For about two years now, I’ve been touting the value of the grading conference in teaching writing to anyone who will listen. I’ve found that meeting students one-on-one to grade their work, in addition to the more traditional “draft” conferences has had enormous positive effects on my students’ work and my own work as well. I started the practice in my face-to-face classes in order to stop procrastinating on grading papers, and I found as an unexpected outcome that the quality of the interaction is greatly improved. I’ll be happy to discuss it at length if you ask . . .

Anyway, about a year ago I decided to find a way to do the same technique with online courses. I always felt if I could just sit down with students and talk that the results would be so much better. I began using Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro in order to do that, with wonderful results.

Connect Pro is a web conferencing software. If you’ve ever attended a webinar (love those neologisms) you know what kind of software I am talking about. Conferencing software allows for lots of interaction: two-way audio, chat, sharing documents, live polls, etc. What makes Connect Pro work well in this case is the ability for the presenter to share his or her computer screen.

Here’s how it works in my course:

A few days before conferences are scheduled to begin, I post a sign-up sheet on FerrisConnect (I use the Group Manager and create one-person groups with times listed on a sign up sheet). Prior to the meeting, I’ve collected their work via the Assignments tool, and have the file open and ready to go.

At their alloted time, a student follows a web link to the meeting space and then calls me on the phone. There’s no software to download or accounts for them to set up. Once we get the meeting going, I share my screen and we read through the document together. I use Track Changes and Comments to record notes from our discussion (whether it is a draft session or a grading session), and when we’re done, I convert save the file as a PDF and post it back on FerrisConnect for them.

There are many advantages I found to conducting online conferences. First, they are efficient. Because we have a conversation, I can reduce a lot of the bypassing that happens in online courses. I can explain an issue and they can ask questions. At least I know that they’ve heard me.

Second, the experience is personal. Many students really enjoy these sessions, and I do too. I get to know them much better, and they get to know me. I use a webcam from my end, so they know my face and can see non-verbal cues as well. My “disappearing” rate among online students is lower with this personal connection, and we have better working relationships.

Third, the writing is better. Students have a better understanding of my feedback when I add the live conversation to the typed notes. I see fewer instances of students repeating the same kinds of flaws in their work, in part due to the conferences forcing me to stay on schedule with my feedback!

I’ve developed some specific practices to help things along. For example, I’ve learned to be flexible with time. I do conferences on afternoons, evenings, and weekend. I balked at doing weekend conferences at first, but then I remembered I would be sitting around Saturdays staring at a stack of (virtual) papers anyway. I also give students opportunities to reschedule if they need to, in order to meet as many of them as possible.

I schedule the conferences on the half hour. It doesn’t take half an hour to do a conference, but there needs to be that leeway for technology hiccups and students arriving late and early.

The conference room has a virtual door, and I use it. I lock the door when a student comes in, because sometimes the next student pops in early or at the wrong time.

I have students call me directly, rather than the built-in voice conference. With one student that’s easier. If I were meeting a group, I would use the built-in audio. I set up a Skype phone number so I could use a headset and the same number at home or at work.

I tell students to maximize their screen and ask them often “Do you see that?” when I’m highlighting something. There is a small time lag with AdobeConnect, and I have to be careful not to go too fast.

Overall, the time invested in grading this way is worth the return for me. Despite my years of trying, I am still very slow at grading papers on my own. This method is not for everyone; a lot of hours are eaten up doing these conferences. I do them seven or eight times a semester with each student.

In order to get started with Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro, you can contact the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning. I also recorded a demonstration of the software at work. You can find that here: http://tinyurl.com/jontaylorconf

So yesterday was our all-day training session on BlackBoard 9.1 for those of us who are piloting classes in the system for this semester.  I’ve had a couple questions via Facebook, so I’ll answer them here.

What is the roll-out schedule for BlackBoard 9.1?

The schedule, as far as I know, has not been set yet.  In fact, the decision to switch to BB 9.1 hasn’t been made yet.  We originally were going to pilot two or three systems but the FerrisConnect Advisory Board and Academic Affairs decided to pilot BB first, since it exists with our current software provider.  My feeling is if it’s not a disaster, we’ll probably switch.  Information about the decision-making process is here:

http://www.ferris.edu/htmls/academics/center/ferrisconnect/fab/FC2-learningMgmtSystem.html

Will we have to start over with this new software like we did with the switch from WebCT to FerrisConnect?

There are several issues wrapped up in this question.  First, FerrisConnect was our name for the next WebCT product.  We had WebCT Campus Edition, and then we switched to WebCT Vista, because Campus Edition was going away.  In the middle of this transition, BlackBoard bought WebCT and stuck its name everywhere, so WebCT Vista suddenly became BlackBoard Vista (and Microsoft Vista came out at the same time.  Oy!) We called it FerrisConnect.

So what we know now as FerrisConnect is the last remnant of WebCT, which is also going away.  What we’re moving to is what used to be the BlackBoard line.  There are important differences between the two (see a comparison at the link above) but also a lot of very familiar things.

Another issue is that we did not have to “start over” with FerrisConnect.  It was a newer and different system (though not as different as we initially thought: all that stuff about courses vs. sections and templates proved to be mostly irrelevant), but we were able to migrate a lot of courses and content.

With BB 9.1, some people in the pilot had their courses migrated from FerrisConnect, but I chose not to.  I like to rebuild courses every semester to make them fresh and make sure no old stuff gets moved without me reviewing it.  So I do know that courses were migrated, and I did not hear about a lot of problems at the training.

What is your impression after the training?

It is a lot more efficient and runs more quickly, but we are running on BlackBoard’s server right now and are not integrated with our system (Mary Holmes is managing student accounts manually).  There are a lot of little things that are better, like moving things by drag and drop rather than with menus.  I’ve started building my course, so here’s an old vs. new screenshot:

Keep in mind that the “new” layout is much more flexible: you can put whatever you want in the menus, change the course entry page, easily mix html and content links on the pages, etc.   In fact, the training emphasized up front that instructors have to make decisions about how to organize courses using the menus:  you could organize it by tool, the way FerrisConnect is, or by unit (one folder per week), or by content, or some mixture.  (This also opens the door for disorganization, so it’s something to be emphasized f0r training).  I think this flexibility is a great asset, though.

Also something which is much better is the GradeBook (called Grade Center in BB 9.1).  It is very easy to navigate and contains lots of tools for looking selectively at data (categories, filters, smart views).

One thing that is nearly impossible to do in FerrisConnect is weighted averages.  It is very easy to do that in BB 9.1.  Say, for example, you had a class with quizzes, tests, and assignments, and you wanted to make quizzes worth 20%, assignments worth 30%, and tests worth 50%.  All you do is assign each column a category tell it how to weight each category and then there is a tool that adds all that up for you and figures out the math.  And, if you added more quizzes in partway through the term, as long as you assigned them to the quizzes category, the system readjusts automatically.

There are lots of little things in the Grade Center that are neat too.  You can quickly change one cell, without waiting for three different screens to load.  You can quickly show one row on the screen and hide the rest, so if you were working with a student, you could show only that student’s grade on the screen.

Another good thing is that the’re no prohibition on using the back button in the browser.

A couple of negative things came up.  First, there are not popup announcements in BB 9.1–but it does have a sophisticated “alert” system.  Also, as it stands, there is no mechanism built in to enforce time limits on tests (there is a time limit, apparently, but once it counts down to zero, nothing happens; it does notify the instructor that the student went over the time limit, but doesn’t show what the student did after the time limit).  We found out that Princeton developed a “building block” that we can install to fix this problem.  As I mentioned before, Grading Forms are not implemented, but are in the works for this summer.

Also, there is no centralized Assignments page, which seemed odd at first, but it turns out it is just different: you manage assignments in the Grade Center instead, and it uses the Alerts system to notify students.

All in all I am pretty excited about trying out this system—but I’m in “new toy” phase right now.