Giving myself 96%

I launched my SPAN 1412 with OER materials this past semester.  Whew.  It was an adventure.

I knew launching the course with these materials would be a challenge.  I wasn't sure if the students would learn the information needed to go on with SPAN 2311 with me or at another institution.

I was nervous--we went over challenging material that they needed to master.

The good news is that it was a success.  I learned a few lessons:

*I'm a great teacher face to face.  I saw that my face to face section did better on concepts on quizzes than my online section.  

While celebrating that face to face was going well I had to figure out how to make my online course better.

*I added grades for watching select lecture videos.  

A dual credit student last spring told me if I expect students to watch a video a grade has to be tied to it.  Yuck.  I resist that but I accept it.  

I created concept review videos (less than 4 minutes) that students had to watch and answer one question that chat gpt would have a tough time with.  

Note: a handful of students answered the question with something completely odd that seemed robot-generated, but most answered the question correctly.  

*Adding CC.  I chose to use a website that has fantastic lecture videos.  Ironically my reason for choosing the videos--they are concise and very easy to follow--made students not love them.  They aren't flashy or funny, but they are easier to understand than reading a college textbook.

I realized that when these videos were created in 2013 the creator didn't enable the CC function. 

I had a choice to make--replace these videos with different material or add the CC myself.  It took some time and it wasn't enjoyable, but I added the CC.  Here's hoping it was worth the time spent on it.

*Projects.  There were 4 chapters of new information and a mini-project was assigned in each.  I deliberately chose concepts that fit well for projects.  They were all quick to create and focused on personalizing what we were learning.  Student feedback was positive and I enjoyed grading these.

*Adding guidance in the lessons.  I designed for students to read lesson/watch a lesson video and then complete a Drill lesson in Canvas to practice the information at a very basic comprehension level.

While this worked, I've gone back into the lessons and added this graphic:

I use this to show the students to take a moment to reflect on what they have read/watched.  I tell them how to think through the information or practice with it.

I give myself a "96%" because I didn't catch the CC issue on the lecture videos until after the semester ended.  I fixed the issue when I became aware of it.

There were also some typos in assignments.  Luckily, I had a student that worked on her assignments early in the week and she would email when something looked amiss.  I'm grateful for her diligence so I could fix issues.

I saved each student $139 by using OER resources.  I also have 100% control over the quizzes, tests and assignments.  That is fantastic.

I did something hard and made myself really vulnerable.  This could have been an enormous flop.  It wasn't.  Hooray!