{"id":12909,"date":"2019-08-06T08:07:56","date_gmt":"2019-08-06T15:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/?p=12909"},"modified":"2019-08-06T08:07:56","modified_gmt":"2019-08-06T15:07:56","slug":"how-to-design-online-courses-that-are-full-of-surprises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/2019\/08\/06\/how-to-design-online-courses-that-are-full-of-surprises\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Design Online Courses that Are Full of Surprises"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Wolf<\/p>\n

This article is part of the guide\u00a0Toward Better Teaching: Office Hours With Bonni Stachowiak<\/a>\u00a0and was originally posted on EdSurge. The following is the latest installment of the\u00a0Toward Better Teaching advice column<\/a>. You can pose a question for a future column\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Dear Bonni,<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAny suggestions for \u2018mixing it up\u2019 in asynchronous online courses?\u201d
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2014An online educator<\/strong><\/p>\n

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It is a paradox. In our teaching, we want to be consistent enough so students can easily navigate our courses and not be confused about where to find things. On the other hand, we want to surprise students and ignite their curiosity.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

One way to approach a desire to change things up in our teaching is through creating what are called \u2018times for telling.\u2019 I was first introduced to this idea from\u00a0Derek Bruff<\/a>, director of the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University and author of the forthcoming book,\u00a0Intentional Tech: Principles to Guide the Use of Educational Technology in College Teaching<\/a>. On\u00a0Episode 71 of the Teaching in Higher Ed<\/a> podcast, he stressed the importance of getting the students curious about something before expecting them to digest what might be perceived as the less-interesting parts of the explanation. As Bruff said: \u201cStudents first need to encounter a problem, or a challenge, or something mysterious\u2026 and then that provides them with the motivation to hear the 15-minute explanation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bruff took his inspiration from a 1998 article by Schwartz and Bransford called \u201cA time for telling\u2019<\/a>. When teaching online classes, it is all the more vital that we set the stage up front for why what we are about to share is relevant and interesting. Starting with questions instead of answers is one way to do that. The goal is to evoke emotions and get learners thinking. How did that happen? How does it align with or contradict my existing perceptions? Did I just see what I think I just saw?<\/p>\n

Unexpected Videos<\/h2>\n

When curating videos for students to watch, or when creating your own, the goal is to find ones that are unexpected. All too often, when we watch videos designed for online classes, we anticipate that we will see what we usually see. There will be a slide deck, with around five bullets per slide and someone talking over them. We may or may not see a face to accompany the voice. Either way, the person will be taking the content and themselves very seriously and will maintain a methodical cadence throughout.<\/p>\n

Another option for videos is to change things up and have your students create them. Smartphones offer a whole universe of possibilities for video creation. One option is to use a service called\u00a0FlipGrid<\/a>. Pose a question on\u00a0FlipGrid<\/a>\u00a0and then invite students to participate in the discussion by filming a brief video of themselves with their phone or webcam. This makes it possible to have class discussions where each participant sends in their comments whenever they have time, but where everyone can see and hear each other.<\/p>\n

Changing Up Note-Taking<\/h2>\n

Instead of leaving students to take notes individually, you can invite them to participate in some group annotating.\u00a0Hypothesis<\/a>\u00a0is the service that I use, both for my personal note-taking, and for having students collaborate by highlighting passages of a text and note-taking together.\u00a0Hypothesis<\/a> essentially creates another layer on top of any web page being viewed in a browser. Most of the time,\u00a0Hypothesis<\/a>\u00a0is tucked away as an extension (a button) on my internet browser. When I am ready to take some notes for my own records, or to engage with others in annotating, I press the button and use a set of tools off on the right-hand side of my browser to make comments.<\/p>\n

Most of the time, I use\u00a0Hypothesis<\/a>\u00a0for straight text notes when I want to share my ideas about a site with another person. However, you can include other rich media\u2014including videos, pictures and links\u2014that really brings the conversation to life beyond what words may be able to do in a given context.<\/p>\n

Next Steps<\/h2>\n

To recap, here are three ways to mix things up in online classes:<\/p>\n

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  1. Start with times for telling and ignite the curiosity of your students (give them the why), prior to providing them with longer explanations (the how).<\/li>\n
  2. Use\u00a0FlipGrid<\/a>\u00a0or other video services to invite students to become content creators, instead of mere consumers of content.<\/li>\n
  3. Try\u00a0Hypothesis<\/a>\u00a0or other social annotation tools so that students can discuss class reading material in community, instead of the usual way of each student making notes that only they can see.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The goal is to offer a sense of the unexpected in our teaching, while still maintaining consistency around how the class is set up and what is expected from the students.<\/p>\n

    One fun example I will leave you with comes from\u00a0Alan Levine<\/a>\u00a0(aka\u00a0CogDog<\/a>), an independent educational technologist. Levine teaches a course called networked narratives (#netnarr). He establishes what he calls\u00a0spines<\/a>, or the skeletal framework of the course. Each week largely follows a similar structure. Levine sends out a blog post each week, to let the students know what is coming. They are also warned that blogging will be a big part of them engaging in the class.<\/p>\n

    However, every week has a series of surprises. It might be an unexpected guest who joins in one of the virtual studio tours he leads. Or it might be a special project, such as creating a gif or sharing their work in a digital art exhibit. My favorite element of surprise on the networked narratives website is the hamburger menu (three horizontal lines stacked on top of each other in the upper right-hand corner) with the label: \u201cdo not click.\u201d The curious learner will be met by a number of surprises, if they push past any rule-following tendencies and see the trail of fun left behind by Levine. He offers further reading, links to non-essential resources and even a joke for people who listened to him on an episode of Teaching in Higher Ed, when I complimented him on this serendipitous opportunity to explore.<\/p>\n

    I am appreciative of the example that Levine provides to us of how to really mix things up in our online teaching.<\/p>\n

    Photo by Scott Walsh on Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This article is part of the guide\u00a0Toward Better Teaching: Office Hours With Bonni Stachowiak\u00a0and was originally posted on EdSurge. The following is the latest installment of the\u00a0Toward Better Teaching advice column. You can pose a question for a future column\u00a0here. Dear Bonni, \u201cAny suggestions for \u2018mixing it up\u2019 in asynchronous online courses?\u201d \u2014An online educator […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"coauthors":[195],"class_list":{"0":"post-12909","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-teaching","8":"entry","9":"gs-1","10":"gs-odd","11":"gs-even","12":"gs-featured-content-entry"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12909"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=12909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}