Author: Ana-Paula Correia

Prepare, respond and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic

In an effort to support our colleagues in China to respond and recover from #COVID19 pandemic, the LED research group created a TOOLKIT for Online Teaching and Learning / 线上教学工具箱

PDF available here.

Given the disruption caused by the #coronavirus #COVID19, the LED research group hopes that these expert-curated resources on online learning and teaching may add a sense of normalcy and social interaction for both the online teachers and learners.

TEACHING ONLINE

8 Tips for Teaching Online- Spoiler: It Gets Better with Time
By Bill Schiano & Espen Andersen (March 2019)
It offers eight intuitive but important tips for preparing, maintaining, and teaching online.

Take your teaching online
By the Open University (OpenLearn) free course

Teaching Online Simplified: A Quick Guide for Instructors
By F. D. Yusop & Ana-Paula Correia (2017)
University of Malaya Press, 110 p. ISBN: 978-983-100-948-2
This book intends to serve as a practical guide or “handbook” for those who have limited or no prior knowledge in teaching and/or education but are interested in online teaching or have to teach online.

TRANSITIONING FROM CLASSROOM TO ONLINE TEACHING

Tracing Successful Online Teaching in Higher Education: Voices of Exemplary Online Teachers
By Evrim Baran, Ana-Paula Correia & Ann Thompson (2013)
The findings of this study indicated that when teachers described their successful practices, they often linked them to their changing roles and new representation of their “selves” within an online environment. Their portrayal of the teacher self, both built on a plethora of previous experiences and reformed with the affordances and limitations of the online environment, went through a process whereby teachers were constantly challenged to make themselves heard, known, and felt by their students. This study showed that it was critical to listen to teachers’ voices and give them a participatory role in the creation and use of their knowledge and experience in order to form their online teacher personas. As a result, programs that prepare faculty to teach online may need to encourage teachers to reflect on their past experiences, assumptions, and beliefs toward learning and teaching and transform their perspectives by engaging in pedagogical inquiry and problem solving.

How to Be a Better Online Teacher ADVICE GUIDE
By Flower Darby (2020)
Discusses 10 essential principles and practices to teach online.

CREATING ONLINE ACTIVITIES

Specific Activities to Promote Online Discussions
By Rhonda Dubec (February 2018)
It provides useful teaching strategies to promote students’ online discussion with several video examples and detailed instructions.

20 Collaborative Learning Tips and Strategies for Teachers
by TeachThought Staff (February 3, 2020)
It offers strategies for collaborative learning that can be used in face to face or online class interactions.

Authentic Online Discussions: A Narrative Inquiry into Sharing Leadership and Facilitation Among Teachers and Students
By Ana-Paula Correia, Cara A. North, Ceren Korkmaz, Vicki Simmerman & Karen Bruce Wallace (2019)
International Journal on E-Learning, 18(2), 165-189.
The literature has tended to focus on the instructor’s role in moderation and facilitation while paying less attention to more student-focused strategies that foster meaningful dialogue and engagement on their part. Centering the learner, this study presents an innovative approach for online discussions, examining a case where online students created and facilitated online discussions for a graduate-level course at a Midwestern research university. The study offers reflections from four graduate students, between the ages of 20-55, who took the course over the past two years, and who have analyzed what they gained from creating and facilitating discussion. These students’ reflections foreground how, by participating in this process, they experienced an authentic sense of connectedness and collaboration, as they had the opportunity to bring their perspectives and priorities to the course and take responsibility for their own and their classmates’ success.

Live synchronous web meetings in asynchronous online courses: Reconceptualizing virtual office hours
By P. R. Lowenthal, J. C. Dunlap & C. Snelson (2017)
Online Learning 21(4), 177-194.
This article discusses how to successfully implement online office hours.

Making the Most of Virtual Office Hours
(2019, January 22)
Austin Community College Speech professor Tasha Davis, Ph.D., shares her experience with hosting virtual office hours and ways to maximize your one-on-one time with students.

QUALITY ASSURANCE FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION

Quality Assurance
By The Ohio State University’s Office of Distance Education and eLearning (ODEE) (2020)
To support instructors and academic units in creating high-quality courses, the ODEE instructional design team has developed a set of internal standards that capture university policies, recent scholarship on student success and feedback from Ohio State faculty collaborators.

DESIGN GUIDELINES

The UDL Guidelines
By the Center for Applied Special Technology Universal Design (2020)
Learn about learning guidelines for Universal Design.
Available in Traditional Chinese
Available in Simplified Chinese

ONLINE TEACHING TOOLS & RESOURCES

Online Teaching Tools and Resources
By Yale University Center for Language Study (2020)
This resource contains a list of free tools and resources for language teachers to use in their classrooms.

Live presentation platforms available in China without VPN
网易云信 https://netease.im/livetool
轻课云 http://www.qingkeyun.cn/

For more information

e-Education Research
The Chinese Journal of ICT in Education

Articles in these high-quality Chinese journals explore teachers’ behaviors when teaching online, teachers & learners’ feedback about online courses, strategies to improve learners’ engagement in online learning, teachers & learners’ role in online learning contexts, among other topics.

“It’s Not Just About Research” says Erin Clarke-Dorrell

By Erin Clarke-Dorrell (dorrell.11@osu.edu)

Erin’s goal after finishing her doctoral degree is to obtain a faculty position somewhere in academia. Her work in the LED Research Group is a great resource that has helped her find her voice and learn how to research collaboratively with others. While that is one component of obtaining tenure and working as a professor, there are two other vital components to the role. Teaching and service are crucial in becoming well-rounded in the realm of academics. For Erin, she has always enjoyed providing service and making a difference in her community. So, she decided to jump into service as a Ph.D. student since she is already working on the research part and soon teaching.

Service in academia looks like many different things. Instead of doing things like walking dogs at the local animal shelter, it is serving on a hiring committee or planning college events. Currently, she serves as the co-chair for the Ohio State’s College of Education and Human Ecology’s Department of Educational Studies Equity, Diversity, and Global Engagement (EDGE) Committee. As a committee, their work focuses on supporting and encouraging critical thinking about issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion across the Department of Educational Studies. Right now, she is spearheading an awareness campaign to bring to light ways in which faculty in the department can support their diverse students.

Ohio State’s College of Education and Human Ecology Graduate Student Advisory Council (GSAC).

As Erin said, she enjoys being active, so she also was elected and took on the role of chair of the Ohio State’s College of Education and Human Ecology Graduate Student Advisory Council (GSAC). The Dean, Dr. Pope-Davis, created this council, and its primary function is to support and provide a voice for graduate students across the College. However, they are still trying to navigate how they want to serve the college since the council was just formed this academic year. Additionally, Erin has recently been invited to join the College of Education & Human Ecology first Dean’s Advisory Board. This board is bringing together students, faculty, staff, alumni, donors, community advocates to advise the Dean on important matters to the college.

Overall, in being active on a service level, Erin wants to make a difference and leave Ohio State a better place than when she started. Also, she feels privileged in that she can represent the LED Research Group through her service. Working together, for our future, is what it means to connect service and life in a research group.

Sean Hickey, award-wining learning designer joins the LED research group

Sean Hickey is a doctoral student in Learning Technologies at The Ohio State University. Hickey received his B.S. in Biology from The Ohio State University in 1998. After graduation, he worked as a curriculum developer and program director at the Center of Science and Industry, a science museum in Columbus, Ohio. Hickey later moved on to McGraw-Hill Education, where he developed print and digital instructional materials while simultaneously earning his M.A. in Integrated Teaching and Learning from The Ohio State University.

He currently works at Ohio State’s Center on Education and Training for Employment (CETE) as Lead Curriculum Developer. As part of his role, he facilitates item-writing workshops for statewide career-tech end-of-course tests and industry credentialing exams and develops eLearning materials for teachers and subject-matter experts.

An award-winning instructional designer, he is active in the learning-technologies community and has presented at several conferences related to both EdTech/learning technology and learning and development. Most recently, he has presented at the Future of Educational Technology Conference (FETC), the Ohio Educational Technology Conference (OETC), the eLearning Guild Learning Solutions Conference (LSCon), and OSU’s own Innovate conference, on topics such as assessment strategies, gamification, branching learning scenarios, and inquiry education.

Among his many eLearning projects, Hickey created a software-training game for users of CETE’s WebXam testing system. The game won the “Seasoned Professional” division of Central Ohio ATD’s Look & Learn event. He was also co-creator of an eLearning game about writing multiple-choice test items, called “Multiple-Choice Mayhem,” which was recognized by the Association for Educational Communications & Technology (AECT) as a 2019 Outstanding Digital Learning Artifact and received “Best in Show” at the 2019 Learning Solutions Conference (LSCon) DemoFest.

As part of the research group, Hickey plans to study critical-thinking and non-cognitive skills and how they can be developed or enhanced using technology. He is also currently researching how augmented reality and virtual reality can be used in career-technical education for both training and assessment.

Ana-Paula Correia as invited speaker at Brazilian leading educational research conference

Dr. Correia was the invited speaker for the Special Interest Group in Education & Communication at the 39th Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Educação (ANPEd) annual meeting in Niterói, Brazil on October 23, 2019. More than 4,000 educators, teachers, educational researchers, post-graduate students, and practitioners who are impacting education in Brazil attended this meeting.

Opening Ceremony @AnpedEducacao on October 21, 2019.

Dr. Correia gave a presentation on her research on online learning and teaching. In particular, she explored research and post-graduate education in online formats in the context of the United States. She delivered this invited talk in her first language, Portuguese.

Screenshot of Dr. Correia’s @AnpedEducacao presentation.

Dr. Correia was hosted by Professor Edméa Santos from the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the Chair for the Special Interest Group in Education & Communication. She networked and discussed issues in online learning in higher education that permeate cultures and countries.

Selfie with Professors Edméa Santos and Cristina D’Ávila.

LED research group welcomes Social Media influencer, Fan Xu

The LED research group welcomes Fan Xu this semester. Fan is a graduate from the University of Hong Kong and a first-year doctoral student in Education, specialization in Learning Technologies at The Ohio State University. She loves sharing her life on social media platform and there are 300,000 Chinese people are watching her Vlog.

Fan received her B. S. in Educational Technology from Shanghai Normal University, China in 2017. She then pursued a M.S. in Information Technology in Education at The University of Hong Kong, specializing in Learning Design Technology. She has contributed to the data analysis of several University of Hong Kong Small Private Online Courses by working as a research assistant at Technology-Enriched Learning Initiative. While studying in Hong Kong, she worked as an instructional designer at a local company that focused on e-learning design and development of Mandarin courses for French adult learners. She also designed and developed online training courses by cooperating with local universities and insurance companies. She has a great passion for optimizing e-learning design to engage and motivate adult learners.

After earning her master’s degree, Fan worked at Southern University of Science and Technology in China where she was involved in several academic projects initiated by the International Centre for Higher Education Innovation under the auspices of UNESCO. During that time, she became interested in MOOC design and assessment in higher education contexts, and she is excited about MOOCs teaching potential, particularly in developing countries.

Chenxi Liu, educational TV & Film director joins LED research group

Chenxi Liu is a doctoral student in Education, specializing in Learning Technologies at The Ohio State University. Liu holds a B.A. in Radio and TV Editing and Directing from Zhejiang University of Media and Communications in China, and an M.A. in Curriculum and Teaching from Bowling Green State University.

Liu has worked as a Chinese language teacher, program co-founder, curriculum developer, and instructional designer. She has also worked in the media industry as a TV director and editor in the field of children’s education & development. Her working experience includes local schools, online learning organizations, and TV & Film.

Driven by her work experience and educational background, Liu desires to explore innovative strategies to promote learners’ motivation and engagement and help them to reach their full potential as 21st-century learners. She wishes to fuse research and practice in educational settings. Utilizing data and cognitive science, she aims to design and develop connected digital learning systems that support learners in various educational pursuits.

Liu’s current research interests include online and mobile learning, collaborative learning, learning design and evaluation, learning experience design, educational technology design and production, and learning analytics and modeling.

The project that Liu is currently working on as part of the LED research group aims to explore learning experience design strategies to improve students’ engagement in mobile-computer-supported collaborative learning.

LED Research Group Impact at 2019 InnovateX

The LED Research Group made an impact at InnovateX on May 16, 2019 at the Ohio State University. We gave two sessions at the conference in the Experience and Excite tracks, and presented our ideas to a packed audience of academics, practitioners, and students.

Our first session was “Digital Engagement: What Students Want from Your Online Class?” In this session, Drs. Ana-Paula Correia and Rick Voithofer hosted a panel of current and former students who had taken online courses for the Master of Learning Technologies at the Ohio State University. The panelists include LED members, Karen Bruce Wallace, Erin Clarke, and Cara North, as well as Anna Leach and Robbie McCord. They shared their thoughts on how to make online classes more engaging. They discussed the technologies and teaching methods they preferred, shared recommendations and solutions to help instructors improve their online teaching, and talked about how they applied their learning beyond their online course. Afterwards, they participated in a robust question and answer session, where they fielded a range of challenging questions from the audience.
Panel on Digital Engagement, May 16, 2019 at InnovateX

Panel on Digital Engagement, May 16, 2019 at InnovateX

Our second session was “Creating Interactive Learning Experiences.” In it, Cara North, incoming LED member Sean Hickey, and Karen Bruce Wallace explored the importance of choice in learning. They examined how choice could improve learners’ engagement, covered principles of using choice in learning, and offered a range of applications in the form of interactive demos. The demos included adventures built in Camtasia and Storyline, Keynote, and Twine.

Creating Interactive Learning Experiences, May 16, 2019 at InnovateX

In addition, the three presenters structured the session around the idea of choice. The audience could choose from whom they wanted to hear, what topics they wanted to be explored, and help to navigate the demos. That way, the audience could experience the power of choice for themselves.

LED had a fantastic time at InnovateX, and hope to return next year!

Dr. Correia presents at the 2019 American Educational Research Association annual meeting

Dr. Ana-Paula Correia presented two papers at the 2019 American Educational Research Association annual meeting, which took place on 5-9 April in Toronto, Canada.

In the first paper “Examining Online Learning Experiences in Collectivist Cultures through the Community of Inquiry Framework,” Dr. Correia extended the existing research on the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework. Traditionally, studies have applied the CoI framework within North American online learning environments, which tend to have students from individualist cultures. Dr. Correia considered how CoI applied to collectivist cultures, such as Portugal, Brazil, Chile, and Costa Rica. She discovered that high percentages of agreement for social, teaching, and cognitive presence resulted in a significant level of student engagement in online learning within these cultures. She also observed that the members of the community felt a need for additional ways to show affection and care towards the other people within it.

Session promo flyer

In the second paper “Investigating Students’ Perceptions of Educational Technology Use in College Teaching”, Dr. Correia and her co-author Dr. Karly Good drew on a large set of institutional data to understand how college students’ perceptions of educational technology related to other key instructional elements. In particular, they examined the relationship between educational technology use and important elements such as teaching methods, progress on learning objectives, and course features. Their study showed that an increase in the use of educational technology corresponds to an increase in effective teaching methods and higher scores on the overall quality of the teaching and the course offered. These results are exciting, because they can help universities and colleges to offer more timely and targeted faculty development, based on data-driven decision-making.

In addition, Dr. Correia hosted the AERA Special Interest Group Online Learning and Teaching Business meeting, and shared her vision for the SIG as the incoming Chair as she interacted with members and guests. She will continue contributing to AERA as SIG chair, presenter and reviewer. Her extensive national and international leadership in educational technology adds much value to the SIG and the association.

Colleagues and friends at 2019 AERA annual meeting

References:

Correia, A.-P. (2019). Examining Online Learning Experiences in Collectivist Cultures through the Community of Inquiry Framework. Presented at American Educational Research Association 2019 Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada, April 5-9, 2019.

Correia, A.-P., & Good, K. (2019). Investigating Students’ Perceptions of Educational Technology Use in College Teaching. Presented at American Educational Research Association 2019 Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada, April 5-9, 2019.

North and Hickey Win National Award in Instructional Design

Cara North and Sean Hickey received the “Best in Show” award for their eLearning game entitled Multiple-Choice Mayhem at the Learning Solutions conference in March 2019.

Multiple-Choice Mayhem teaches the user how to identify common item-writing flaws that make the answer apparent or allows a test-taker to easily eliminate several choices. This eLearning game was designed to prepare subject-matter experts for creating more effective multiple-choice assessments. Hickey and North created the game while working collaboratively at the Center on Education and Training for Employment and after realizing the existing teaching tools were not effective and contained information that was outdated.

Designed in the style of a 1970’s television game show, Multiple-Choice Mayhem presents users with 7 multiple-choice trivia questions. Users may miss one or two but will generally find the questions easy. After answering the questions, the user will then learn through a brief animation and explanation of why the item was easy to answer. Hickey and North designed the game to have the player to learn the consequences of bad item-writing firsthand to help them recognize the value of following item-writing standards and to avoid pitfalls. Since its launch in September 2017, Multiple-Choice Mayhem has been viewed and played by more than 600 people.

“Best in Show” award at the Learning Solutions conference, March 2019.

The Learning Solutions conference is an annual conference from the eLearning Guild, a professional organization for those in the field of learning and development. More than 1,500 human resources, learning and development, training, and eLearning professionals from more than 15 countries attend the three-day conference to get practical learning and training content they can take home and apply immediately.

The last evening of Learning Solutions is DemoFest, a showcase of attendees’ best eLearning, video, and training programs. A month prior to the event, attendees must apply to participate. For 2019, 40 products were selected to participate in categories that included Academic, Alternative, Blended Learning, Business Process, Game-Based Training, Immersive/Simulation, and Video. Conference participants attend DemoFest and vote for the best demos. One “Best in Show” award is given to each of the eLearning vendor demo and the non-vendor attendee demo with the most votes. In addition, the highest vote earner in each category is given an award for that category. Multiple-Choice Mayhem won “Best in Show” (non-vendor) as part of DemoFest.

Congratulations Cara and Sean!

Learning Solutions conference, March 2019.

Ohio State’s Innovate, here we go again…

Last year LED research group led a 45-min session on “Shifting the Balance: Engaging Students as Collaborators in Online Course Redesign” at 2018 Innovate that attracted more than 100 participants who engaged in collaborative design activities.

During this January writing retreat, LED research group members worked diligently on creating different session ideas for InnovateX, the Ohio State’s annual conference in online learning and teaching. The Request for Proposals is now open and asks for new ways to excite students about learning, explore teaching opportunities outside the classroom and delve into the student experience.

Hurry, the deadline is January 25, 2019!

LED writing retreat, January 18, 2019.