Engaging the Learner in a Distance Education Setting Sharon Fratta-Hill, PhD VP of Distance Education Graduate School USA Charles Lee Sr. Manager, Solution Engineer Blackboard
Engaging the Learner in a Distance Education Setting
Sharon Fratta-Hill, PhDVP of Distance Education
Graduate School USA
Charles LeeSr. Manager, Solution Engineer
Blackboard
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Accessible Collaborative Compelling
Easy to Use Personalized Responsive
What Makes an Experience Engaging?
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Engaging the Distance Learner
• Create a high-end distance education training platform• Move away from the text-based point-and-click experience that
was so familiar to the government employee• Find out how to change skill levels and hold the interest of the
government employee• Measure what engagement really was
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Bridging the Engagement Gap
Capture and keep your learners’ attention• Simulate a face-to-
face experience • Create interactive
content that keeps them engaged
• Focus on learning,not the technology
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How Could We Make the Course Interactive?
• Choose a platform that allows students to chat or interact with the teacher in a real time, collaborative manner.
• We needed:
• The ability to share video and audio with students
• To create a continuous learning environment
• The ability to allow students to privately work and speak with each other
• To be able to share simulations and application software with students
• To archive live sessions so that participants could review sessions
• To create a just-in-time learning experience
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What Were We Thinking?
• How could we create courses that meet the needs of federal agencies?
• What worked for adult students who are federal employees?– It must be either very flexible so that they can move at their
own pace or• The course must be short enough to complete within a
period where employees could be excused from their office duties.
– Exact skill outcomes must be obtained on completion of the course.
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Choosing the Right Distance Education Modality
• Page turner format may be able to produce Bloom’s Taxonomy Knowledge (rote) level learning, but student engagement is needed for Application (or higher) level knowledge acquisition.
• Students must have the opportunity to:– Acquire basic knowledge.
– Share and analyze knowledge with their peers and instructor.
– Engage in hands-on activities which apply the newly acquired information or skill set.
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Blackboard• Adopted v. 6 of Blackboard to
create initial online classes– Federal clients wanted more
interaction with faculty and fewer independent activities
• Blackboard version 9.1.4 was adopted with an Adobe Connect Building
Adobe Connect• Use Adobe Connect to create
asynchronous and synchronous online classes– Asynchronous classes lacked
structure – Students could not determine
the sequence in which learning events should be completed
The Journey
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Blackboard Integration• Collaborate (formerly
Wimba and Elluminate) may be used in the same manner as Adobe Connect.
Interactive Features• Captivate Simulations• Quizzes• Flash Content• Videos• Polling• Breakout Rooms
What Does Synchronous Engagement Look Like?
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Synchronous Training
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Interactive Features• Presenter files with
recorded lectures synched with PowerPoints
• Wikis and Blogs• Journals and Discussion
Boards• Video and iTunes links
Mobile Support• Access to online content
available for students with iPads and iPods
• Bb also provides access for android devices (wifi-only*)
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What Does Asynchronous Engagement Look Like?
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Asynchronous Training
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Interfaces Vary on Tablets and iPhones
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Pedagogy + Instructional Design = Learning…or does it?
LearningInstructionalDesign
Pedagogy
Epistemologies
Methodologies
EffectivePractices
Learning analysis
Audience analysis
Media design
Media development
Evaluation
Achievement
Completion
Retention
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It’s Also About the Experience
• Starbucks is more than a cup of coffee.• Amazon is more than shopping.• iTunes is more than music.• Why shouldn’t your elearning programs be
more than good pedagogy and effective instructional design?
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Summary
• Student/teacher interaction is required to create a meaningful course.
• Blackboard makes it easy to offer a variety of engaging elements in an organized continuous learning environment.
• The Graduate School can use your content, or ours, to create engaging training sessions in either live or self-paced format.
• Our academic-corporate partnership gives us opportunities to enable engaging experiences in ways that we could not do individually.