After attending the blended learning workshop by Ron Owston in January 2008, I was pretty excited about it and felt that I definitely need to apply something to my upcoming course (for the 072 semester). I wanted to do Flickr webpage, a YouTube webpage and a wiki for my MKT330 course on Advertising & Sales Promotion. However, because I was teaching the course for the first time, I have come to realize that practically speaking I would not be able to handle all three…so I decided to stick with a Flickr webpage and do the most of it. I also had online office hours using Yahoo Messenger.

Well…I began forming my Flickr webpage and created an MKT330 group for my course, which can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/groups/alshebil-mkt330/.

The objective of the Flickr group was to post and share local ads and ask for student comments on them whilst providing some application of the course and ultimately creating perhaps a local KSA/GCC ads database.

It’s February 16, 2008…the semester began…and feeling excited I also included the Flickr webpage on my syllabus. I made one post on a local outdoor ad that I saw and sought my students’ comments on it. During my first class I introduced our course syllabus including the Flickr webpage and asked students to participate.

Inspite of all this and a few oral reminders in class, I only ended up having 15 members from my 69 students…and only 2 posts..one by me and another by one very excited student.. As time passed I realized that my Flickr webpage was not getting student attention as I expected. There was almost no activity at all. Part of the problem was that I was teaching this as a new course where I had to also cover a chapter a class, so I was barely catching up with the material itself, not to mention exams etc.

May 6^th I decided to do something about it…with Assignment 4  (our last assignment). I began the day with the the Flickr webpage with a “Failed” stamp on it. As I expressed my disappointment, I also realized that some students were not even aware of till now?! How come I said?It was on the syllabus?!. Well some didn’t come till the second week when things have already begun so they missed the introductory class…and some even said that they don’t read everything in the syllabus?!

I began several classes from then with a short presentation update of the Flickr webpage. I also gave a demonstration of how to upload pictures (since it seemed to be a bit of a hassle I realized). Today, I’m happy to say that the number of students who joined the group grew up to 67 members now! And with 52 ad/sales promotion posts! (some related to the homework some not).The deadline for assignment 4 is June 3^rd and I’ll wait and see what happens till then….but since we are at almost full membership now and the number of posts seems to be growing ….I can safely say that and my MKT330  Flickr webpage is back and alive!

Here are some lessons that I learnt from all this:

1. Students generally need an incentive to do something. One of the main reasons for why the initial failure of the Flickr webpage was the lack of a real incentive for students to take part in it. Assignment # 4 really helped.
2. Announcing the Flickr webpage during the first week didn’t seem to be the best time, or at least I should have made sure that everyone was aware of it later not just by talking about it but by showing it on screen.
3. Getting the students to be members of the group is one thing….but getting them to post is another. Membership is necessary but not sufficient. Getting them to be active participants is what we are really after! A Non-active participant means nothing to the group.
4. The Flickr class demonstration was pretty important especially for those less tech savy students who need a “techno push” to get things done.
5. Constant reminders of the Flickr page update also greatly helped.
6. Regarding member names, make sure students sign in using real names and preferably with pictures as well. I realized that some use generic names (e.g. luv school, …guy..etc.) which wouldn’t be very helpful for me to tell who is who as one can probably guess. Besides that, correcting the assignment will be a nightmare then!
7. With a large number of students (69 in my case) managing such a site can become pretty cumbersome requiring great effort and time. I would further say that it may also be unpractical and unfeasible sometimes to cope up with. Alternative methods for monitoring such large classes may be sought, e.g. a grader perhaps can help in monitoring assignments etc.
8. I decided to ad my picture in my profile and asked students to do the same. Though this seems to be a small matter, I think that students would interact and be more interested when there is a face that comes with a comment especially from their instructor…

Two groups of faculty members one from KFUPM and one from Tabuk University recently attended and completed the online course “Introduction to Online Teaching and Learning”. As I have also attended this course earlier I can say that how transforming this course can be for someone who has never experienced collaborative learning in an online environment.

It takes a while to get use to the paradigm of collaborative learning and in making the sense of what is expected from you as a student. It may also initially feel a bit overwhelming when the course asks you to be actively participating and contributing in the course. However once you get engaged in it then the high value for learning starts holding you. Everyone reads, reflects, posts and comments and the environment thus builds takes you to greater depths of meaning making than what you could get in a non-collaborative learning format. Not only that we learn more about the content but we also get to know more about each other. It is ironic that some of us who were just in the next building but did not know about each other become well-acquainted with each other in the online environment. How Susan conducts the course facilitates in establishing a community of learners where contribution of one becomes the point of reference for the other to make meaning of something that never meant much before.

Fusion is conceived to work on the same idea of learning in a community with each other. All of us with our common interest for teaching and learning can use Fusion as a place to share our views and experiences and use the contributions of other as the food for our thought.

Now that those who attended the course have completed the course, they should have many things to discuss and share with all of us. Fusion is the place for this purpose. We are about 45 faculty members from KFUPM and 20 from Tabuk University who have been participating in the recent activities of this semester. Most of us have already made attempts to explore and use in our teaching what has been discussed in these activities. We can make use of Fusion to keep our community intact and become stronger in its relationships by stay participating in the community through Fusion with our thoughts and experiences.

So far I have been making posts for the Fusion with the hope that this will help initiate the blog for the whole community. The blog, however, belongs to each one of us, the community, and it is by our contributions that the blog will become active and useful. As a minimum we can target to have at least one post a week from one of us for the blog. It is now time for each of us to think about what we have that we can contribute with to the Fusion. Those who attended the online course can write some reflections on their experience in the course or perhaps some reflections on a topic that caught your attention as you attended the course. It can also be some observation you made in your course as you tried to use technology in your course activities.

I think it is in our favor to keep this community active. So get on with your mouse and keyboard, write something say around a page length (500 words) in a MS Word document and send it to me on webdad@kfupm.edu.sa. I will post it on the blog so that each of your post get a fair share of time for all of us to read before a fresh post is made on Fusion. If you like you can also consider sharing you contribution in a multimedia format (For example look at this YouTube video). I will be happy to help you in developing such a multimedia based contribution.

Also when you read a new post on the Fusion that brings a thought in your head, please don’t keep it just to yourself. Enter your comment in the box beneath each post of Fusion. There is a box right below this post too. You can enter some comments on this post right now!

Dr. Tony Bates visited KFUPM last week where he gave a seminar and a workshop on planning and managing e-learning programs. One of the issues he discussed in his talks is the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies in the last few years and the opportunities these technologies bring for teaching and learning.

There are a number of services and technologies which are considered as Web 2.0 technologies. These include technologies such as Blogs, Wikis, e-Portfolios, and services like Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr, FaceBook, Second Life, and Skype just to name a few. web2list.com provides a comprehensive list of Web 2.0 services. At the core of these technologies and service is the concept of user participation. All of these services are designed with an architecture that allow users to quickly and easily join a service and use it for open sharing or contribution to the community of users of that service.

Image Source: oreillynet.com 

The instructional model commonly used at universities is based on institutions having a control at the program level while teachers having a control at the course level on the instructional process. When students join a course of a program, all students are expected to cover almost same content during a set period of time. The teacher controls the process which is centered towards covering the content of the course. Course management systems like WebCT are designed on the same kind of instructional model in which an institution and then teachers have a control on the process of instruction.

The constructivist approach towards learning, which has particularly gained attention in the last couple of decades, emphasizes a shift of control on the learning process from the teacher to students. Students are expected to learn best in terms of deep learning and meaning making if they are actively involved in choosing and exploring the matter of learning collaboratively with their peers. Web 2.0 technologies align well with such ideals of constructivist learning. These technologies provide a community of learners a platform for learning collaboratively on a scale as large as on a world-wide level. These are based on a highly decentralized model where the common interests of the members of community drive the direction of activities.

Today’s knowledge-based societies include professional disciplines in which content of a subject is rapidly growing and is easily accessible. A practitioner of such professions has to be life-long learner to be able to stay current with the knowledge of the field. Those who are working in such a knowledge-based field are expected to not only have the expertise of the subject matter but also to posses the process skills including:

• problem solving, critical thinking
• communication skills
• computing/Internet skills
• independent learners
• entrepreneurial, initiative
• flexibility
• team-work/networking

Dr. Tony Bates suggests mobilizing Web 2.0 in university learning for facilitating the increasing use of learning strategies such as group work, projects and cases, involvement of outside experts and content, field work, language teaching, multimedia assignments and e-portfolios. These kinds of learning strategies allow students to actively participate in the learning process, take control of their learning and develop some of the process skills as indicated above. The environment of Web 2.0 is rich with resources that can effectively support student getting involved in constructivist student-centered learning activities.

Clipart Source: office.microsoft.com

Feedback is a key component of instructor lead learning. We can learn from a variety of sources but what distinguishes instructor lead learning from self-learning sources such as books and tutorial videos is the feedback that instructor provides to the learners. Providing prompt feedback is considered as one of the good practices among the seven principles of good teaching [1]. Feedback can be given for various purposes and in various forms. One of the main purposes of feedback is to let the students be aware of what they have learned and what they still need to know to achieve the learning objectives. Students getting on-time and continuous feedback helps them keep progressing with their learning in a timely manner.

Chickering and Gamson [1] said:

No feedback can occur without assessment. But assessment without timely feedback contributes little to learning.

Assessment of student learning is a pre-requisite for providing feedback. The instruction therefore must provide students opportunities to demonstrate their learning which can then be assessed and students could be given feedback for their learning. What further is emphasized in the above statement is that the more prompt the feedback is given the more effective it gets.

Technology provides many ways for providing feedback, which includes person-to-person feedback as well as instant feedback given to a user by interactive media [2]. Use of online discussions provides a great environment for the students to demonstrate their learning through their reflective posts and get feedback not only from their instructors but also from their fellow students. This results in students sharing the responsibility of giving feedback with their instructors and reducing the need for the instructors to always be available to provide timely feedback even when their busy schedule makes it difficult for them to do it. Students giving feedback to others also has reinforcing effect on their learning. The potential of online systems to keep student work record over a long period of time and to easily make a compilation of works stored at different locations has promoted the use of student portfolios in learning. The easy access to student work and performance facilitates in making in-depth assessment of student progress and providing feedback accordingly.

In addition to instructors and students feedback on the work of a student posted online, a course management system like WebCT provides quiz & self-test tools as means for providing instant feedback. Students can submit a quiz or self-test which is instantly assessed by WebCT and an assessment report can immediately become available to the students providing an instant feedback on their performance on a quiz or self-test.

Our review of the use of WebCT over the past semesters indicates a very limited use of WebCT at KFUPM for the purpose of students posting their work on WebCT and the use of WebCT to facilitate timely feedback to the students. Most of WebCT courses at KFUPM are being used to post course syllabus, course notes, assignments and assignment solutions only. There has been some improvement in the use of online discussion over semesters with about 25% WebCT course accounts now having some use of discussion tool. However there are only 5% courses which are making a substantial use of online discussions for the purpose of collaboration among learners. Similarly there are only a handful of WebCT course accounts which use WebCT quiz or self-tests or allow students to upload their work through assignments or presentation tools.

It is now about seven years that WebCT is being used at KFUPM. The question is why is it that WebCT is still being used at a basic level of posting content only. Is it because instructors don’t have time or they are still not prepared and need more training, or is there any more fundamental reason like a lack of awareness of the significance of feedback for learning and the potential of online environment in facilitating it? Whatever the reason, it is an issue that needs attention. There is great room of improvement and the question is how we can improve making a better use of online environment for providing feedback.

Useful Resources:
TLT Ideas for Giving Prompt, Better Feedback to Students

References:

1. Chickering, Arthur W., and Gamson, Zelda F. “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education.” AAHE Bulletin, 1987, 39(7), 3-7.
2. Chickering, Arthur W., and Ehrmann, Stephen C. “Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever.” AAHE Bulletin, 1996, October, pp.  3-6.

A group of KFUPM faculty members visited Tabuk to conduct a workshop on the “Art of Online Learning” for the participants from Tabuk University. The workshop was conducted as part of the project on “Development of Creativity and Excellence of Faculty Members at Universities in Saudi Arabia” which is supported by the Ministry of Higher Education.

The workshop was opened by Dr. Mustaf Hariri, Director e-learning center, who introduced the two days proceedings of the events to be held on March 22 and 23, 2008. Introducing e-learning he highlighted benefits of e-learning and presented some examples from the online courses developed at KFUPM. Using the online environment brings the potential of increased student-teacher and student-student contact, access to additional resources, as well as providing prompt feedback. The trends in online enrollment were discussed which show an increasing demand for online learning and an increasing number of institutions adopting online education.

In the second session Dr. Talal Maghrabi presented different technologies that can help in developing and delivering online content and in conducting courses online. He discussed WebCT as an example of a course management system and Centra as an example of a live virtual classroom environment. He also identified tools that be used for developing content for online delivery including those that are designed for the rapid development of online learning content. The second session continued with the talk of Dr. Obaid Al-Shuridah who discussed theory of planned behavior as a model for identifying what can influence the adoption of online learning at an institution. He also discussed some models which can be used for the selection of technology for online learning with an administrative as well as a pedagogical perspective.

The afternoon session on the first day was conducted by Dr. Mohamed Antar who discussed why online tutoring is important as it facilitates learner centered education and learning of students. He also compared online environment with face-to-face environment and the strengths of each compared to the other. He also discussed the institutional considerations in planning for online education.

Dr. Sahalu Junaidu was the first speaker on the second day. His main topic of discussion was challenges and requirements for learners and tutors to be successful in online teaching and learning. He offered several tips for successful online learning. This was followed by the presentation of Mr. Husni Al-Muhtaseb who shared several examples from his own courses where he has used online environment for course activities. He gave a variety of examples of course interfaces of his WebCT courses and various scenarios based on which he used different strategies of designing his courses. He emphasized the need to encourage student participation through online discussions and offered several tips for promoting and managing online class discussions.

Before the end Mr. Junaid Siddiqui introduced the establishment of a community of practice at KFUPM and invited the participants to contribute to the community of practice. Dr. Mustafa Hariri in his closing remarks shared some of the measures that have been taken at KFUPM to promote the use of web for teaching and learning and thanked all attendants for their interest and participation in the workshop.

The weather was quite nice in Tabuk with temperature around 27°C in the evening. Keeping with the traditions of DAD group tours, we had our daily evening walks in which we walked along the streets around our hotel.

The suburbs of Tabuk have been built recently with wide roads. We walked for more than an hour and a half on the evening of the first day of the workshop. We left for Dhahran on the evening of the second day on the completion of the workshop. All in all it was a nice time together and working with the colleagues from Tabuk University.

Fusion is a place on the web for the KFUPM community as a whole, and for the KFUPM faculty in particular, to explore and discuss areas of common interest with the specific focus on Learning. It is being launched as part of the project “Development of Creativity and Excellence of faculty members at Universities in Saudi Arabia” which is supported by the Ministry of Higher Education and is administered by the Deanship of Academic Development. The project includes a program on “Teaching and Learning Skills for Online Education” and one of the components of the program is to prompt the formation of a community of practice at KFUPM.

People have come together to form associations and groups for sharing common interests, promoting professional interests and for helping and supporting each other. The idea of community of practice has a strong emphasis towards learning. It is about people with common interests interacting with each other for solving their problems and learning from the interactions. There is a strong sense of belonging in the community which facilitates frequent interactions and reflection among its members. A community of practice deals with a broad level theme such that people coming form a variety of backgrounds can participate and can look at the topic with a variety of perspectives in a multidisciplinary manner. A community of practice negotiates its values and the theme of interest through interaction. The interactions happen both in formal as well as informal settings with a focus on practical experiences. It is the passion and motivation of its member that derives a community of practice to progress.

Fusion has been established to facilitate the formation of a community of practice at KFUPM. While teaching and learning online is currently the focus of Fusion, it is not the only topic that will be discussed on this Blog. We will be discussing all issues relevant to teaching and learning at KFUPM.

As the editor of Fusion I invite you now to please suggest topics that you feel can be of common interest in relation to the academics at KFUPM as well as the means of communication and interactions that can help all of us participate in our collective quest of the improvement of teaching and learning at KFUPM. Please scroll down and write as much as you want to write in the box below and hit the “Post My Comments” button.

It is only through your contributions, direct from the trenches, that will guide the participation and interaction among the community. Please keep your comments to the posts of this Blog coming in. In addition please send your posts for the Blog to webdad@kfupm.edu.sa as a direct contribution to Fusion. Let us also not forget celebrating the proud heritage we have for our institution KFUPM as we support each other in getting better in all what we do at KFUPM.