Online Class Format

[the_geneticist]

I've had great success with having students design experiments one week, we film their set up, and give them the video of their results the next lab.

So do the TAs perform the labs, according to the students' designs? If so, how many students do you have?

Frequency of tasks in online courses seems to matter:

https://activelearningps.com/2021/02/10/comparing-the-performance-of-on-campus-and-online-students-in-an-accidental-experiment/.

If I read it correctly, attending class matters for in-person classes more than task submission, but task submission matters more than class attendance for online students. It's very interesting.

Actually, I set up the experiments.  I've done this with up to 24 lab sections.  I limit each class to one design per section.  Having other folks, like TAs or prep staff, set up the experiments is also a great idea.

[marshwiggle]

I've had great success with having students design experiments one week, we film their set up, and give them the video of their results the next lab.

So do the TAs perform the labs, according to the students' designs? If so, how many students do you have?

Frequency of tasks in online courses seems to matter:

https://activelearningps.com/2021/02/10/comparing-the-performance-of-on-campus-and-online-students-in-an-accidental-experiment/.

If I read it correctly, attending class matters for in-person classes more than task submission, but task submission matters more than class attendance for online students. It's very interesting.

Actually, I set up the experiments.  I've done this with up to 24 lab sections.  I limit each class to one design per section.  Having other folks, like TAs or prep staff, set up the experiments is also a great idea.

Interesting. I've been talking with our VP of Teaching and Learning about lab adaptations for covid, so I'm curious to hear what others are doing.

[the_geneticist]

I've had great success with having students design experiments one week, we film their set up, and give them the video of their results the next lab.

So do the TAs perform the labs, according to the students' designs? If so, how many students do you have?

Frequency of tasks in online courses seems to matter:

https://activelearningps.com/2021/02/10/comparing-the-performance-of-on-campus-and-online-students-in-an-accidental-experiment/.

If I read it correctly, attending class matters for in-person classes more than task submission, but task submission matters more than class attendance for online students. It's very interesting.

Actually, I set up the experiments.  I've done this with up to 24 lab sections.  I limit each class to one design per section.  Having other folks, like TAs or prep staff, set up the experiments is also a great idea.

Interesting. I've been talking with our VP of Teaching and Learning about lab adaptations for covid, so I'm curious to hear what others are doing.

My videos are either "kitchen science" like dissolving table salt in water or putting flowers in food dye.  The students tell me what they want for the set up (stir or not stir? water temperature? etc.).  I also use "choice chambers" to have students investigate animal behavior in pill bugs.  I get the pill bugs from my compost pile, but you can also order them from a bio supply company.
I have colleagues who will have students design PCR primers, set up the reactions for them, and send them images of their agarose gels.   That does require access to campus and a supply budget.
We don't' have the budget for lab kits, but I know that some folks are using that option.

[reverist]

Just to comment on the discussion boards, as I design online courses for a living (a meager one, but still):

I have had success by placing a small number of students "in charge" of a discussion each week (e.g., a class of 25 students and five boards total will have five students leading the discussion each week). The leaders respond to the main prompt early in the week (I set a deadline for them). The non-leaders need to reply to at least one of the main prompts by another deadline. The leaders must respond to every reply made to their initial post up to a certain time (I don't require them to stay up until 11:59pm on the last day). The non-leaders must make three posts--they can all be to one leader, or to multiple.

The actual results aren't perfect, but I tend to get conversations between the leaders and non-leaders that are at least three somewhat substantive posts deep: the leader's post, student's reply, leader's response. It's a lot of work for monitoring purposes, but they have largely had the best conversations compared to other sections where I don't do this.

[Charlotte]

Just to comment on the discussion boards, as I design online courses for a living (a meager one, but still):

I have had success by placing a small number of students "in charge" of a discussion each week (e.g., a class of 25 students and five boards total will have five students leading the discussion each week). The leaders respond to the main prompt early in the week (I set a deadline for them). The non-leaders need to reply to at least one of the main prompts by another deadline. The leaders must respond to every reply made to their initial post up to a certain time (I don't require them to stay up until 11:59pm on the last day). The non-leaders must make three posts--they can all be to one leader, or to multiple.

The actual results aren't perfect, but I tend to get conversations between the leaders and non-leaders that are at least three somewhat substantive posts deep: the leader's post, student's reply, leader's response. It's a lot of work for monitoring purposes, but they have largely had the best conversations compared to other sections where I don't do this.

This is an interesting idea! Do you have students getting confused over what they are suppose to do?
How does this work on the grading side? Does everyone get the same number of potential points or do leaders get more? What happens if one or more of the leaders do not complete their part?
Do you tend to have positive responses from students who have this format?

[reverist]

This is an interesting idea! Do you have students getting confused over what they are suppose to do?
How does this work on the grading side? Does everyone get the same number of potential points or do leaders get more? What happens if one or more of the leaders do not complete their part?
Do you tend to have positive responses from students who have this format?

What I neglected to say is that I contact the five in the prior week (it wouldn't be very good to spring it on them a day or so before they have to write!), and in my weekly announcements I let the students know if they haven't been contacted to be the leader (this info is also available on every forum), they are to do the three posts in reply. It seems to go fairly well!

The assignment is out of 100. The non-leaders are easy to grade: first post 34, other two 33 each. The leaders are less objective, but they respond to each main response to them before Friday. If they did what they needed to do substantively, I am happy to give them 100 as well.

In cases where they did not respond to all posts, I noticed a potential problem: not every person received the same number of posts responding to them. Obviously I cannot simply say "Well you [Student A] missed 4 posts and Jim missed 2, so you're getting fewer points," when Jim only had two posts and Student A had 10. So I grade it proportionally. I have only had one leader miss doing anything at all once, and gave them a zero.

From a prof's perspective, I have shared this process and a lot of them seem interested but do not do it. This is because it is admittedly a solid amount of work (no autograding here). The students' responses to me have been uniformly positive: a student only leads one forum, and it is harder. But their conversations are better, and every other forum they are a student who writes three posts. Most conversations far exceed the sections where I don't do this. It's worth the work for me, but I get it's not for everyone. But it is thus far the only way I have come across where I get fairly consistent good results.

I got the basic idea from The Online Teaching Survival Guide, by Judith V. Boettcher and Rita-Marie Conrad, where they recommend student ownership of discussions. I only post to keep things on track or to connect two students whose ideas would be especially interesting to see for interaction purposes.

[Morden]

I liked the Online Teaching Survival Guide and do something very similar to Reverist with the discussion boards now. Instead of points, I assign a letter grade to the leaders for that week--I make the leaders submit a self-assessment using a rubric (categories like timeliness, thoughtfulness, & contribution to learning community) & saying what they could do better the next time. It's relatively fast to check what they did with what they said they did. Those participating get a letter grade at the end based on how many times they posted (adjusted for substantive/nonsubstantive).

[Golazo]

I have tried something completely different and it has worked well for me--for each of the four modules, 1/4th of the class must write an essay and post this a week prior to the discussion (public, on a wiki type setup). I have about 25 students. Then we have a synchronous Zoom breakout session (3x 7 or 8 and sometimes one on ones due to scheduling and discuss the essays together. After this everyone posts reflections. This has worked quite well for engagement, but obviously organizing the meetings takes some legwork on my part.