Distance Education Newsletter

Educators give so much year-round; let's make February, with Valentine's Day at its heart, the month to nurture ourselves for a change. Buy yourself some chocolate! Go watch the sunset at the beach! Give yourself permission to do something just for fun! Then cultivate your professional growth with a fun workshop, stimulating podcast, or fascinating article (see below for some great suggestions).

Please join us in congratulating our outstanding Instructional Designers, Helen Torigoe, Jamie Sickel, and Youxin Zhang for being the recipients of the 2020 UPCEA Strategic Innovation in Online Education Award. This national, highly competitive award is given out by the University Professional and Continuing Education Association that is an American non-profit association for professional, continuing, and online higher education. For more information please consult their website.

The award recognizes an institution of higher education (i.e. campus, system, or consortium) that has, at an institutional level, set and met innovative goals focused on online education and been strategic in the planning, development, implementation and sustainability in line with the institutional mission. Examples include, but are not limited to, authentic institutional online organizational structure, partnership models to achieve specific goals, maximizing resource efficiencies, improving the learning experience for faculty and students, or the use of technology and learning design to advance online education and address institutional goals. The award recognizes an institution (broadly defined) that has achieved excellence and innovation in strategies used to meet goals and objectives focused on online education.

Congratulations Helen, Jamie, and Youxin!

We are excited to announce the brand new VCAA Award for Excellence in Online Teaching. Thank you to Chancellor Pagotto, the Executive Leadership team, and Faculty Senate for working with the DE Committee to create this award. The award recognizes outstanding educators who teach online courses at Kapi‘olani Community College. Recipients are faculty who have taught at least one online class at Kapi‘olani CC and exhibit an extraordinary level of online teaching effectiveness, exceptional course design and creativity, and regular and substantive interaction that benefits students. We now begin the process of forming the award committee consisting of committed online faculty, instructional designers, and online students. If you would like to serve on this committee or know of someone that would be perfect for this role, please contact Nadine Wolff nwolff@hawaii.edu.

Accessibility has 8 critical components, namely Headings, Lists, Hyperlinks, Images, Tables, Colors, Videos, and Audios. From this month we’ll introduce some key considerations for each of these eight elements through a section called ADA Booster in the DE newsletter. Stay tuned.

Headings

Do you know that screen reader users can navigate a page according to its headings by hitting a shortcut key? Using headings to organize your content helps users get a sense of your document’s organization and structure. This is particularly important to screen reader users. A screen reader is a software program used by blind or sight-impaired people to read the text that is displayed on the computer screen with a speech synthesizer or braille display. The most commonly used screen reader programs are JAWS and NVDA (for Wins), Voiceover (for iOS) or Orca (for Linux).

Always apply Headings (Styles) in a digital document so that screen readers can pick them up. Do not just simply use bold, caps, italic or color in place of headings. Heading 1 should be used once per page, usually for page title. Other headings (e.g. H2, H3) can be used multiple times as needed.

Student Resources Folder

Do you encourage your students to embed images in their discussion posts? There is an easier way for students to do it: In Laulima Resources, you can create a special folder with permissions for students to upload their image(s) and embed it into a discussion post.

In the example below, a folder called “Student Resources” was created then its permission was updated to allow students to create resources, read resources, edit own resources, delete own resources, and access/create group resources.

In Forums (or Discussion and Private Messages) students can now click Insert Image, upload to the Student Resources folder, then embed it.

Name: Susan Jaworowski

Department: BLT

What courses do you teach online?

I teach four online courses: LAW 101, the Hawaii Legal System (online starting spring 2008); LAW 141, Intellectual Property (online starting spring 2010); LAW 136, Tort and Insurance Law (online starting summer 2017); and LAW 176, Criminal Law (online starting fall 2017).

How long have you been teaching online and what made you decide to teach online?

I started teaching online at the request of the Chancellor when I was hired as the Legal Education Department Chair in January 2007. He told me that Legal Ed was one of only two departments where no online courses were offered, and indicated that we needed to jump on this option. I said that I would, but at that time I had never even heard of an online course, much less taken one. Over summer 2007, I took a course at the UHM College of Education in educational technology (the program was then known as ETEC, but is now called LTEC) to learn more about online teaching, and I was hooked! I applied for and was accepted into the first ETEC Ph.D. cohort, built the first third of my online LAW 101 course as a class project in the fall 2007, offered it in spring 2008, and never looked back.

What is your favorite part about online teaching?

I love the challenge of revisioning my course content from a beginner’s perspective! In the field of law, there are many preconceptions based on a multitude of TV and movies, many of which are skewed, incomplete, or just plain wrong. My challenge is to recognize what those preconceptions are, help to make them explicit, help students see why those are not true, and then provide a structured, clear, and thorough explanation of the law. While I use some outside resources, I create many videos to personalize general legal concepts for our specific Hawaii laws. Last summer I spent over 100 hours redoing all of my video slide presentations for LAW 101 to refresh the content, update the slide to a personalized template, and create better sound quality with a more professional microphone. My next challenge is to work with Jamie to figure out a way to translate the popular mini-legislature role playing session in my face-to-face LAW 101 course to an online version. There is always something new to think about, and I find that so absorbing.

What is the most challenging part of teaching online?

The most challenging part of teaching online is the sadness I feel when a student stops participating in a course, and I reach out but get no response. I was a pilot in the Starfish program to reach out to students during the semester to keep them informed of how they are doing and to refer them to resources if needed, and I still implement this series of check-ins. Nevertheless, for the students who abruptly drop the course or ghost me, it’s hard not to worry about whether it is something with the course, or my interaction, or my instruction that I could have done differently.

What surprised you about teaching online?

While I started teaching online because of the chancellor’s direction, I really didn’t see how it could take the place of my face to face interaction. Was I ever wrong! I really enjoy the challenge of creating an online community of learners, and connecting them with me and with their fellow students. I use weekly discussion forums to develop critical thinking and analysis, and for three of the four courses, put weekly assignments in the forums tool, so that after students post their own, they can see the work of their classmates. They are very visible to each other. I have started using Flipgrid last semester for introductions and mid-semester retrieval practice, so in addition to sharing thoughts, they can see and hear each other, strengthening their connections. This semester, I heard about interactive syllabi through a wonderful podcast, Teaching in Higher Ed, on the Thursday of duty week, and even though I had already created my syllabus, I literally jumped up and down with the possibilities, dropped the old syllabus, and worked on adapting it for my LAW 101 courses the same day. Students responses so far have been very positive, and I have answered many more questions than I usually would get.

While there is considerable work in offering four different online courses, the upside is that many of my students take more than one and they are so supportive of each other and happy to see each other online. I was tickled when in the Torts class introductory forum, one of my continuing students said to a first time online LAW student, “welcome to the party.” Now that’s the kind of community I am aiming for!

What is your favorite web tool/technology:

My tool would have to be Camtasia! I have had one version after another for over 10 years (starting when it was a PC-only program in 2008 or 2009). I have over 600 videos on YouTube, most of which are either for my four online courses (legal topics need frequent updating!) or instructional videos for students and faculty on Laulima, Taskstream, STAR, and other tech tools. Most of them are unlisted as they are meant for my classes and faculty, but I have some that are open, such as the Laulima series I did with the last major Laulima update which had short individual videos showing students how to use common Laulima tools, including as the Forums, Assignments, and ATS tools. If you want to use any of them, the link is here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSicRfGIuMcDWXM4835Xlzd8I2E3uQZ-3

I love to think about ways to break down and scaffold up the learning through videos and interactive multimedia such as Storyline and interactive games like “Name That Homicide” and “Do I Have A Right?,” how to employ useful metaphors and illustrate them visually, and how to bring in historical content by adding relevant pictures, from the current Supreme Court back to portraits of Marbury and Madison, from Abraham Lincoln’s patent to George Harrison’s estate on Maui.

I find Camtasia so essential to my workflow that I have bought my own version for my home computer, and even with an edu discount, it is not cheap! I know there are other brands of video creation software, but Camtasia is my jam.

Mahalo to Laureen Kodani, our friend and fellow instructional designer at UH Maui College, for sharing out a Zoom guide for students she adapted from Frank Jumawan’s work, UH Mānoa COE! We have adapted it into our own Kapi‘olani CC Zoom Guide for Students. Feel free to share this as is with your students or File > Make a Copy and further adapt it to suit your needs!

What are our students saying about their online classes? In spring 2018, a total of 378 DE students responded to a survey regarding their online learning experience. The results have been summarized in the Online Learner Experience (DE Student Survey Report).

Most survey respondents were female (73%), 20 years or older (87%), and live on O‘ahu (87%). They also work for pay (74%) and provide care for dependents (53%), which explains their top reason for choosing to learn online: “Flexible schedule to fit my work and/or life situation” (81%). Seventy-eight percent had taken an online class prior to the school year that they were surveyed, and 33% said they were enrolled in all online classes at the time of the survey.

The next survey of online learners will be administered in March 2020. We will let you know when the survey goes out so you can encourage your online students to participate.

Congratulations to the UH Online 5-week summer cohort participants from Kapi‘olani CC! They will be participating in a professional development program this summer to support their design and development a 5-week online course. More info.

• Beryl Man Yang

• Donovan Preza

• Duane Seabolt

• Lauren Tamamoto

Since August 2018, Kapiʻolani Community College has implemented ProctorU, a leading online proctoring service adopted by many higher education institutions in the United States. To date, a total of 877 test-takers took 242 exams over a period of 9 terms including summer. This service is particularly helpful for students in F2F classes with online tests and students who cannot make it to campus during Testing Center hours.

You’re cordially invited to join a workshop on Friday, February 7 at 1:00 – 2:30 pm in Lama 116 to learn more about what ProctorU offers, cost of test-taker per exam, and essential steps of ProctorU implementation, such as setting up a ProctorU instructor account, configuring an exam profile in ProctorU system, linking ProctorU to your Laulima course site(s), etc. Please use this Workshop Registration Form to reserve a seat and indicate your tech needs. Hope to see you there.

Note: ProctorU only supports exams that can be delivered online. Please consult with Youxin (youxin@hawaii.edu) if you need assistance in deciding whether your exams can be proctored via ProctorU.

RSI: with increases in online learning offerings, our latest accreditation visits, policy-related press and even our upcoming online course review process, it’s become a bit of a buzz term as of late. But how exactly do we define RSI? Who does it involve? Why is it important, and how do we implement it in a meaningful way? Jamie’s session will tackle these essential questions and present practical strategies for cultivating regular substantive interaction to support student achievement. Mark your calendar for Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14 from 1-2pm in Lama 116 - hope to see you there!

Want to see some of your colleagues’ online or hybrid classes? Maybe you teach online/hybrid, and are interested in hearing about some cool things your colleagues are doing in their online classes. Or maybe you’re curious about teaching online or hybrid, and would like to see how colleagues in your discipline have made the transition from face-to-face to online.

This semester, the SPOTLIGHT Online Learning series will be continuing with its Tour of Online Classes by discipline. Come to our sessions to get a peek into colleagues' online classes, steal some great ideas, and share some of your own.

Friday 2/28/20 at 1:00 - 2:30 pm in Lama 116: Language and ESL Classes

Friday 3/27/20 at 1:00 - 2:30 pm in Lama 116: Health Sciences Classes

Friday 4/24/20 at 1:00 - 2:30 pm in Lama 116: Business, Legal, and Technology Classes

• The Next Big Idea episode: “Success: The Dirty Little Secret about Getting Ahead” (audio: podcast)

Posits that the failures of a meritocracy (based in capitalism) are largely due to the failure of Education to fulfill its democratic promise.

• The Happiness Lab episode 10: “Making the Grade?” (audio: podcast)

Digs into the science behind grades’ impact on intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation. Education’s grading system is undermining our students’ long-term motivation to learn.

• To Shake the Sleeping Self by Jedidiah Jenkins (book)

On the eve of turning 30, terrified of being funneled into a life he didn’t choose, Jedidiah Jenkins quit his dream job and spent 16 months cycling from Oregon to Patagonia. His trip focuses on the question: What makes a life worth living?

• Hackers stole $13,103.91 from me. Learn from my mistakes. Vox (article)

Three simple ways to protect yourself from common hacks.

• Pedagogies of Online Welcome, Faculty Focus (article)

Suggests a few practical techniques for creating a warm and inviting environment in your online classroom, and suggests we engage in a Compassion-driven Scholarship of Online Teaching and Learning (CSoOTL).

• The Future of (Revisited) Online Education, Inside Higher Ed (article)

Specific suggestions for creating and teaching a “robust, engaging, highly-interactive” online class.

• Why the Convenience University Will Rule Higher Ed, Ed Surge (article)

Emphasizes the fact that students expect and appreciate convenience and personalization in their higher ed experience; their choices will continue to reflect this.

• Will Higher Education Roar in the ‘20s? Inside Higher Ed (article)

10 predictions about the future of higher ed in the next decade, including increasing numbers of non-traditional learners, the proliferation of short and stackable certificates/degrees, and tuition adjustments.

• DE Newsletter - Jan 2020

• DE Newsletter - Dec 2019

• DE Newsletter - Nov 2019

• DE Newsletter – Oct 2019

• DE Newsletter – Sep 2019

• DE Newsletter – Aug 2019

• DE Newsletter – May 2019

• DE Newsletter – Apr 2019

• DE Newsletter – Mar 2019

• DE Newsletter – Feb 2019

• DE Newsletter – Jan 2019

• DE Newsletter – Dec 2018

• DE Newsletter – Nov 2018

• DE Newsletter – Oct 2018

• DE Newsletter – Aug 2018