-595-22123-8 Published by Iuniverse, Inc. Lincoln NE.
6) 4Mat in Action by Susan Morris & Bernice McCarthy ISBN 0-960 8992-5-1 v.
7) Teaching OnLine, A Practical Guide by Susan Ko and Steve Rossen, published by Houghton Mifflin Company.