Novel Uses of Social Media and On-line Technologies in

Teaching and Recruitment

Breakout sessionSession chairs Dagenbach & Weinraub

Sunday, February 24, 2013Annual Meeting

Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology

Useful Links re Job Searches

• http://psychjobsearch.wikidot.com/2012• Forum cover page

http://psychjobsearch.wikidot.com/forum:star

• example of discussionhttp://psychjobsearch.wikidot.com/forum/t-591980/ Ivy League University –cognitive

• Example of active discussionhttp://psychjobsearch.wikidot.com/forum/t-568368/-educational-psychology-cognitive-science

On-line learning

Useful report can be found athttp://

www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/changingcourse.pdf

COGDOP Survey Questions

• Does your department offer online courses? If so, what are the enrollments (estimate)?

• Does your department offer entire programs online? If so, what kind?

• If you do offer online courses or programs, how do you assess the quality of them? In particular, how do you determine the extent of learning?

• Online courses are rapidly becoming more prevalent. What do you think are the major implications for higher education? For Psychology Departments?

Social Media and Teaching

Starting assumptions:

•Today’s student is different, used to Facebook, Twitter, 24-7 digital interaction with the world, etc…

•Using the technologies they’re familiar with will be more effective than trying to produce that same effect using our technologies even when our technologies include things like blogs on Blackboard, Sakai, etc…

Effective use creates dialogue outside of classroom bringing new

energy back to the classroom

for example, Facebook page for a class where material is posted, students are required to comment, leading to more comments, postings, etc…

Caveat: Need to segregate personal and academic social media

Current Use of Social Media in Teaching

Faculty responses

Do Use 34 %Don’t Use 66 %

Age effects

Do Use Under 35 40% Over 55 30%

Types of Social Media Used at Least Monthly

Blogs & Wikis 23 % Podcasts 14 %Facebook 8 %Twitter 2.5 %

Concerns about Social Media in Teaching

Intergrity of student submissions 70%

Privacy 63 %

Separation of course and personal accounts 61%

Grading and assessment of submissions 53%

Inablity to measure effectivenss 45%

Online teaching: Has there been a sea change?

Source of data: 2013 Babson Survey Reporthttp://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/changingcourse.pdf

Online Teaching Definitions

On-line course – at least 80% of content delivered online

Blended or hybrid – between 30 – 79 % delivered online

Face to face – zero to 29% delivered on line

New ideas

MOOCMassive open online course (and FREE to students)Currently offered by 2.6 % but an IMPORTANT 2.6 %9.4% planning MOOCs

Massive = Massive, 100K students in a course

Reward for completion = learning + course certificate

Why offer one?

a.Way for institution to learn online technology

b.Way to advertise your brand

c.Way for students to pilot test whether they’re good candidates for online education

MOOC issues

Will MOOC credentials count? The same as a formal course?

Will they muddy the waters about what a course is?

Lots of confusion

“Traditional” Online Teaching

•Importance

•Prevalence and Trends

•Quality and Quality Assessment

Institutional importance attached to developing online learning

Chief academic officers (CAOs) reporting online learning is critical to their long term strategy

Critical Not important

2012 69.1 % 11.2 %2013 < 50 %

Administrators clearly perceive gold in those hills.

Prevalence of online learning

•N taking at least one course online 6.7 M

•Proportion taking online courses is at an all time high: 32%

•Growth of online course enrollments slowed for the first time in the survey’s 10 year history, but so did enrollments for higher education in general

Something we’ve learned along the way: Doing online courses well takes a

lot of time and effort

. Many teaching them find them way more demanding than a large lecture class.

CAO’s only partially agree:

Online teaching takes more faculty time and effort

45% of academic leaders agree (moving up from past years)

24 % of academic leaders at private for profit agree

Learning outcomes? Large discrepancy between faculty and administrators.

Learning outcomes comparable?

Academic leaders Yes No 77 % 23 %

and these values have been going up.

Faculty perceived to have less belief in efficacy of online education

CAO’s report faculty in general do not accept value and legitimacy.

The strongest faculty supporters are at institutions with fully online programs, and then only 38% of the faculty agree that they’re comparable.

COGDOP Response to Online Education Poll: 24 responses

1. Does your department offer online courses? If so, what are the enrollments (estimate)?

Some are doing a lot: 1250 students / semester, 1379 students currently

enrolledSome classes are large 160/course , lots of 100/course, BUT

Most actually are surprisingly small Answers ranging from 15 to 50/course were the most

prevalent

2. Does your department offer entire programs online?

If so, what kind?

Few do – 4 yes responses, but also more programs in development

Human Resources MSPsychology general majorGeneral psychology; human services administrationBS major; Masters in human factors

3. If you do offer online courses or programs, how do you assess the quality of them? In particular, how do you determine the extent of learning?

Divided responses based on whether question was interpreted as aimed at quality of teaching or learning.

For those answering about learning, 3 common themes

•Assessment is a big problem

•We use tests and papers

•We’re going to start, or already have started, proctored exams

4. Online courses are rapidly becoming more prevalent. What do you think are the major implications for higher education? For Psychology Departments?

Virtually every respondent acknowledged that this is going to have enormous implications for our future.

•Some see it as potentially positive, freeing resources for other things.•Some suggest, hopefully, that it’s a fad that will eventually go away.

•Most see it as real but with lots of possible costs:

“This is tricky. I strongly suspect that, if things just unfold organically, we may well see the Amazonification of academia.

One version is many lower division/entry courses will be taught on-line.

An extreme version is that Univ degrees will become obsolete and people will provide a CV showing a set of on-line classes on their resume in lieu of a degree.

Either way, I do envision that there will be a significant decrease in faculty positions. It has happened in every otherindustry and it isn't clear why academia would be immune.”

Some indicated what we need to move forward

”We are NOT getting answers to our main questions: (1) what kinds of learning can be effectively delivered online? (2) what are best practices for doing so (3) As we hire based on research productivity, is there a single person who's a model for a well-funded researcher teaching online courses? … I think it's possible, but not easy, to stimulate thinking and conceptual growth with online... So, jury's out, we can accept doing it badly, or we can insist on doing it well and selectively/thoughtfully if we are going to.”

And some, taking that online teaching is going to be prevalent as a given, asked that our session today move in this direction:

“Here's what I think would be UNproductive - opening up session for gripes by the uninitiated. That could fill a week. Find out who in the room believes they have the most mature problems and ask them to tell what has gone well in how they’ve established and what conundrums they now face. I guarantee trajectories will be similar for other depts that head down this path and chronicling 3 effective models for those who do attend the session and those like me who can't would be a great gift to the listserv and a good starting point for what comes next.”

If online education is a given, can we productively influence its course?

Designing next year’s long session on this

Issues:

1.What kinds of learning can be effectively delivered online? a. knowledge b. critical thinking/discussion? c. clinical skills?

2. What are the best practices for doing so

Implementation Questions

What has worked in setting up online courses/ programs?

What were major obstacles?

For those courses / programs that are working, what new issues have arisen?