Supporting Online Group Work Video Transcript
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Kelly L’Engle: I teach graduate students in our Masters in Public Health, and our Masters of Science in Behavioral Health programs. I, as a professor, have the course content knowledge, and I know some things about good teaching, but the digital education team really has this depth of knowledge about instructional practices for online learning.
Xavier Gomez: My name is Xavier Gomez, Senior Instructional Designer at the University of San Francisco. I work with faculty, generally, to determine the best course design for their content and teaching style, and to translate that for online. Kelly's class was project-based, and all group work, so the question is, how do you support group work for online students who have never seen one another, who have never met in person, yet they have to develop a substantial project proposal together? And, that was our challenge.
Kelly L’Engle: It was a pretty major shift to go from in-person, or face-to-face teaching, to online teaching for this class. The class is based on a team learning environment. There are a lot of in-person, face-to-face activities, and it was important to be able to take these group learning, face-to-face opportunities and translate them into the online environment.
Xavier Gomez: When working on group projects, the goal is to find a technology that supports a group dynamic, that allows team members to collaborate and to communicate successfully, and Canvas provided that through its integrated group function.
Kelly L’Engle: A group of students can have their own website. They can have their own discussion boards. They can post their own assignments, things like that.
Xavier Gomez: The online group function supports student-centered learning through peer-to-peer and group interaction, as they built their projects for this course.
Kelly L’Engle: I also heard from a number of online students that they really liked the group aspect of the course. They found it really challenging, but at the same time, they found it really enhanced their learning, and they appreciated the networking and the bonding that they were able to do with their student teams.
Xavier Gomez: The discussion forums within the groups and with the entire class, really, encourage peer interaction online, and they provided a place for students to engage with material, and to articulate their thoughts. For instructors, discussions are a great way to gauge how students are doing in their class.
Kelly L’Engle: I've been particularly surprised at the success of this mode of communication, of the use of those electronic discussion boards for maximizing student engagement in the class. I've seen really extensive use of critical analysis skills. They're very thoughtful when they make comments on their peers' posts, and then what I also see is that they take what they learn from those discussion boards and their peer posts, and they apply it to their own team assignments, as well as individual assignments.
Xavier Gomez: We use Zoom video conferencing for this course. It gave online students an opportunity to actually see and talk with their peers, work with their groups, and communicate with the instructor, as well.
Kelly L’Engle: Zoom also has a recording function, and so sometimes they will actually record those meetings, and they'll share those meetings with me, if they have particular bumps along the road, or challenges that they're having with tacking certain portions of the assignment. They also will request a Zoom meeting with me if they're running into problems as they're working on their proposal, or if I see that they're having challenges in certain sections of the proposal, I'll ask them to schedule a Zoom meeting with me.
Xavier Gomez: Social presence has been well researched, and shown to enhance student engagement.
Kelly L’Engle: Public health is all about group work. Very rarely do you do things alone in public health, and so this course is really designed to simulate that group work environment that most of these graduates from the public health program will face on a day-to-day basis in their careers.
Xavier Gomez: Ultimately, IDs want what instructors want, which is to provide a meaningful learning experience for their students. Our hope is that students will be able to apply what they've learned with confidence and competence beyond the classroom.
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