My name is Nancy Swenson From the UCF Center For Distributed Learning, and I would like to
welcome you to: Writing a Compellitive---Goodness, Compelling Narrative," part of UCF's Dziuban Award
Workshop Series.
Our Intention in each of these 30-minute workshops is to provide a brief overview of
a topic relevant to applying for the 2018 Chuck Dziuban Award for Excellence in Online Teaching.
I would like to acknowledge the participants on site with us here in our Center for Distributed
Learning offices, as well as those participating online via YouTube live.
Our online participants are in good hands with Kathleen Bestito and I, as online moderators,
and Jonathan Pizzo and Arianna Davis ensuring technical quality.
If you have any questions during the session, please place them in the online chat window
or hold them until the end if you are participating online.
We have reserved time at the end of the session for questions, and the online---
---The face-to-face audience, I'll be coming around with a mic for the purposes of recording
all the questions in the recording, for recording purposes.
Please join us today in welcoming Dr. Alisha Janowsky and Dr. Beatriz Reyes-Foster, thank you.
Hello. Oh, well thank you, thank you.
No, no. It's too kind, it's too kind.
Thank you very much for joining us live or if you are online, welcome to you as well.
My name is Alisha Janowsky, I'm in the Psychology department and I am here with---
Beatriz Reyes-Foster in the department of Anthropology.
And we're excited to be presenting the 3rd in the 4 part video series to help everybody
get ready to apply for the Dziuban award, hopefully you're all actively working on that
as we speak, and by that I mean teaching Summer B.
So, couple of maintenance things first.
OK, so just to recap, the eligibility for this award is---the award is basically full-time
faculty of any rank.
You have to be the original creator of the course.
You have to have a quality designation, and so if you don't have quality designation
in your course, we suggest you get that process going today if possible, because it
will take some time.
Now, you so have to have either received or have started the process of the high-quality
designation, and there's been some delays at the state level, which is why there's
a little bit of flexibility as long as you have requested and started the process
for high-quality, your application will be considered.
You have to have taught at least one online class within the past year and not have received
the award in the last 3 years.
Whoop, just kidding.
I forgot you had the clicker.
So in terms of timeline, they want you to have completed your quality review this summer,
so tick, tick.
And you must have requested your high-quality review by September 10th, so keep in mind that
with the quality review, there might be a little bit of back and forth with your
instructional designer before you get your official badge, so hence you want to have
a little bit of a window to get all that completed.
We also suggest that you watch our exciting video series.
Multiple times, even, if you're so interested.
And then of course, we hope that everyone will apply.
The window for application is going to be: September 10th at 8:00AM and the application
window will close on the 23rd of September at 11:59PM.
As we all know, we should never have midnight deadlines because no one understands them.
So, today's session is about crafting your narrative, creating the story of your
application, in other words, really selling yourself.
What makes you an extraordinary online teacher?
And so, what we'll be talking about is how do you discuss pedagogical innovation?
So this is your opportunity to sell your class. To sell your teaching as being
exemplary, right?
But, like with everything, we want to have a window of words to do this through.
So, we'd ask that you keep your narrative to about 500 words.
Now, having said that, we also welcome innovation in how you present your narrative.
So, if you want to do a video narrative or some combination of video and text,
that's fine.
We would just ask, again, that you keep that still within that 500 word script if you will,
so that everything is equivalent.
And in this, we want you to focus, again, on that pedagogy and innovation.
Everyone at this point will have received a quality designation.
If you haven't gone through that process yet, it's really looking at a lot of the
fundamentals that you learn in IDL 6543, those skills that your instructional designers
have instilled in all of us as we graduated, right?
So there's no reason to necessarily go through that aspect of it.
As you start going through high-quality design, they'll focus on some additional
advanced design structures, but this is about what you have added to your class, right?
What is it that you have in your design that is innovative, unique, OK?
So, we want to look at that faculty actions that are supporting student learning, right?
So, what is it that you have asked of your students, provided for your students,
engaged them with.
Are you using any innovative tools, right?
Are there any apps that you're using, additional technologies, how are you using
some of the technologies available in canvas in innovative ways?
Assessments.
Are you having them do something super cool in your class?
You want to obviously highlight some of that.
And of course, engagement, right?
So, what are you doing to get your students excited-ish about clicking in to your class?
So, the previous sessions have focused on some of the questions of engagement
and assessment, and so really, the primary thing to think about here is that the statement
is where you sort of spell it out for your reader.
How, in a descriptive way, how do you carry this out?
How do you know that your students are engaging, for instance?
Engaging with one another in class, with the teaching material itself, and finally with you
as Instructor.
And so, you want to make sure that you address this, not only by demonstrating it
in your other materials, but also spelling it out in your narrative.
Right, so the idea is that we're putting things in context.
You're gonna have your supplemental materials, like if you were to apply for a tip or an
excellence award, right?
You're going to have those documents supporting what you're saying, but this is how you're
going to put it all together.
So, the other---one of the sessions previously looked at student engagement, another one
looked at the idea of learning gains, and again you want to put this into the broader context.
So, for example, if it is some sort of an assessment that you have done, right?
So you want to connect that to the learning outcomes that are involved in the class, this
is how it is meaningful to the student, to what we hope that they learn, whether
it be from the department level, from your level, from national requirements if you're
teaching in that genre, right?
And this is why it's important, unique, and novel for the student.
And then you would have your supporting materials to back that up.
You also want to talk about the student experience, right?
So, are you getting feedback from them that this has been a meaningful, amazing, wonderful
experience in their eyes?
That could be anything from, your SPOI, right, if you're going to have that, you need
to include the whole kit and caboodle so you can't edit out the ones that you don't like, just FYI.
But, you know, we also sometimes get those nice emails or you see things put into reflection
documents that they may have done for you.
So all of that would certainly be warranted, and again, the idea behind the narrative is
that you are directing us to that connection.
"So I know that this was useful because, as you'll see in my attachments for,
blah, blah, blah."
"You can find all that here."
So, in many ways, this narrative is a roadmap much like that one for your readers,
so that your reader can identify your particular strategies in your narrative and
then go back and look at the actual materials and see how you demonstrate it.
And you want to address student engagement and learning gains.
Really tell the committee where to go.
Make it as easy as you can on the committee.
So again, the idea is: What's making you incredible?
That should be the whole focus of what it is you are writing.
That I am special and unique because---
I know for some of us this can be challenging, because tooting our own horn can be difficult
or it sounds out of tune when we do it, but this is your opportunity to really sell
this class.
And this award is different than some of the other awards we have at UCF, which are more
general about teaching overall.
Remember, this is about one class in particular.
What have you done specifically in this class that makes it the most exceptional online
class at the University?
And so one of the things that we, that Alisha and I talked about was: "OK, well how do you
showcase this?"
One of the challenges we have with this is that this is the first time we actually request
this document in the Dziuban award.
And so it's also an opportunity to really think about, "what does the award mean, right?"
And so some examples that we thought of that we have seen in the past of what makes
online teaching incredible, what is that punch, that above and beyond just
best practices, right?
Because we already know you do best practices because you have a high-quality designation.
So, some of the things that we thought about were: Persona, organization, and assignment design.
So, when I think about things like award winners in the past that we've been on the
committees for and we've looked at the applications of, we've seen things with
persona.
It's been, for example in, if you got the opportunity to see, plug, the student
engagement workshop, the first one of this series, Ken talks a lot about his video
persona and all the things that he did to create these kind of amazing videos for
students to get to really know him.
Now, just because you may not have worked with a theater background and some film crews
and things like this to make your videos doesn't mean there aren't other ways for
your persona to come through.
So when I applied, one of the things that I highlighted in my application was how I
tried to get my persona through to me students, and a lot of them are cat memes, I take
responsibility for your power-point, I apologize.
But I'm OK with students thinking that I am a crazy cat person because then they send me
cat memes and they feel they can connect to me on this level or they'll tell me that they
feel I'm discriminating against them because they're dog people and then throughout the
semester I'll be like: Well, some of you complained about dog memes, so here
you go," and I give them a pug meme because pugs make better memes than other dogs.
Tip.
So, but then they'll tell me at the end that they really feel like that was a connection
for them, that they knew I was reading what they were saying because I adjusted
my course as we went.
I have an introduction discussion, like many of you probably do.
I make it a point to respond to every single one of their posts, so that they may never
go back and read them, but they can at least see that I read it, I'm a person, I've seen
what they have to say, and I use their--- I use surveys and things like this
throughout the semester.
Right, so the key with the persona is really making the student realize that there's a
human being, that they're not learning from a computer but they're learning from a person.
Even if you, in some ways, kind of exaggerate your own personality so that it really shines
through in your course.
Another aspect that we have seen in exemplary courses is organization.
So, in this instance, that's one of the things that I have gotten really good feedback on
in my own assignments is, for instance, I use a lot of graded discussions and, as you
may know, with graded discussions you have to have one set deadline but if your discussion
assignment is: Write an initial post and then reply within a couple of days, it's very common
for students to wind up missing that part and either being late with their submission or
just being extremely confused about deadlines, and so one of the things that I introduced
was what I call "ghost assignments" where I create a placeholder assignment for students
to see so that it shows up on their calendar and they know they actually have two deadlines
connected to a single assignment.
Another thing that I've done that's been very successful is I have, in my online modules,
I have these little, you know, suggested time management and I'm not even making them
do it, it's just a, you know, just an idea of how they can visualize their time.
And so it's, you know, a Monday through Sunday, you can do---
On Monday you can read this chapter and then usually on Saturday they'll tell them:
"Just relax, don't do anything."
And, as simple as it was, the students really appreciate it and every semester I get
feedback from the students and this is one of the things I was told has made the course
very successful when it went up for the Dziuban Award.
And so, organization is definitely something that will shine through to the committee.
And I will say I stole that "ghost assignment" idea and it is very effective, so I plan on
stealing the timeline idea.
So basically, what I'm looking for is what I can steal from your applications.
That's true, that's true. That is what we look for.
That's the thing that's like "Ooh, that's so cool, I totally am going to do that!"
And I thank you in advance.
I will say one other thing about persona, Amanda Groff, who was our inaugural winner,
has a really interesting way of introducing her persona, she has a flicker feed of some of the
research that she's done and some of the sites that she's been on and things like this.
So it doesn't have to be, you know, anything that you want to share personally about your
life, cats are easy for me because no one's ever going to see my cat.
But it's a very cool way to show students that this is actually real-life, the things
that they are learning.
And if you have, you know, what I like to call "Sexy Research," like if your research is just
the kind of research that really draws people in, like, integrate it into your online persona
because the students will see some very concrete ways in which this class that I'm
taking now could one day translate into this really interesting and exciting and unusual
career.
Yeah, pictures of me doing qualtrics is not, not interesting so---
Yeah, there's nothing quite like a pictures of digs, pictures of digs are always so fun.
Yes. And I'll say other things with organization.
When you talk about your class organization, again, move beyond the "Oh, well I use headers
because that's what I was told to do in IDL," right?
Again, it's the pedogogical rationale behind the organization that you're including there.
And then, you know, for assignment design, things that, you know, we've seen---
I love your "wordle" discussion, so I'll let you talk about that.
Sure. So, there's two innovations that, and I'm trying to remember if the photo-voice,
If I had the photo-voice before I got the award, I may not have.
But there's, you know, one innovation that I know that I've been using for a few years
that has been also fairly successful and that is, again, I really like online discussions
because I feel it's a way for students to engage with one another and it also allows
me to see that they are learning and applying course concepts beyond just a multiple choice
exam.
And so, this particular assignment really meant to shake up the usual prompt where they get a
question and then they just answer it and, you know, the students really kind of---
You could tell that they were sort of going through a little check mark in their head and
just doing exactly what they needed to do and nothing more.
And so the word cloud challenged them to think in a non-linear fashion, so the question---
I took texts and I created word clouds with them and then I had the students look at the
texts and guess about the author and time period of the particular piece and they knew
that these were speeches.
And for this particular class, of course, you can't do that in, you know, a chemistry
class, but for this particular class the assignment worked quite well.
And so, I'm always looking for, again, things that you can steal.
Innovations that will get the students to engage with the material in a different way,
or will kind of challenge them to think critically beyond the kinds of typical
classroom interventions that we use.
So, to sum up and leave some time for questions, when you start drafting your
narrative, you know, this is kind of a real basic way to kind of think about it.
"My teaching is awesome!"
"And it's awesome because..."
Yadda, yadda, yadda, if you're a Seinfeld fan, OK?
"Evidence of my awesomeness in this area is seen clearly in module...blah, blah, blah."
You want to direct us to the best place to look to see this amazing thing that you
have created, alright?
"And I know I'm awesome because---
And this is your opportunity to direct us to those additional resources you're going to support---
"Because exam grades have gone up when I started using this and, you know, here's
the attachment data."
Whatever it is to show the learning gain.
"Because my student evaluations went up significantly as a result, as can be seen in
the attached document."
So what questions can we answer for you?
To use the mic, face-to-face, OK.
At this point I don't see questions online yet.
Hi, thank you. Could you comment, just briefly, on the impact and people's
expectations for how class size affects the types of innovations you tend to see from people?
So I'll say we, I think we've given---awarded this award to all kinds of class sizes.
Usually what I've seen in people's explanations of what they're doing in their classes is it
includes some information about that.
"So, because it is such a large class, I don't do as much writing, I do X. Y, and Z instead."
I've seen lots of different ways of doing them in other classes.
It seems not so much that I've seen to be a class size issue so much as a discipline issue,
and how people engage their students depending on the content of the course.
So what you might do---like what I do in my statistics class is very different than what
I would do in a general psychology class or a social psychology class where it's going
to lend itself more to discussion.
I don't pose a lot of questions like: "So, how do you feel about that T-test,
pretty good, right?"
Discuss and reply.
Like, you know that's not something that I was gonna have them do.
Does that help a little bit?
Yeah, absolutely.
The content is really what---although it is helpful to know something about the class
being taught as well, right?
Particularly when it's framed in the narrative as, you know, "This is a very large class, these
are some innovative ways in which I ensure that students continue to engage with the
material, despite the fact that it's very easy in a 300-500 person class to fall
through the cracks, right?"
Or, "This is a---this class has 15 people, this is the way in which I innovate this
class to create the feel of a face-to-face seminar even though these students never
get to see each other.
Any other questions?
Since one of the things that we need to show is the SPI's as a support for how much
the students have improved, I assume that you need to have taught the class at least
one more time after you get the high-quality review, right? Because otherwise you won't
have the SPI's in hand.
No, most people that I've seen apply include their SPI's as support of student engagement,
student approval, however you want to--- endorsement---however you want to think
about it.
If you watch the 2nd of our series that talks about learning gains, one of the
things that is actually brought up is that SPI's are not usually considered a measure
of learning gain.
You might---if I had taught the course multiple times and I had tried something
new a following semester that really made, you know, my numbers go up, I might talk
about that but it wouldn't be a deterrent to apply if you only taught it once and
they happen to all love it, great.
You need to have evidence of learning gains in some other way.
It could be something about comparing it to a face-to-face class that you've taught
or even looking at, you know, "I got feedback from module one that said I
needed to do X, Y, and Z, I made the change and I noticed a jump in quiz grades from
module one to module two or something like that.
No, because most of the courses will not have high-quality designations by the time
the award opens.
Right, if I could jump in for a minute.
Please do.
Because the review process is pretty new, this time around at least, it's not possible
to go through the review process and then have time to teach it completely and so
really, it's the---how do I say it---the quality and high-quality review process is more about
your evidence of commitment to good online design.
There's a little distinction between that and your teaching practices, so if you have taught
an online course and you feel that you have displayed exemplary teaching practices, that's
what you need to be---that's the evidence that you need to provide.
And so if you have taught a course and then you decide, "Now I'm going to go through a
quality or high-quality design review process, that's just demonstrating your commitment
to further improve your course.
So, the evidence that you provide doesn't necessarily have to be after the review.
Does that help? OK. Because it's a newer process. This year it's a bit hard to do.
This is Amy Denoils---
Oh, hi. I'm just jumping in here.
She's one of our instructional design team leads, and she's also the lead of the
quality initiative here.
And I would also just jump in here to say if anyone is interested in getting the review
process started if you haven't yet, the Dziuban Award website, the webpage, has a
link that will direct you to fill out the qualtrics form, Alisha, qualtrics form---
Take pictures.
---And that will also kind of ping your instructional designer or me and we'll
get that process started.
Thank you, Amy.
I would add to that as, you know, from the committee perspective, the award committee
perspective, that what had been happening until now was that the committee had a rubric
and then the committee would go through every single class that was submitted and
basically make sure, you know, make sure that some very basic things were done.
Like, is there a Syllabus?
Are office hours listed on that syllabus?
You know, just really kind of pain-staking things that should really be basic in any
online course.
You know, is this person following campus requirements and best practices?
And so, this is a kind of a clearing house, it's a way to ensure that every submission
already fulfills these basic requirements and so what we're looking for is, you know, how do
you go above and beyond the basics.
We only have a few minutes left and we have one question from the audience online, so
if you don't mind, I'm gonna ask that question.
This is the question: I often get contradictory feedback on my assignments, for example,
for exam one in my courts course, I use a music video that shows the story of a criminal
court case.
Some students love this, others hate it.
One said, "It's not taking them seriously enough."
How can I devise creative assignments that will be more universally well-received?
So, I have to say that I work very closely with my instructional designer.
And so a lot of the classroom's innovations that I have come up with, I will be perfectly
honest, are in large-part because of that collaborative process.
That said, one of the things that we do is collect data.
So we have a survey when we do something new, like I introduced photo-voice, which is a method
of the students taking photographs for their discussion posts and we had a survey where we
were very---we came up with an instrument and really trying to measure, not only that
they like it, but is this effective?
And then we tracked it for several semesters.
So, I guess what I would say is, it would be good to have some firm numbers, you know,
how many of your students love this idea versus how many hate it and if you find that
you know, 80 of them love it and 20 hate it, then maybe it's not a bad idea, right?
But if you find that it's 50-50, then maybe you need to revisit it and kind of think
about another way of including, you know, this innovation.
Yeah, I don't think there's ever anything you're gonna do that is universally loved
by every student in your class, except maybe extra credit that they get for clicking a button.
That would probably be universally loved.
But, one thing I have done in my discussions and in some of my assignments, is give options
of what to respond to.
So that way they can kind of pick the one that fits best with their interests and offer novelty
for other purposes and they seem to have preferred that to the much as they can like
discussions.
OK. Any other questions?
We have about 30 seconds left. Sure.
Kelvin Thompson, long time listener, first time caller.
Just maybe one parting plug, it's really difficult to disentangle design and pedagogy,
right?
The design and the teaching part, as Amy Denoils pointed out a while ago, the emphasis
in the Dziuban Award for Excellence in Online Teaching, not design, is on the actions that
you take, not on the building that you build, metaphorically speaking, but on the lived
experience, on what happens between you and your students.
It is difficult, right, to completely step away from the design parts and if there's
really, truly exceptional, innovative designs like Alisha and Beatiriz said, that absolutely
should be part of your story.
But I think what might tip you over the edge in your awards submissions, as you're
doing this narrative, is talk about what you've done and how students benefited.
You know, tell that story, not just "Hey, I did this cool stuff."
You know, strictly.
And then the quality and the high-quality design process---review process deal with
those design elements more.
So I hope that's helpful.
I just wanted to put that plug in for what you do, because you'll score higher on
the rubric, I think. Probably.
Yes, it's not so much "I designed this cool assignment, but this is the really cool thing
my students did with this assignment."
"Look at this incredibly insightful discussion post that is the direct result of this thing
that I created."
OK, our time is up, we do have one person's asking about the award criteria and eligibility,
I'd like to refer everyone to the Chuck Dziuban Workshop Series website, which also links
to the Chuck Dziuban Award site, and all the eligibility and criteria for the award
is listed there and the recording of this session will be up there as well as the
previous sessions will be listed at the website.
The next session is going to be September 10th---7th, sorry, September 7th, at 1PM
in this room, September 7th.
The award window will open September 10th through September 23rd.
So the last workshop series session will be September 7th and then the award window
will open up September 10th through the 23rd.
And the next session is on compiling your packet, OK?
And we thank you all for attending, we're going to be shutting off the recording at
this time, and hopefully see you at the next session.
Thank you very much.