Elements of Design Discussion Posts

Introduction

Hi everyone, I’m Angelo Bummer and I teach at a community college called Las Positas in Livermore, California (about 20 miles east of Oakland). I’m brand new to the LDT program, and I have experience designing online college courses (English, Critical Thinking, and World Literature). I took some professional development courses on designing online classes during the first year of the pandemic, and it was through these courses that I became intrigued with technology enhanced learning and wanted to learn so much more about it, both as it's used in academia as well as in other fields. In terms of a recent design, I just created an online accelerated freshman composition course; it’s an “accelerated” course because it’s only 8-weeks, and the normal semester length for our school is 18-weeks. Condensing an 18-week course to an 8-week course really made me think hard about phrasing the learning outcomes and crafting the major assessments for the course. It also made me think deeply about the clarity and simplicity of instruction as well as being picky with the formative assessments (I needed to make them really count since there’s only enough time for so many). I just started teaching the class this week, and I’m sure I’ll get a bunch of ideas to help me tweak and refine it for the next time I teach it. At any rate, I’m really excited for this class and look forward to working with everyone!

Where & When Do We Appreciate Design?

I have to say that one of my hobbies is to cook, and I've found this simple food mill to be one of the best additions to my kitchen. The only thing I use this for is tomato sauce made from fresh tomatoes. As a sort of perfectionist when it comes to making sauce, I am not able to reproduce the texture of the sauce without passing the tomatoes through this mill (after cooking them). I have to say it is "the trick up my sleeve" when I cook spaghetti for guests and family. It obviously has other purposes, but this is all I use it for: tomato sauce. Its best design qualities are simplicity and functionality, and most of all its ability to produce a silky and light texture to the tomato sauce.

Everyday Gestalt

This is a picture of the sign for a shop in my neighborhood. The first thing that stands out to me is the principle of closure. Each letter is created with two or three distinct shapes, and the viewer fills in the spaces to perceive each letter. The viewer also reads the word HANG because of the principle of proximity, or putting these perceived letters next to each other. The principle in similarity does show up in this image as well since the perceived letter A shares one shape with two shapes that make up letter N, as well as the letter H using two identical shapes that look like columns. The principle of symmetry also trains the eye to read the images as a word, with the top and the base running in even horizontal lines and with the perceived letters being each the same size.

Defining a Design Problem

Context

Under assembly bill 705, California Community Colleges cannot require students to take remedial Math or English. Instead, students must place themselves, and colleges must offer them guidance with this task. This has forced departments to be creative in not only how to guide students with their choice but design course offerings in a way that best supports student success.

This has disrupted the way in which departments offer remedial support; traditionally, a remedial class was required; now, given that a remedial class can only be optional, remedial support must also be embedded in transfer-level Math and English courses.

This problem focuses on designing integrated support to best meet the needs of students and help them succeed in English 1A, the first college-level English course students are required to take.

Data shows that students with a 2.6 grade point average (GPA) in high school or higher are best prepared and most likely to pass their first college-level English course; students with a 1.9 to 2.5 GPA are less likely to pass without additional support; and those coming to college with a high school GPA that is under 1.9 are the most vulnerable and in need of significant support. On top of this, courses must maintain DE offerings, which have historically lower success rates at our college, for purposes of access and equity.

To support students who are less likely to succeed in college-level English composition courses (i.e. those students entering college with a high school GPA lower than 2.5), the English department created an alternative version of English 1A that integrates an extended support lab (2 additional hours per week), identified as English 1AEX. it has had varied success, and the English department is now reconsidering the model.

Target Users

Students taking English 1A, the first required college-level English course, and who are identified as in need of additional academic support, including those requiring access to distance education, to be successful.

Empathize

Said: Many students said they prefer to have in-person academic support for their English 1A class; they preferred a lab component where the instructor would help them get their homework done;

Did: The majority of students ended up taking distance education classes regardless (both asynchronous and those with a synchronous Zoom component); English 1AEX has around a 50% pass rate (English 1A has around a 75% pass rate); English 1AEX students passed the DE course at about the same rate as in-person class.

Thought: Many students perhaps thought they had the time and resources to commute to school but realized that it was not realistic or worth the time given their time commitment to other aspects of their life, such as work and home responsibilities.

Felt: Many students perhaps felt more comfortable with distance learning than they initially did given their experience with online learning during the first year of the pandemic; those students who did not pass or dropped the course (50%) could have felt overwhelmed by the workload, disconnected from academic culture and/or the course curriculum, or lacking in confidence or basic understanding of course goals and tasks, among others

Problem Statement

English 1A students (entering college with a high school GPA under 2.5) need effective academic support accessible in all learning modalities (in-person, hybrid, asynchronous) because they are less likely to pass the class without it.

Some Questions

How can we provide support that accommodates for student schedules?
How can we develop an effective delivery method(s)?
How can we support asynchronous learners?
How can we design support to increase student satisfaction/motivation in learning?
Overall, how can we increase success rates?

Initial ideas

Develop a support course(s) (1-2 units) that students can opt into. Promote this class at the beginning of the semester and have it start two weeks into the semester. Consider different modalities (in-person, Zoom sessions, asynchronous)
Hire an embedded tutor to assist in targeting students and provide intrusive tutoring support (for asynchronous, perhaps this just means attempts to set up Zoom tutoring sessions)
Develop a course from existing college support resources (ongoing English workshops and tutoring); students earn 1-2 units for attending a certain number of workshops and/or tutoring sessions.
Develop non-credit, informal learning support with mobile accessibility.

Peer Feedback

Your problem statement is one that takes me back to helping high school seniors register for their first classes after being accepted to college. We often found that students needed convinced to take the course that would offer the support they needed, instead of the easiest option. This ties into your accommodation to student schedules question, but I think work, family and many other situations would play a role.

From experience helping high schoolers as well as adults going back to school after years without any educational classes, I can think of many a student that would have opted into a class that started later in the semester if they were able to see if they needed the support first. I myself would have loved the opportunity to take a support course that started after my normal courses so I could take it only if I thought I needed the support and without messing up my schedule. If this takes off, I can see these courses having an extreme impact on the less academically inclined students that attend colleges across the nation. ~Leah Grace St. Clair

I really like your idea that you would have the option for students to enter a course that does prepare them for that level of curriculum since it would stem from intrinsic motivation based on it being their choice. All too often, if we obligate students to study things that they find little meaning in or actually find it to be an obstacle, the students lose the intrinsic motivation before the course has even begun. Your initial ideas are well thought out, and I really like that you realize assistance would be important in executing courses like this to help the students be at the level that they should be. ~Ian Caldron

Ideation

Context & Problem

Under assembly bill 705, California Community Colleges cannot require students to take remedial English. Instead, students must place themselves, and colleges must offer them guidance with this task. This has forced departments to be creative in not only how to guide students with their choice but design course offerings in a way that best supports student success.

This decision is informed by research that indicates (1) a high school GPA of above 2.5 is a better indicator of success in college-level English than any placement test; and (2) regardless of GPA, students are more likely pass college-level English within the first year of college if they enroll directly into a college-level course “that provides ample support” than if they would take a pre-requisite remedial course before entering college-level English.

This has tasked English departments to consider best practices of integrating “ample support” which targets those less likely to succeed, namely students who come to community college with a high school GPA under 2.5 and enroll in English 1A, our first college-level English course.

Problem Statement

English 1A students entering college with a high school GPA under 2.5 need ample academic support accessible in all learning modalities (in-person, hybrid, asynchronous) because they are less likely to pass the class without it.

Some Questions

How can we provide support that accommodates student schedules?
How can we develop an effective delivery method(s)?
How can we support asynchronous learners?
How can we design support to increase student satisfaction/motivation in learning?
Overall, how can we increase success rates?

Initial ideas and concerns

Develop a support course(s) (1-2 units) that students can opt into. Promote this class at the beginning of the semester and have it start two weeks into the semester. Consider different modalities (in-person, Zoom sessions, asynchronous).

- Concern: if enrollment is optional, students who would benefit most may not actually take it

Hire an embedded tutor to assist in targeting students and provide intrusive tutoring support

- Concern: how would this work for asynchronous DE courses? Does this just mean a tutor would attempt to set up Zoom tutoring sessions with students?

Develop a course from existing college support resources (ongoing English workshops and tutoring); students earn 1-2 units for attending a certain number of workshops and/or tutoring sessions.

- Concern: may not be sufficient in and of itself as completion rates for these types of courses that depend on student initiative are generally low

Develop non-credit, informal learning support with mobile accessibility.

- Concern: same as above, probably a good additional option that would work for some, but not sufficient as a sole means of support.

Other Concern: also, the length of semester may influence success rates. Currently, we have an 18-week semester, which is pretty long compared to other colleges. Is there any agreement on best practices for the length of an academic course? Should the length of a course be different for an asynchronous distance education class, as opposed to a regular face-to-face class?

Peer Feedback

My students NEVER volunteer for additional, non-required work of ANY sort. The only students at our school likely to do so would be AP, Honors, and IB students (you know, the ones who don’t need any form of remediation at all …). The short of it is that you’re going to have to “trick” the system for the students’ own good. My suggestion would be an embedded-remediation requirement for grading purposes within the course. This could function with both in-person and virtual students. At the beginning of the semester, the professor would ensure that students knew their attendance in “tutoring” would be a major grade for the course (say 30%). Students who achieve above the 2.5 bar could be easily phased out of such tutoring as their skills become apparent and they are given a “skills check” test that allows them to pass that portion of the course and no longer have to attend such tutoring. Students who cannot ace such a skills check would have to continue the tutoring until such a check is aced or the course has run its, well … course. Such tutoring sessions could focus on aspects of remediation with tasks students have to complete. Higher performance on such tasks would accelerate the time frame before students are allowed to attempt the sills check while poorer performance on such tasks would slow the time frame before students are allowed to take the skills check.

Obviously, this is additional work on the university, professors, teacher aids, Registration, and tutors to get up and running, but the state has left you little choise. It’s either something like this or watch students repeat the same course a dozen times until they finally take the initial to get the help they obviously need. However, once up and running, such a component would give students the same help they once received in remediation while also allowing them to tackle a course needed for graduation. An overall win-win. ~Jeremy Tucker

Creatively Flexible, Technologically Fluent

I’ve picked up so many new technologies (new to me) since I started converting all my classes to online when the pandemic hit. I teach English at a community college and while I had some experience using Canvas and designing hybrid classes, I had never previously created asynchronous classes. I picked up some html tricks to create buttons, boxes, and tabs to help me organize content in Canvas, learned how to use Canva to create banners and presentations with decorative images to upload into my courses, and learned Canvas Studio to create instructional videos with captions, something I had never done before, not even with YouTube. I’ve also tried out other technologies in my online courses, such as Hypothesis, which allows students to collaborate on annotating texts, and I have also recently started to include student surveys in my classes, which allows me to get feedback from students on their learning experience and collect ideas on how to tweak my course design.

Throughout this experience, I’ve adjusted my assignments and how I use Canvas features. For instance, one regular activity in English classes is peer review—when students offer feedback on other student’s work, for an English class namely essays or parts of them. Canvas has a feature in “assignments” that enables students who submit their essay drafts to read and comment on them, and instructors can also embed a rubric for students to use in their review. This is an ideal feature in terms of the tools it offers, but there are some limitations to this feature that limit flexibility for students and caused me to scrap it. The most glaring limitation is the necessity for students to submit a draft in order to be able to perform peer review; and another limitation is that Canvas only allows one exact time to automate assigning peer review; this basically means that if students submitted early, they would need to wait for another time for their peer reviews to be assigned, and this also means that if students submitted their drafts one minute late or two days late, the teacher would need to go back and manually assign papers for the student to review in order for them to participate in the activity (which I did for a while but turned into too much back and forth I did not have time for). In a nutshell, this created an environment in which only the higher performing students would be able to do the activity while the others, many of whom would benefit most from peer review, were basically blocked from performing peer review. In the end, after realizing how this lack of flexibility was impacting student learning, I converted the activity to a discussion board, which does not have all the annotation tools the peer review feature in ‘assignments’ has, but it allows students to submit and review essays on their own time.

One other technology that I use is Turnitin.com, which is basically a plagiarism checker that works okay (some students have tricks to get around this). One big issue that unfortunately pops up is some students using Essaybot (Links to an external site.) and paraphrasing tools online; Essaybot basically helps students get away with plagiarism—students type in their essay topic and then select paragraphs the site generates from online articles for their essay; and they then go through an automated paraphrase generator to elude Turnitin and other plagiarism detection tools. This issue occurs in face-to-face classes as well but it has proven to be a much bigger issue with online classes. There’s not really any technology that helps to detect it given the fact that Essaybot is designed to elude such technology, but the type of writing it produces makes it easy to spot (you can imagine the awkward phrasing and weird synonyms an online generator would produce). So, I guess my take-away with Turnitin and plagiarism detection technology in general is that they are not perfect tools; they can help but are not always reliable and there are ways for students to get around them.