A Commitment to Accessibility

The Talking Communities video above (unfortunately, it isn't captioned) shows two meeting planners who realize just before their Web conferencing session that their audience will include blind and deaf participants. They speculate that the blind people will be able to hear the conversation and the deaf will be able to see the slides, but conclude that "there must be something better." Indeed!

CCC Confer and the California Community Colleges have always been committed to making technology accessible to all of our constituents, regardless of disability or the severity of impairment. When our first RFP (Request for Proposals) was released for a Web conferencing vendor in 2001, our requirement of compliance with the Section 508 Amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 eliminated all but one of the vendors then providing the service. We selected that vendor because it mattered to us that ALL users be able to access and enjoy this technology. Our current vendor conforms to Section 508 as well as to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Priority AA (issued December 2012) and has received Gold level certification for non-visual access from the National Federation for the Blind NFB).You can find this vendor's Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) here. (The VPAT is a standardized way in which developers can report on their compliance with Section 508 requirements.)

From the beginning, when we offered Web conferencing, we decided that the option for captions would be available at no charge to the end user. The California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office, which funds our project, has always made it possible for us to make good on that decision. Recently, in fact, we've been able to divert the costs for instruction-related captioning to the Distance Education Captioning and Transcription (DECT) project, also funded by the CCCO. All of our captioning happens in real time, and we have been able to preserve this captioned content in our recorded archives. We also provide screen reader support for the blind and visually impaired, keyboard shortcuts, built-in speech-to-text support, features for changing text size and controls, and navigation options for menus and tabs - all of which are recommended by the National Consortium on Deaf-Blindness. Our vendor provides a downloadable Web Conferencing Accessibility Guide which is extensive (86 pages) and very helpful for anyone presenting to an audience of differently-abled individuals.

I hope you as a presenter are as committed to accessibility as we at Confer are. Consider some of these suggestions to ensure that all of your students (or audience) can access your presentation:

1. Don't assume that all of your students know how to use CCC Confer or have ever been in a Web conference before.
2. Prior to your session, ask your students or audience if they have assistive needs and - even if no one reports any - become aware of the options available.
3. Send files (handouts, agenda, slides, etc.) as attachments before the meeting/class session begins. You can also send them during the session (File Share), but having a backup plan is wise. If using PowerPoints, consider creating a text version.
4. Practice in advance so you know how to share your screen, mute your participants, etc.
5. Come early to your Confer room and pre-load your content/slides.
6. Decide how to handle questions (chat, verbal, at a specific time?)
7. Tell your online audience what you're doing as you do it; it will help them understand what they're seeing (or hearing or reading).
8. Give participants the Computer Readiness link well in advance of your session so they'll know whether or not their equipment is compatible with the Confer software.

It's also important that some rules of etiquette be followed in your online sessions to maximize accessibility. Tell your students or audience:

1. Mute phones when not speaking
2. Find a way to take turns (I like the virtual hand-raising icon)
3. When you're speaking, tell everyone who you are (voices sound alike, and the captions will be more useful if comments are attributed to their authors)
4. When or if you arrive late, don't interrupt the session by introducing yourself

For more information about accessible Web conferencing options, see:

Where the Disabled are Enabled, in which Web conferencing "allows students with disabilities — as well as distance-studies students and those who just want a refresher — to access information in their own time."

How to Add Captions to Blackboard Collaborate Recordings, in case you are not a CCC Confer customer or forgot to pre-order captions.

Using Blackboard Collaborate to Provide an Accessible Environment for Individuals with a Hearing Loss, in which a 37-year veteran Deaf Educator explains why "especially important to me are the options that Blackboard Collaborate provides for offering students with a hearing loss the same equal access to information that their hearing peers enjoy."


Leaving No User Behind, in which Shannon Forte declares a commitment to "be sure that virtually anyone and everyone can fully engage and participate in your online classroom."

Say What? Why Audio is Vital to Good Online Lectures

Here's an observation: students will forgive bad video long before they'll forgive bad audio. They'll watch presentations of lectures with fuzzy slides - or even no slides! - as long as they can hear what's being said clearly and (apparently) imagine for themselves what's being shown on the screen. Reverse the situation - with stunning visuals but terrible audio - and they'll quickly give up in disgust. (Thinking back on it, I attended many a lecture from the back of the room, where I couldn't see - or be seen - much, but was perfectly able to hear what was being said and take decent notes.)

Here's a video from Mari Smith with excellent tips about online audio enhancement:




She includes here some inexpensive microphones and connectors that will even work with smartphones to bring your audio up to snuff. Other resources for recommended microphones for Webcasting can be found here.

Audio enhances learning outcomes, especially when it involves narration that explains a complex visual, formula, graphic, or video  with which students are unfamiliar. Research indicates that adding audio (as opposed to text) to this kind of material can improve learning outcomes by as much as 80 percent. Simply by adding phonetic memory to visual memory, the brain is able to process the information more efficiently. If students are trying to understand a drawing or math formula you've presented to them, adding more text - which increases the strain on their visual processing - won't help as much as explaining to them with audio (your voice), which allows for audio processing to work with visual processing to produce understanding.


Since audio is so important, you as a speaker (presenter, lecturer, etc.) should do your best to optimize the quality of the audio you're providing to your audience. Prepare your environment for any unexpected sound (noise) that will interfere with your narration. Turn off  your cell phone (muting doesn't always eliminate all the alerts your phone wants to send you). I use a sign on my door (the current one reads "GET A ROOM...") to let others know you're not to be disturbed. Ask someone to take your dog (or baby) for a while - somewhere else. As e-learning guru Ruth Clark advises: "

Avoid ear candy. Background music and environmental sounds create unnecessary cognitive load and distract from, rather than increase, learning. Indeed, music, over longer periods of time can be incredibly annoying. Note that this also applies to sounds, such as beeps or applause, that reinforce right and wrong answers. This may be appropriate in a games, but not for most online learning. Ear candy is as bad as eye candy."

Online Teaching 2013: The State of the Art

The 2013 Online Teaching Conference in Long Beach, California encompassed myriad topics that reflect the major trends and concerns of the profession: MOOCs, legislation related to distance education and open educational resources, YouTube, the rapid changes in the educational environment, hybrid options and design, collaboration, faculty training, social media, online student services, digital textbooks, tutoring, disruption, and innovation. Thanks to the great work of the OTC professionals, here's a sample of the recorded sessions.

Be There Now (or Later): How to Be Present When Your Students are Somewhere (or Somewhen) Else

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In 1971, Ram Dass published Be Here Now, a life-changing book for many of the Boomer generation. The book emphasized spiritual truths and the admonition to be present at the only time that matters - now - and in the only place that matters - here. With quotes like "the next message you need is always right where you are," it brought many readers to an awakening based on the present moment.

Teachers in the virtual classroom often have a difficult time with the concept of "presence" and "here and now." They miss the eye contact with students that the traditional classroom provides, making it difficult to hold the audiences' attention or even to know when they are holding it. Non-verbal signals (facial expressions, body language, hand gestures) are also missing online. Students who wish to can get up and walk around, turn their backs on the instructor, switch screens, feed babies, etc.: there is little physical control granted to the instructor over the virtual classroom. Distractions - barking dogs, incoming text messages, e-mail, Facebook prompts, etc. - are difficult to control and have the potential to destroy instructor presence. We've all got horror (or humor) stories about that: one that recently appeared in The Chronicle's Wired Campus spoke of "barking dogs, wailing babies, and a naked spouse" as intruders in the virtual classroom.

The potential for disconnectedness or distraction is so great that virtual classroom instructors have to be proactive, just as the readers of Ram Dass's book were urged to "wake up" and "be here now." They must pay attention to what they're saying, how often they pause to ask questions and wait for answers, and how they recognize opportunities to solicit feedback and participation. They regularly check the class roster and call on students to contribute thoughts or materials. They know that injecting humor or surprise is an effective method for breaking the ice and getting everyone's attention. They find ways to personalize their presentation, often by using the Web cam judiciously to show themselves and/or their environment or by inserting personal pictures (of themselves, their garden, a pet) onto slides or whiteboards.

Where synchronous collaboration is possible (i.e., where you have an online audience now), it should be encouraged and planned for. I like to make my students believe that they can be called on anytime to do something - and then prove it by calling on them randomly and often. If more than three minutes go by without my pausing to engage my online audience, I'm in danger of losing both them and myself in the lecture, not the present moment. I like to insert a PAUSE slide about every 10 slides in my presentation to ensure that I use it and "wake up" to my audience. The chat back-channel is a great way to reinforce presence and engagement, as long as you pay attention to it and encourage student participation.

Vicki Davis cites 12 healthy habits to grow your online presence in her Cool Cat Teacher Blog:

1. Share.
2. Respond.
3. Comment.
4. Link Generously.
5. Read (or Listen) Prolifically.
6. Distribute Yourself.
7. Beware of Flattery.
8. Live Life Online and Off-line.
9. Latch Key Your Legacy.
10. Laugh (a lot).
11. Take Every Presentation Seriously.
12. Expect Criticism.

Be there!

Lighten Up Online (Seriously!): The Value of Humor in the Virtual Classroom

"A joke is a very serious thing." - Winston Churchill

In Carla Meskill's forthcoming book on Online Teaching and Learning, N. Anthony has contributed a chapter entitled, "Perceptions of Humour in Oral Synchronous Online Environments." Anthony interviewed and surveyed students and teachers using the Wimba classroom specifically to determine the role of humor in this synchronous online environment. Here are some of the students' comments:

• "It helped with the anxiety levels. The times we had humor, it did kind of lighten the mood and took the pressure off...."
• "It helps me to relax and not feel pressured."
• "It makes it more fun and makes it more ok to try and make a mistake than being afraid to speak...."
• "Making it funny helps people feel less insecure about messing up."
• "I believe that teacher-initiated humor relaxes the classroom and leaves us all more willing to participate because we aren't afraid to mess up because there is a portrayed sense of light-heartedness."
• "It just makes it easier to feel relaxed and speaking in conversation is less intimidating." 
• "It's easier to remember something that is funny than something that is boring... Words are remembered better when presented in humorous situations."
• "Often humor makes the content more memorable and therefore helps to learn it faster and better."
• "I tend to remember things more easily if I have a phrase to associate them with, and humorous phrases are particularly memorable."

Other researchers have noted the beneficial role of humor - both from teachers and from students - in the online classroom. Mirjam Hauck and Regine Hampel investigated the factors in the virtual classroom that facilitated interaction (with students and with instructors) and observed, "making humorous comments or observations to improve the interaction with individual partners and the group as a whole was also identified by several students as a motivating factor." They describe a particular use of humor by a student who did so because he perceived that "some of his peers still felt uncomfortable in the synchronous online environment and were therefore exposed to techno-stress and cognitive overload."

Michael Eskey notes that "humor, whether in the form of jokes, riddles, puns, funny stories, humorous comments or other humorous items, builds a bond between the instructor and students; bridging the student-teacher gap by allowing students to view the instructor as more approachable." How you introduce and use humor will depend on your teaching style, your pedagogical objectives, and your comfort with the tools available in the online classroom, but there is a growing body of evidence that students learn better when they are allowed to "loosen up" online and enjoy themselves and one another.

In the Confer classroom, instructors will inevitably be doing some things by "trial and error": the technology changes, for one thing. Successful instructors demonstrate a fearless attitude and don't mind making public mistakes in the process: it's probably the best way to encourage experimentation and exploration on the part of students. By letting your audience (students) "in on the joke" while you try to figure out how a new tool works, you're allowing them to participate (naturally, you won't allow your experiment to last so long that it interferes with instructional time or time on task).

Have fun!

Alone (or All One) Together Online: What Keeps Us Together in the Virtual Classroom

The constructivists maintain that social interaction leads to knowledge construction, higher order learning, and greater student success rates (i.e., achievement and completion). Students have to socially network in order for the neural network to do its thing and make connections between concepts and ideas. Sherry Turkle's wonderfully insightful book Alone Together is about, as she says, "how we are changed as technology offers us substitutes for connecting with each other face-to-face." The danger may be that if we use substitute (artificial) networking online, we may produce artificial learning or hamper the connections needed to enable real comprehension and mastery.

How do we build a community of learners from strangers who only meet online? Etienne Wenger prescribes course design elements that encourage interaction and reification (making things seem real). The use of real-time voice and video is one method the Confer instructor uses to deliver to students a sense of a real-time, articulate, caring, human. As Walsh et. al. reported in their study of Web conferencing learning communities, students may struggle with video and audio, but they prefer it to the alternative. "I think seeing someone on screen during the tutorial can keep you interested and makes the tutorial feel more interactive," says a Humanities student. Another student says, "I think the tutors who use this need to try and make it as interactive as possible ... [and to] input their own thoughts and ideas." Asked how the instructors could improve their use of the Web conferencing technology, students suggested:

• "Find ways to ensure students participate in the live sessions"
• "Develop and encourage methods for collaboration between students"
• "Remember to use students' names to help make it a more personal experience"

McBrien and Jones cite similar observations from the students in their synchronous online learning study. "Talking through the microphone really helped me connect my thoughts, knowing that I could only express myself verbally. It also made me feel more in control of how I communicated my ideas because a large group of people weren't staring at me..." "Voting was great - great to see what everyone else in class felt - you don't always get that feedback." Their students reported these negatives in the virtual classroom:

• Missing friends
• Lack of support when presenting
• Missing non-verbal gestures

One student observed that the class "needs to be planned more carefully and maybe tried the first session with all of the students in the classroom, not home."


We may be years away from taking these general suggestions and translating them into practical course design for the synchronous virtual classroom. As Mia Lobel et. al.  observe: "There is virtually no data describing how existing successful pedagogies, which are predicated on real-time interactive immediacy and skill practice, could be adapted to online learning environments. Much discussion and exploration is needed concerning the delivery of human relations skills online, when the pedagogy is based on group interaction, specifically active experiencing, concrete observation, abstract conceptualization and active practice and the content design is predicated on theories of group development, and observational and facilitation skills which necessitate participation and interaction."

 

Online Teaching: What the Experts Say

The Online Teaching Conference is days away, and there will be lots of exciting and informative presentations in Long Beach June 19-21. But why wait? Some of the presenters have already pre-recorded their presentations. Take a look - and make sure you register for the conference so you don't miss more!
You're Teaching a Course Online! Did You Do It Right? In this session Mauricio Cadavid discusses strategies for student success, engagement, and a positive learning experience. The audience will learn about developing rapport with their online students, as well as acquire a list of web-tools that can be used as effective design of class activities and participation.



The Importance of the Application of Critical Thinking in the Online Classroom.
Michael Eskey addresses teaching critical thinking skills to our online students. Research indicates that academics and students have differing perceptions of what happens in university classrooms, particularly in regard to higher order thinking, in particular, critical thinking. Higher education is challenged with encouraging students to pursue higher-order thinking and often fall short according to industry standards. The current research that will be discussed is directed at responses from full-time and adjunct faculty teaching either face-to-face or online mainly in the disciplines of criminal justice and political science to assess their views and application of teaching critical skills. The findings are applicable to all disciplines and emphasize the importance of specific instructor training to apply to the classroom in this area.



Yo Ho Blackboard Inline Grading For Me!
Eric Wilson explains that Blackboard recently updated the way you can grade Assignments and Discussions! With the new Inline Grading System, this recorded workshop will show you how to create Assignment and Discussions and how to grade both with the new inline system and paperless. Eric reviews the built in rubric system as well. It is so easy and can literally make grading painless.




Recruiting, Training, Maintaining, and Retaining Online Adjunct Instructors
Dr. Henry Roehrich with Dr. Michael Eskey explain that the development of online adjunct instructors requires a professional adult learning approach that incorporates a facilitation training program, mentoring process and instructor informational resources. The presentation outlines and discusses how this process can be effective and tailored to the needs of institutions in higher education. This will include the required online adjunct recruiting process, required training, online resources, professional development opportunities, the formal / informal mentoring process, required and optional refresher training. Additionally, there is a discussion of online adjunct and online student perceptions of instructional needs and requirements.



Does a Face Make a Difference? Comparing Synchronous Online Education with Other Instructional Methods at California Community Colleges and the Impact on Student Retention Rates
Claudia Tornsaufer
The main focus of this study was to investigate whether there is a difference in mean institutional retention rates among California community college students by the following institutional characteristics: 1) instructional method (on-campus, asynchronous and synchronous online courses); 2) ethnicity; gender; and age groups. The study’s findings on student outcomes will shed light on the impact of increased online student-teacher, student-student and student-content interaction in synchronous online courses and how it compares to the interaction on on-campus and asynchronous courses.