The Distance Teaching and Learning Conference held in Madison, Wisconsin, has been running for 32 years and is the largest and longest-running distance education conference in the USA.
I’m writing this blog from Frank Lloyd Wright’s gorgeous Monona Terrace after 3 full days of #UWdtl keynotes, presentations, demo booths, ePosters, and discussions. I was one of 4 Canadians who attended and presented to a room of 45 people about the online STEM/Math work we’ve been doing at Waterloo.
It will take me some time to fully digest everything from the conference, but here are 6 takeaways that immediately stood out.
1. Most instructional design models are some derivation of ADDIE (analyze, design, develop, implement, and evaluate), but ADDIE’s applicability to digital environments has been under scrutiny for some time. Other instructional design models are emerging, such as Allen’s Successive Approximation Model (SAM), shown below, and McKenney and Reeves’ problem-focused Education Design Research (EDR). Their books are referenced below and I now have two new books on my Amazon wish list!
2. Learning analytics are becoming more prevalent and the potential to better understand our learners with concrete data is awesome. Learning analytics happens at three levels and each level involves both understanding what’s happening and sharing the information with students in a way that’s useful for them. Here are the levels:
- what students are doing today/have been doing in the past,
- where students are likely going (using predictive modelling), and
- where students have the potential to go/what is their optimal path.
Unfortunately, nobody at the conference had concrete examples about implementing levels 2 and 3 in any great depth, but I enjoy thinking about analytics in these three parts.
3. Some institutions spend a lot of money on remote proctoring services like Examity. Math or other courses that can’t easily require students to complete their timed work electronically are trying out things like requiring students to position their web cameras downwards towards their papers and hands. Unsurprisingly, privacy issues are surfacing. For example, same -sex options are now required at some institutions after female students reported being uncomfortable having unknown male proctors watching them work in their bedrooms.
4. You’re more likely to get buy-in for new initiatives if you start small. People are almost always willing to let you pilot something, and pilots can quickly and easily turn into beta versions. If a beta version works out for a project, it’s almost always seamless to fully implement (and find funding for) it. This path is much more efficient than trying to find approval for or fund something “big”.
5. Hooks are necessary: courses and classes should start with stories, problem questions, or other “hooks” instead of a bulleted list of outcomes. Similarly, rather than nicely wrapping up a class, they should end with another “hook” to get students thinking about the next class. Cognitive psychologists refer to this process as an open-loop.
6. Wisconsin’s recently launched Online Teaching Experiences site has been very well received and their site analytics reveal that the most popular part of their site is the instructor videos. I wonder if, in addition to our Instructor Community of Practice, CEL should investigate/create (digital) resources and videos for our fully online instructors. Would this kind of resource be valuable at Waterloo? I’d love to hear our online instructors thoughts about this (so please email me your thoughts – tonya.elliott@uwaterloo.ca).
References and resources
- Monona Terrace image retrieved from http://www.mononaterrace.com/
- Image of SAM model retrieved from http://content.alleninteractions.com/hs-fs/hub/55048/file-602597552-png/SAM-1.png?t=1471054493333&width=1962
- Tony Bates – Is the ADDIE model appropriate for teaching in a digital age? , Sept. 9, 2014
- Jack Gordon and Ron Zemke – The Attack on ISD , April, 2000
- Allen, Michael. (2012) Leaving ADDIE for SAM: An Agile Model for Developing the Best Learning Experiences. Alexandria, VA: ASTD Press.
- McKenney, S., & Reeves, T. C. (2012). Conducting educational design research. London: Routledge.
