Last week I had the opportunity to attend a session sponsored by World Campus as part of their World Class Connections series. This session was a panel of Penn State students brought up to the Penn Stater to discuss their experiences with online learning. The students were from a range of demographics and disciplines and were very ready to share.
It was an interesting and very crisp session. Larry Ragan, director of World Campus Faculty Development, did a great job moderating the panel (despite some not-so-shocking technical problems with the Adobe Connect production) and keeping it flowing. The format was fairly simple: each panelist was given 3 minutes (almost all took more) to give their story and then Larry took questions from both the live attendees as well as questions from those on the Connect session. The questions were directed toward the different members of the panel and were often based upon what a particular panelist had shared earlier.
While the outcomes were not particularly unexpected, it was still insightful to hear it in conversational style with these different students. Among the issues they discussed:
- More consistency in web experience: While the common denominator is still ANGEL, they feel that most everything else is different. One student said he feels he spends the first few weeks of a new course just figuring out how to navigate through the content. He felt that it seems as if faculty all do their "own thing" when it comes to content.
- More consideration of their schedule: As expected, most of the panel were "non-traditional" students, meaning they have jobs and families to tend to during day hours. They do experience some flexibility in this regard, they would like to see it more consistently applied in all courses they take.
- More timely responses and feedback: This is probably an issue with all students but perhaps more so for this group because of their longer stretches between being able to get back to their studies. Perhaps more frustrating for this group because in their typical 'real world' jobs, such feedback is expected and critical to moving on. There was some very good discussion around this issue.
But What I Really Like About This...
As I said earlier, this feedback is not all that unexpected but it did provide a somewhat of a picture of the state online learning experiences at Penn State. But what really struck me about this entire session was the mere fact that it had been all pulled together in the first place. Clearly, hearing educational experiences from students is nothing new but the way this event was executed seemed to really work for a number of reasons.
- For me, being there in person to see and hear them really works. Especially when we got to the questions portion. It's good to see how questions and responses build off each other and lead into a real dialogue. Questions lead to answers that lead to questions and so on. Very effective.
- The attendees were instructors, faculty, learning designers and other assorted folks involved with creating and delivering instruction online. Again, the in-person nature allowed me to put some names with faces as well as see some familiar ones around. This led to some very interesting F2F discussions immediately afterwards. Like hearing the story about an instructor assigned to each an online course during the summer who decided that, since it's online, there's not much to do so he...went on vacation. When students began complaining about a lack of feedback, and instructional designer called him one afternoon and found he was 'a bit enthused' on the beach and very annoyed at being bothered in such a way. That let me know how some instructors may think of the effort to deliver a course online. Good stuff!
Good Model so Let's Do More
This session showed me a great model for getting a dialogue with students. Like a marketing focus group, it provides a great environment to dig into deeper issues on the fly. I know that Larry and his team had to work hard to make this come off so smoothly but it seems this was an excellent model for mimic for many other areas at PSU. And not just for online learning either but for all the various modes of delivering instruction. I look forward to the similar session at TLT Symposium this year in which we hear from students and faculty on their expectations for educational technology. I'll be not only paying attention to the conversation but also the format.
Agreed. The student panel at the MC Tailgate was excellent. It would be nice to have students be part of the conversation coninuously too, and not have to wait for these events.
Thanks for this Matt. Good reflection on the event and a lot to learn between this and the Tailgate panel. I see a lot more of these and similar activities in our future. Students are going to have more of an influence in where their IT money goes. We're going to have a student version of a "faculty fellow" this summer. Overall, I welcome a bigger student voice in the design of their educational experiences.
The tricky part is in some of the stuff you've outlined above - doing it in a way that is helpful, constructive, smooth, and revealing at the same time.