Embedded Files
This course taught, at root, the importance of being engaged and continually improving. There are many different ways that we can continually improve our online courses. Certainly, the material in this course has suggested many possibilities. Of those, surveys tend to be effective for me. I have used them many times at the end of a course, for general feedback. I like the idea of using them through Canvas at different points within the course, so corrections can be made to improve the overall experience. One of the most important things is to identify, at the outset, the objective for teaching. This seems somewhat obvious, but an undue focus on the feedback of students could create a weird dynamic whereby changes are made to a course in order to reduce the amount of complaining, and not necessarily to maintain the quality of the teaching or the level of material. In other words, I could certainly reduce the feedback, negative in particular, from students by making the material much easier or the grading standard much lower. Yet, there is certainly a balance where a high standard must be maintained. Another tool for feedback, which can help lead to course improvements, is to hold an optional live course for students interested in participating. I have done this as well, offering a small extra credit bump for those who attend. Admittedly, the attendance was limited, but those students that did attend were quite engaged in the material and gave me immediate feedback for improvement.
Reflections
Reflections
Course Improvement:
I will revise Business Law 1, the introductory business law course offered at College of the Desert as part of the Applied Science and Business curriculum.
The Canvas analytic I would like to take advantage of is found under the title Submissions. It relates to the assignments submitted weekly by students, marking each as “on time,” “late,” or “missing.”
The principal assignment for my students is a weekly quiz, which both judges their understanding of the material for the week and also measures their ability to apply the legal concepts to fact patterns. I have the feeling that assignments that are completely missing often reflect time constraints by students more than difficulty with the material. It would be nice to know what prevents students from completing the quizzes. Based on that, I will be able to identify places for improvement.
I will use the quiz function to create an ungraded survey to poll students about their experience, and to judge the primary drivers of missing assignments. Based on the results of the poll, I will consider revisions to the course. For example, if the primary consideration is time, I may consider breaking quizzes into shorter sections. Or, I could ask fewer questions. If the primary consideration is difficulty with the legal concepts, then I will need to modify my approach on either the legal principles or the skill of applying the principles to facts
The following are five questions I intend to include in the survey. Each will require a response on a scale of one to five, with five indicating strong agreement and one being strong disagreement with the statement. Two, three, and four will represent varying intermediary levels.
1. I have adequate time in my schedule each week to complete the weekly quiz (The purpose of this question is to identify those people who feel that the weekly quiz is simply burdensome given the importance of the course and their other obligations.)
2. Several short quizzes during the week would be easier to complete than one long quiz on a single day. (The purpose of this question is to identify if shortening the length of time needed might be easier for students to complete then a quiz that takes a longer block of time. Perhaps the issue is one of scheduling during the week, and not the length of the quiz itself.)
3. A quiz with fewer but longer questions would be easier to complete than a quiz with several, short questions. (The purpose of this question is to see if several short, and perhaps superficial questions are easier to digest than fewer, longer questions. Again, this is to identify how the students perceive the difficulty of the quiz, and the length of time needed to complete it.)
4. I understand how to apply legal ideas to specific fact patterns. (The purpose of this question is simply to identify whether or not students understand this key skill, and whether more instruction is needed.)
5. I understand how to spot legal issues in an example story or fact pattern. (Again, the purpose of this question is to identify whether or not students understand the import skill of identifying issues in a fact pattern, and then, as a result, whether more instruction is needed.)
The type of indirect student feedback I will gain from the course is in the discussions, themselves. Many of the discussions are a type of fact pattern, asking the students to apply the legal principles they have learned. Very often, I can see from discussion submissions whether a student truly understands the tested concept, or not. That is an opportunity, when there seems to be a good deal of confusion, to identify areas where additional instruction could be helpful the following semester.
While routine review of the discussions is part of normal teaching, I will specifically look at discussion responses in connection with major modules, such as for employment law and contracts. Those modules tend to be the areas of most significance to the students now and in their later careers. They also tend to be the subjects that give students the most trouble.
Ongoing course revision is already part of my pre-semester work. I will follow continuing education courses to expand my skills and to keep abreast of current developments in the area of distance education.
Where I was.
Where I was.
I have been teaching distance education courses since the beginning of 2015. I have the basics down. I know my students are learning the material, in an efficient and effective way. However, that is not at all the same thing as saying that they are learning the material in an engaging way.
Where I am.
Where I am.
I realize that much more could be done in order to improve the experience of my students. The use of video is one example, especially to improve direct communication between me and the students. I have not yet used video, like Flipgrid, to encourage communication from the students to me. Yet that is something I would like to incorporate in my course this semester.
Where I'm headed.
Where I'm headed.
One comment stuck with me from an online student at another institution, taking a different course. While there were many things wonderful about a distance education course, including the flexibility for scheduling, the risk was that he often forgot he even had the class. Hopefully, I can take the subject matter that I teach and make it much more engaging, so students don't forget about it, or the class! I intend to teach in the distance education environment for some time. The more tools and skills I have available to me, the better.
Examples
Examples
A. Case analysis assessment
- Learning objective: The purpose of this formative assessment is to judge how well you have understood the link between legal concepts and real scenarios by spotting legal issues. Based on the response from this assessment, we will see if more or less time is needed on that important skill.
- Directions. Based on your reading of the last two chapters, governing intentional and unintentional torts, read the following fact pattern. Identify at least five legal issues that relate to the chapters read. The five legal issues should be submitted to me in the text box found, below. Please note that there are more than five, and any five will do.
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- Alec is driving 25 miles per hour down a four lane street in a school zone where there are children playing. One seven-year-old child, Jason, runs into the street chasing a basketball. Alec, without looking over his shoulder, swerves into the other lane to avoid Jason. As a result, Alec hits a car, driven by Bill, that was speeding past him in the left-hand lane going in the same direction.
- Alec loses control of his car, hitting a telephone pole and is seriously injured. The telephone pole, owned by Acme Telephone, Inc. easily snaps into pieces and hits Bill, who is still in the street, knocking him unconscious and resulting in permanent injuries.
- Acme Telephone, Inc. never tested its poles to see how easily the poles broke. The only consideration used in making the poles was cost. The poles were made of low quality trees and were not treated in any way except for a coating of tar for water resistance. No reinforcement was used on the poles.
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- Length of assignment. This assignment should take no more than 30 minutes.
- Due date. Your answers are due no later than the end of the day this Friday, [Insert].
- Grading. As this assessment is chiefly for me to judge how well you understand the idea of spotting legal issues, it will be graded as credit or no credit, based on a complete submission.
B. Instructor-to-Student Feedback
- The skill this assignment assesses is the ability for students to identify legal issues in a set of “real life” circumstances. In order to measure that ability, the assignment uses a fact pattern oriented around the legal principles of torts in the United States, a subject of a module in the business law class.
- I will use the Assessment tool in Canvas in order to furnish the information for the students and as a means for them to submit their responses. No resources would be necessary beyond what will have been provided already, namely the textbook and course instruction. Given that weekly assessments are part of each module, the additional assessment fits well into the flow of the class and does not disrupt the normal flow by introducing many new skills or requirements.
- From the results, and specifically the number of quality results, I will have an idea about the skill level of the students to identify legal issues in a fact pattern. The number of successful submissions will tell me how well they understand the idea of issue spotting. The number of quality submissions (e.g., with four or five correct issues) suggests how well they understand both issue spotting and the specific legal topic of torts.
- Naturally, students who perform poorly may be either contacted directly for follow-up and additional instruction or, if appropriate, provided support through a group presentation (like ConferZoom).
- The skill of issue spotting is critical for the class and needed for the final examination, so the assignment is significant for the students.
Example of a Fact Pattern Question:
Goals
This assignment asks you to develop your ability to apply the legal principles from the first half of the semester to two fact patterns. The law is full of abstract ideas, but in the end applying those ideas is where it matters. Therefore, you can use concepts from any of the following modules:
Chapter 1, Introduction to the Law; Chapter 3, International Law, Chapter 4, Constitutional, Statutory, Administrative, and Common Law; Chapter 5, Courts, Litigation, and Alternative Dispute Resolution, Chapter 7, Intentional Torts and Business Torts, Chapter 8, Negligence, Strict Liability, and Product Liability, Chapter 10, Forming a Contract; Chapter 11, Requirements for a Contract, Chapter 12, Performance of a Contract; Chapter 13, Practical Contracts, Chapter 14, Sales; Chapter 16, Secured Transactions, Chapter 17, Agency; Chapter 18, Employment Law, Chapter 19, Employment Discrimination.
Instructions
You will write two multiple choice or true-false questions, including the stem, correct answer, and three plausible distractors in the case of multiple choice questions, or one plausible distractor in the case of a true-false question. Each question will have a fact patterns to which a student will apply the legal principles from the above-referenced modules. In total, you will submit two questions, and I will use them on an extra credit exam later in the semester.
Tips
The following are some guidelines for writing effective distractors for multiple choice or true false questions.
1. Selecting the correct response should require a clear understanding of the material and how to apply it in a fact pattern.
2. Keep the length of the response options similar, as the correct answer should not stand out one way or another.
3. Avoid overlapping response options, so as not to create two plausible, correct answers.
4. Naturally, avoid all grammatical and spelling errors.
5. In the case of multiple choice questions, avoid using absolute terms such as “always”, “never”, “all”, or “none”. These tend to draw attention to those answers and are often easily rejected. Having said that, feel free to use those adjectives if they are correct.
6. In the case of multiple choice, do not include an option for “all of the above”, or “none of the above”.
Submission
Submit your questions to this assignment via email to me as a text document, either through Word or Google Docs. Please use "Student Questions" in the subject line.
Grading
The following rubric will be used to respond to your submission: This is a credit/no credit assignment. Twenty points will be given for correctly following the instructions and submitting the two questions is the format provided.
If you have specific questions you would like me to address, please let me know. I'll make every effort to return all submissions within 72 hours of the due date.
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