Online Course Facilitators Describe What Works in Learner-Centered Feedback

Contact Author: Helen Teague, Doctoral Candidate, Pepperdine University,PBS TeacherLine facilitator, helen.teague@pepperdine.edu

Francine Wargo, PBS Children’s Media & Education, Arlington, VA, fwargo@pbs.org Rose Castro: PBS Teacherline facilitator, San Antonio, TX

Dr. Joyce King, PBS TeacherLine facilitator, Camden, TNVictoria Lara, PBS Teacherline facilitator, San Antonio, TX

John Tierney, PBS TeacherLine facilitator, Spring Creek, NV

Abstract: A four-point-effectiveness checklist for continued student engagement through personalized assessment feedback in online courses is described in this poster and accompanying paper. Designed for pre-service and in-service adult learners, the checklist reflects research in pedagogical practice of knowledge transfer, adult learning theory, and the TPaCK instructional framework.  Data sources include the feedback artifacts of current online course facilitators, who are also the co-writers of this paper.  Post-course assessment data from adult learners validates the success of these methods in both current teaching practice and subsequent professional development through participation in online courses.Keywords: Online Education, Online Learning, Transfer of Knowledge, TPaCK, Adult Learning Theory, Personalized Feedback

Introduction

The role and potential of online learning communities has received considerable attention in the field of educational research (Kent, et al., 2016; Selwyn 2011). Especially communication is an essential element of learning and constructing knowledge (Mathiasen, 2008). Platforms like Moodle provide content hosting and communication features. Online course facilitators at PBS TeacherLine collaborated on this paper and resulting poster to discuss best practices for composing and delivering course feedback to learners from our combined century in online courses and online education.

PBS Background Information

PBS TeacherLine is a part of the Children’s Media and Education Department at PBS.  Charged with the mandate “Teachers First,” PBS TeacherLine has provided high-quality professional development courses for over 70,000 PK-12 educators since 2000.  PBS TeacherLine offers 40 graduate level, facilitated courses in reading and language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, instructional technology, and instructional strategies.  PBS TeacherLine works with leading education and professional organizations - including NASA, the Library of Congress, the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards, NCTM, and the Annenberg Foundation. Content also aligns with national standards.  

PBS TeacherLine works with nine universities across the country who provide graduate credit for most of the courses.  Recognized with several awards over the years, PBS TeacherLine continues to serve teacher professional development needs with the goals of improving teacher effectiveness and increasing student achievement. Research into best practices remains a focus of PBS TeacherLine and will form the basis for our poster and paper (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Research-based focus of PBS TeacherLine

PBS TeacherLine facilitated courses are asynchronous and run for six weeks with start dates every month.  Learners in online courses are guided through coursework by trained course facilitators, who are teachers with at least a master’s degree and previous on ground and online teaching experience. Course facilitators are trained in online course delivery and community building techniques. Such training has proved beneficial for instruction. As one course facilitator explained, “I have observed that teachers who have not had the formal training like we did do not know how to extend the discussion. They tend to think that they need to respond to each participant’s posts with positive and constructive feedback. Posing an effective question requires training and strategy.”

Figure 2: The writers’ Frequency Word Cloud of words they use in personalized, online course assessment

Literature Review

Best practices among online course facilitators in assessing online course discussions include Transfer of knowledge (Huber, 1991), Adult Learning Theory (Knowles, 2014), and the TPaCK instructional framework (Koehler & Mishra, 2008; Mishra & Koehler, 2006). These approaches are necessary to meet the needs of adult learners. Adult learners are persons aged 25 years and older according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The number of non-traditional, adult learners continues to grow (National Center for Education Statistics) as does the need for continuing professional development to meet their needs. The numbers of non-traditional adult students continue to grow and outpace the population of traditionally-aged college students, who are those between ages of 18 and 24 years of age (https://nces.ed.gov/pubs/web/97578e.asp).  

Transfer of Knowledge

Transfer of knowledge is an expectation of education (Stronge, 2002). In online courses, it is both a transmission of information and an exchange of ideas. The learners should be able to apply the knowledge and skills learned to a variety of situations.  Transfer of knowledge can be described as “high road” or “low road” (Perkins, 1998).  The “Low Road” indicates that the knowledge gained can be directly applied to a situation comparable to that which was used to convey that knowledge.  This is a memorization condition where the information is repeated in the same context, and perhaps recalled in a multiple choice test or similar experience.  In the “High Road”, the information and/or skills are applied in a totally different setting.  When information is organized into a conceptual framework, greater “transfer” allows the learner to apply what is learned in new situations and also learn related information more quickly (Wiggins, 2010).  When there is transfer, learners cue themselves to use all their prior learning or recognize how the new situation might reflect prior learning (Wiggins, 2010).  Online course facilitators at PBS Teacherline actively experience how knowledge can be transferred when used in various situations. Teacher-learners gain a better understanding of the course content and use this as a model to teach knowledge of transfer techniques to their students.    

Facilitating Transfer of Knowledge through the Design of PBS Teacherline Courses

Effective online courses reflect Transfer of Knowledge through teacher-to-teacher interaction, engaging discussion prompts, and personalized feedback. PBS TeacherLine’s community of teachers is both national and international with varied educational settings, and a diversity of cultures (Herrera, 2010). Teacher-to-teacher interaction (Anderson, 2008) where teachers, as learners, are encouraged to take advantage of knowledge growth and discovery in their own subject areas and within Each learner brings personal views and passion for refining the craft of teaching.  Although this mixture can sometimes be seen as a challenge in the online learning concept (Anderson, 2008), experienced online facilitators’ use feedback and discussion posts that extend the ongoing conversation. These methods provide openings for the learners to share some of their background and current classroom setting (Collison, Elbaum, Haavind & Tinker, 2000).

Each learner sees how the information can be used in their class, and by sharing through the rich discussion, others can sense how implementation of the concepts can also occur in their classes as well as in other subject areas.  Often this leads to suggestions on further study. PBS Teacherline facilitators use critical-thinking strategies that help the teacher-learners in the course dig deeper in their discussions, make connections, and acquire multiple perspectives (Collison et. al., 2000).

In addition to the Discussion Forums, Transfer of Knowledge occurs when learners are also given the opportunity to apply the strategies from the course content and reflect on the implementation and student reactions. This information is shared for feedback in Discussion.  This opportunity for practice gives the learners multiple hints for improvement, recommendations, or compliments for the successful implementation. This fulfills one of the requirements of transformative learning experiences: “Enable teachers to develop a new repertoire of practice that fits with their new understanding” (Loucks-Horsley, Stiles, Mundry, Love, Hewson, 2010).

The PBS Teacherline courses typically span a six-week period with an estimate of 30 hours spent completing required course work, unlike the typical professional development workshops or programs that are less than 14 hours and often fail to increase student learning or change teaching practices (Gusley et. al., 2009; Yoon, Duncan, Lee, Scarloss, & Shapley, 2007). Gusley (2009) states “time must be well organized, carefully structured, purposefully directed and focused on content or pedagogy or both.” PBS Teacherline Professional Development courses provide time and offer opportunities to reflect on the course content and gain multiple visions on classroom implementation, gain confidence, and ultimately, plan lessons that will model transfer of knowledge for the students.

Helping learners understand that it is desirable for the knowledge they gain in the classroom to also be transferred to other situations is one of the goals in both on ground and online education.  In order to teach for transfer, teacher learners can experience how the content-based course content from the PBS Teacherline courses can be implemented in various classroom settings.  This experience affords them the opportunity to plan lessons that encourage teacher-learners to apply what they have learned to other situations.

Adult Learning Theory

Transfer of Knowledge with online learners in continuing education while in professional practice requires specialized techniques. Recent trends in the demographic population of learners in the United States higher education marketplace have clearly demonstrated that the population of non-traditional learners (those aged 25 or over according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) [nces.ed.gov]) continues to grow and outpace the population of traditionally-aged college students (those between ages of 18-24 years) (https://nces.ed.gov/pubs/web/97578e.asp).  Malcolm Knowles’ Adult Learning Theory, also known as Knowles Principles of Andragogy (2014) applies four distinguishing principles. These include participatory planning, problem-based learning relating to professional practice, iterative cycles of increasing competence, and immediate implementation of concepts.  

Proponents of andragogy (Iverson, 2011; Merriam, 2004) maintain that the key principles differ for adults than for children in the following ways (Figure 3):

Principle Meaning for Adults

Need to know Problem- or task-centered

Self-concept Self-directed

Prior experience Bring life experiences

Readiness to learn Developmental tasks for social roles

Orientation to learning Immediate application

Motivation to learn Intrinsic

Figure 3: Distinguishing Features of Andragogy

Knowles’ four distinguishing principles of Adult Learning occur in the context of the online course environment. Online, much of the context-based learning occurs in the discussion forums while teacher-learners and course facilitators discuss professional practice, plan projects for inclusion in their curricular areas, applications for teaching and learning, and offering mutual support to each other.  Both the teacher-learners and the course facilitators enter into collegial relationships online with each other, thereby becoming members of a learning community. This learning community can be considered a community of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger,

1998). Communities of practice are groups of people who share insights and ideas and who help one another solve problems and develop a common practice.

TPaCK Instructional Framework

Online course facilitation involves the integration of technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge. These three elements coalesce in the TPaCK instructional framework. Technological, pedagogical, content knowledge is commonly known as TPaCK.  TPaCK is the collective acronym for the combination of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge which teachers blend to provide student-centered instruction (Koehler & Mishra, 2005; Mishra & Koehler, 2006; Koh, Chai, & Tsai, 2014). TPaCK is a combination of seven different categories intersecting between three central domains of technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge (Koehler & Mishra, 2005). The seven categories of TPaCK are: Technological Knowledge (TK), Content Knowledge (CK), Pedagogical Knowledge (PK), Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), Technological Content Knowledge (TCK), Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK), and Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPaCK).

In online education, course facilitators must serve as both the curriculum facilitator and the gateway to technology troubleshooting. Anticipating technology questions is accomplished in a course Help Forum, but course facilitators must be ready for solution finding in case of unforeseen technology hardware and software issues.

Probably the most important TPaCK feature for course facilitators is the adaptations in instructional pedagogy because of the asynchronous nature of instruction. For example, online course facilitators must let discussion forum conversations evolve and resist jumping in too soon with too much information or too little support. Online course facilitators must find the “sweet spot” of online discourse through appropriate methodology. The goal is for the participants taking ownership of the process, making the Discussion Forum their own. The forum is the heart of the course as it is Professional Learning Community (PLC). According to Blitz (2013), “The literature finds that teachers who collaborate online are engaged with the group, develop a sense of community, improve their knowledge of subject and pedagogical content, and intend to modify their instructional practices accordingly.”

Methodology of Personalized Messages

Methods to maximize Transfer of Knowledge require course facilitators to apply concepts of Adult Learning Theory and the use of the TPaCK instructional framework. This paper discusses four best practices used by online course facilitators in composing personalized assessment messages include:

1. Responding in a timely manner and several times per week 2. Incorporating actual quotes from learners’ submitted assignments3. Referencing terms and phrases from the Assessment Rubrics4. Composing feedback messages with rich, descriptive language (Figure 2)

Personalized Messages contain invitational language and specific language for either praise or revising (Collison, et al., 2000).  This voluntary sample of assessment messages from current course facilitators reveals a snapshot of the key words (Figure 4 and Figure 5). In the following examples, learners’ names are omitted. A cross-section of randomly chosen assessment messages from course facilitators reflect key words of reinforcement, encouragement, and/or suggestions for improvement, as needed. In practice, personalized messages include the learner’s name and the course facilitator often ends the assessment with a signature.

Figure 5: Examples of Online Course Feedback for Discussion Post Replies

Figure 4: Examples of Online Course Feedback for Discussion Post Replies

ConclusionAs online course offerings increase, there is a demand for information on the best ways to reach learners in remote and varied locations. Gone are the days when traditional course materials could just be scanned and uploaded online. Learning online is different and requires new skills and pathways such as Transfer of Knowledge theory, Adult Learning Theory and TPaCK instructional framework. PBS TeacherLine Professional Development Courses provide opportunities for gaining knowledge and skills through content-based classes where participant discussions can bring a richness of thoughts, ideas, and designs on how to apply the knowledge and skills gained.

Personalized assessment messages are an influence mechanism that leverages participation quality and online socio-cultural bonds. These bonds form a socio-relational community online among teachers as learners. Most importantly, online course facilitators weave descriptive language to accentuate the messages that might typically flow in face-to-face traditional classroom discussions. Six online course facilitators, with a century of combined expertise collaborated on this paper and accompanying poster to share their ongoing experiences on what is working in effective online course ecosystems.

AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank Lori Brittain, Senior Director of Business Operations with PBS Children’s Media and Education, for her support of all of our work in Professional Development, including this poster/paper presentation.

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