Online teaching - "Regular and Effective Contact?"

[ciao_yall]

Hi all,

It appears my college is going to be online for Fall 2020 with few exceptions, such as nursing and biology labs.

There is a requirement for college courses to have "regular and effective contact" between student and instructor, otherwise it's just considered a "correspondence course" and thus ineligible for credit, financial aid, all of that.

So...

• How does everyone have "regular and effective contact" for their classes? Do you have regular Zoom/synchronous meetings, for example? Are there standards that must be met?
• Can a class pass muster at your college if the instructor just puts up materials and lets students take quizzes, and waits for students to ask questions?
• Who enforces standards, if there are any? What are the consequences if these standards are not met?

Thanks!

[Parasaurolophus]

My department head is supposed to drop in and make sure standards are being met.

For my classes, which are asynchronous (my rural wifi is not great for synchronicity, and most of my students are home in India anyway, and working, so...), I have "contact" with them in these ways:

• Synchronous office hours scheduled during "class time".
• I maintain and monitor a discussion board, which includes weekly Q&A threads and discussion topics.

My department head says that's enough for now.

[ciao_yall]

My department head is supposed to drop in and make sure standards are being met.

For my classes, which are asynchronous (my rural wifi is not great for synchronicity, and most of my students are home in India anyway, and working, so...), I have "contact" with them in these ways:

• Synchronous office hours scheduled during "class time".
• I maintain and monitor a discussion board, which includes weekly Q&A threads and discussion topics.

My department head says that's enough for now.

Are they required to participate in office hours?[/list]

[arcturus]

The easiest way to meet this requirement is to have regular class announcements (instructor to student) and discussion boards (student to student and instructor to student). Because these methods of communication are so easy to identify as "regular and effective contact" it is often short-hand to say, for example, that discussion boards are a requirement for an online class. They are not. But they are a convenient way to document peer interaction and can be good pedagogy (but not always).  For instructor-student interactions, class-wide announcements that provide guidance/context for the activities scheduled for the week, that give general feedback regarding assignments after they have been graded (and before they are submitted, if appropriate), or are simply encouraging words are all good.  One advantage of class-wide announcements is that they will usually be delivered directly to the students' email accounts, and provide a reminder to the students that they are enrolled in an online class. It is easy for students to forget about the work associated with asynchronous online classes because they do not have the physical/temporal connection of showing up to a specific classroom at a specific time.

[RatGuy]

• Synchronous office hours scheduled during "class time".
• I maintain and monitor a discussion board, which includes weekly Q&A threads and discussion topics.

My department head says that's enough for now.

I am currently finishing up a 4-week summer course, and these are two things that I did. Visits to office hours weren't required. I used Collaborate Ultra, which handled my spotty home connection and my students' connection from phones quite well. There are a lot of cool features, and it's all supported by the university IT department in a way that Zoom isn't. I also had daily assignments, which went live at 12:01am and were due at 11:59, and all of which had feedback.

I found that students tended to get more out of the assignments -- they were thoughtful in a way that discussion boards were not. I was told to set students' expectations early, but even then it seemed that the discussion boards were quite half-arsed.

If we go full online in the fall (we won't, because we sell a fun party experience to rich out-of-state kids), I'll make the Collaborate sessions mandatory. And they'd be synchronous, despite the issues with that.

[Aster]

The easiest way to meet this requirement is to have regular class announcements (instructor to student) and discussion boards (student to student and instructor to student). Because these methods of communication are so easy to identify as "regular and effective contact" it is often short-hand to say, for example, that discussion boards are a requirement for an online class. They are not. But they are a convenient way to document peer interaction and can be good pedagogy (but not always).  For instructor-student interactions, class-wide announcements that provide guidance/context for the activities scheduled for the week, that give general feedback regarding assignments after they have been graded (and before they are submitted, if appropriate), or are simply encouraging words are all good.  One advantage of class-wide announcements is that they will usually be delivered directly to the students' email accounts, and provide a reminder to the students that they are enrolled in an online class. It is easy for students to forget about the work associated with asynchronous online classes because they do not have the physical/temporal connection of showing up to a specific classroom at a specific time.

This. +1.

[polly_mer]

• Can a class pass muster at your college if the instructor just puts up materials and lets students take quizzes, and waits for students to ask questions?

This is a hallmark of correspondence courses.  Requiring the students to initiate contact with the instructor is one way that online courses got in trouble with the HLC several years ago.

• Who enforces standards, if there are any? What are the consequences if these standards are not met?

The regional accreditor should be checking during regular visits and upon notification of possible problems (do a search on Adams State University about 2015 for an illustrative saga on passing review and then failing on additional review of online programs).

The consequences in extreme cases for the institution include losing eligibility for federal financial aid, having to repay federal financial aid, probation with the regional accreditor, and even loss of accreditation.

Any one course in normal times might be able to fly under the radar.

Anyone offering a correspondence course this fall instead of a distance ed course is likely to be called out by the authorities at the institution who will be tasked with ensuring compliance to keep the institution out of trouble during this time of undertrained people offering online cases.

[clean]

How does everyone have "regular and effective contact" for their classes? Do you have regular Zoom/synchronous meetings, for example?

Agree that discussion boards will meet the standards. 

I require students to write 5 original multiple choice questions for each chapter we cover. They are formed into groups and I have a standard survey that each student completes to evaluate the questions their group members wrote.  As part of the evaluation I ask them to nominate the Best Questions from each person. I take those questions, bundle them together and create a practice quiz with them.  (I require that the questions be written in the Respondus Format so that I dont have to reformat the questions first!!)

Otherwise you can post questions and have them participate in the discussion boards. 

[OneMoreYear]

How does everyone have "regular and effective contact" for their classes? Do you have regular Zoom/synchronous meetings, for example?

Agree that discussion boards will meet the standards. 

I require students to write 5 original multiple choice questions for each chapter we cover. They are formed into groups and I have a standard survey that each student completes to evaluate the questions their group members wrote.  As part of the evaluation I ask them to nominate the Best Questions from each person. I take those questions, bundle them together and create a practice quiz with them.  (I require that the questions be written in the Respondus Format so that I dont have to reformat the questions first!!)

Otherwise you can post questions and have them participate in the discussion boards.

Oooh.  I've had students write questions and created a practice quiz from them (and tell them that some of the best questions might end up on the exam with slight alterations), but I've never required the questions are written in Respondus format.  Why did this not occur to me?  I also like the idea of group nominations for the best questions, gives students some ownership of the evaluation process and gives me some insight into the types of questions they think are useful.

[dr_codex]

If you want to "tick the boxes" (akin to taking attendance in a classroom), the easy ways are:

1. Regular announcements. Send them to students' email accounts, too.
2. "Discussion" forums. Set these up with timed openings and closings, so that student can only complete them during the window. Require at least one originating post and one response.
3. Hold regular, optional, video office hours. Announce these (as in #1, above). Address Discussion forums (as in #2, above).

Remember that you can play all kinds of games with timed release of materials, and with "adaptive learning" structures. Arbitrarily revealing the final exam questions on 25 November isn't substantially different from hinting that you'll share the exam topics on the Monday before Thanksgiving in a traditional class ... to students who attend. Think about how you ensure regular and sustained engagement with your courses, and modify them for an online delivery mechanism.

Quiz and feedback is pretty weak tea, unless the feedback is personal and deep.

[clean]

Oooh.  I've had students write questions and created a practice quiz from them (and tell them that some of the best questions might end up on the exam with slight alterations), but I've never required the questions are written in Respondus format.  Why did this not occur to me?  I also like the idea of group nominations for the best questions, gives students some ownership of the evaluation process and gives me some insight into the types of questions they think are useful.

By requiring that THEY write in that format you save hours of time formatting the questions yourself! 

I give them a set of sample questions in that format. I used to spend the first 3 sets of assignments grading them and fixing them for format errors. NOW I tell them that this is the TEMPLATE and suggest that they copy this to Word and then replace the questions and solutions provided with their own.  The template is the same example I have always used, but by actually calling it a template, rather than an example, it works a lot faster.

I also require that they provide feedback to the questions that includes the page number(s) where the answer is and some description of why the right answer is right and the wrong answers are wrong.