Daryl O'Hare, 2012 TWSIA Award Presentation, Jasig-Sakai Conference Atlanta, GA

June 10-15, 2012

Growing Community; Growing Possibilities

TWSIA Presentation

English Composition I

Daryl O’HareInstructor

Chadron State College

2012 Jasig Sakai Conference 2

rSmart and Wiley

TWSIA judges

Chadron State College

Kaleidoscope Project

Dr. Susan C. Hines

Family

Thank You


English Composition I:

Taught on-ground in sixteen week sections at Chadron State College

Students bought a textbook that cost approximately $75

Prior to 2011


Chadron State College teamed with the Kaleidoscope Project to develop a new eight-week English course in a fully online format.

Spring, 2011

http://www.project-kaleidoscope.org/


English Composition I should be developed:

collaboratively to serve “at risk” students to reduce textbook costs by using OER in ways that challenge and innovate for reuse and adoption by other institutions

Guiding Principles


I worked with Dr. Susan C. Hines—a fellow English professor. We divided our labors for a more effective development strategy. My role was principally that of Subject Matter Expert (SME), content author, and instructor.

Collaboration

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The course should use high-quality OER, and if the resources did not exist, we would create them.

2012 Jasig Sakai Conference

Best Practices


The course should have content that would engage students from at-risk populations who enrolled in Composition I with a certain amount of dread or anxiety.

Best Practices

Diverse Contemporary Materials

Video

Podcasts

Websites

OER Textbook

s

Still Images


The course should leverage collaborative writing spaces to address composition from a process-oriented perspective and to include students in a larger writing community.

Best Practices


The course should align outcomes with activities and assessments in ways that are resoundingly clear, both to faculty and to students.

Best Practices


The course should meet compliance standards for ADA/508, both to meet accessibility standards but to assure the course addresses a variety of learning styles (visual, auditory, kinesthetic), as well.

Best Practices


The course should:

have a modular design, so it is easy to navigate.

meet or surpass online course design standards, such as those advocated by Quality Matters.

have interoperable features and a clear information architecture, so that it can be used by other institutions who may operate different LMSs.

Best Practices


Student Engagement and Community Building

CommunicationLearning Materials and StrategiesLearning Outcomes & Assessments

Learner Support

TWSIA-Innovations


Engagement and Community BuildingThe most important feature of the course is the course writing community. The forums, particularly those geared toward essay revision and grammar reports, provide students with a place for self-reflection/expression and mutual support.


Interactive Grammar ReportsStudents deal with grammar issues “workshop style.” They create teaching reports after investigating mistakes noted by their instructor on a writing assignment; they then correct their mistakes, and share the results with the entire class. The class then evaluates which report is the most useful. This process helps students see that everyone makes mistakes and that many of us make the same mistakes!


CommunicationsIn a course that is highly collaborative, it is important to make sure access is easy and technologically current (as many students communicate in a variety of technical modalities). While I used the Sakai communication tools extensively, I embed a Skype virtual presence badge in my courses, so that students can see when I am online and initiate a text or video chat.


Learning Materials & StrategiesOne of the challenges of designing this course was to find and use Open Education Resources (OER) or publicly available materials, exclusively. Where materials did not exist, Dr. Hines and I created them, including leveraging social media.


Guided, Interactive Prewriting & Note taking


Kaleidoscope course textbooks costs were reduced by 98.7%.

Textbook costs of English Composition I were reduced by 100%.

111 Students took the Kaleidoscope online course (fall 2011-Spring 2012); the cost savings were $8,325. Non-Kaleidoscope students (286 students) spent approximately $21,450.

Students responded positively to the ways in which the embedded materials engaged their interests.

Of the students completing Kaleidoscope surveys following the fall term 2011, 97% found the course materials to be of equal or higher quality than those used in their other courses.*

*(see: Bliss, TJ, John Hilton III, David Wiley, Kim Thanos. The Cost and Quality of Online Open

Textbooks: Perceptions of Community College Instructors and Students. Submitted for publication.)

Benefits of using OER


Learning Outcomes and AssessmentsThe central goal of Composition I is to improve upon student reading and writing skills. So, one of the goals was to demonstrate a process to my students by which they may succeed. The weekly learning arc provides students with a rationale for the methods introduced in the course.


Cross-Referenced Learning Outcomes and Topics


Each week, students are required to achieve learning outcomes through the following outcome assessments:

a series of reading quizzes, delivered in each module. Quizzes were intended to reinforce reading knowledge/ability as well as assess reading knowledge/ability

discussions and writing assessments requiring careful textual analysis or peer editing

discussions and writing exercises that require a response to and/or analysis of podcasts, screencasts, and/or web video

discussion forums and writing exercises geared toward attitudes about writing and self-reflection on essays

writing exercises and essay drafts A series of grammar reports, which include error analyses, research on

errors, and articulated remedies A series of secondary-response discussion assignments that require peer

feedback on written content A series of essays, including narrative, descriptive, reflective, and analytical

expression—essays from the course are included in a portfolio

Assessments

232012 Jasig Sakai Conference

Learner SupportIn addition to linking to institutional support services (academic and technical) in my syllabus, I also developed the habit of linking to services in places throughout the course where such support might prove immediately helpful.


ADA Compliance and Interoperability

One of the students who enrolled in my course had not just one, but two disabilities. She was legally blind as well as hard of hearing. In fact, she was referred to the online version of the course because it struck the institution’s administrators as more accessible than the on-ground version. Thus, our decision to make the course ADA compliant was immediately useful.


Kaleidoscope Results

Course Fall 2010 Fall 2011 Spring 2012

Historical Success

Low-Income Success

ALL SuccessLow-Income Success

ALL Success

Business Fundamentals 59% 65% 67% 61% 59%

Biology 62% 70% 72% 67% 78%

Chemistry N/A N/A 50% 53%

Geography 74% 69% 71% 66% 68%

Dev. Math 41% 61% 61% Awaiting Data

Interm. Algebra 22% 62% 58% 12% 38%

College Algebra N/A N/A 86% 57%

Psychology 46% 56% 61% 48% 54%

Dev. Reading 37% 45% 65% 85% 72%

Dev. Writing 74% 83% 81% 70% 69%

English Composition 43% 36% 43% 64% 58%


Feedback and ContactsYou can visit English Composition I at:http://shines.courseagent.com/kscopehttps://academic.rsmart.com/~Kaleidoscope-English-Composition-I

http://shines.courseagent.com/kscope



https://academic.rsmart.com/~Kaleidoscope-English-Composition-I



Daryl O'Hare, 2012 TWSIA Award Presentation, Jasig-Sakai Conference Atlanta, GA

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Transcript of Daryl O'Hare, 2012 TWSIA Award Presentation, Jasig-Sakai Conference Atlanta, GA