Archive of Faculty Websites: Why They're Important and How to Create One NOW!

Yesterday's Center Hangout was fabulous so I wanted to share the archive front and center on my blog.  This topic relates curiously to a post I wrote back in June of 2010.

The Value of Open-Web Faculty Websites

 +Dean Patti Flanigan , Dean of Online Learning, and +Kathryn Damm , Professor of Psychology, both from Saddleback College spent some time discussing the values of open-web faculty websites.  "Open-web" differs from content pages that faculty create and post inside an LMS. Content stored in an LMS requires students to have a password to access or at the very least (in the case of a course that is set to "guest access") requires a particular set of skills be understand how to locate the information. Open-web faculty websites are simple links that become most valuable when they are woven into the fabric of the student enrollment experience. Increasing student access to instructors and courses before registration occurs, improves student preparedness and satisfaction, especially in a social, web 2.0 world where most students rely on anonymous Rate My Professor reviews anyway.

Weaving Faculty Websites into the Student Experience

To demonstrate this, Patti and Kathy discussed the faculty profile system developed at Saddleback which provides a basic webpage to each and every faculty member.  This basic page is linked directly into the online class listings. As a student is scanning for classes, she simply may click the link to learn more about that profess. Now what is on that page certainly varies but, as Kathy demonstrates in the video, a faculty member may choose to include a link on the profile page to his own personal website (which may be institutionally hosted or not). Kathy, for example, developed her website using Google Sites. What's important is that the site be accessible to everyone -- students (remember, videos must be captioned) and the instructor (there should be no barriers to making edits to one's webpage).

A Strategy for Improving Student Success?

Patti reflected on the higher than average online retention and success rates that Saddleback College has, which, to me, is admirable.  While statistically there is no way to validate a causation between the faculty websites and the higher rates, I am certain I could find a steady flow of online faculty who do not have this type of fabulous support system that would argue there is a correlation.  When classes are in short supply -- as we know they are at California Community Colleges -- doesn't it make sense to allow a learner to understand the personality of the instructor (through a video on a website), the requirements of the class, and other essentials before registering?  Time and time again, I see students drop my own class upon gaining access to the course materials.  Replicating this Saddleback model, which includes supporting faculty with both a place to link a website within the class registration system and an institutionally provided webpage that may be augmented by a faculty member with an external website link, and researching its impact on student success seems like a worthy experiment

In the second half of the Hangout, you will see me demo how to create your own beautiful faculty website using a brand new tool called Populr.me. Here is a link to my own faculty site created with Populr.me. The video will show you how to make one just like it!

Sign up for your free Populr.me PRO educator account here:  http://populr.me/coupons/poppinteacher

Want to chat about this topic? 

Join in on a #CCCLEARN Twitter chat 

on the topic of Faculty Websites 

next Thursday, February 13, 2014 at 3pm PST.

The Underbelly of CA's Community College MOOC Bill

As an online California Community College (CCC) instructor who has worked hard to promote practices for cultivating high quality, high touch, humanized online learning, I am watching the news about Steinberg's proposed bill (SB 520) to allow California's community college students to complete MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) offered by third party vendors to complete high demand courses that the students are unable to access through California's community college system. 

The concept is rough but is being applauded by open educational resource (OER) supporters and certainly makes significant strides to support a mission of the CCC system which is to promote access to low cost higher education to Californians.  And Steinberg has been quoted, "This is about helping students. We would be making a big mistake if we did not take advantage of the technological advances in our state" to do so.

But is it high quality learning (another thread of the system's mission)?  This is the question I want to untangle here. 

The concept at the heart of SB520 is driven by the exciting work of Simon Thrun, who received a 2012 Smithsonian Ingenuity Award for "transforming the way people learn around the world" and Daphne Koller, co-founder of the MOOC-hosting site Coursera.  Thrun and Koller have become to popular pioneers of MOOCs (but are by no means the founders -- scroll to "The Forgotten History of  MOOCs" by Audrey Watters here) which are massive open online courses.  MOOCs are online classes that have lots of students -- lots of students, like over 1,000.  This is why the model in California would promote alleviate the road blocks that students have hit in recent years as the system has cut classes in response to the state's devastating budget deficit.

To date, there is no large scale effort in the uS have an entire system of education grant college credit for the completion of a MOOC.  If SB 520 is approved, California's community college system, the largest system of higher education in the nation which serves roughly 2.6 million students, would make a huge precedent in higher education and MOOCs would make quite a foray in formalized learning.

The Problem

I agree that MOOCs will find a place in the future of formalized learning.  But I also believe figuring out how, where, and to what extent is a fragile venture and the leap that is proposed in California is poised to fracture the foundation of community college student learning. 

The problem lies in the demographics of the students that are served by the MOOCs.  Thrun and Koller are Stanford professors.  They do not teach community college students.  Those of us who teach community college students understand the unique blend of needs our student demographics bring into our classrooms and how these unique needs tie into our pedagogy -- whether the class is face-to-face or online.  When teaching a community college class, you (the teacher) are pivotal to the success of the learners.  That is true regardless of whether the class is face-to-face or online. 

Each semester, in my online class, I work to support students with a variety of needs.  For example, many have cognitive disorders like ADHD and I often identify students who I suspect have dyslexia but have not yet been tested.  I have a student now who is about to give birth -- her due date was yesterday and we have made arrangements to support her through her delivery.  And I have another student this week who I needed to set up a special quiz for to accommodate his ADD.  I understand that by reaching out to understand and support the needs of my learners, I will increase their chances of success. 

That's just one of my roles.  I also must design learning activities that support a range of cognitive levels and differences.  Using tools like VoiceThread and blogs, in addition to traditional assessments creates scaffolded learning spaces where students receive personalized voice and video feedback from me and their peers.  My teaching and social presence resonates with my students. Dyslexic students have accommodations built in and more proficient students take roles as community leaders in our participatory learning environment.

 MOOCs are teacherless.  That's why they are so efficient.

The Issues

Taking the teacher out of an online community college class is a bad idea for students.  The active presence of a teacher in an online class has been validated as an essential element of a student's success for decades (Anderson, 1979; Paloff & Pratt, 1999; Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000;  Richardson & Swan, 2003). And when the the mix of learners in a class becomes more diverse, the demands of the teacher to work more closely with the learners to understand and facilitate their understanding and comprehension of the mastery of the objectives becomes more critical -- not less. 

Some studies have noted that MOOCs have a success rate as low as 20%.  A strategy Udacity is using to improve this is to hire "human mentors." 

I could not agree more that we have problems in California's community colleges and that students are feeling the pain of an ugly financial crunch that has landed on our community college system.  But the problems that we are disregarding pertain to the value of high quality community college teaching.

To start, more than 300,000 students have been turned away from California's community colleges because our state has elected to cut programs and classes and get rid of teachers.  And this solution replaces them with MOOCs developed by third-party vendors that are teacherless.

Moreover, out of the roughly 58,000 faculty members that teach California's community college classes, Jonathan Lightman from FACCC shared that only 31% of them are full-time.  Even though state law mandates California to maintain a 75:25% ratio of full-time to part-time faculty, this has been deferred in recent years because the budget has just been too weak.  I find it interesting that the system's proposed increased funds this year may go to support teacherless solution.

The solution proposed by Steinberg is not good for community college student learning.  It does not support the diversity of student needs that are critical to success in community colleges.  Community college learners need teachers who are held accountable to high standards to foster high quality, community-oriented learning experiences.  Motivation, engagement, morale, and ultimately cognition will not thrive in a MOOC environment with most community college learners.  Some will do fine, yes.  But most will not. 

Alternatives

In the future, learners will have no shortage of access to free, open content.  So what will the function of a community college be in society?  That is the question.  I think we are in the midst of re-envisioning the role of the institution from an access provider to a facilitater of learning.  In a lifelong learning society, individuals need to understand how to master their own learning and this will continue to play and increasingly critical role to both the success of the lives of people in the 21sst century and the relevance of educational institutions.

To put this more clearly, learners -- with all their learning differences in tow -- will come to community colleges because they will need teachers to inspire them, to help them understand and master new skills, and to help them create digital content that will demonstrate their mastery to the outside world.  Access to the content will not be the issue.  It will be how to learn the content.
 
Community college leaders today should be funding the creation of centers of innovation in teaching and learning -- empowering hotbeds of research and experimentation where instructors are incentivized to understand what it means to teach effectively with emerging technologies in their discipline and how to foster high touch learning environments that demonstrate ways to develop students into critical, mindful users and creators of digital media.  From these sites, resources would flow to other colleges through an interconnected, open sharing system that would empower faculty to learn together in community. 

In contrast, as an instructor in California, it's devastating to experience how disconnected I am from my 55,000+ faculty peers at the most connected time in human history.  We should all be learning in community from each other, sharing with each other, and in a constant dialogue with each other.   A new online instructor at a college in Chico should be able to locate an experience online instructor in Palm Springs in a moment and develop an informal mentor-mentee relationship.  A simple online commons, like the Academic Commons developed by CUNY, would foster a space for sharing and connecting across the state.

Innovations in teaching and learning is the area in which California's community colleges should be leading the way.  We have tens of thousands of committed, bright, passionate educators who teach because they are dedicated to their students.  Instead, we're sending our students to third party vendors and applauding the use of technology to deploy content to them.

Archive: Learning Out Loud-Is It the Missing Link in Online Classes?

Webinar: Learning Out Loud from VoiceThread on Vimeo

Above is the archive of a webinar I recently presented for VoiceThread.  In the webinar I shared results of a semester-long teaching experiment that resulted in increasing the percentage of voluntary student voice or video comments from 25% to 75%.  I also share student feedback results that demonstrate how learning out loud in an online class improved the students' perception of how well they understood of the material, improved their verbal skills, kept them motivated, and made them feel more connected to their peers and instructor.

View a list of all VoiceThread webinar archives here.

Community Colleges: A Defining Moment

Each month, I write a sponsored blog post for Cisco's GETInsight blog, which is part of the GETideas community.  Each post delves into a topical conversation about transforming education, particularly through the use of technology.  This month's post isn't focused on technology but it is one that will shape both the future of the United States and affect the lives of millions of people for generations to come.  And you or someone you care about may very likely be one of those people.

The topic is the historic commitment that community colleges have made to open access to higher education.  That commitment is being threatened as colleges across the nation, particularly in extremely deprived economic states like California, struggle to imagine how to serve students with pennies instead of dollars. 

Community colleges are always there for us. We have come to rely upon them to serve an array of functions in our lives.  As a result, the array of ways that community colleges have supported students' academic and personal success and contributed to local and regional economies is immeasurable. 

I hope you'll take a moment, first, to read the post, and two, to share your story in the VoiceThread about how your life has been touched, helped, transformed, or improved by a community college.  The VoiceThread is embedded below and also appears on the GETInsight blog.  You are warmly invited to leave a comment by following the instructions at the bottom of the slide.

Please share this VoiceThread and encourage your friends, family, colleagues to share their story. Thank you!  Use this link to share: http://voicethread.com/share/2927210/

Click here to read "Community Colleges’ Commitment to Open Access: Sharing Your Story at a Defining Moment." 

Community Colleges: What's Your Story?

For generations, community colleges have served as the gateway to higher education for millions of Americans.  Their commitment to open access coupled with financial support from local funds have stimulated local economies and made dreams come true for people who would have otherwise never imagined college to be a reality.  The same holds true today -- but for fewer students each year.  Budget cuts across the nation are resulting in a rationing of enrollments and who will be admitted to community colleges in the future is a hot topic today.

A report released yesterday from the Center for the Future of Higher Education, Closing the Door, Increasing the Gap, stresses the importance of critically examining who could be left out if access to higher education is rationed and what encourages us to ponder the effects that the rationing process would have on society longterm.  The report states, "We are living in a time of growing gaps between the rich and the rest – gaps that have not been seen since the Great Depression. Since the largest growth in traditional age students is among lower-income, first-generation, students of color, and immigrants, they will be impacted the most. Rationing college by social class and ethnicity results in a higher education system that will increase the gap between the 1% and the rest in ever more extreme ways."

I invite you to share your story about how your life has been affected by a community college.  If you're new to VoiceThread, it's easy.  Just follow the instructions typed at the bottom of the slide or listen to them by playing the first comment.

Please share this VoiceThread using this link: http://voicethread.com/share/2927210/

VoiceThread Webinar Archives: A Learning Library

There are now a total of six 1-hour webinar archives in the VoiceThread training library.  Keep this resource in mind for spring, summer, and fall faculty development planning.

Topics to date include:

• How to Save Time with VoiceThread for Moodle
• How and Why to Flip Your Classroom with VoiceThread
• Supporting All Learners with VoiceThread
• Supporting Student Success with VoiceThread
• Making Sense of Assessment with VoiceThread
• Integrating VoiceThread into the Campus-Wide Teaching Toolkit

You may view each video here with an interactive transcript.

Follow my blog or on Twitter @brocansky to receive invitations to future webinars -- they're all free!

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Advocating For "Online" Student Success Strategies

If anyone out there has been following the recent statewide dialogue in California about identifying strategies to improve the success of California community college students, you may be interested in reading the "Draft Recommendations Report" which was recently made public on the Chancellor's website.

I've just begun trudging through it and have been a bit stunned to see that due to "time restraints," the task force did not directly address "distance education" in the report (p. 11).  I feel compelled to take a step back right now and point out that the continual lumping of online courses in with our face-to-face courses continues to hurt California community college students.  Online classes are unique and the strategies necessary for increasing the success of students in online programs as well as those who enroll in both online and face-to-face coursework needs to be addressed directly. 

General communications from the Chancellor's office shared in articles throughout the year with the public typically report important data, like enrollment, in lump figures and the data for distance learning is traditionally reported in a separate report every two years.  This reporting process, in my opinion, makes the realities of the impact that online learning is having on the landscape of the CCC system murky, at best.  And, as a result, the significant role that online learning plays throughout California's 112 community colleges -- which support 2.6 million students, more than any other system of higher education in the nation -- is not positioned as a statewide priority and the unique needs that online learning brings to the system are often not realized. 

The 2011 distance education report can be found here and in it you will see some information that may surprise you.  It surprised me and I consider myself pretty well informed about online learning in California.  The graph below illustrates the past four years of enrollment changes -- distance education is represented in blue and traditional, face-to-face, classes are represented in red. 

As the data illustrated above makes clear, the future of California community colleges is a blended future.  Between academic years 2006-2010, traditional enrollments remained relatively stagnant year over year or declined, while online enrollments have soared, even in the face of severe budget cuts. 

Lower Success Rates for Online CCC Students
The report also provides evidence that online course success rates trail traditional success rates by 10-12% over the four year period measured in the report (course success defined as the % of enrolled students who end the term with an A, B, or C).  This isn't groundbreaking news but is certainly a significant point to consider.  These success rates can be improved significantly with the proper strategies but will not be improved if online classes are not understood and valued as unique.   Online students who learn in solitude with little to no human connection are at a greater risk of failing -- especially when they're academically challenged and/or their courses are designed with cold, text-based information and void of a sense of relatedness to one's instructor and peers.  One of the most important elements of supporting student success online is professional development and faculty training. 

An intriguing recent study at Cabrillo College has revealed that online success is even lower for Latino students.  The online success gap for Latino students is 44% greater than white students, according to the study.  This may be due to the strong role of human-to-human contact and relationships in the latino culture that are undercut by flat online course design.  Raymond Kaupp, director of workforce development at Cabrillo argues that the low success rates for online Latino students is likely rooted in Latino attitudes toward education. “Relationships are important to Latino student learning."  Community colleges need to foster online community, just as they foster face-to-face community -- within a class, within a department, across a program, and an entire campus.  In our mobile, interconnected world driven by video technologies that are now free to low cost, it's a failure to create cold, isolating online learning experiences.

Online classes can be vibrant, dynamic and highly personalized if they're designed effective and integrate pedagogies that support active and constructivist learning through the application of emerging technologies, and faculty are supported to ensure content is accessible to all students.  One model that has been proven effective at increasing online student success is the Human Presence Learning Environment used at Santa Barbara Community College.   

Warm, High-Touch, Community-Oriented Online Learning
In the teaching I've done over the years for @One's Online Teaching Certification Program, I've seen hundreds of faculty be inspired and amazed at what they can do for their students to create more social, community-oriented learning experiences for their students with a higher sense of social presence -- through the use of technology that would otherwise be absent from their teaching approaches.  When the framework embraced for evaluating student success does not view online as a unique entity, these essential pillars of online student success are rendered absent (and they aren't, by any means, the only pillars). 

I look forward to watching the lively discussion about the report evolve and am hopeful there will be more advocacy from faculty, staff, students, and the community about the importance of stressing the uniqueness of online learning, the central role it will continue to play in the future of California community colleges and our students.

Join Me! Increasing Student Success with Google Sites - free webinar

Hey Professors, 

Would you like to increase the number of prepared students on your roster?  Do you dream about a class students who, on day one, are informed and know what to expect from your class?  

Did you know there are more than 10,000,000 student comments shared on RateMyProfessors.com, a site your students use to learn about you and your class?  Wouldn't you prefer to harness the potential of this web 2.0 wave to introduce yourself to your students and get them prepared for your class?


You will learn how to use an existing Professor Website Template on Google Sites to start building your site today!

Join me this Wed, 10/13 at 12:00 PST for the @One Desktop Seminar: Increasing Student Success with Google Sites. 

Register here -- yes, it's free!

Use Google Sites to Increase Online Success and Retention

As an online instructor, I always felt that one of my goals should be to strive to ensure all the students enrolled on day one are students who are informed about the class requirements.  When we teach in a classroom, there are always students who attend day one, read the syllabus, and then decide, for a range of reasons, the class simply doesn't work for them.  These reasons could range from, "I'll take this next semester when I have a lighter load," "just too much work,"  "I'll take it with someone else," "don't like this instructor," "sounds like a bore."  How do I know?  Because I used to do it as a college student too (come on, fess up). While budget cuts may naturally be forcing students to stay enrolled in classes they don't "prefer," I believe all students should be informed ahead of time about what to expect in their learning experience.  This strategy is an effective and realistic way to foster a culture of student success in a class and, even more powerfully, at an entire institution.

Improving retention and success in "offline" classes is important too.  But I am focusing on the online learning environment because our online classes in higher education have consistently trailed in success and retention rates.  And the demand for online classes continues to go through the roof.  I would regularly turn away up to 40 pleading students in each online class, unable to accommodate their desire to enroll.  And then in the first week of class, a flock of students would drop, leaving me feel frustrated and disappointed about all the students I turned away.  Sound familiar anyone?

Offline?  The situation wasn't nearly so bad.  Sloan-C recently cited tracked our nation's overall higher ed enrollment growth was at around 2% (including offline and online enrollments in both 2 and 4 year institutions) and our online enrollment growth was about 17% (22% in community colleges alone). Our students are naturally leaving the offline classroom in search of more online learning opportunities.  So, let's prepare them ahead of time so the learning can begin on day one. 

Here's a simple strategy to try.  Create a Google Site, using one of their new and improved templates, and use it to share a video introduction, detail course requirements and clear expectations, and upload a class syllabus. The key is to weave the site into your enrollment process so students find it.  How about creating a link in your online class schedule, connecting your class description to your Google Site?

So, students...would this help you succeed?  Instructors, what are your thoughts?  Here is my sample Google Site (which was used in this way, only in an older and less aesthetically pleasing Google Site template) to demonstrate the idea.

Note: I am no longer employed at Sierra College and I use the materials on my sample Google Site in an effort to share my own course strategies to help other online instructors improve their instructional approaches.

Are You Ready for an Online Class? Back by Request!

I was recently contacted by from who alerted me that a video recording of a student success workshop I had shared on my blog awhile back was no longer available. I love that aspect of blogging -- when your content becomes unavailable, you find out who your audience is!

I'm still not sure why Blogger deactivated my video but I have shared it here once again, as I'm delighted to learn that it's being shared and put to good use. I do hope there are students out there who find it useful and, if so, I'd love to hear from you!

This is a live recording of a one-hour workshop I presented at Sierra College titled "Are You Ready for an Online Class?" It highlights strategies for a successful online learning experience and sheds light on some of the myths about taking online classes.