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Dr. Philipsen, professor of Communication at UW Seattle, has taught at the University of Washington for more than 30 years and now teaches two online courses — “Introduction to Communication II” (COM 202) and “Cultural Codes in Communication” (COM 484). He sees pros and cons to both the online and face-to-face class formats, but has carefully developed his online courses to cultivate student engagement and learner success.

Benefits for students: “The self-paced format (at least of my courses) provides an alternative pacing that some students find to be helpful. Student time is devoted exclusively to learning rather than transportation to and from campus. I do not see any negatives for students, which is not to say that online courses are equivalent in every way to other formats, only that for some courses this is a perfectly suitable way to learn the material.”

Benefits for the instructor: “Opportunities to earn extra income; to reach students you would not otherwise reach; and to develop courses in a format that is quite focused, in terms of setting out readings, materials, and experiences, without having to adapt to a physical classroom and the presence of people interacting in that space. I am a great fan of meeting face-to-face, but face-to-face also has its downsides, and my online classes eliminate those downsides.”

Is online equivalent to face-to-face? “It depends on the given student and the course material.”

Advice: “I specifically developed my courses so that they would intensify student engagement with the required readings, and this was extremely successful. I did not pay attention to getting students to interact with each other, but rather zeroed in on getting students engaged with the text, and in a very powerful way. However, in each of my two courses, there is one assignment in which the students must interact with other people as part of the course assignment. I would advise faculty initiating online courses to try to develop the ways that facilitate the intensive engagement with text (broadly defined) and not to feel they must use newish technologies, some of which distract from serious engagement with text. I am, of course, a bit of a throwback, but this has worked very well for me — and for my students! At the same time, I do use, to very good effect, some videos, that the students can view at their leisure and, as necessary, re-view.”

Links: Dr. Philipsen’s faculty web site

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Read the full Provost report on how UW faculty are enhancing teaching with technology.

Dr. Jenkins, an assistant professor in the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs at UW Seattle, uses a variety of technology tools, including the Canvas learning management system and portable response systems using ‘clickers’ to enhance her introductory course “Society and the Oceans” (SMEA/SIS/ENVIR 103).

Value of Canvas: Dr. Jenkins says she likes the Gradebook feature of Canvas because “it’s not too complicated.” Her students “know all the time where they are, what their grade is at that point in the quarter. It is super helpful.”

Clickers: “Using clickers is a way of keeping students engaged and making class more active. You can see that when they use them it causes a bit of a reboot, and they get more energy. I also use the clickers for my midterm and final review and that helps students see where they stand with the rest of the class. Also I can see, okay, for this particular lecture, students really don’t have a strong understanding of this concept or that concept, and that tells me I need to dig in more here.”

Flipping the classroom: “I don’t do basic content delivery in my classes. I think that’s really a waste of students’ time. They can sit down and read about and understand definitions and all of those things. The next step is: so what, who cares, and how does this change the way you operate in the world? It’s really just about giving content to the students ahead of class in such a way that they can do higher-level Bloom’s type learning objectives with it and apply that synthesis when they come to class.”

Advice: “Go to workshops! The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) hosts the Large Class Collegium at the beginning of each year. And what’s wonderful is you’re meeting other professors who are using these technologies at UW, and you’re hearing their pros and cons as opposed to the ideal. Because the reality and the ideal are different. People say if you do active learning then all of these fabulous things are going to happen — yes and no, you’re also going to hit roadblocks. So it is good to know in advance what the reality is, and to hear from someone else: how difficult was this, are you glad you did all of these things at the same time, what would you recommend? I think that’s invaluable for deciding which things you want to start with. And then go slowly.”

Links: Dr. Jenkins’ faculty web site

More information on Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Objectives (origin, 1956; revised 2000): “How to Create Course Objectives Using Bloom’s Taxonomy” and “Bloom’s Taxonomy”

First IV: Faculty Institutes for Reforming Science Teaching. Dr. Jenkins has participated in this NSF-supported project, which seeks to reform and transform undergraduate biology education by training postdoctoral scholars in innovative and engaging active learning techniques

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Read the full Provost report on how UW faculty are enhancing teaching with technology.

Ms. Haynie, a statistics lecturer in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences department at UW Tacoma, is teaching the first online math classes at the Tacoma campus, with one section of pre-calculus, and another of section of introductory statistics. She notes, “As most people would agree, math is a tricky subject, and we knew it would be a challenge.”

Keeping students on track: She has been piloting a tool called Persistence Plus, which gives students electronic ‘nudges’ via their mobile device — about due dates, upcoming quizzes and exams, and motivational text messages. She says, “The initial set up was not too difficult.”

Student reactions: “I have only heard positive feedback from students. Many students said they found the reminders about due dates to be extremely helpful, and the other thing they specifically mentioned loving were the motivational texts. It gave them a little boost to study harder, or go find a study group to meet with.”

Access: “With a growing number of military personnel and older students returning to earn a degree, we felt it was critical to offer them a variety of options to fit their schedules and lifestyles.”

Advice: “Just try it! It doesn’t have to be permanent, and if you try it and decide your students don’t benefit from it, then you can scratch it.”

Links: Educause Review online article about the pilot, “Analytics, Nudges, and Learner Persistence”, by Tracey Haynie, Jill Frankfort, Kenneth Salim, and Colleen Carmean

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Read the full Provost report on how UW faculty are enhancing teaching with technology.

Dr. McKinley, an associate professor of Psychology in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences department at UW Tacoma, was a 2012 Tech Fellow and taught “Lifespan Development” (TPSYCH 220) as a hybrid course in 2012. She says: “For me, this was an intermediate step toward learning to do it online” and as of winter quarter 2013, she is teaching the course completely online. She adds that she plans to convert her class “Body Image and the Psychology of Appearance” (TPSYCH 405) to a hybrid course next year.

Benefits for students: “I find it difficult to have any meaningful discussion in a large class; frequently, just a few students participate and the majority are silent. By adding an online component where students worked in small groups (five to six people) to discuss a topic, come up with a position, and write a group position paper together, I believe more students were much more engaged in the discussion.”

Student learning: “My impression was that more students were engaged in discussion. I also thought the papers produced were equivalent or better in quality to papers I get in other classes.”

One successful approach: “I found the FAQ discussion board useful. It meant I didn’t have to answer the same question multiple times by email. It did take some training on my part to get students to post questions rather than email me.“

Why try it? “For me, developing the online course has been very exciting and challenging. I’ve enjoyed learning the technology and thinking about my teaching in new and creative ways.”

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Read the full Provost report on how UW faculty are enhancing teaching with technology.

Dr. Berger, an associate professor in the Science and Technology program at UW Bothell, is the degree coordinator of Bothell’s new Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. The program’s capstone courses (BEE 495 and 496) are partially conducted online and are designed to simulate real-world consulting projects. Dr. Berger uses the meeting software WebEx “to do some teaching online, to give lectures. I use it with several of my capstone teams who cannot come to campus for our regular project status meetings.”

Benefits for students: “In terms of educational outcomes, online has a lot to offer. Particularly, I think, for the non-traditional students. Many of our courses here at Bothell are taught late afternoon, early evening, to accommodate adults. But where we are located (the intersection of SR-522 and I-405) is just a rush hour nightmare. Students are trying to get here from their jobs at the worst possible time of day. So anything we can do to make it easier for them to manage their lives and attend classes has got to be good.”

Student performance: Once when he taught both online and face-to-face sections of a computer architecture course, he was surprised by the results. ”The online students did slightly better overall than the students who were in the classroom with me. I found that to be really depressing!” In the capstone courses, he says, “They go from being a student to an engineer over the course of two quarters.”

Efficiency: “For certain kinds of classes, such as lectures and project status meetings, there’s really no difference between sitting in a room and discussing a project and doing it online. In fact, in some ways online is more convenient. Industry learned this years ago, when airline travel became very expensive and physically taxing.”

Flexibility: He says that when using this technology it’s important “not to have any rigidity, to use it as is appropriate. At different phases of a project, it makes sense to meet in person. Once it’s going, meeting online is quite simple. At the beginning, face-to-face is more effective.”

Advice: “You need people to help faculty bridge from traditional methods to technology, because you can’t do it alone unless you’re really, really savvy. Also, there needs to be a strong commitment from the university to support the effort. Without that commitment, you’re on your own, and you’re the one with the arrows in your back.”

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Read the full Provost report on how UW faculty are enhancing teaching with technology.

Dr. Kelley, an assistant professor in the Urban Studies program at UW Tacoma, has been teaching online for several years and recently started to use the Canvas learning management system.

Value of Canvas: “Canvas has been great. Its analytics are a significant improvement” over other learning management systems.

Online flexibility: “I am not tethered to a particular place or a particular time in order to deliver my curriculum. Using little more than a mobile phone or tablet, I can participate in the class, grade assignments, or troubleshoot via email.”

Benefits for the instructor: “I am able to teach at times that are most suitable to my own rhythms — this means I can get my writing and research done during daytime hours (when collaborators are around, when the library is open, when computer labs are available, etc.). I notice considerably more flexibility in my research schedule.”

Benefits for students: He appreciates “getting to hear students’ voices in a way that is not possible in the face-to-face environment.”

Advice: “Design an explicit and logical schedule” so that students are clear on due dates and expectations. He adds, “Most likely, the first two times you teach a new online course it will be difficult (more work than teaching face-to-face), but after the kinks are worked out, it does get easier and more rewarding.”

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Read the full Provost report on how UW faculty are enhancing teaching with technology.

Dr. Groom is a professor of Ecology and Environmental Studies in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences department at UW Bothell with an adjunct appointment in the UW Seattle Biology department. Six years ago, she began asking her students to create and edit Wikipedia entries and has continued to do so ever since. Why? Students benefited, she says, “Instead of a paper that only one person read and commented on, they could strive to meet standards higher than the typical entry, and have their efforts serve a common good.”

Why Wikipedia? “At that time, assigning students to post or edit entries on Wikipedia was a rare thing to do, but it provided a tangible, real world reinforcement of many principles of good research and writing habits that I, and all my colleagues, try to instill in our students.” These include:

• The importance of careful screening of and attribution for source material used in their synthesis
• Critical evaluation of competing ideas and presentation
• Thoughtful development of an argument and presentation of evidence
• Clear, concise writing

Student reactions: “Students found this an immediate challenge that pushed many to do stronger work than I had typically seen before. It was one thing to do a quick job for a term paper assignment, and another to put it out there for the world to see and judge. In interacting with the world of Wikipedians, many students had to confront challenges about their use of sources, their construction of a summary, or biases that were left unchallenged in their pieces. The larger Wikipedia community had precisely the same principles for what made for a ‘good’ post as we profs did — and these interactions added a layer that spoke far louder than grades and faculty comments on papers.”

Online assignments can help face-to-face class: “I rely on students doing a lot of reading out of class, but I also try to focus their work by giving them questions or tasks to complete before our discussion time in class. Sometimes that is by beginning the discussion online — to get the big ideas and concerns out there, or to share information the students have found before class so we do not spend time reporting, but instead spend our time in analysis and synthesis. Essentially, I am pushing for higherorder thinking in class, supported by the initial work comprehending and organizing ideas out of class.”

Her objective: “Helping students see the value in upping the quality of their work is my goal, and I still find that the very public and open nature of Wikipedia entries helps achieve this goal.”

Students see the value: “Students initially found the Wikipedia assignment intimidating, but I mostly got very positive feedback (including on anonymous evaluation forms). The fact that the assignment has a real-world outcome is most often mentioned, but others mention that it has helped them really understand the value of careful consideration of what makes an appropriate source, or other aspects of creating a sound synthesis of complex ideas.”

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Read the full Provost report on how UW faculty are enhancing teaching with technology.

Dr. Ezeonwu, an assistant professor in Nursing and Health Studies at UW Bothell, taught “Community Health Nursing” (BNURS 409B) as a hybrid course in Summer 2012. It’s a work in progress, she says, “I’m still tweaking it a lot.”

Why hybrid? “I just wanted to do something different. Something exciting, something that’s not the status quo anymore.”

Who are the students? “We do have a lot of non-traditional students. Students that are working a lot, that work full time, that have families. Some of them commute quite a bit.”

Benefits for students: “It’s good for them, but for some of them it’s challenging because some of them are not that computer savvy. It is actually good in a way, on the other hand, because this is exposing them to the realities of life in the 21st century, that you have to get in the ball game. I haven’t seen any negative responses. Students have really loved it. This model of teaching not only supports students’ synthesis of in-class and out-of-class activities through critical thinking, it also increases studentto-student interactions, and encourages full participation by all students.”

Student reactions: “Overall, I’ve seen positive attitudes about it, especially in terms of doing the actual interactions online. Those online components are always very interactive, and students tend to enjoy it, and I enjoy it too, so I think it’s something positive.”

The hybrid format: “It allows me to keep in touch with them while they’re in the field. I’m not with them, but I know what they’re doing.” Dr. Ezeonwu noted that although she still talks to students in the field, additional online communication makes it easier for her to know exactly “what they’re doing and what their difficulties are and some of the challenges that they face. It’s no different from the face-to-face conversations we have in class, but we are doing it online, which makes it fun.”

Online discussions: “Conversation is actually elevated to a much higher level. There are some students that are quiet students in class, that don’t talk much in the classroom; I used to be one of them. But giving them this opportunity to do this online — you go out and discuss your activities, you discuss what you learned out there in the field, and come back and talk about it online — it gives everybody the opportunity to respond. That participation piece is huge for me. And not only that, the way that students are participating is much more solid because the online discussions are asynchronous. In other words, they are thinking. They are doing their homework before they talk online. It gives them a lot of time to be articulate in responding to my questions, as well as to their peers’ questions.”

Advice: “For hybrid you have to be very thoughtful. If you do something that doesn’t work, you lose your students. So you have to be very careful in terms of engagement. You have to find a way to engage that conversation, and the level of engagement will depend on the kinds of questions you pose.”

The power of perseverance: “The first time you try something new, it doesn’t have to be perfect. My course has evolved over the quarters and over the few years I’ve done it, and so has my comfort level. I feel I can do this in my sleep now. So that’s all about trying — you try it, you explore it, you do it, and it goes very well, which is great.”

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Read the full Provost report on how UW faculty are enhancing teaching with technology.

Dr. Grossman, an associate professor in Computer Science & Engineering at UW Seattle, chose to make his first online class a MOOC. “Programming Languages“ is a Coursera adaptation of a course he has taught several times already at UW. Dr. Grossman is also helping coordinate the adaptation of four other courses from UW Computer Science & Engineering to MOOCs, working with instructors and TAs to learn best practices for teaching MOOCs, and for the Coursera platform.

Why a MOOC? “For me, it is largely about being passionate about the course material and how to present it. Given this passion, why would I not want the largest rooftop I can find from which to shout?” More than 65,000 students signed up for “Programming Languages” on Coursera, and 3,500 completed the first two assignments. “I try to compare the impact to what I might have from writing a textbook; the ability to reach learners via videos, assignments, and an online community is exciting. It is an opportunity for UW and for me personally to exhibit educational leadership.”

Educational value of MOOCs: “With so many students, some will have a transformative educational experience, others will learn very little, and most who express some interest will not end up participating. To compare it to a conventional course where students get personal attention, have significant financial investments, and have shared background as part of a coherent curriculum, is difficult. I instead prefer to compare it to writing a textbook. Just as many people touching a book do not read it and those who read it have a wide range of understanding as a result, the learning in MOOCs defies description.”

Student reactions: “Because of the large size of the classes and the physical separation of the students, the sheer amount of (attempted) learning and self-motivation is stunning. In the first day of my course, more people watched my course-introduction video than have ever taken one of my conventional courses.”

How he sees his role: “Like a book author, I am primarily making content available and providing learning opportunities. I do interact on the discussion forum as time allows, but it is often more as a firefighter than as a pedagogue.”

Student learning: “The amount of student learning is difficult to judge, but even if we grant, as others would vigorously contend, that it significantly trails conventional courses, is that the right comparison? What if many of the students spending their evenings participating in my Coursera course are doing so instead of watching reality television or going shopping?”

Advice: “It can be deeply rewarding, but have no illusions. No matter what you do, many students will complain and many more will not finish.”

“It is an enormous amount of work. To continue my favorite analogy, it is perhaps as much work as writing a textbook. Make sure you have a great course and a solid set of materials that will translate reasonably well to an online setting. Start early — months early.”

“Work with TAs who share your passion for the material and for the excitement and novelty of MOOCs. I may be the talking head in the videos getting all the credit, but I have a small but unbelievably fantastic team keeping things afloat.”

Links: Dr. Grossman’s faculty web site

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Read the full Provost report on how UW faculty are enhancing teaching with technology.

Dr. Ackerman, an assistant professor of Social Work at UW Tacoma, was a 2012 UW Tacoma Tech Fellow. She has used Twitter in and out of the classroom to engage students in a broad conversation about criminal justice issues.

Twitter: “Setting up Twitter was the easy part for all. Operating Twitter was a little more difficult for students. I created a ‘how to’ document for them to follow, which seemed to shorten the learning curve. Within a week or two, most students were using Twitter effectively.”

Student reactions: “Student reactions have been mixed. Some students love the instant interaction.”

Benefits for students: “I believe that Twitter enhances student learning. This is especially true when I have invited ‘guest lecturers’ to class via Twitter. I have done this with authors of books, journalists, and other scholars. This allows students to benefit from the reactions of others in the field in real time. Another added benefit occurs when the students ‘tag’ authors of articles and the author responds directly to them.”

Brevity requires focus: “I believe that having to condense one’s thoughts into 140 or so characters provides focus. Some students welcomed this challenge, while others would much prefer the traditional essay.”

Leveraging social media expertise: “Students already know how to use social media, but learning how to do so in a professional and articulate way can only benefit them in the long run!”

Advice to other faculty interesting in using Twitter: “Be patient and have a lot of structure regarding what you want from students.”

Links: How-to document about Twitter Dr. Ackerman created for her students.

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Read the full Provost report on how UW faculty are enhancing teaching with technology.