Kimball's Steps for Maximizing Retention
Lisa Kimball’s ten steps for maximizing online learning experiences seem pretty straight forward: 1)Identify your purpose for being together; 2)define participants’ roles; 3) keep conversation fresh and keep it going; 4)respond with positive feedback; 5) encourage the participants who remain at the edge of discussions; 6)vary the pace of instruction and required work; 7) support members and invite new members to join (though for a class with advance registration this is not entirely possible); 8) reflect what has been done in the class and try to make connections between various parts of class; 9 & 10) stay alert to who is participating and to what participants are saying—which will help you be a better facilitator.
For an online class, I would want to make the purpose or tasks of the class clear, but also the context within which the class/tasks are happening would need to be made clear as well—so, for instance, if I am teaching composition on-line, I would need to make clear not just that students would be writing a certain number of essays for the course, but that they will also be writing drafts and revising those drafts; that that they will need to be members of a writing group and respond to each other’s work in meaningful ways in order to gain full credit for the course—and I would want to explain why the class would be run this way—so I might include a letter to the students where I gave them a brief picture of my philosophy of teaching writing.
Defining participants’ roles is part of the larger context of the class—students would need to know I value their responses to their peers work, and they should too—they are learning to be better writers and better readers—knowing roles is part of knowing what is expected of one.
In terms of online discussions, keeping things fresh and keeping them moving is challenging—I think of writing workshops of I have taken and at some point I have burned out from reading and responding—even too things I want to read and respond too—online discussion groups and blogs are draining and require a sustained attention and critical thinking which gets hard to hold on too for a very long time—so this, in my mind, this goes along with varying the pace of learning and instruction. In a classroom, I don’t always do things in large groups, or in small groups, or individually. When I taught three hour classes that met once a week—varying the kinds and rhythms of work was crucial—otherwise, everyone is asleep after and hour. In online discussions, this might mean having students respond to questions in the same post, responding to the question and to each other in the same thread; or having small groups post their own questions for the members to respond to and then having them make the most interesting thread public for the whole class; or just having students read and post no responses—or perhaps only questions. I am sure there are more ways to do this that I will need to learn.
The next is to provide feedback, and I think this is important to do for each student but also publicly to the class as a whole; so, I would want to enter in to the discussion s where it seemed appropriate, so the students would be able to hear my voice and ideas among theirs—not just as the moderator or final arbiter of their grades and ideas. I would want to model response and questioning within the context of ongoing discussions—this is more how I run my classrooms—students see me doing what I am asking them to do; often, the class discusses things all at once—I would like to bring that experience to an online class. This is also where you can encourage lurkers who are not participating as much as they could—in much the same way I would in a classroom: by asking for small contributions at first—form everyone—leading to longer and riskier things as the course proceeds.
This sort participation in on going discussions also allows me to make connections and to reflect /say back what we have done in the class, so students can begin to make and validate those connections for themselves. In a classroom, I ask students to periodically go through and re-read everything they have written in their notebooks and then to describe what they have read, what they see that may surprise them, what questions they still have, etc.—then these reflections, based concretely out of their notebooks, are what get shared in the class—I think this would be possible for online discussions as well.
The last two list items: “tracking participation” and “going with the flow” are both made easier by participating in the ongoing discussion boards.
The thing I want to think more about are the two ideas brought up in the Stanford lecture about community cohesion: the relative strength of groups formed around ideas or causes and the relative strength of groups based on personal connections or relationships—watching that video made me think that college courses are a sort of merging of these two types of groups: a class has a shared purpose or cause, but it also is important for students to establish relationships with other students (their cohort) and with the instructor—especially in degree granting programs. So, making the shared purpose or goal clear and inviting (part of the students’ identities) seems crucial to keeping students engaged and an active, as well as, developing relationships which are open and honest. Of course, doing these things is more difficult than saying they should be done.
My To Do List to Increase Retention
My goal is to create an online community of writers who become invested in each other’s work as well as in their own work. While most students who take composition are taking it because it is a requirement, I want student/participants to have the shared goal of becoming better writers and for them to feel necessary to the class and to each other in order to reach that goal—in other words, I want them to move beyond the fact the class is required and to understand how it can be important to them in broader terms. The following is the start to a list I am sure will be revised over the course of this class.
1. Collaborate as much as is possible with my peers on course design, implementation of new activities and technologies, and to discuss problems that may arise.
2. Introduce the course as a joint venture in which all class participants play a vital role.
3. Ask class participants to introduce themselves, say a bit about their past experiences with writing, as well as talk about why they are in the class and what they expect to learn or take away from the class.
4. Introduce myself and respond to their introductions and expectations: this is where I have one opportunity to clarify how the class will be run and to highlight expectations and requirements which they may not be aware of or fully understand.
5. Have students set up blogs where they can write informally about their class experiences, their questions, their thoughts on their reading & writing—this would be in place of a notebook—would be a required activity (formative) though would not be graded. I would invite participants to visit each other’s blogs on a regular basis. And I would visit them as well—not so much to respond, as to check in to see how students are doing. In order to encourage students to do this, I would ask them to post the top three things they have learned or found interesting about others' posts every two weeks.
6. Every other week at the beginning of the semester and then every 3-4 weeks later, post a discussion thread which asks how things are going for students and what issues they are facing in their work for class. I would want to encourage everyone to participate in these discussions even if it is to say everything is OK. Each student will be responsible for curating one of these discussion threads over the course of the semester.
7. At the mid-point, email students individually to let them know how I see their progress and to see how they feel about the class & how they are doing.
8. Create writing & responding groups, so students get to know each other and each other’s writing—monitor how these groups are going in order to prevent or curtail potential problems.
9. Have my own course blog where I can make general observations; note course wide problems, address questions, and discuss points of composition, revision, editing, responding, grammar, usage, etc.
Lisa Kimball’s ten steps for maximizing online learning experiences seem pretty straight forward: 1)Identify your purpose for being together; 2)define participants’ roles; 3) keep conversation fresh and keep it going; 4)respond with positive feedback; 5) encourage the participants who remain at the edge of discussions; 6)vary the pace of instruction and required work; 7) support members and invite new members to join (though for a class with advance registration this is not entirely possible); 8) reflect what has been done in the class and try to make connections between various parts of class; 9 & 10) stay alert to who is participating and to what participants are saying—which will help you be a better facilitator.
For an online class, I would want to make the purpose or tasks of the class clear, but also the context within which the class/tasks are happening would need to be made clear as well—so, for instance, if I am teaching composition on-line, I would need to make clear not just that students would be writing a certain number of essays for the course, but that they will also be writing drafts and revising those drafts; that that they will need to be members of a writing group and respond to each other’s work in meaningful ways in order to gain full credit for the course—and I would want to explain why the class would be run this way—so I might include a letter to the students where I gave them a brief picture of my philosophy of teaching writing.
Defining participants’ roles is part of the larger context of the class—students would need to know I value their responses to their peers work, and they should too—they are learning to be better writers and better readers—knowing roles is part of knowing what is expected of one.
In terms of online discussions, keeping things fresh and keeping them moving is challenging—I think of writing workshops of I have taken and at some point I have burned out from reading and responding—even too things I want to read and respond too—online discussion groups and blogs are draining and require a sustained attention and critical thinking which gets hard to hold on too for a very long time—so this, in my mind, this goes along with varying the pace of learning and instruction. In a classroom, I don’t always do things in large groups, or in small groups, or individually. When I taught three hour classes that met once a week—varying the kinds and rhythms of work was crucial—otherwise, everyone is asleep after and hour. In online discussions, this might mean having students respond to questions in the same post, responding to the question and to each other in the same thread; or having small groups post their own questions for the members to respond to and then having them make the most interesting thread public for the whole class; or just having students read and post no responses—or perhaps only questions. I am sure there are more ways to do this that I will need to learn.
The next is to provide feedback, and I think this is important to do for each student but also publicly to the class as a whole; so, I would want to enter in to the discussion s where it seemed appropriate, so the students would be able to hear my voice and ideas among theirs—not just as the moderator or final arbiter of their grades and ideas. I would want to model response and questioning within the context of ongoing discussions—this is more how I run my classrooms—students see me doing what I am asking them to do; often, the class discusses things all at once—I would like to bring that experience to an online class. This is also where you can encourage lurkers who are not participating as much as they could—in much the same way I would in a classroom: by asking for small contributions at first—form everyone—leading to longer and riskier things as the course proceeds.
This sort participation in on going discussions also allows me to make connections and to reflect /say back what we have done in the class, so students can begin to make and validate those connections for themselves. In a classroom, I ask students to periodically go through and re-read everything they have written in their notebooks and then to describe what they have read, what they see that may surprise them, what questions they still have, etc.—then these reflections, based concretely out of their notebooks, are what get shared in the class—I think this would be possible for online discussions as well.
The last two list items: “tracking participation” and “going with the flow” are both made easier by participating in the ongoing discussion boards.
The thing I want to think more about are the two ideas brought up in the Stanford lecture about community cohesion: the relative strength of groups formed around ideas or causes and the relative strength of groups based on personal connections or relationships—watching that video made me think that college courses are a sort of merging of these two types of groups: a class has a shared purpose or cause, but it also is important for students to establish relationships with other students (their cohort) and with the instructor—especially in degree granting programs. So, making the shared purpose or goal clear and inviting (part of the students’ identities) seems crucial to keeping students engaged and an active, as well as, developing relationships which are open and honest. Of course, doing these things is more difficult than saying they should be done.
My To Do List to Increase Retention
My goal is to create an online community of writers who become invested in each other’s work as well as in their own work. While most students who take composition are taking it because it is a requirement, I want student/participants to have the shared goal of becoming better writers and for them to feel necessary to the class and to each other in order to reach that goal—in other words, I want them to move beyond the fact the class is required and to understand how it can be important to them in broader terms. The following is the start to a list I am sure will be revised over the course of this class.
1. Collaborate as much as is possible with my peers on course design, implementation of new activities and technologies, and to discuss problems that may arise.
2. Introduce the course as a joint venture in which all class participants play a vital role.
3. Ask class participants to introduce themselves, say a bit about their past experiences with writing, as well as talk about why they are in the class and what they expect to learn or take away from the class.
4. Introduce myself and respond to their introductions and expectations: this is where I have one opportunity to clarify how the class will be run and to highlight expectations and requirements which they may not be aware of or fully understand.
5. Have students set up blogs where they can write informally about their class experiences, their questions, their thoughts on their reading & writing—this would be in place of a notebook—would be a required activity (formative) though would not be graded. I would invite participants to visit each other’s blogs on a regular basis. And I would visit them as well—not so much to respond, as to check in to see how students are doing. In order to encourage students to do this, I would ask them to post the top three things they have learned or found interesting about others' posts every two weeks.
6. Every other week at the beginning of the semester and then every 3-4 weeks later, post a discussion thread which asks how things are going for students and what issues they are facing in their work for class. I would want to encourage everyone to participate in these discussions even if it is to say everything is OK. Each student will be responsible for curating one of these discussion threads over the course of the semester.
7. At the mid-point, email students individually to let them know how I see their progress and to see how they feel about the class & how they are doing.
8. Create writing & responding groups, so students get to know each other and each other’s writing—monitor how these groups are going in order to prevent or curtail potential problems.
9. Have my own course blog where I can make general observations; note course wide problems, address questions, and discuss points of composition, revision, editing, responding, grammar, usage, etc.