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.

Trends

Online learning is exciting in and of itself, but new trends are even more exciting. It's very difficult for many people to think in new ways. Or at least think of old things in new ways. In psychology we have what's called "functional fixedness." Yes, a strange word, but psychologists can be strange birds. Do you remember the candle problem from psych 101? If not, look it up, I'm not doing your work for you. Functional fixedness is when we find it difficult to look at an object and find new ways to use it. A person may look at a cell phone and fail to think of how it could change. They are so used to how it is that something new doesn't occur to them. There are many examples of this and the internet is bringing on even more. For instance, the newspaper industry. The internet comes along and absolutely trashes the entire industry. What do they do when they see the internet will butt into their news territory? They take their news and put it online, for free. Ok, nothing has really changed except instead of paper it's electronic and the free part, of course. For them to compete they need to shake things up drastically and do something completely differnt. And here, I bring up Steve Jobs and Apple computer. Jobs took something that was already on the market (a cell phone) and changed it to be something different, not totally different, but different enough to be new, fresh, and exciting and makes you jump up and holler, I want one!" And indeed, millions did jump and holler. Education is at the crossroads, too. When online learning became the rage many school took their curriculum and plopped it online. Ok, it's the same stuff only it's online instead of in a classroom. To be truly revolutionary and effective online education needs to change the way it presents material. It's interesting that the online revolution in education will no doubt change all of education even the face-to-face classes. In fact. I think it already is changing face-to-face. When students and teachers) understand how much better active learning, collaboration, and a non lecture format is they will switch over. They will have to, because students will demand it. I think trends will be not only a shake-up of online learning, but a shake-up of face-to-face.

Two Weeks Down

Welcome and thanks for reading this blog post. This blog will be my record of the IM 554 course with a sprinkling of the IM 555 course. I named this blog Facenook because last week I typed Facenook instead of Facebook. I thought it was an amusing typo. The name brings to mind both a place to be and a person. This is me the person at this little nook the blog.

I am two weeks into the semester and so far, so good. I know about theories because I teach a counseling theories course, but I was surprised to find that the theories of education and learning are taken from psychology and I am very familiar with those. It seems psychology is an important part of education and business which are two topics I enjoy very much. Maybe that's why I enjoy them because both are grounded in psychological research and psychology is something I know very well. I like how the theories can be laid down as the foundation for instructional design strategies. The material to be taught will drive how it will be presented in the classroom.

I liked the asynchronous meeting we had, although the technology leaves something to be desired My mic went out about half way through and it was difficult to type all my thoughts. I thought later that if I would have exited the classroom and reentered it might have started working again. I will try that if it happens again. I would prefer the class be more progressive or not so much like a regular classroom where the teacher is in the front and students are in the audience. That teaching style is not effective in person or online. I think the time is better used in break-out sessions or round-table discussions with students solving problems or collaborating on other ways. There is a lot of education and experience in the classroom and it's a shame not to use it fully. The asynchronous discussions were good and while the theories were familiar I got new ideas from reading other student's posts and from writing my own.