Engaging and Retaining Online Learners

I was struck this week by Ghazala’s February 8 post about the importance of communication between faculty and students. She goes on to state that “student engagement is a reciprocal product of faculty engagement.” As so many of us know whether through research or by observation, students who are more engaged (more involved academically or socially) are more likely to be retained or to persist. Thus, successful students are engaged students.

I keep coming back to this question about engaging students outside of the formal learning environment of a classroom. On a physical campus students engage with one another in the classroom but also outside of the classroom. They may hang out intentionally (or unintentionally) in a commons are or the library; they may enroll in multiple classes with the same students creating informal learning communities; they may chat in the parking lot. All of those experiences create community. So, how do we create community in the world of online learning? In my current Distance Learning class, I am excited to see the connections my students are making with one another. They are finding common ground in academic interests, career goals, as parents (a new mom is being cheered on by the more-experienced moms), and as workers. But, when a student ends a Blackboard class, that gathering “space” is eventually removed. Where do students hang out and connect informally, as they might on campus, in our online learning environment? How can we develop opportunities for student engagement that are not confined by bricks and mortar?

I for one am ready to learn more about how I can best engage our online learners. I hope you’ll join me on February 23 and 25 from 1:00-2:30 for a two-part webinar on Engaging and Retaining Online Students. The program is facilitated by Karen Betts, a nationally recognized expert on online student learning and engagement, who is an administrator and faculty member at Drexel. We’ll meet in the LTC Auditorium. I hope we’ll learn and discuss together and begin to shape additional opportunities for our students to become engaged learners. You can register to attend the webinar in the Knowledge Center. The title of the session is JSRCC, Engaging and Retaining Online Students-Part 1 and Part 2. Check out the webinar’s website to learn more about the specific topics covered. If these dates do not work for you, the college has purchased the DVDs of the webinar and will re-broadcast at a later date this semester.

-- Meg Buchanan Foster

QEP Assistant Coordinator

Digitally Literate: Another Look at the Millennials

Since Millennials have been immersed in a technology-driven society from birth, they possess the ability to intuitively use technology and navigate the internet (Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005).  In fact, “20 percent began using computers between the ages of 5 and 8.  Virtually all [Millennial] students were using computers by the time they were 16 to 18 years of age” (Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005, p. 2.2).  Due to this immersion into technology from such a young age, many Millennials prefer graphics over text and can transition from the virtual world to the real world almost instantaneously.  This reliance on graphical images is such a predominant characteristic that many Millenials refuse to read large amounts of text “whether it is in the form of a reading assignment or lengthy instructions”  (Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005, p, 2.7). In fact, the average Millennial college learner has spent less than 5,000 hours reading but well over twice that amount playing video games and over 20,000 hours watching television  (Woempner, 2007).  This reliance on images and the virtual world leads some Millennials to be less literate when it comes to text-based information than previous generations of learners. 

The Millennial generation is also more likely to use the internet for research as opposed to a brick and mortar library.  In fact, many of these learners have never used a card catalog, encyclopedia, or dictionary that does not reside in a virtual environment  (Rosen, 2010).  This brings up the issue of being able to discern the credibility of information found on the internet. With the explosion of web resources such as Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers, the Millennials must be taught the proper research and evaluation techniques for an educational environment.  Next week, I will discuss the impact this has on education.

--CJ Bracken

Instructional Designer, JSRCC

Oblinger, D. G., & Oblinger, J. (2005). Is it age or IT: First steps toward understanding the net generation. In D. G. Oblinger, & J. L. Oblinger (Eds.), Educating the net generation (pp. 2.1-2.20). Educause.

Rosen, L. (2010). Welcome to the igeneration. The Education Digest, 75 (8), 8-12.

Woempner, C. (2007). Teaching the next generation. Denver: Mid-continent for Education and Learning.

A Teaching Tip: Good Note-Taking Strategies Increase Retention of Learning

I've been working with my ENG 107 students lately on taking good notes.  Besides the basic hints in their textbook, we also watched, and took notes on, a video from Dartmouth College about taking--and follow-up processing--class notes. Here are my own Cornell-style, or split-page style, notes on that video:  Hibbison Notes.

A Suggestion for Faculty: Besides recommending the video to your students, perhaps as a Blackboard "External Link," I suggest that you ask one or more of your better students for a copy of his or her class notes to show to other students (preferably without the student's name on those notes).

A Shock:  I had my students take notes on the Dartmouth video because it is clearly organized by what to do "before, during, and after" taking class notes.  Out of my three ENG 107 sections, many students noted that arrangement in the preview, but only a handful actually used those headings in order to organize their own notes.  Most students simply listed ideas subordinate to those headings down the left margin with no indentation and no headings.

The Scary Question:  Even if you tell students the basis of organization of your day's ideas, do they use this organization for taking notes or for reviewing?  Obviously, mine don't; but I hope they will now--before they get into your classes.

--Eric Hibbison

Head, JSRCC Reading Program

Cyberized Education: The Six Levels of Change and Why They’re Important

Higher education has become cyberized -- fundamentally dependent on online and other digital technologies the way that it more or less entirely depends on electricity at present.  Education which does not take advantage of digital resources, tools, and delivery modes has already become as outdated as a traditional education would be without books, pencils, and blackboards.

The cyberization of education is happening on several distinctly important levels (see figure below).   On the three more basic levels, digital technologies serve as resources for our lives, our learning, and our education.  On the three more advanced levels, digital technologies serve as a means of delivering formal education -- for information, communication, and enterprise management, for instruction, and for the improvement of teaching and learning.  These six levels can be briefly described as follows:

Showcasing the Oscar-Winning QEP Film

On a listserve that focuses on accreditation issues within the SACS region, an administrator from another institution asked for creative ways to provide information about the QEP with her broader college community. In response, I shared our QEP video that was scripted and produced entirely with our "local talent." As I watched the video again myself, I realized that we have so many new faculty and staff who have joined us recently and who may not know the full scope of our plan. The video provides a great introduction to the College's QEP. If you've already seen it, enjoy watching again the Oscar-winning performances of our local celebrities. Okay, I admit it:  we didn't actually win the Oscar that year, but it was only because we were competing against Avatar.