Multi-week projects...do students use the extra time well?

One of the design decisions I made early on was to try to reduce the number of things students had to turn in. I didn't want to have things due every week. Instead, I wanted to require just three significant projects (significant in terms of authenticity and relevance...projects that could have a life outside of the course), and give students adequate time to work on them. I wanted students to have 3-5 weeks to work on each project, and I worked hard to match the project requirements and scope to the number of weeks I assigned for each one. I wanted to make sure students had enough time to let their creativity percolate, and enough time to actually creatively accomplish what they wanted to. And, allowing for more time per project also recognizes that adult students have things that come up in their lives that require their immediate attention...and academics must be set aside temporarily. With multi-week projects, students can still get projects done even if they have to take some time away from the coursework. Or, if they are taking more than one course and have to juggle deadlines.

But, I'm not sure that all of the students used the available time well. I have a sense that there is still a fair amount of last-minute scrambling going on for some. Some people work better that way, which is fine. But, for those who don't, the work -- and the learning -- suffers. So, is there anything I can do differently next time to avoid this potential issue, sort of having smaller project deliverables throughout (and then I'm back to what I wanted to avoid in the first place...lots of due dates for students to track)?

The idea I have is to require that each student post one question about their project each week that I would then respond to. This would help us stay connected, and hopefully at least encourage students to think about their projects from the get-go. I could even be a bit more specific then "post a question" by guiding the type of questions they should be asking at different phases of the project. For example, at the beginning of the project, I could ask, "Who is the audience, and what are the learning objectives for this instructional message?" During the middle of the project I could ask, "What challenge are you facing at this point in the design of your instructional message?"

I am going to keep thinking about this issue, but am thinking now that this sort of guided prompting on my part could help students use the weeks available to them for each project in a more productive way.

Reflecting on my processing of the Zoomerang results

I received some very useful feedback from the Zoomerang survey…I really appreciate when people take the time to share their thoughts and ideas. I haven’t posted to this blog for awhile as I have been focused on the course (grading the second Culiminating Project), and making appropriate adjustments to the course based on the feedback.

Only about ½ the group responded to the Zoomerang survey. Right or wrong, my positive spin on it is that those who did not respond are satisfied with the direction of the course. At least I can’t think of a time when I provided an opportunity to share feedback and those who were unhappy about a particular aspect of the course didn’t take advantage of the opportunity. [Note: It also has a lot to do with how you ask for feedback, the questions you use. I learned from Marty Tessmer – formative evaluation expert – that you have to ask questions in a way that invites a response and assumes that there is always something that can be improved. So, questions that ask, “What three things would you change and why?” indicates that there are at least three things that one should be able to suggest for improvement. The invitation, and structure of questions, can definitely change the response rate and the quality of the responses received.]

Of the responds I received, there were several positive comments, which is good. It is helpful to have reinforcement for what I am doing and what I have designed. Positive comments included things about my attentiveness, quality and quantity of feedback on projects, nature of projects, flexibility to resubmit projects for more points, and the Duarte and Reynolds readings.

I also received several constructively critical comments. Some of the issues shared I immediately addressed. For example, because of comments about the workload being too heavy, I eliminated a Hands-on/Minds-on project to make more space and time for folks working on the final Culminating Project. There were also comments about wishing there were more discussions, so I added a discussion as a way to help the group process Marty Tessmer’s book on designing online tutorials.

Some comments I could respond to now. For example, I received negative comments about the Mayer text. Although I couldn’t fix it for this term, I will find another way to expose students to Mayer’s principles without using his text next year.
Some of the critical comments presented challenges for me because:

• They were inconsistent (some folks liking a particular aspect, and others not)
  
• They were about aspects of the course to which I am committed from an educational perspective (in this case, I just haven’t made the case well enough, I am assuming)
  
• They are about structural issues with the eCollege shell that are out of my control, or – for me to design around – requires a fairly cluegy approach to the design
  
• They are more related to the individuals than the course. At least I think they are…

Let me say a bit more about that last one… Honestly, as an instructional designer, I point my finger at myself as much as possible. It gives me comfort to think that there are things I can do – or do differently – to improve the chances that students’ motivation to learn will be enhanced. But, sometimes, I receive a few comments to a survey like this one that feel more like an abdication of student responsibility than something I can directly address.

For example, a specific comment I received had to do with being consistently confused about due dates. Because it is so easy to lose track of due dates in an online course, I standardized on a single weekly due date – end of day on Sundays. There are three times during the course where there are differing due dates, and those are related to three sets of peer reviews due on Thursdays. The calendar of graded activities (in the Syllabus) and Weekly Agendas – both including information regarding due dates – has been available since the start of the course. My assumption was that people would rely on whatever method they use to track course due dates. For example, I mapped all the due dates to my daytimer so they would be included in my overall view of my week. I also printed out the syllabus and weekly agendas so I could check items off as we went (in fact, I designed the weekly agendas to function as a checklist).

Was my assumption faulty? Yes, or I wouldn’t have received the comments. Was my assumption unreasonable? No. This is a graduate level course, with students who are midway through their programs. Online courses require a proficient level of self-directedness…folks have to be able to manage time, resources, and energy for themselves. Is there something I could do to make things easier to track? I guess so, I’m just surprised I need to.

Where does this leave me? I’ve made some positive adjustments for the remainder of the semester, and have a list of things – like the Mayer text – to reconsider for next time. The feedback – as always – was very useful to my thinking. I always appreciate it when folks take the time to share their thoughts and ideas, even when it isn’t what I hoped or wanted to hear. If you ask for feedback, you have to be prepared for what you receive, and be willing to take appropriate actions based on what you receive. I think I accomplished this.

Not using a week-by-week structure

Typically, I set up my online courses in the LMS using a week-by-week structure. However, I have never really liked that structure because it seems more natural to me to think in terms of activity, especially when those activities occur over multiple weeks. From a student-scheduling perspective, I realize that a week-by-week structure might help folks. But, I am always afraid that the week-by-week structure hides the complexity and context of projects...potentially causing important details to be lost.

When I started working on this course, I kept thinking about what I would do in an on-campus course in an attempt to simplify things, and get the workload for students (and me) under control. So, all of the structure for this course is based on what I do in on-campus courses. I provide descriptions of activities and projects with the syllabus. Then I use weekly agendas to drive what happens each week, with pointers to the various activity and project descriptions. For me, this seems more manageable, simplistic, straight-forward.

I am not sure what the students think about this structure, especially given the fact that many of them have spent a year in online courses that followed a week-by-week structure. So, my decision to structure the course based on activity type -- with weekly agendas for reference -- could fall flat. My hope is that the folks in the course will share with me their views on the design of the course so I can continue to enhance it while in progress and for the next run of the course.

Is it all challenging enough?

When I started layout out activities, assignments, and projects, I had about 25 things. Yikes! So much for simplicity and balance. It has been very effortful to get the workload under control. My concern -- one of many, I guess -- is that the learners feel they have read, practiced, and discussed enough in advance of completing a "Culminating Project" (which is a project I assess against a rubric and provide more detailed feedback, as opposed to simply check-off as completed which is what I will do with the Minds-on/Hands-on and React and Respond activities). I am trying to not overwhelm with discussions every week. I am trying to ask for a reasonable amount of reading to be accomplished. And so on. I wonder if I will get it right this time -- the balance between workload, engagement, efficacy-strenthening...

Will they do the reading?

Without required weekly discussions, I am worried that folks won't read. And the readings are really critical to getting this stuff... I am making an effort to require annotations and citations with Culminating Projects, but that isn't necessarily an immediate application of the reading to something. Yet, I don't want to add back in required weekly discussions...I just think it is an overload. I wonder what will happen, and how the learners will react.

What is a "Hands-on/Minds-on" activity?

I think of Hands-on/Minds-on assignments as similar to the type of learning activities I would ask students to participate in during an on-campus class session. In other words, they are activities that are designed to help you process the readings (hence the "minds-on" part), and practice the application and creation know-how and skills (the "hands-on" part) that are needed for the Culminating Projects. These activities are designed to be completed in 1-2 weeks, so they are short-term assignments.

The reason for this category of activity in IT 5130 is because one of the issues I struggle with as an online educator is finding the workload balance (I've been exploring this issue for awhile, see my article on workload reduction strategies to see where I started). I tend to feel overwhelmed by the workload in online courses, as do learners. I want the coursework to be challenging and reflect high expectations, as graduate-level coursework should. But, at the same time, I want learners to have a good, relatively stress-free experience that recognizes their full personal and professional lives. So, one of the angles I took when I started to think about redesigning this course was what I would do if I was teaching the course on-campus. Now, I don't mean to suggest that what I do on-campus is ideal or the gold-standard for comparison purposes. But, I don't tend to feel overwhelmed when teaching on-campus...so, I thought there might be something for me to explore there. It is because of this analysis that I determined to try this distinction between short-term activities (Hands-on/Minds-on) and the multi-week activities (Culminating Projects).