Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

This week I stumbled upon a position paper titled Digital Critical Dialogue: A Process for Implementing Transformative Discussion Practices within Online Courses in Higher Education, by Jason T. Hilton, and coming across this article happened at a good time. Right now I am working to develop a model course structure as an introduction to teaching online, and the article prompted me to really consider my suggestions for enhancing discussion practices. Albeit, they may not be as transformative as Paulo Freire intended – I would just like if faculty members leveraged the technology available to create critical dialogue within their online courses. Additionally, B-School has taught me a thing or two about critical dialogue, and I think I can marry these two resources to develop a fairly comprehensive suggestion list for enhancing critical dialogue in online courses, specifically within higher education.

1. USE YOUR FORUMS! – And by this, I do not mean just using your forums. Use them responsibly! You should build discussion posting requirements into your course outline. For example, adding a 5-10% participation mark that is awarded based on 1 unique post (usually to a question posed by the instructor) and 2+ responses to peer posts. Quality can be rated based on criticality of the dialogue – “Great post!” is not a quality response to a peer post – I’m sorry. Right now I am seeing many green professors grading based on participation, but while the forum is present in their course, they’re grading students based on attendance in VOIP sessions, and in online courses, it’s not always possible for students to attend all VOIP sessions – there’s usually a reason students are taking online courses.
2. Assign group work – Most students aren’t a huge fan of group work; I certainly wasn’t – I preferred to go it alone and not have to rely on others for part of my grade. However, group work, when structured properly (more on this in a moment), can create critical dialogue by inciting a collaborative approach to learning. What do I mean by ‘structured properly’? Well – Create group environments (e.g. forums specific to only group members) where individuals can discuss aspects of the assignment amongst themselves. Within the assignment specifications, dictate that students must respond (usually at a minimum of 500 words) to each group member’s submission and indicate that there will be peer evaluations – doing this may enhance honesty and integrity, allowing students to understand that not only will their cooperation within the group be graded by the instructor, but also by their group members.
3. Use Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) – Most institutions have some form of VOIP (e.g. Collaborate or Adobe Connect); you should leverage these technologies for two main reason – 1) to provide students with a variation of traditional face-to-face learning, which is critical for students who prefer this type of learning, but are hindered in their ability to commit to a physical classroom, and 2) to enhance critical discussion by allowing students to critique one another or ask questions within a more traditional style lecture. I have found these sessions to be incredibly effective when used as a forum for oral presentations. As a student who hated giving oral presentations, VOIP sessions allowed me to hone my speaking prowess, while reducing my associated anxiety.

Other ways of enhancing critical dialogue may be through the implementation of Learning Management System (LMS) database functionality (e.g. students may upload material, view peer uploaded material, and comment on peer uploaded material), allowing students to use blogs or curate wikis, and assigning annotated bibliographies (less of a focus on collaborating with peers, and more of a focus on critically considering the literature).

In any event, you don’t want to create page-turner courses, especially in higher education – you want to show of the passion of your discipline and perhaps make students passionate and engaged with their studies. While many instructors may be resistant (or afraid) to changing their teaching methods, it is essential to understand the technologies available for leveraging your online courses and engaging your students, especially with students coming from a digital age. If you’re afraid of technology, as your resident Instructional Designer or Ask Me – I would love to help!

Follow these tips, and I’ll be a very happy gal!

I cannot tell you how long I have been wanting to write this post – years. I’m sure a musical will follow shortly…After reading an insightful article by fellow Instructional Designer, Nicole Mellas, entitled 3 Steps to Get MORE out of Subject Matter Expert (SME) Interviews, I was prompted to share my tips and experiences.

Dealing with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) can be tricky. Often times, they have trouble placing themselves in the shoes of their audience and/or Instructional Designer, and on particularly frustrating days where communication has come to a standstill, I call this relationship “My SME and Me.” In the darkest moments (re: sobbing over my keyboard), it renews my faith in humanity.

As Instructional Designers it is our job to figure out how to communicate effectively with our SMEs. Effectively in the sense that you get clear (or somewhat clear) answers to the questions you have in order to ensure the most accurate content, and you do this in an efficient manner. The phrase ‘time is money’ is a very accurate one in this respect. There are often many other tasks that you could devote your time and effort to in the instructional development process, so it is critical to be able to streamline the approach you take when it comes to communicating with your SME. Another phrase I’ve come to appreciate in recent weeks – “Everything is figureoutable” – Marie Forleo – allows me to recognize that each SME is their own person and as such, they are entitled to their own manner of communicating and disseminating information and the Instructional Designer will eventually figure out how best to communicate with that particular person.

When I reflect on my annual performance, I often cite communicating with SMEs as one of my greatest challenges. While I still consider this task challenging, I walk into my SME interactions with a different attitude – one that appreciates where the SME is coming from and their area of expertise – they’re a SME for a reason, after all. This is step one.

Go into your SME interactions prepared. Pinpoint the specific content areas you want to discuss in an agenda, that you submit to the SME ahead of time, and bring relevant reference material to the meeting (or include it in the agenda email) – this will help streamline your meeting by giving the SME an opportunity to prepare themselves ahead of time.

Always keep your eye on the prize. The prize is engaging, accurate content or copy, and you need to steer the ship of conversation! If your SME begins to go off on a tangent, diplomatically get them in check, and proceed with your agenda (e.g. “That’s an incredible story about how you built the rocket, but could you tell me more about how to launch the rocket?”). Accurate content is essential for many training programs. I would say all, but something like soft skills training may be more subjective than something more specific like air traffic control training. It is imperative that you keep your SME on point.

Finally, respect your SME. When you are especially frustrated and feel like you’ve talked circles around yourself, always be polite and ensure you are respectful to your SME. In many industries, you will likely have to interact with this individual again, and not burning bridges will go a long way in your next interaction.

To summarize, my tips for successful SME interactions are:

1. Get your attitude in check
2. Come prepared
3. Keep the content in mind
4. Direct your SME and keep them on point
5. Respect your SME and build rapport

What have your SME experiences been like? Have you experienced cases of My SME and Me?

When developing courses, I tend to take the Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS) approach. There’s no point overcomplicating things that some may already find complicated.

Tip #1 – Put yourself in your learner’s shoes. While you might be the Subject Matter Expert (SME), try to present information in a meaningful way, avoiding industry jargon at all costs. When a course isn’t successful, often times the issue is in the structure and presentation of the course, not the ability of the learners.

Tip #2 – Engage the learners my providing concrete examples that may allow learners to activate their prior knowledge as a foundation for new learning opportunities.

Tip #3 – CHUNK CONTENT. The last thing a learner needs is to spend hours scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling through content.

Tip #5 – Be concise. I don’t think I can emphasize this point enough – maybe I could make a marquee banner? Learners likely spend a lot of their time scrolling through PDFs and reading textbooks or other course materials. Value your learner’s time by concisely structuring your content. Doing this will also allow you to easily chunk your content.

Tip #6 – Provide assessment opportunities coupled with meaningful feedback. Learners want to know they’re on the right track. If you allow them to apply their knowledge through assessment opportunities, you open up a door to provide them with meaningful feedback, which will likely contribute to higher academic achievement and learner satisfaction.

Tip # 7 – Add appropriate media. This is tricky because everyone has a different idea about what might be considered ‘appropriate media’. What I mean by this is engaging the learner with multimedia, when appropriate. For example, you’re teaching an individual about car doors and how they can open and close. For this example, a side-by-side static graphic of the car door open and then the car door closed would be sufficient. Creating an animation to illustrate this may enhance engagement, but is not necessary to meet the learning objective.

Tip #8 – Be smart about your use of audio. I’d like to think that most folks can use their heads here and make good judgement calls, but I’ve worked on projects where the client requested, and truly believed it was necessary, to have 1.5 minutes of audio narration for an animation lasting 45 seconds (cut to a classroom of sobbing learners). Use audio when it makes sense. You might explain a procedure in detail in the onscreen text, but in the audio you should paraphrase the procedural steps to line up with what’s happening in the onscreen media.