Student Support

Universities and colleges have provided many different support services for students over the years. Most services have been for traditional aged students. Distance education presents renewed challenges for instructors and administrators. Students attending online may need some of the same support as traditional students, however they present new challenges in the areas of engagement and community building. Ludwig-Hardman and Dunlap (2003) argued that building relationships with students is vital for retention and student success. The authors said building relationships with online students should start in recruitment and continue through the education process according to Smith, etc. There are many tools to use for relationship building. In our class we have been using some of these tools like blogs and twitter. I like using twitter I think the idea of it is so simple and yet, brilliant. There are many ways instructors can use it  for communication and sharing between the students and between the student and instructor. Students can also use it to communicate with experts and students from other programs with similar interests. We haven't talked much about using Facebook in education, but I can see that as a valuable tool. I would like to see interfaces like Facebook and twitter embedded in the class management system. Students should be able to communicate and share with each other and the instructor within the classroom. If these tools were embedded in the classroom they would also be private. I've never used twitter in an academic setting and i must admit I really liked it. Although I've been using twitter for about 4-5 years I've never used it in the classroom and I really enjoyed posting and reading the posts of others. Twitter helped me understand better how my students would experience it. Overall, I think the education field has only skimmed the surface of the tools available to use for student engagement. The years ahead will bring a rich and interactive online learning environment far removed from the traditional lecture hall.

Social Media

I really believe in interactive learning and collaborative learning. Online learning presents some challenges in this area, but it's very possible to build communities and relationships with others in the online environment. However, students need to skills to fully use the tools available. Not all student shave the skills. A couple of interesting points for this week's lesson that struck me were disparity in skill levels of students and how the tools can change your brain and how we can change them. I always made the assumption that all young people were computer literate and adapted to computers like fish in water, but that is not always the truth. Some students do not have access to technology due to poverty, disinterest, poor teachers, or other reasons. This puts them at a disadvantage as they join the digital divide meaning they will be left behind in work and the occupations they can pursue in the future. I'm not sure how to solve this problem, but the problem will continue to come up in time.  The other interesting part of the readings was the article about Google and how the internet is changing our thinking. At first, I felt a bit alarmed about this, but then when I was thinking about it, reading and writing are not instinctive skills, but are learned. The way we read and learn will undoubtedly change as the internet slowly takes over like the printing press took over and changed us many years ago.

I'm not crazy about the synchronous discussions. Having an online discussion is not the same as having a face-to-face discussion. From my experience, it takes longer and needs to be more clear and simple due to no visual paralanguage cues. I think it might help to include readings or sources for presenting online before attempting a discussion. Facilitating an online discussion is also a skill that needs to be learned because it's again, different from face-to-face. It's nice that we are practicing the skills along with the content, but it seems like a hit-or-miss. I look forward to seeing how the students will present and what I can learn each week from others' experiences.

I've decided to change my interview project person. Upon reflection, I know more about social media than she does and I will interview either a dean from Walden University (I know from FaceBook) who participates in social media or a professor in Canada (who I know from Twitter) who teaches in the teacher ed department about how to use social media. My project will focus on using social media to build student/teacher relationships. I will focus on college age students and not K12 students. I have started some of the research, but haven't gotten far. I noticed how people used social media in the Komen/PP clash last week and thought about how social media tools can be powerful for building and maintaining relationships in the classroom, too. What I want to get out of the interview is a glimpse into the future. My research will focus on the past and the interview will focus on what the future might bring in terms of using social media in the classroom.