Online Learners: A Typology With Tips

One of the circumstances that most bother instructors new to teaching online is that their students are largely faceless. The little headshot that pops up when you receive an electronic message from an online student is no substitute for the 360° appraisal you are used to making based on a student’s appearance, vocal characteristics, and body language during face-to-face meetings. It seems impossible to customize your teaching to meet all of the different learning styles and personalities you are used to detecting in the classroom. Doesn’t online teaching guarantee you can’t get to know your students well enough to really reach them?

Written communications and the silences between convey highly personal information, if you listen for it. Each student’s writing voice—the persona(lity) they can’t help but project through their phrasing, word choice, topic preferences, and logic—gives you a key to what the student wants from you as a teacher. When you know your students only through their writing—i.e., forum posts, papers, and emails—you can still develop effective strategies for dealing with recurrent complaints or common misunderstandings. 

After ten years of teaching writing online, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are at least six main online personas that need special attention in an online course. While there can be some overlap in my typology, most online students play one role throughout the length of a course. This makes it important to identify a strategy for working productively with each one of them right from the beginning. Not included in the list that follows is The Ideal Student, who follows the course as you planned it and turns in great work on-time that clearly demonstrates the value of formal education.

● The Technowort—Anyone preparing to teach a class online for the first time should be prepared for the several students who have never taken an online course before. Be aware that they expect you to be highly sympathetic to this fact. Besides making your course site as usable and clear as possible, you need to get the Technoworts connected to the technical support people on your campus from the first day of the course, even before, if possible. I’ve found that no matter how well I explain how to use the specific electronic tools in my course site, my word as the instructor is never as convincing to the Technowort as recommendations from coursemates or IT. It’s best just to quickly figure out who the Technoworts are in your course (they usually self-identify early in the term) and recognize that they want your sympathy but not your advice.

● The Litigator—Litigators want to negotiate and debate every tactic you employ to get them to learn something from your course. They differ from The Back-Seat Driver (see below) in that they are all about debating the merits of the writing assignments you make, including their length and purpose, and the readings you recommend. Litigators don’t want to change your behavior as a teacher as much as they want to let it be known that they disagree with you. They will sometimes interrogate the elements of your syllabus in course forums but they prefer to send you long, private emails cordially explaining where you have gone wrong in your career as a teacher.

 

● The Stoic—While Stoics sometimes turn into Ghosts (see below) they can be known by their steady participation in course activities until the first paper is due. Once they have missed the first real deadline and you contact them by email or phone, it turns out that the Stoic has two full-time jobs in order to pay her mortgage and is taking 20 credits that semester. Alternatively, the Stoic had a life-threatening health issue last week she didn’t want to bother you with. No amount of reassurance in the syllabus that students should contact you when life takes a dangerous turn will flush the Stoic out of his well intended silence. The best you can do is notice when a student suddenly stops participating and act quickly to find out why. The solution may be for the student to withdraw from the course, hopefully in time to get a full tuition refund, with a warm invitation to re-enroll in the course once it’s more likely s/he can succeed.  

● The Sunny Optimist—SOs are a delight early in the course because they interact enthusiastically with their coursemates and are always gratifyingly positive about the syllabus, the course site, and the college mission statement. Unfortunately, the idea that tasks in the course are time-sensitive, that is, have deadlines, does not register in their world of “Can do!” and “As soon as possible!” As fun as it is to have SOs in your course, ultimately they bring out the nagging parent in you that you swore you wouldn’t be this time around. These are the people for whom the “Incomplete” grade was invented. It’s best to trust that they have good reasons to be optimistic and try not to lose too much time at the computer worrying about their dwindling participation as the semester wears on.

● The Back-Seat Driver—These hard-charging students take self-directed learning to mean that following your syllabus is completely optional, like traffic signals to an Italian taxi driver. The BS Driver will leap ahead in the course to do the assignment in Week 10 even though it is Week 2 of the term and you have carefully sequenced the course with curricular scaffolding in mind. They will demand that they be allowed to substitute core readings you picked because they sound “boring.” They are frequently impatient with length guidelines and grading criteria so that their posts are skimpy and their papers are twice as long and half as well documented as requested. In the name of experiential education, the BS Driver is to be patiently tolerated up to the point where he or she confuses or intimidates other students in the course who are stilling trying to figure out how to attach a file to their posts.

● The Ghost—Unlike the students who don’t show up for class or sit so far back in the classroom you might mistake them for a movie poster, the online Ghost may have an attractive thumbnail photo attached to his messages suggesting that he wants to be recognized when he’s corresponding with you. But beyond a cheerful introduction in the first week’s forum, The Ghost is rarely heard from again. You send him messages when the drop/add deadline is near; then again when his activity report is essentially blank at midterm. Surely he doesn’t want to pay all that tuition for nothing?? I’ve learned from my own college-educated children that financial aid need not register as real money until long after the sixth year of college. Ghosts have their justifications for not frequenting your course. After a few worthy attempts to make contact with them it is safe to assume that they believe themselves to be in a better place. Who are you to judge?

Back when hand-written letters were the norm, you didn’t have to be a scholar to maintain a lively written correspondence across the miles. And the time between hand-delivered letters gave you time to read and re-read the messages you did get, wringing every bit of information out of them before carefully composing your reply. 

For any online course that involves regular exchanges in full sentences, start the course with this assignment: 

"Write a 400-word writing autobiography that explains how you learned to write academic papers, how you feel about your writing, and what areas you hope to improve in while doing the writing for this course."

Do not grade this assignment. Instead read and store these little goldmines of individual context, voice, and attitude to read again later as your students gradually teach you who they are as online learners. It’s only a matter of time before The Sunny Optimists and The Litigators alike will expect you to read their minds, just as they would in a face-to-face setting. 

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Positivity in Writing Feedback

Encouragement. Support. Kudos.
Kindness. Students and faculty alike associate these with the Prescott College learning experience. They contrast with the competitive, tough- love precepts that have traditionally permitted teachers to cover a student's first draft with red ink. PC mentors need not feel caught between the professional writing standards they value and the warm bonds they form with each of their students. There is a way to be positive when giving specific feedback in writing, one which motivates rather than alienates your student.

Decades ago, research on the teaching of writing began to show that students want detailed feedback on their papers and that they understand that criticisms are useful in their revision process.* What matters to students is how criticisms are worded. 

Negative comments such as "You still don't know how to use a semi-colon," or "I find your point hard to believe," will motivate only the most confident writers to revise their work successfully. The same errors can be highlighted using a positive approach as in "See the Purdue OWL site at...on semi-colons," or "You need more evidence to convince me of this point," respectively. The latter comments are positive even though they draw attention to weaknesses in the paper. The positive phrasing implies solutions rather than judgments. Even writing-phobic students recognize the difference.

Which brings us to the most important way mentors can be positive when giving feedback on their students' writing. Sometimes students turn in drafts or even finished work that is downright scary, riddled with misunderstandings, errors, and misuses of scholarly language. The key to a successful outcome, however large the task of giving feedback may seem, is to remain absolutely positive that every student can learn how to write for the audiences she or he wants to reach. 

A mentor with this positive attitude will refer students to resources like those available through the PC Learning Commons rather than to an editor-for-hire who might fix the student's papers without teaching the student a thing. A mentor who believes in her students regardless of their variable writing proficiency will contact the Writing Center with questions about how to best help a struggling writer rather than ask her student to read the latest version of a professional style manual--again.

Encouragement, support, kudos, and kindness all have their place in teaching, learning, and writing. Mentors who strive to give constructive, productive writing feedback and refer students to others who can help play a positive role in their students' lives. Isn't that why we all do this? 

*We highly recommend the excellent article titled "Responding to student papers: Responses to avoid and productive advice to give," by Jessica Mosher (1998) that typifies this research. Mosher's piece, available in this blog, offers the results of a survey of student writers and specific dos and don'ts for those who want to comment effectively on student papers.  

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A Reader's Checklist for Mentors

Many are the ways to respond to a student's written work. Most graduate mentors have done a fair bit of academic writing in their own careers so they will often comment on a paper the same way their writing was critiqued when they were students. In fact, it is difficult to convince highly educated people over the age of 45 that the art of giving feedback on student writing has come a long way in the last 30 years. There's a whole academic discipline, called Composition and Rhetoric, that's developed new methods to help you help your students learn to write more professionally. But to profit from these well researched methods, we have to give up on the idea that a) grad students should already know how to write well and we shouldn't have to coach them, and b) giving writing feedback means editing, aka correcting, student writing.

Today's students, even adult learners, were raised in homes and schools where reading and writing had to share time with t.v., movies, video games, HIV-prevention and anti-drug counseling, and after-school jobs. The 20-40-something graduate student is not less literate than before, but she has to be literate in many more media and content areas today than was once true. Research writing is a specific set of skills that take time to develop and a writing-intensive graduate program may be the student's best opportunity to gain those skills through a highly interactive writing process involving you, the mentor. The best way to help a student improve her or his research writing is to require it (making the parameters for each writing assignment as concrete as possible) and then provide timely, specific feedback as a discriminating reader (not editor).

Therefore, the next time you receive an intermediate draft from a student who is asking for your opinion/evaluation/approval, do not pop open the document in track changes and begin to rewrite the paper in the image of your favorite journal article. Rather, use the comments function in your word-processing app to respond to the draft as a reader so that the writer can see from your comments and questions how you experience the draft as an informed reader. You can use a scoring rubric you've picked up somewhere or a checklist (see below) to keep you focused on interacting with the draft rather than prosecuting it. Resist the temptation to fall back on summary judgments ("Awkward" or "Great point!") as a substitute for engaging with the student's argument and how s/he is making it. A student needs much more than your applause or disapproval to learn what works in writing as opposed to what does not. And isn't competency in the scholarly conversation, written and spoken, what you want for your students?

It is easy to find graduate writing rubrics on the web these days and not all are of equal quality. Ask the writing coaches at the PC Learning Commons for suggestions if using a rubric to guide your feedback interests you. There is a time for corrections and summative evaluation of final drafts but you will find it less painful when you know how to coach your students to create better finished products. For intermediate drafts, you can use this all-purpose reader's checklist to help you ask the right questions as you are reading, whether it's a great draft or a weak one. In the process, you might learn a thing or two about your own writing, compounding the benefits of learning to critique writing as an art developed for students of the 21st century.

A Reader’s Checklist

      Because reading is difficult work, writers are obligated to meet certain standards that engage readers and reward them for their attention. For example, readers need key sentences that direct their attention to important points; these sentences must be written to reveal the writer’s thought, not to obscure it. Readers appreciate correct spelling and punctuation because these are signs of respect from the writer. Readers also expect the writer to be knowledgeable on the topic and to use a tone that fits the purpose and occasion of the document. A careful reader will ask these questions of a draft and shape her or his feedback accordingly:

  

When I read the paper does it…

·         Reflect an awareness of who the writer is writing for and why? 

·         Focus on the assignment and topic without straying into irrelevant material? 

·         Have a significant and interesting focal point or thesis I could easily paraphrase? 

·         Provide me with credible details, examples, arguments, or other kinds of to evidence to support the thesis statement? 

·         Offer verbal and typographical cues to help me follow the information the writer has chosen to present? 

·         Contain clear, logical sentences that motivate me to read on? 

·         Avoid wordiness, clichés, pat phrases, and repetition? 

·         Contain words I can be expected to understand? 

·         Show respect for my time by being carefully proofread for spelling, typographical, formatting, and punctuation errors?

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Be Timely, Specific, Positive in Your Written Feedback by Bev Santo

The handwritten words “GOOD WORK!” loitered on the cover page of my 22-page research paper. The paper had made a leisurely trip in an 8- by 10-inch manila envelope from me to my mentor and back again. Eager to find out more about how the paper had been received I quickly flipped through the pages looking for my mentor's comments. But not a single drop of ink decorated, highlighted, or conversed with the black type of my carefully considered paragraphs. I had spent hours, days, and weeks researching and constructing this paper. The near silence I received in return was deafening.

Fortunately, I wasn’t completely unprepared for this lack of usable feedback. When I met my graduate mentor for the first time she had asked, “Are you self-directed?” As a graduate of Prescott College, a single mom, and a full-time educator, I assured her I was. 

“Good,” she said. “This job supports my real profession which is writing. If you’re not self-directed I can’t work with you.”

Three months later when I received her two-word response to my first paper, my mentor's definition of 'self-directed' became as clear as bottled water. When I had assured her I was self-directed, I meant that I was motivated and personally engaged in my learning, ready to take responsibility for the writing, reading, and research that lay ahead. I thought that the mentor's role was to walk beside the self-directed student, coaching, facilitating, being a part of the support crew, and providing resources, feedback, and encouragement. Sure, as a student I would do the heavy lifting of being fully engaging in my own intellectual growth and goal-setting. That the mentor would respond to my writing helpfully I took for granted.

Twenty-five years of teaching, learning, and mentoring have passed since that experience in graduate school. In that time I have developed a rule of thumb regarding providing written feedback to undergraduate and graduate students when they do the hard work of writing a formal paper. The rule has three parts:

• Be timely.
• Be specific.
• Be positive. 

What it means to be timely has changed since the advent of the internet but it is a good idea for all mentors to think about what timely means from the student's perspective. Today's mentor might worry that 'timely' means 'immediate' to some students. That means it is best to let students know what kind of turn around time to expect on a paper or draft so that there are no misunderstandings later. For a standard assignment in MAP, mentors should ask students to allow one to two weeks for a mentor to respond with questions, comments, and encouragement written directly on the paper. One to two weeks is plenty of time to give substantive feedback rather than just a thumbs up or thumbs down, either of which minimizes the student's efforts.

If you struggle to give students feedback in a timely manner, reflect on on the barriers to your doing so, i.e. what's causing you to postpone feedback to a student who is eagerly awaiting your comments? Do you feel that you must rewrite or heavily edit each draft you receive? Are you avoiding the task of responding to a student because you dread hurting the student's feelings by pointing out the paper's flaws? Do you feel unqualified to give the student specific, constructive advice on writing? 

In the next post on my feedback rule of thumb, we'll discuss ways to be specific in your feedback that will help your students without drowning you in thankless work. Once you get the hang of giving your students effective writing feedback that empowers them to revise thoughtfully, you may find it easier to be more timely with your much appreciated responses. 

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The Magic Show by Bev Santo

Harry Houdini drapes the purple satin tent over Babu the elephant and “whoosh”. Gone. Vanished. The audience gasps, children squeal, even the cynical gape.  An illusion of course, but the rare observer can deconstruct how the magic happened. In another 30 seconds the purple satin tent descends from the rafters and as it touches down on the stage the intake of held breath is audible. The now visible Babu stands smiling and swinging her trunk toward the crowd.

How has the magician created the illusion that Babu can appear and disappear before the wide open eyes of the audience? How is it we can look for the jar of peanut butter in the refrigerator and not see it sitting directly in front of us on the top shelf? When, where, and how do we hone our ability to perceive, to see, to observe? What if we could refine this ability to see what is directly in front of us? What if the capacity for keen observation described by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Blink could be fostered, grown, and mastered? And, what if the quality of what one learns depends on the quality of one’s ability to observe and take notice? Would it be worth educators’ time to learn how to observe intensely in and around the world? If one can master the skill of “seeing” might it be possible to foster this same skill in graduate learners?

As Ritchard, Church and Morrison have noted in Making Thinking Visible, “looking carefully to notice and fully describe what one sees can be an extremely complex and engaging task. Such close observation is at the heart of science and art” (p. 6). 

Corita Kent and Jan Steward in their book Learning by Heart: Teachings to Free the Creative Spirit observe,

There are many styles and ways of seeing. The thesaurus mentions discern, perceive, and behold as elements of seeing. To really see implies one is making an appraisal of many elements. When we finally comprehend and understand a situation our response is often, I see! Connections are made, the truth revealed. (p.33)

Try this experiment called “Exercising Your Seeing Muscles” developed by Corita Kent.

For ten minutes a day look at a plant that is native to your area. Write about the plant for 15 minutes every day, describing visual details, as well as the feel, the fragrance, and the sound made when the wind blows through it. Do ten drawings each day of the leaves or other foliage and ten drawings each day of the whole plant. This is a wonderful exercise to combat the habitual. (p.33)

Once you have done this exercise yourself for one week, you will notice that your seeing skills in other contexts are enhanced; your relationship to your chosen plant is enriched; and a greater appreciation for botany and biology in general begins to bloom. Fine details of the Globe Mallow or California Poppy become firmly planted in your mind. What was metaphorically and in varying degrees invisible to you becomes available to the senses. Babu has reappeared. Keen observation and perceptive seeing by the graduate scholars we mentor set the stage for the powerful learning we seek to inspire. 

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Writing the M.A. Course Plan by Bev Santo

Aren’t adult learners busy enough without being asked to design the curriculum for each one of their graduate courses? The simple answer is “yes” they are busy enough. But if educators from John Dewey to bell hooks offer us any insight it is that when learners take responsibility for their education the outcome is learning that is meaningful, relevant, durable and transformative. We can aspire to this ideal form of education, or we can use the read-and- regurgitate model that asks students to sit passively, pass a test, and get over each course the way one might get over the measles. 

That doesn't resemble the Master of Arts program at Prescott College, which believes in the transformative power of education. We advocate that students do the heavy lifting of designing their courses with guidance and support from the faculty, mentors, and instructors. The PC mission stresses the power of experiential education and self-direction in interdisciplinary, liberal arts learning. 

Experiential education traditionally has been connected to outdoor education or learning an industrial art. The College defines experiential education more broadly. Just as one might learn to shoot free throws by practicing and practicing so too might a learner come to master the skill of generative thinking or creative problem-solving by repeated practice. We learn to think, to write, to make insightful connections though repeated experiences of thinking, writing, and making connections. Experiential education happens when I sit down with a scholarly article and engage in conversation with the author, all the while making connections to prior knowledge gained from life experiences, other courses or scholarly journals, and perhaps films, television shows. YouTube videos, iPad applications, travel experiences, novels, or even conversations with Aunt Hattie. 

Self-direction takes focused effort to master. Initially, adult learners enter the M.A. program with a general sense of being self-directed. They know how to manage their homes, their finances, their jobs. When stepping back into an academic setting the old habits of expecting to be told what to do by those “in the know” resurface. Instead, PC faculty and mentors provide the tools necessary to master the skills necessary to become confident, self-directed, self-motivated in an academic discipline. “Just tell me what to do” is a statement I’ve heard countless times over the past 30 years, and to my dismay, there are times when I cave-in and simply oblige the student’s request. 

What does the student learn when I give in to their request? The graduate scholar might continue to believe that faculty and mentors make learning happen. In reality, the learner has all of the power to learn. This might suggest that the only type of genuine, authentic learning is self-directed. All of the other “stuff” called learning may be suspect. Think back to the last powerful learning experience you had. How did the learning occur? Who MADE you learn? Did you at any point refuse to learn? Decide to learn? 

In the Prescott College M.A. program, mentors and faculty working with self-directed students act as coaches, provide perspective and resources, serve as sounding boards, cheerlead,and get out of the way. Enter the course plan. The value of a course plan is that it becomes the road map or blue print for your learning. It prevents you from wandering into a bog and catching shining-object syndrome. By returning to your course plan throughout the course you will be at peace with the progress you are making and can sleep well at night knowing you are meeting the objectives you set for yourself. The mentor's job in developing course plans with you is not to tell the truths about any given topic, but rather to provide a map, a guide, to probe open-ended questions that help you discover the beginning edges of what you want to learn. The work of the mentor is to challenge assumptions, open doors, raise doubts, foster curiosity, and encourage research. 

Specifically, how do you design an effective course plan? 

First, you need to create cogent course descriptions. As a guideline, students should look at at least three course descriptions of similar courses at other institutions to become aware of industry standards. Using a sturdy template, the mentor and student can craft an original course description that suits the student's goals and needs. To find these sample or template course descriptions, mentors should recommend multiple resources to the student: 1) Google or browse course catalogs of other institutions by course title for exemplary course descriptions that can be adapted for the M.A. course plan; 2) Search the Prescott College Course Schedules for past and current Moodle course descriptions; 3) search the thousands of course offerings from institutions that offer free, high-quality online courses (known as MOOCs) for sample course descriptions and syllabi (see the PC Learning Commons Weekly post on MIT Online for example); 4) see the three-part article for PC undergraduates on writing study or learning contracts for additional suggestions and tips. 

Second, course objectives in each course plan should be clear, precise, and have a measurable outcome. For example, if I write an objective that says, “I will understand the theory of relativity,” the big question is how an outside observer will verify that I do understand that theory. On the other hand, if I write the objective “I will develop a Power Point presentation that accurately describes the theory of relativity,” by the end of the course an outside observer can see if I have produced that presentation or not. It can help to begin the series of objectives with the statement “As a result of this course I will (be able to)…” and then list the outcomes for the course. Begin objectives with active verbs rather than stative verbs such as know, understand, learn, or comprehend which promise a result that is difficult to measure. A good list of actions verbs for use in writing learning objectives is available here. 

Third, create fun and challenging course activities that are relevant to the course objectives. For each of the objectives listed in the course plan you will have one or more activities to help you reach the objective. What experiences, in addition to reading scholarly books and articles, will anchor your new learning, allow you to practice what you are learning, and foster connections among the theoretical concepts you are studying and the world beyond the textbook? A course like Learning Theories, for example, bridges the disciplines of psychology and education. It asks questions such as, "How do people learn?" How do people learn different types of skills, knowledge and dispositions? What are some generally accepted theories of learning? Some activities you might consider for this course include:

• Ask up to five people for directions to the local corner market. Notice the types of directions they provide. Do they use landmarks, give you street names, describe turning left and right, or north and south? What might this tell you about how they learn? 
• Create a YouTube video of someone completing a task such as cooking a meal, repairing an engine. Then describe what learning theory might inform this learned skill.
• Try to learn a new skill such as new dance step, basketball shot, or computer program. Reflect on each step you took in order to master the skill. Write the steps down. Do this with up to 10 different new learning activities. Keep a journal. Notice what common threads run through the journal. 
• Look up some international schools on the internet and view the videos. In what way might culture impact how one learns? 
• Offer to teach a cooking class, Sunday school class, swimming, skating etc. to a small group of children in the neighborhood. Design a plan to teach based on what you’ve learned about how learning happens. Write an evaluation of the course you taught reflecting on your ideas before and after the teaching event. 

Finally, apply equal creativity to the resources and evaluation pieces of each course plan. Mentors can contribute widely and wisely in the resources section. Ask your mentor and the resource librarian for recommendations for books, articles, and videos to provide you with the theoretical component of your course plan. The evaluation section must describe what you will provide as the evidence that you have reached your learning objectives. For instance, in most graduate course learners, are asked to write a 15-page research paper. Often these papers become a key component of the Literature Review in the master’s thesis. Other ways to document your learning are through the production of videos, journal notes and reflections, a Prezi presentation, or a portfolio of art, poems, and/or short stories. The essential requirement in the evaluative piece is that you describe how you will demonstrate your learning for others for the purpose of evaluation, discussion, and further reflection.

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Announcing a New Resource for Graduate Mentors, Instructors

Because graduate mentors and online instructors support the learning of our graduate students in so many ways every semester, we want to give them a place in the PC Learning Commons Weekly where they can find essential resources to support them. Mentor Coordinator and Associate Faculty member Bev Santo will begin posting helpful information here on a regular basis so that it is easy to find later. 

She also hopes to promote dialogue among mentors and faculty by establishing the "Resources for Mentors & Instructors" section of the Weekly. All posts relevant to graduate mentors will be collected under the label "Resources for Mentors" (see the list of labels to the right of this post) for quick access. Thanks to the blog format, readers can comment or reply to any post to start a conversation or just say hi. Bev welcomes mentors' suggestions for new resources and post topics that could enhance their experiences with graduate learners.

In addition, mentors who subscribe to this blog or visit it regularly are encouraged to make use of the writing advice, announcements, and links to learning resources that appear throughout the Weekly. (To subscribe, type your email address in the "Follow by email" box to the left of this post.) We would even welcome short notes or tips from mentors or online instructors who are inspired to share them with us. 

For starters, here are a few links to the PC website that form the most basic toolkit of a successful graduate mentor:

Master of Arts Resources Page 

Master of Arts Academic Calendar

MAP Handbook

MAP Counseling Psychology Handbook

Graduate mentors and online instructors will also be receiving a monthly email from Bev to keep everyone up-to-date on changes to policy or procedures. 

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