Email expectations

Every time I go to conferences or open the Higher Education Chronicle, I see something about how students have unreasonable expectations for faculty responding to emails. And in pre-semester workshops, I keep hearing that "students these days expect an immediate response." Personally, I have not experienced this, but there are enough people talking about it that there must be some element of perceived truth to it.

Actually, my students have always been quite respectful of my time. If anything, I wish students would email me more frequently. I wonder what the difference between me and my students and other instructors and their students is... could it be the age of the students involved? I have some younger students, but by and large they are well into their 20s at the very youngest. It could also be the fact that I teach primarily graduate classes. Or maybe my responses are so lengthy that students are afraid to get me started!

What do you think? Do instructors have a responsibility to answer all emails immediately? What is an appropriate amount of time to allow to pass before re-emailing? How will you handle students who are attached to the Internet 12 hours/day and expect you to be "always on" and hyper-responsive to their messages?

Twitter

So I started using Twitter last week. It's pretty interesting, but I usually forget to update frequently and remember only once in a while. Hopefully, I'll get better. One cool thing is that you can text your messages into twitter. You can follow what I'm doing if you like and see what it's like to be an overworked nurse educator.

Strange Stats

I started messing with stats on the survey. There aren't enough retests yet to look at test-retest reliability (best to have at least 25, preferably 30)but I ran some other statistical analyses instead. Cronbach's Alpha was .150 for initial reliability analysis of the scale as a whole (we want as get up to .6 or above if possible), and even factor analysis didn't identify any underlying dimensions.

I was puzzled.

So, I looked at the instrument and picked apart the items that were generally positive statements about online learning, then ran a reliability analysis on those: 0.78! Pretty good. The same test on the other items -those that were generally positive statements about face to face learning- yielded a 0.82. Wow. So there are essentially two scales (instruments, essentially) combined into one instrument. But why didn't factor analysis pick these up? That's what factor analysis is for: Determining which, if any, items on a test tend to hang together in terms of responses, or in other words, seeing which items people tend to answer similarly.

Well evidently, these two have a dichotomous relationship. Respondents that score the generally positive online statements favorably tend to answer the generally positive face-to-face statements negatively. Now, believe it or not, that's not in line with the current thinking about online and face-to-face learning. We do not tend to think about people as "online people" and "face-to-face people." Interesting, isn't it? I'll have to start looking at demographics at some point and see if there are any key hinges upon which responses swing one way or the other.

What are your thoughts thus far?

Test-Retest Reliability, Round Two

Ready for Round Two? Here is the link to the retest: Survey - Part Two.

While you're taking this second survey, do not actively try to remember the answer you selected for the first survey. That will just cause false positive reliability ratings. The idea here is to simply answer the questions on the survey as you feel are appropriate. Then, I'll compare answers from the first survey to the second survey to determine if the instrument measures what it purports to measure consistently.

If you missed the first one, but would still like to participate, you can find and complete original survey here. The originally survey will now automatically link to the retest when you complete.

Thanks again for the help!

Happy Fourth of July!

I hope everyone is having a pleasant independence day!

General Feedback for Module One

I haven't got everything graded, but I did finish enough to provide some general feedback to the class. First, I'd like to give all of the groups a pat on the back for some excellent group discussion essays. They were all good, and each made at least one unique point. Well done! It's hard to say much about the group project discussions yet, as there's not much there, but the ideas that are forming up look fascinating. I'm really looking forward to seeing these develop in the next two modules. Discussion was good as well! Normally, the first module is fairly poor discussion-wise, but I've got to hand it to the class: With almost 50 people engaging in simultaneous discussions, you managed to ask, explore, and answer questions wonderfully. Keep up the good work!

That said, a few students didn't seem to completely understand the discussion requirements, but again, that's normal. It takes a while to figure out where to post and what sort of expectations each instructor has, and that's OK. To make sure that you get a fair start in the class, I will be adding two points to your M1 individual discussion grades (up to 8, max). I'll leave the existing grades up so you can see how you did and adjust accordingly, but when I grade Module Two I'll add up to two points each.

Also, I think some clarification about the different forums in the course is in order. Usually, we'd spread these out over different online technologies, but when you put them all together it gets a bit hard to follow. So, here goes:

• The general discussion forum is for general topics that don't fit into the various assignments. Normally, I start posting some questions in the beginning of Module Two, but I've noticed that the questions and topics the class are asking and discussing are quite excellent. If that continues, I'm happy to let students drive the general discussion forum and will not need to add significantly to the topics. No matter who starts the conversation, you should engage in some of the discussions there. They are quite good. (Note: I opened a new general discussion forum in order to relieve congestion on the first one. You can still use both forums, but please start new topics on the new M2 general discussion forum.)
  
• Assigned group discussion question forums are for posting and discussion your responses to the group discussion questions in each module. Each group constructs their own answers, submits and essay, and then we all read and discuss. Ideally, we will be able to identify some themes that emerge across groups.
• Assigned group instructional design project forums are for posting drafts of your group's project for review by your peers.
• The individual group forums (i.e., Texas Four Step) are there simply to help the groups communicate and share. In a longer semester, I would have required them to find their own place to do this outside of Bb, but in the short summer session I felt your time was better spent otherwise. These forums are not graded at all. Drafts of group work for review should be placed in the module GIDP forums. These individual group forums are just for ease of communication.
• The Help! and Faculty Lounge forums seem to be well understood. Nice work on helping each other out with your tech (and gardening) problems.
  

About grading, please note that your individual discussion grade for each module combines discussion from several places: The general discussion forum, the Help! forum, and peer review/discussion activities on the assigned group forums. Your group discussion question grade comes solely from the essay that your group creates, and your group ID project grade comes from the work that you submit for those assignments. The individual discussion grade comes entirely from individual discussion - it is the only part of the grade in this class that is not tied to your group work.

You may have noticed that I haven't provided a whole lot of instructions on exactly how your final project should look, nor have I given you a template to follow or an example from a previous class. I have not provided instruction re: the form that your projects take because you don't need it! Teaching is a creative process: More often than not, you won't have any models (no good ones, anyhow) to follow when you're trying to create a lesson, a program, etc. Use the technologies at your disposal to design a unit of instruction and you'll be well prepared to do so with your students in the future. Of couse, if you have some questions about how to put things together, feel free to contact me. I'm sure your peers will also provide some excellent advice in their feedback to you as well.

Again, 5263, nice job!

Grading

I am commencing with grading of Module One. With over 1500 discussion posts, this is going to take some time. I will get it done this week, but please don't panic if you see some low numbers in the gradebook over the next few days! After I finish, I'll also provide some general feedback to the class here. For those who are worried -for whatever reason- know that I tend to be somewhat relaxed about grading the first modules/timelines in online courses. Everybody needs time to learn what each instructor expects and I understand that. :)