Strategies for streamlining discussion participation time

The majority of students complain about having to participate in discussions in online courses. Some enjoy it and others look at it as a chore for which they do the absolute minimum to get by without failing. I always provide students with tips on how to streamline the discussion process so that they can fit in the maximum participation with the least amount of time. Realistically, students should be able to contribute to high-quality conversations, 5 days a week, without spending more than 15-20 minutes most days and an hour a couple of days each week. Here are some of the tips I share. These are specific to Blackboard and it's horribly designed discussion board but you can adapt these to whatever LMS you are using. Yes they are all slightly different; but these tech tips are adaptable to any LMS that I've ever used.

DISCUSSION BOARD “HOW TO”

ALWAYS check new messages on a daily basis. It takes far less time to read and respond to a few messages than to skip a day or two and then have to read through 15 or more messages. And let's be honest here -- you're not going to read or respond to more than 5-10 messages in a long list of messages so in order not to miss anything, check every day for new messages. You can print to make notes for later responses or respond on the spot, whichever you wish.

Go to TOOLS and then click on DISCUSSION BOARD. This shows you the entire list of weekly discussions.

New discussion contributions will show on the page in BOLD print. Click on that to bring up all the new postings since the last time you logged in to the course.

After reading each message, click on READ in the bottom right corner. If you choose to reply to any new messages, simply click on REPLY and post your response (don’t forget to change the subject line to indicate who you are replying to).

Once you hit SUBMIT, the response will be posted in the forum and the message will automatically be marked READ so it won’t show up again on your new posting list.




PRINT MESSAGES
You can also print unread messages. Simply copy/paste the page after opening unread messages to a word doc. Then you can read and jot down notes for responses when you're not logged in to the course. As you complete your contributions, you can proofread, add sources, and the copy/paste in responses where you want them to go next time you're logged in.

BLACKBOARD CLEAN COPY/PASTE

First option: to paste, use control shift V (not just control V)

Second option – turn off the text editor.
My Places
My Preferences
Personal Information
Change Personal Settings
Text Editor On or Off – check the OFF box.

Full time online adjunct teaching

Rerun from Aug 2011

My instructional practice centers around personalizing each student’s learning experience through a constructivist approach to instruction. Every individual comes to my class (whatever the subject –and I teach many!) with different background, experience, and knowledge. Every individual learns material in different ways. And finally, every individual needs to learn something different in order to master the course outcomes and objectives.

Putting that all together in one package means that my job is to provide personalized instruction based on individual needs within my classroom. One of the reasons I love online teaching so much more than classroom teaching is that I am able to communicate with my students one-on-one much more than in a once-a-week seated classroom situation. I get to know my students’ educational needs and learning strengths and weaknesses and I can teach to the strengths while at the same time, enhancing weaknesses so that whatever margin exists between those learning styles decreases over time.

Providing a personalized learning experience happens in the online classroom in a variety of ways. My favorite and most effective means of immediate communication are the question/answer forum in each course (if there is not one in a pre-written course, then I add a Q&A forum), the informal, off-topic forum (I also add one of these if one is not already included in a pre-written course), feedback on individual assignments (including discussion work as well as written papers), and of course daily email.

I am available 7 days a week for all my students. I answer emails twice a day five days a week. and also guarantee responses to questions at least (usually twice) on weekends and holidays. My students know that if they post a question in a the course Q&A, I will answer that day or first thing the next morning (including weekends and holidays). Students know they’ll get personalized comments and instruction with all graded work. They see me in their course every day either answering questions, posting new info and resources in announcements, commenting in the discussion, or returning graded work.

I have continued 7-day-a-week availability through a hurricane when we lost power and cable internet for 12 days (I had to be creative, but I did figure out how to stay online during that time and only missed the one day and night the hurricane actually came through here ), during weekly trips out-of-state (9 hours driving each way) on weekends for two months to help during a family member’s terminal illness, prior to and during and after quite a few medical and dental procedures of my own, various trips and vacations, and other assorted medical and family emergencies. I never missed a day in class. I speed read and also type over 100 wpm with 90% accuracy and that helps with accomplishing tasks in a timely manner.

I managed just fine in all those situations and others as well over the years and my students never even knew anything different was going on. The bottom line is that you do your job through whatever life sends your way and you do it effectively and efficiently. Every day there are more and more “wannabe” online instructors out there just waiting for the chance to prove they are the best at what they do. The unfortunate fact is that an online instructor is easy to replace with someone else who is or can be just as good or better. It pays to be conscientious and do the job right. 

ProfBowman.com Teaching & Learning Center

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Leslie Bowman
1virtualprof
ProfBowman.com

Teaching and Learning Online Interview

Love this perspective on distance learning from Tara Ross on Kathy Hansen's blog. This is one of the best interviews I've ever read about online teaching and learning.

Organizing emails related to job searches

I suppose no one is as much of a packrat as I am. I've still got student emails and work archived from when I first started teaching online. I never delete anything. Ever. Comes from my PI days I supposed. Document, document, document is my motto.

For job stuff, I just file everything in one email folder; I don't bother with further organization. There's no need with a good email search feature. I also have an archived job folder from years past (occasionally I'll purge the recent jobs folder and archive a bunch of emails). Often I'll apply for a job this year at a school where I applied a year (and in one case five years) ago so I keep it all.

This means that I also have contact people in HR in some of those emails and I'll touch base personally occasionally. I keep all rejection letters because this is often where good contact info can be found. I assume everyone's using an email account with search. If I want to look up a school or job, I just do a quick search and I get a page of all matching emails.

To that end, most of my communications are saved by original and a forwarded version (to myself) where I put the details of the job/school in the subject line. Makes searching email easier. I can remember all the 100's (or more) of the schools I've applied to even from years ago (partial photographic memory for text). I can see a school name and just know if I've ever applied.

I also keep bookmarks and a todoist "project" list (also like a bookmark – it's really neat and syncs with iphone or android so I have really important bookmarks with me at all times) with all schools where I've applied, their jobs page, and the login/pswd for each. That way I can go straight down the line, click on each, login, and check the job status.

Oh there are lots more things I do to stay organized with job searches but these are the biggies. Well just one more – whenever I leave a school, I remain on very good terms with my boss so that I can reconnect later if I need to for a recommendation or even another job at some point. Trust me on this – never burn bridges because you never know when you might need to cross that bridge again.

Happy hunting.