0.3 Findings  (Page 14/22)

Miller found that one of her biggest challenges in teaching the theories course had always been the amount of class time the videos consumed. Miller thought that having the students watch the streaming videos from the course website on their own would be a major improvement, “a wonderful way for them to take their time and really be able to read the theory, see it being performed, spend some time digesting it and thinking about it.”

Online communication

Because this was her first hybrid course, Miller had to decide how she would communicate online with the students. She reflected on what kind of things she felt comfortable responding to directly on the discussion board, and which things she felt deserved a personal email or printed response.

I communicate with them through regular email, also in person every other week. I don’t communicate with them on the discussion board. I provide feedback on their reflections, but I do it in writing. I don’t want it to be public. I often challenge their thinking and their opinions.

Miller was not comfortable interjecting her voice into the students’ discussion board. Especially when it came to challenging a student’s ideas or beliefs, Miller felt she should respond to students privately, on an individual level. If she had chosen to comment to the discussion board, it might have been instructive to the class as a whole. Instead, she responded to them with individual comments written on paper given directly to students. She seemed concerned that she might embarrass or offend a student in front of his/her peers in disagreeing or correcting an inaccuracy he or she had posted.

Miller had prepared a very structured rubric for posting to the discussion board. As a result, the way the students used it was rather formal. Miller was very pleased, however, with the amount of interaction between the students both in the classroom and on the discussion board.

This semester it’s been really, really good. In fact, I love that about the postings because I require them to not only do their own posting, but respond to someone else’s. When they’re in class there’s not a lot of interaction across the entire class, [but] there’s great interaction that way on postings. They can’t respond to the same person each week, so they have to respond to other people. In class when we do the base groups where they discuss their reflections, it’s good collaboration. You wouldn’t push a whole group [into]pretty close intensive kinds of discussions when you don’t have the technology, but they’re able to really address arguments of students across the class over the course of the semester. They bring that confidence into the classroom, presenting as more knowledgeable about the theories.

Miller attributed the students’ high level of communication to their experience of proving themselves in their postings and contributions to the discussion board, where, “They have to take a stand and defend it. So by the time they come to class they are a little bit more confident in what they discuss.” In Miller’s estimation, the hybrid course format enabled the students to know each other better and share more than the more traditional class format she had used before. She saw a direct connection between level of trust among the students and their level of participation in discussions, both online and face-to-face.