Kathleen's Blog

Looking to the finish line

Mon, 12 May 2008 08:37:00 EST

Hello again, everyone.

As we wind down to the last week of our nine-week IMC term, we finally have enough grades on students to determine their standing in the class. We can take a quantitative approach to students? performance and simply add their scores on a spreadsheet. But doing so would miss the subtleties of student participation.

So, we can examine student participation qualitatively. We can follow, anecdotally, different patterns of participation over time. By reviewing their assignments and discussion grades, we can learn that some students performed consistently throughout the semester; their assignments were always comprehensive and coherent. They were committed to the syllabus. Others started well, but their participation was uneven; they did not always maintain high-quality participation; still, they completed the course and understood and reflected the concepts in the course. Yet another type of student did not seem committed to the course and did not read deeply enough in the text to grasp the content of the course; nor did this person reach out to us, as most high-performing students do; so we may not have caught this low performance in time to change it.

The students we have in our online courses are accomplished people, already successful in their communities and companies. But, as we lead them back to academic studies, if they have had a hiatus of several years, or as we lead them on, across the bridge from undergraduate to graduate studies, we have to maintain our high standards. For the low achiever, this means requiring competent and documented papers; for the high achiever, it means additional feedback to their already good papers, so that we encourage their intellectual insights.

While the online environment demands that the student stay fully and consistently engaged in the course, we need to realize that students may falter as they approach the finish line because they may not have understood how demanding graduate school is. So, like a good coach, we need to encourage them and challenge them to end well.

So, let?s put our collective pedagogical minds together to answer this week?s question: What makes for a good finish in an online course?

Related Reading: Gilbert, S. (2001). How to be a successful online student. New York: McGraw-Hill. Retrieved 11 May 2008 from www.amazon.com.

How does an inactive group member affect the rest of the group?

Mon, 05 May 2008 07:35:00 EST

Hello, again, everyone.

This week, we take Week Seven?s topic about groups in a new direction, as we look at how to keep the group functioning. Sometimes called teams, groups are the building block of community, civic, and corporate life. That is because teams are often the best personnel vehicle for solving problems or advising others on pertinent marketing issues.

In an online course, the challenge is to keep all members of teams engaged in their group?s work. When a team member is really engaged in a group, he or she is sharing tasks, taking initiative, and following-through on assigned projects. That?s the ideal.

The reality is that group members often become disengaged from team work. While this week?s related reading offers reasons for what the author calls, ?dysfunction,? we all know as online faculty when dysfunction occurs, whether our class is doing group work or not. One of the first symptoms of dysfunction that we see is a decline in the quality and quantity of work: fewer postings and less frequent postings, to name a few.

Since a group is a microcosm of a class, the dysfunction is not a general occurrence but a specific one. Certain group members become inactive because their jobs or families are taking a lot of their time, so they don?t answer queries from the active members of a group. Perhaps they are not logging on, or perhaps they are unsure of how to be in a group in an online setting.

The result is that increased responsibilities are placed on the active team members, particularly the leader of the group. When several groups exist in our classes, any inactive members in a group slow down the progress of the group and affect a group?s prominence among the other groups. If this inattention by inactive groups persists, the team leader has to take the initiative to contact them and urge them to participate. Should the behavior continue, the remaining active members and leader have to move on and finish their tasks, often doing more than their fair share of work.

So, what has been your experience with groups. As you post to the blog, continue to identify yourself by your class moniker, as we answer this week?s question: How do you keep the group productive and pleasant?

Related Reading: Lencioni, Patrick M. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable. (2002). San Francisco: Joosey-Bass. Retrieved 3 May 2008 from www.amazon.com.

Starting the group process

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 07:42:00 EST

Hello, again, everyone.

The more one looks at groups or team work, the more fascinating the topic seems. From a research standpoint, some of the scholarly literature discusses group work among distinct educational populations. Yet other studies look at how groups work online, and that is what we will examine this week because our IMC classes exist in a virtual environment.

Talking about group work often means talking about who the emerging student leaders are in completing an online group project. Or it can mean managing conflict in a group project, for differing opinions can occur in even the best of groups.

One common student concern is whether an individual?s grade will suffer because others in the group are not doing their fair share of the work. Assuring hard-working students that their contribution is recognized can be a useful strategy for the instructor and a self-esteem boost for the student, especially if more tasks have to be assumed by the students who are contributing. Of some concern is how last-minute laggards sometimes participate in final presentations and take credit for group work that they have not done.

Fortunately, many teams can become cohesive if the instructor creates groups that reflect diversity in age, gender, and size. For instance, if there are five men and 15 women in a class, put a man in each group; similarly, if the statistics are reversed, put a woman in each group. Try to ensure that mature students do not monopolize and intimidate younger, yet equally intelligent, students. Restrict your groups to about four or five members to promote consensus.

Because many IMC students are working professionals, they are already participating in teams at work, so use examples about group work that draw on their knowledge and expertise in this area. As you post to the blog, continue to identify yourself, as we answer this week?s question: What?s been your experience with group work?

Related Reading: Cho, H. (2005) Communication styles, social networks, and learning performance in a CSCL community. Conference Paper. International Communication Association, Annual Conference 1-23. Retrieved 27 April 2008 from Communication and Mass Media Complete www.ebscohost.com.

Avoiding the midterm lull

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:22:00 EST

Hello, again, everyone.

I?m there, are you? I?m talking about the semester lull. It?s that time in the term, past the midpoint, when students and instructors seem to lack the energy of earlier in the term. The quality of some student papers may be declining, as students get tired. Well, they?re only human! Perhaps we are all getting ready for the big push, as we head towards the end of the term.

Uhm, let?s get energized. Consider complementing students for good comments that they make in the discussion postings. Are there especially salient statements that they have made in their assignment papers? Let them know that you value their intellectual insights.

Our low-performing students can worry us, of course. On the graduate level, they don?t give up as undergraduates do, rather they become uneven in their pedagogical performance, following the syllabus well one week, being incomplete the next.

We all know that our best students are going to come through for us. Yet we want to keep our middle-level students in the running, too. As faculty, we need to monitor their assignments, answer any queries that they have promptly, and be accessible to them during our online office hours.

So, let?s hear how you jump start a weary class. As you post to the blog, continue to identify yourself by your class moniker, as we answer this week?s question: How does a course stay interesting?

Related Reading: Davenport, R. J. Are We Having Fun Yet? Joys and Sorrows of Learning Online (2001). Science, 293, 1619-1620. Retrieved 20 April 2008 from www.jstor.org.

Creating a polished and professional graduate paper

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:43:00 EST

Hello, again, everyone.

As we guide our students through the Integrated Marketing sequence, we aim to make them critical thinkers, critical readers and, yes, critical writers. Some students just entering our program, may have turned in critical papers as undergraduates, so their papers reflect this pedagogical strength. However, perhaps you have had other students, who are new to academic writing.

Our online assignments offer them specific directions on what should be put in written assignments, yet a few students may not always implement the directions completely because they may be new to the complexities of scholarly writing. They may not know the APA citation style to be used for parenthetical documentation, for instance. More importantly, they may not understand how to read scholarly articles, thus making writing about them all the more challenging.

Some of our students have been away from campus for several years with professional and family responsibilities, so getting them back into academic composition may take an assignment or two. Other students who are transitioning from undergraduate to graduate status can find it difficult to write the longer papers required at the master?s level, and they may not be used to the denser articles found in scholarly journals.

The decrease in reading in our culture coupled with the increase in student attention to social networking sites may make it all the more difficulty for them to stay focused on long scholarly articles and their explanation of them in serious, academic writing.

As you post to the blog, continue to identify yourself by your class moniker, as we answer this week?s question: How do we maintain high standards of academic writing both in form and content?

What makes APA style effective?

Related Reading: Goddard, R. (2003). Relational Networks, Social Trust, and Norms: A Social Capital Perspective on Students? Chances of Academic Success. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 25, 59-74. Retrieved from www.jstor.org..

Recognizing the parts of a scholarly research article

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 07:32:00 EST

Hello, again, everyone.

Do beginning graduate students know how scholarly articles are organized? Can they recognize the significance of the findings and reflect on whether the methodology was valid? Some can, of course, particularly if they have written evaluative papers and used scholarly sources as undergraduates.

Others have had infrequent experience with critical reading; so, the substantive articles that they encounter in IMC can be challenging at first. The situation can be daunting for them, particularly, if they do not understand the divisions of a refereed article. They may get bogged down in the review of literature and in scholarly diction that is new to them. They?re in a foreign country, so to speak, with a new language and new routes to learn.

You can be their guide, though, by reading a journal article that they cite and then telling them via an email which parts of the article you thought were significant. This helps them understand and practice intellectual inquiry, the real aim of scholarly content.

When it comes to helping students learn the formatting of a scholarly paper, other assistance exists on the www.wvu.edu website. Select Academics, then Libraries, and you?ll navigate to the Libraries web page. On it there is a section called Help Guides and Tutorials that discusses critical issues and gives various links for crediting scholarly sources.

What have been your experiences with the papers that are coming into your class? As you post to the blog, continue to identify yourself by your class moniker, as we answer this week?s question: What is intellectual inquiry?

Related Reading: Master, Cam (2007). How to retain your Gen-X workforce. Manage Smarter.
Goggle July 10.

Applying job-related experiences to academic topics

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 07:44:00 EST

In the diverse mix that is the IMC student body, we find two interesting categories, which we will discuss today. In the first section are those students who are already in their professions and have come to graduate school to move up the career ladder. Of course, there is another category of students in our classes: those who are enrolled to change their careers.

Anecdotally and demographically, we tend to find the youngest of Generation X, Generation Y and a few Millenials in the first category; while in the second category are the oldest of Generation X, and a few residual baby boomers .

Each generation named here has its share of intelligent, hard workers. Yet, how each fits work into the larger scheme of life may differ. Latchkey kids of the 80s who became Generation X and Y seem to see work as a part of life, not its total meaning. Some baby boomers define themselves by their work.

?Gen Xers and Millenials view time as a currency. While Baby Boomers tend to see time as something to invest, the younger generations view it as a valuable currency not to be wasted? (Marston).

Think about , then, how these different perspectives on work can affect student participation in the online classroom. Will they mix well in group work? Will one group view a missed deadline as ethical, while another will see it as a moral lapse. Will younger students be intimidated by older students and vice versa/

We have all witnessed this diversity; so, as you post to the blog, continue to identify yourself by your class moniker, as we answer this week?s question:

How does one?s generation and work ethic affect success in the online class?

Related Reading: Master, Cam (2007). How to retain your Gen-X workforce. Manage Smarter. Google July 10.

Watching emergent student leaders in online discussions

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 07:29:00 EST

Hello, everyone, again.

Just like race horses out of the gate, we quickly see which of our students are ahead of the pack and which are lagging behind. . . . at least around the first bend. It?s what is beyond that first bend that can be disconcerting. Will the slow ones catch up? Will there be a spectacular come-from-behind? Will those in the middle maintain their course?

Questions like these start coming into our minds because we are not only subject-matter specialists, we are also managers of our online classes; and we want everyone to stay in the academic horse race that is graduate school.

Among the first clues that a student is not keeping up is that he or she has posting deficiencies. These omissions can take the form of not posting at all or posting inadequately, usually the latter.

We have all experienced this phenomenon; so, as you post to the blog, continue to identify yourself by your class moniker, as we answer this week?s question: How do we grow short postings into meaningful online exchanges?

Seeing what student bios tell us about adult learners

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:04:00 EST

Hello, everyone and welcome to…

the IMC Faculty Blog

Here?s where we trade tips on teaching techniques that help our classes thrive,
on what works for us and what worries us about our students? progress.

Each week of this nine-week late spring term, I?ll propose a point for us to ponder, an open-ended question, tied to a pedagogical strategy or to an online learning issue, that we have experienced while teaching and that is being seen in scholarly journals, too.

Well, to begin, let me introduce myself. I?m Kathleen DeMarco, one of the 612 instructors. I have met some of you at the retreat this past fall and look forward to making the acquaintance and gaining from the wisdom of you online here in our blog.

As you post to this first question, introduce yourself by the class you are teaching, just for this first week; it will be a kind of electronic name tag. So, here?s our opening question: What makes for a good start in an online course?

Lorenzetti, J. (2007). Reducing the risk: effects of a first year experience course for non-traditional students. Distance Education Report,11, 3-8.