So maybe communollaborating isn't a word. Okay- it definitely isn't a word. But "communication & collaboration tech tools" sounds like a work conference you'd fake a stomach bug to avoid. So now that I've lured you in with a terrible portmanteau (and made you look up the word "portmanteau"?) let's turn to the actual topic at hand.
This blog post is in response to a project calling for a redesign of a class element to add communication and collaboration. Not having taught a class before, I'm going with a brand new creation. I've been working on a mini-lesson about the atom that, if interested, you should need only a Canvas account to enjoy.
So here's what we're working with: a Canvas course that follows the development of the atom from its Ancient Greek origins to the modern model in all its quantum glory. I currently have a few pieces of content, but it's still very much in development. It's designed for high school science students, who need to know the main points of key historic atomic models. Maybe it's not the most exciting topic to most folks, but we're going to make it fun!
Communication
Communication in this context refers to communication from the teacher to the students. In online courses, it is important that communication be clear, complete, and concise, as students cannot seek clarification as easily (Mushkat, 2016). First and foremost, I decided to make a splash page/home page/landing page to orient students to my course. Because online courses lack many of the traditional signaling cues about what students should expect and do "in class," orientation to online courses is particularly critical (Riggs & Linder, 2016).
I wanted to include something a little more fun than a block of text, so I used Voki to create an avatar character that could introduce the course for me. Voki is a tool that animates a character of choice to say whatever you'd like it to. Working with the free version of Voki turned out to be a pain, as I couldn't embed my character or use more than 60 seconds of speech. To get around all that, I used screen-cast-o-matic to record a video of the avatar talking, overlaid my voice, uploaded to Youtube, and embedded from there into my Canvas site, and this post! A lot of steps and miscalculations, but it ended up working out okay.
Check out my video above if you'd like! Don't worry- it's short. Because they didn't have any scientist characters available for free, I decided to use an astronaut and take advantage of the opportunity to create some meaning in the lesson by tying in the application to space travel. This is something the course will also touch on later. Because of the 60-second time limit, I couldn't have the avatar say everything I wanted, so I added some further information to my homepage to cover everything I needed to say. In the future, I'd like to find another way to create character videos that allow for more flexibility and ease of creation.
Communollaboration
For my next punch-up, I wanted to add a little content to my course, so I used VoiceThread to create an interactive video to kick off a section. Videos can be great ways to convey material, but students need to view them as active assignments rather than a passive activity. Research shows that students who answer questions and interact with the content retain the material better than those who do not (Farah & Barnett, 2019). This falls under communollaboration because it is partly intended to convey information to students in a clear and engaging manner, but also to solicit comments and discussion from students.
To start, I found a Youtube video that includes great content along with closed captions. With VoiceThread, students (and I) can post comments in either text, video, or audio form on specific sections on the video.
VoiceThread was easy to use, did everything I wanted except for letting me add images as comments. You can't have everything! The video might be slightly longer than ideal, but for a complex concept I found that it was as concise as I could hope for.
Collaboration
To add some more collaborative elements to my class, I added two discussions. The first is an introductory assignment where students create some sort of graphic or video to introduce themselves and post it to a forum. I also took an assignment I had previously created, where students are asked to represent a historical atom in a creative way, and made it such that students will post their creation to a forum where other students are asked to comment and give feedback. Below you can see a screenshot of my course on the intro assignment page, and my example submission. The discussion page lays out parameters for how many comments/responses are required by each student, to ensure clarity of expectations.
Research tells us that students gain motivation and engagement in a course when they are interacting regularly with their peers. By adding two discussions to my unit, which would occur over about a week, my course now meets the recommended guidance of 2-3 peer discussions per week (Barak, Watted & Haick, 2016). By posting a work of their own, socializing with their peers, and providing feedback to other, students are providing a cognitive, social, and teaching presence in the discussion. According to Ives (2020), having all three components is critical to effective discussion. She also notes that too much teacher moderation can have a de-motivating effect on discussion, so these discussions are set up to not require external guidance unless something goes horribly awry. Thankfully, the Canvas site makes it really easy to set up threaded discussions, so this tool did most of the work for me!
With these additions, I'm hoping my course just got a lot more engaging. As always, I welcome your feedback. Until next time!
References
Barak, M., Haick, H., & Watted, A. (2016). Motivation to learn in massive open online courses: Examining aspects of language and social engagement. Computers & Education, 94, 49-60.
Farah, K., & Barnett, R. (2019, August 20). A 5-Step Guide to Making Your Own Instructional Videos. Retrieved September 24, 2020, from https://www.edutopia.org/article/5-step-guide-making-your-own-instructional-videos
Ives, K. (2020, April 1). How to cultivate student engagement in online classes. Retrieved September 24, 2020, from https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2020/04/01/how-cultivate-student-collaboration-and-engagement-online-learning-opinion
Riggs, S. A., & Linder, K. E. (2016). Actively Engaging Students in Asynchronous Online Classes. Retrieved September 24, 2020, from https://www.ideaedu.org/Portals/0/Uploads/Documents/IDEA%20Papers/IDEA%20Papers/PaperIDEA_64.pdf
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