Online Learning

Mon, 07/28/2025 - 13:45

A spring 2026 federal digital accessibility deadline is ushering in a new paradigm for disability accommodations.

A two-hour Canvas course is helping faculty study up on new federal accessibility guidelines for online content. There's currently a $200 incentive to take the course.

COB, CECS online programs among top in the country

lblouin — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 17:49:37 +0000

COB, CECS online programs among top in the country lblouin Wed, 02/07/2024 - 12:49

Earlier this academic year, U.S. News & World Report released their annual guide to American colleges and universities and ranked 51��Ƶ-Dearborn among the best in the Midwest — listed as the No. 2 regional public university.

In rankings released Wednesday, U.S. News again included 51��Ƶ-Dearborn in their rankings of more than 1,600 online programs.

The College of Business’ online MBA and online master’s in business programs (excluding MBA) and the College of Engineering & Computer Science’s online master’s in Information Systems and Technology were named among the best. Curious about the methodology? U.S. News explains it.

CECS’ online graduate degree in Information Systems and Technology is the second-ranked program in Michigan and No. 44 overall.

COB also ranked as second in the state and No. 68 overall on the list of Best Online Master’s in Business Programs. This isn't the first time this academic year that COB programs have been recognized. In fall 2023, Poets&Quants, a leading online publication for business education news, ranked the online MBA as No. 28 in the United States — second in Michigan, only behind 51��Ƶ-Ann Arbor’s Ross School of Business — and called 51��Ƶ-Dearborn’s program a Best Online MBA Program of 2024. Poets&Quants also named COB a Best Undergraduate Business School for 2024.

COB’s online MBA program — ranked in the No. 3 spot in Michigan on U.S. News and World Report's Best Online MBA Programs list — is also recognized on the top program for veterans list, which showcases universities that make pursuing a college education more affordable for veterans and active-duty service members.

In the fall, U.S. News named 51��Ƶ-Dearborn as the No. 1 in the state on the “Best College for Veterans” list among regional public universities. Criteria for the designation include being GI Bill-certified and participating in the Yellow Ribbon Program. In addition, 51��Ƶ-Dearborn has veterans-based programming and provides structure for incoming Dearborn Wolverines who have served.

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If you are a service member or veteran interested in learning about the campus or degree programs, contact Veterans Affairs Coordinator Tom Pitock. Article by Sarah Tuxbury.

Academic Excellence

College of Engineering and Computer Science

College of Business

COB Graduate Programs

Computer and Information Science

Off

Wed, 02/07/2024 - 17:01

U.S. News & World Report’s rankings include 51��Ƶ-Dearborn’s outstanding online programs and ranks campus’ MBA as a top graduate program for veterans.

A graduate student presents in the Bloomberg Lab, one of the College of Business' flagship facilities. Photo by Julianne Lindsey

Accessibility or Affordability

‘The more people understand about OER…the more we all benefit’

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 14:20:41 +0000

‘The more people understand about OER…the more we all benefit’ Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/08/2022 - 10:20

This article was originally published on October 17, 2019.

College of Business faculty member Patty Graybeal’s managerial accounting course is a large class with mostly sophomore-level students. Realizing not all of them will go on to be accountants — but knowing the lessons are useful in future business classes, their careers and everyday life — she looks for ways to reach them.

Graybeal does “Your Turn” exercises in class to show how accounting is relevant. For example, to explain the concept of managing costs, Graybeal compares business costs to a student’s cost of attending college — emphasizing controllable versus non-controllable costs.

She encourages students to try applying the concepts and using equations without the help of their phone’s or calculators and walks around the room giving one-on-one assistance. She even color codes the equations and concepts on the board to make it easier to follow along.

This semester Graybeal did something else in an effort to help her students: She chose a textbook that 's completely free and saved each student in her class up to $200.

The textbook is on OpenStax, an Open Educational Resources (OER) that provides freely accessible and openly licensed textbooks or other digital assets for teaching and learning. The students have access to the materials online or they can download a pdf.

And Graybeal is very familiar with the OpenStax accounting textbook she chose — she wrote it.

Principles of Accounting Vol. 2 Managerial Accounting, which was published in July, was created with student and faculty educational needs in mind; she thought about how to keep students engaged and how to help faculty teach. For example, each chapter starts with “Why It Matters,” a scenario that relates the chapter material to a student-related situation, such as managing a student organization.

What started as a cold call out from OpenStax — a Rice University-based publisher with funding from the various foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Koch Foundation — looking for business faculty to write textbooks turned into Graybeal’s nearly three-year 739-page project.

“I know some of our students are struggling financially; it was very motivating for me. I wanted to write a textbook that they could read because it was free. And that they would read because they found it interesting. I wanted to create useful supplements,” says Graybeal, who also contributed to Principles of Accounting Vol 1 and crafted over 1,400 PowerPoint slides for both texts. “I simply want students to learn and hopefully appreciate what they have learned. Removing any barriers, such as cost of materials, is a first step.”

Sophomore Chris Kachigian says it is the first time he didn’t need to worry about buying an expensive textbook for a class. “I can use that money for gas to get here,” says Kachigian, noting that he doesn’t discard print as a medium, but many of his required textbooks — each costing hundreds of dollars— won’t be used beyond the class. “I’m not an accounting major, but this book is actually interesting as far as textbooks go. And it doesn’t take up space like the one I have just sitting in my closet because I couldn’t sell it. It’s pretty cool that Professor Graybeal did this.”

OERs in higher education have been on the upswing during the past few years and with the high quality of today’s publications, more and more institutions are looking into ways to incorporate OERs into classrooms. And 51��Ƶ-Dearborn is among them.

Professor and Interim Library Director Maureen Linker, who leads campus’ OER Task Force, says courseuse of OERs has the potential to increase teaching efficiency and reduce economic barriers to education through these shared resources.

Linker says college students are struggling to get ahead, so reducing the cost of course materials — in this instance, textbooks — is a good thing. Linker says a 2017 OER campus student survey reported some students had to choose between buying groceries or textbooks; that finding was motivation for the task force.

And not making people choose between needs and textbooks leads to students having the materials they need to be successful: A 2018 publication in International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education found that DFW rates — rates where students have grades of D, F or Withdrawal — decreased by one-third among minority and Pell-eligible students in classes that switched from commercial textbooks to OER.

On the teaching side, there’s a benefit through the resource sharing — which includes prompt questions, class activities, study guides, talking points and more — that faculty can find on OER websites along with the textbooks.

Linker knows that OERs may not always provide a perfect solution — for example, e-text may be an unfamiliar territory for some — but free quality resources are a move toward equity in educational access. For any issues that arise, Linker says the task force will research solutions. To address the above example, they are looking into low-cost publication services for campus use and providing how-to-use OER educational workshops.

As an incentive to try it out in the classroom, the OER Task Force offered grants to College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters faculty — CASL was chosen because it had the largest amount of OER resources available in appropriate subject matter — who were interested in remixing and adapting OER texts for use in Fall 2019 courses. Linker says Graybeal was ahead of the trend and acted independently in her OER work, but they’ll work together in examining campus outcomes.

Now implemented in four classes that have a combined 26 sections, OERs have saved students $263,000 in this Task Force initiative. Linker says the faculty are happy with the results too. The 51��Ƶ-Dearborn OER Task Force is presenting at a statewide conference Friday about the success of the program. And there will be a campus panel discussion and lunch at 12:15 p.m. Oct. 25 in Library Room 1216 to hear from faculty about their OER experiences.

With the success of their first major OER campus push, the grant program will expand to all colleges in 2020. The application process and additional information will be announced in January. The task force will also run OER trainings on how to find and tailor materials to a professor’s class needs.

Because of educational efforts and positive experiences, there’s been an increase in OER awareness. According to a 2017-2018 survey about teaching materials in U.S. higher education, responses from more than 4,000 faculty and department chairpersons report that nearly 50 percent of faculty have OER awareness, up from 34 percent in 2014-2015. And with this increased awareness, it’s believed the OER adaptation will continue to steadily grow.

“OpenStax has saved students over $600 million in textbook costs since 2012. For my text alone, there have been nearly 20,000 downloads and it’s only been available for a couple of months. It’s rewarding to see so many classrooms incorporating it in their lessons and to realize the impact of free textbooks,” Graybeal says. “This is not a fly by night thing. The more people understand about OER — that these are well-written, well-cited learning and teaching resources that are free, accessible and customizable — the more we all benefit.”

The members of 51��Ƶ-Dearborn's OER Task Force are: HUB for Teaching and Learning Instructional Designer Autumm Caines, Library User Services Supervisor Anna Granch, Library Interim Director Maureen Linker, CEHHS Librarian Raya Samet, HUB for Teaching and Learning Instructional Designer Alfonso Sintjago, Library Electronic Resources Specialist Tim Streasick, and Mathematics Associate Professor Alan Wiggins.

College of Business

Mardigian Library

Thu, 10/17/2019 - 05:00

Campus continues efforts to educate and adopt Open Educational Resources, saying OER materials are well cited, customizable and promote educational equity in the classroom.

Extended Learning & Outreach

Three great lecture recording options for remote education rookies

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 17:26:28 +0000

Three great lecture recording options for remote education rookies Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/19/2022 - 13:26

This article was originally published on July 27, 2020.

As 51��Ƶ-Dearborn prepares for a fall semester that’s heavy on remote learning, many faculty will soon be recording lectures for their first fully online courses. If you find yourself in this boat, don’t panic. Even with tight timelines imposed by the pandemic, 51��Ƶ-Dearborn’s digital learning experts say the challenge is totally manageable if you don’t try to do too much, too fast. Here are three straightforward approaches they say will deliver solid results, even if you’re a rookie.

Option A: Simple at-home recording

Tech you’ll need: Can be as simple as a laptop or phone; add an external camera and mic for better quality. Annotation devices can give your students a whiteboard-style experience.

For many faculty, recording a lecture at home will be the most straightforward choice and Instructional Designer Alfonso Sintjago says producing high-quality videos at home is totally doable. The built-in camera and mic on your smartphone or laptop can be adequate, but if you want to go the extra mile, the university is supplying faculty with external cameras and mics that will deliver better video and audio. Once on camera, experiment with the lighting. Sintjago says first make sure you have enough of it; if your image looks grainy, you probably need more light. Your light source should also be in front or slightly to one side of your face, rather than behind you. Using natural light from a window is great if you can record during the day. You’ll also want to make sure the camera position is at eye level or a little above, because shooting from below is typically unflattering. For faculty who write on the board a lot during their lectures, Sintjago says consider adding an annotation device, which is basically a tablet that you can write on with a stylus. Whatever you’re scribbling down can either be displayed as its own screen, or superimposed overtop an existing screen, like a PowerPoint slide.

For software, Sintjago says both Kaltura Capture, which is integrated right into Canvas, or PowerPoint 365 work great for beginners. PowerPoint has an added advantage of recording a single video file for each slide, which makes it easier to correct something if you discover a mistake or decide to do a small retake. Importantly, both platforms automatically generate on-screen captions for accessibility. They’re typically 80 percent accurate, and correcting transcription mistakes is as easy as editing a text file.

One last tip: The casual, personal vibe of an at-home lecture can totally be an asset. “I saw a great example from someone in Minnesota where you could see her dog and fireplace in the background. The whole scene was very cozy and you felt invited into her home,” Sintjago says. Another way to make the whole experience more personal for students: Record casual, short beginning- or end-of-week videos where you go over important reminders or respond to interesting discussion points from students.

Option B: At-home recording with style points

Tech you’ll need: Laptop, external camera, wireless lavalier mic and green screen.

If you’re aiming for something with a little more polish, adopting Mercedes Miranda as your online learning guru can dramatically shorten the learning curve. The Business Economics and Finance lecturer has been teaching online since 2009, and her colleagues rave about her video lectures. Miranda says she does everything at home, and her setup is pretty simple: An external camera, wireless lavalier mic, and the Kaltura Capture software that’s integrated into Canvas. But she does have one secret ingredient: a $20 green screen she got at Walmart. This allows her to lecture onscreen with a slide in the background, kind of like a TV meteorologist showing off a weather map. She says studies have revealed that showing your face makes a lecture appear more personal to students, though too much of you can be distracting. She finds being onscreen to introduce the topic and then letting the PowerPoint slides and voiceover carry the load to be the right balance.

More than technology, Miranda’s secret to successful lectures lies in how she organizes them. “If you simply try to reproduce your classroom lecture on screen, you’ll end up with a one- or two-hour monologue, and that’s not very engaging,” Miranda says. Instead, she says dissect your lecture and break it down into no more than five main points. Then record a no longer than 10-minute lecture on each point. She even further segments those individual mini lectures with short quizzes, which appear periodically during the video. That helps add some interactivity and also checks for comprehension. The Video Quiz function is integrated right into Kaltura Capture and you can insert quizzes easily at any point after you record your lecture.

Two of Miranda’s next-level tips: First, have your mini lectures focus on core concepts, but avoid referring to specific examples, pages of a particular textbook, or things that could get out of date quickly. If you end up teaching online for multiple semesters, you can reuse your core concept videos and simply update your examples as needed. Second, leave yourself enough time to produce your lectures. Miranda says it typically takes her two eight-hour days to finish one. And you never want to start a course with fewer than two weeks worth of lectures in the bank.

Option C: On-campus lecture capture

Tech you’ll need: None, but you can bring your own devices.

If your home situation makes recording challenging, or you just find using all this technology a little daunting, recording on-campus might be a better bet. The Professional Education Center (PEC) recently opened up its lecture capture classrooms to all faculty, and they’re equipped with high-quality cameras, microphones, document readers, annotation tools, the Canvas-integrated Mediasite Desktop Recorder software (which you can also use at home, by the way), and staff to guide you through the recording session. To make things even easier, much of the process is automated. Video Production Coordinator Joe Goraj told us the recording automatically begins at the start of your booked time and your videos get uploaded immediately after you finish. If you need some light editing at the beginning or end of a session, they can help with that too. Typically, the finished videos will be ready for your students the following day. In addition, they have portable equipment to shoot short supplemental videos if faculty want to do some show-and-tell from their labs. Check out this clip to see an example of what your finished video lecture will look like.

Two tips for beginners if you go this route: As much as possible, try to look directly into the camera. It may feel awkward at first, but from the student’s perspective, that amounts to looking them in the eye. In addition, if you’re used to pointing a lot during a lecture, say, at a whiteboard or projection screen, be aware that may not be in view of the camera. As an alternative, you can annotate your screen with a digital stylus or use your mouse pointer.

Bonus tip: Make a plan before you record and get help if you need it.

Whichever route faculty end up choosing for lecture recording, Sintjago says don’t get too hung up on the technology. What makes a lecture video “good” isn’t so much its production values but what you’re doing with your time on screen and how it fits into the rest of your course. If you need help figuring out an approach that works for you, Sintjago says to reach out to the instructional designers at The Hub. They can help you talk through what you want to do in the course and figure out what tools and techniques will get you there. The Hub is also hosting weekly course design tutorials in August to help faculty get ready for fall.

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Need help getting started? Reach out to The Hub. Or if you want to learn more about CECS’s on-campus lecture capture, send an email to 51��ƵD-CECSOnline@umich.edu. Ready to record? Complete this form to schedule a recording appointment on campus in the PEC.

Digital Education

Mon, 07/27/2020 - 05:00

Recording lectures can be a daunting challenge for faculty who are new to online learning. Here are three solid approaches, vetted by our 51��Ƶ-Dearborn experts.

remotelearning_recording_final

Student-tested tips for online classes

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 17:06:34 +0000

Student-tested tips for online classes Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/19/2022 - 13:06

This article was originally published on September 9, 2020.

After months of planning, the mostly remote semester is upon us. And if you’re a student who’s a little nervous about finding a rhythm with online learning, we’ve got some student-vetted advice to get you off to the right start. English and education senior Katarina Moore and bioengineering and mechanical engineering senior Brigit Bradakis are both veterans when it comes to online classes. And just ahead of the semester, we hit them up for their personal tips and tricks when it comes to things like time management, minimizing distractions and getting help when (or preferably before) you’re feeling overwhelmed. Here’s their collective Top 8.

Expect the fall semester to be different (and better) than winter.

If your only prior experience with online classes was this winter’s emergency switch to remote learning, you might be approaching the fall with some trepidation. But Brigit Bradakis says there was a big difference between her experience this winter and previous online classes. “Basically, winter was a crazy situation that no one was prepared for — not the students, not the professors — and everybody was doing their best,” she says. “But now, everyone has had time to record proper lectures and figure out the extra supplemental assignments that make an online course interesting.” That means students can expect a much more intentionally designed online experience this fall.

Schedule. Schedule. Then schedule some more.

As someone who had prior experience with online classes, Katarina Moore should have been as equipped as anyone to adapt to the quick format change this winter. But she says she actually struggled quite a bit — especially with asynchronous courses: “I would tell myself, ‘Oh, I'm a night owl, so I’ll watch this video or do this reading tonight.' And then, of course, I wouldn’t do it, and I got pretty far behind.” Creating a super detailed schedule saved her semester. She keeps both online and paper calendars to schedule everything from big due dates, to specific time blocks for reading and watching lectures, to five-minute tasks like sending emails to professors. On top of that, Moore creates daily to-do lists, which she often relays to her mom to add another layer of accountability when they break down the day over dinner. Bradakis says it’s also helpful for her to turn on notifications from her calendar apps and Canvas.

Close distracting browser tabs.

When your learning experience is centered around your laptop or phone, it’s pretty easy to get distracted by non-school stuff. Bradakis says having browser tabs open for social media or personal email accounts can seem harmless enough, but they turn out to be big temptations. Instead, she keeps those out of sight and mostly out of mind in a completely separate, minimized browser. If you know those kinds of distractions are a big challenge for you, consider turning off social media and personal email notifications on your phone.

Buy (at least some) old-school textbooks.

More online classes means more screen time. But if you find yourself needing a break from your laptop or phone, Bradakis has a simple, brilliant fix: Buy print copies of at least some of your textbooks (and buy them used if you’re on a budget). That will allow you to periodically cut your tether to your laptop and do your reading from the comfort of a park or backyard hammock. She even has a cool piece of hybrid analog-digital tech called a Rocketbook, which is a reusable notebook with whiteboardlike pages for taking handwritten notes. When you’re back online, you can use an app to photograph the pages, which upload automatically to storage platforms like Google Drive.

Brigit Bradakis (left) and Katarina Moore

Get up and move.

Bradakis says one of the biggest things she noticed when everything went remote was how sedentary her routine got. “You take for granted the 10-minute walk between classes, and I found out I was really missing that.” To recreate the experience, she makes a point to step away from her desk throughout the day to check-in with her parents or do some stretching. It’s not just good for your body. She finds that even 15 minutes of doing something that’s not school related provides the mental reset you need to stay sharp for your next Zoom call.

If you feel like you’re drowning, ask for help.

Moore says she’s always surprised by the number of students who seem nervous to reach out to their professors. “I think people have the idea that a professor is going to be mean or something, but that’s not been my experience at all. Nine times out of 10, they’re going to be happy you took the initiative to ask for help or ask for an extension.” Of course, it’s always better if that call for help doesn’t come on the day the assignment is due, so try to reach out before you’re in crisis mode.

Start a Zoom study group.

Your classmates can offer you another layer of support. In her past online classes, Moore says she organized Zoom study groups to cram for big exams and Snapchat groups for quick questions about assignments. Moore says if no one has organized one yet for your class, don’t be afraid to take the initiative and do it yourself.

Make an effort to make friends online, even if it’s a little awkward.

Moore says her hands-down, number one tip is to not let the online semester deter you from making social connections. “A big part of college is getting to know people, and without that five minutes before class where you’re all waiting for the professor, it can be really hard to do that.” Moore’s suggestion: Reach out to your online classmates who you feel an affinity with. “It can be as simple as sending someone a message in the Zoom chat like, ‘Hey, you seem super cool, I’m on Instagram if you want to connect.’ Even if you feel super awkward, you have to put yourself out there.”

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Ready for more tips? Check out our story on what faculty wish students knew about succeeding in online classes.

Opinion or Voices

Student Success

Wed, 09/09/2020 - 05:00

Two 51��Ƶ-Dearborn students share their advice for tackling the unique challenges of a mostly online semester.

Graphic by Violet Dashi

Data ethics for the digital education age

lblouin — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 12:57:28 +0000

Data ethics for the digital education age lblouin Mon, 04/04/2022 - 08:57

The use of digital educational technologies has surged during the pandemic, bringing students and faculty a range of new options for learning. In so many ways, this is a great thing, and we’ve covered some examples of 51��Ƶ-Dearborn professors being inspired to use new techniques as a result of their remote teaching experiences. As more learning goes online, though, colleges and universities are also having to wrestle with some emerging privacy and data ethics issues, according to The Hub for Teaching and Learning Resources’ Autumm Caines.

Instructional designer Autumm Caines

The basic scope of the conversation about digital data ethics in higher education is more or less similar to how we think about privacy and data in our daily lives. As you know, many digital platforms, like social media or websites, track lots of data about our behavior, and that data is used by companies for various purposes. We’ve gotten pretty used to some of them, like how tracking allows businesses to show you products you might want based on your web searches. Sometimes, though, this kind of data mining can lead to real harm. For example, your data can be stolen, or it might unintentionally reveal something about you to another person that you’d prefer was private.

In a higher education environment, learning technologies are also collecting data about their users, who are primarily students. The kind of data can vary quite a bit by platform. A learning management system like Canvas, for example, has metrics that allow faculty to see which course pages a student viewed, track completed assignments and grades, and view students’ “last activity” and “total activity” in the course. But say a professor wants you to download an app or visit a website for a one-off assignment. The app or website might very well be collecting a broader set of data about your identity and behavior. And here lies one of the murky ethical issues, says Caines. In this case, the professor is more or less requiring the student to download third-party software. But it’s the student who has to check the box and agree to the terms of service, which likely requires sharing potentially sensitive data, and thus carries some risk. So the question is: Is compelling a student to share their data in this way ethical or fair?

Sometimes, Caines says, even seemingly more benign data sets, like Canvas metrics, can be used in harmful ways. The most high-profile example came last year, when Dartmouth College accused 17 medical students of cheating on their exams. The college claimed that Canvas metrics revealed students were accessing course pages containing information relevant to their exam while they were taking their tests. “The problem is Canvas metrics were never designed to be used for this kind of forensic investigation,” Caines says. “They’re simply not that precise, and Canvas even says their metrics can’t be reliably used in this way. If you leave a Canvas page open or have one open on another device ⁠— and sometimes even if it’s closed ⁠— the app might still be pinging the server trying to maintain its connection. So it can look like you’re active in the system, even if you’re not.” Eventually, Dartmouth came to this conclusion too and dropped its case and apologized to the students.

Other times, the risks of harm come from the now ubiquitous practice of selling data. Caines says the recent poster child case for this involves Naviance, a software platform used by 10 million high school students every year to research colleges and submit college applications. Not surprisingly, Naviance also collects a lot of student data, which it then, through its sister company, Intersect, uses to sell universities targeted recruitment and ad campaigns. (Both Naviance and Intersect are owned by the ed tech company PowerSchool, which is in turn owned by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners.) But a recent investigation by the Markup, a nonprofit big data watchdog organization, found this data is being used in ethically problematic ways. Using the ad and recruitment platform, college admissions offices can target students based on their location, grades, majors they’re interested in ⁠— and also their race. The Markup found multiple cases of universities deliberately targeting only white students.

So what’s the best way for universities to navigate this increasingly complex data landscape? Caines says in some situations, the approaches can be relatively straightforward. If a professor is asking students to use an app for an assignment, they could also have an alternative assignment for those who were uncomfortable with the app’s terms of service. And students could also consider using alias email accounts for these kinds of activities, which offers some, though hardly foolproof, protection. For broader issues, like how an institution uses data to recruit students or enforce academic standards, Caines says we’ll likely need to have deep, ongoing conversations that include a wide range of constituencies at the university, so we can reduce the risks of harm to vulnerable groups. Right now, in fact, the three U-M campuses are considering what such a policy might look like. Moreover, Caines says, it always helps to be transparent with students and parents about what our practices are.

One other bit of wisdom from Caines: Remember that the fast-growing and increasingly profitable ed tech industry isn’t just targeting students, it’s targeting us as institutions. Colleges and universities are some of the biggest consumers of educational technology, and we can be savvy about what we choose to bring into our classrooms. For example, Caines says we’re not helping our students if we don’t introduce them to the latest tools and technologies that are relevant in the workforce, simply because they carry some risk. But we can also choose to pass on enticing, heavily advertised products that overpromise and underdeliver. For example, one trendy selling point nowadays is “engagement metrics,” where platforms attempt to score how engaged students are with learning via an amalgam of clicks, page views, and time spent on a page. The problem, Caines says, is those metrics paint a pretty superficial picture of student engagement, and aren’t all that useful to skilled instructors who are already tracking this via other more nuanced instructional practices. She says there’s also a general danger of becoming too reliant on data. “It can definitely become reductive. If we can only measure certain things, then we run the risk of only valuing those things, and that’s problematic for a bunch of different reasons. Ask anyone who’s been in education a long time and they’ll tell you there are many things that are extremely valuable that we simply can’t quantify.”

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Story by Lou Blouin. Want to learn more about data ethics in digital education? The Hub recently held a webinar featuring Bonnie Stewart, an expert in this area, and you can watch the Zoom recording on the Hub blog.

Off

Mon, 04/04/2022 - 12:57

The Hub’s Autumm Caines walks us through some important privacy and data ethics issues facing universities as more learning goes online.

Graphic by Violet Dashi

National publications rank 51��Ƶ-Dearborn programs among the best in the country

tinahu — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 17:55:25 +0000

National publications rank 51��Ƶ-Dearborn programs among the best in the country tinahu Mon, 01/31/2022 - 12:55

It’s been a busy few months with college rankings. Lists from academic ranking authorities U.S. News & World Report, Poets&Quants and Princeton Review have all recognized 51��Ƶ-Dearborn’s programs. In September, U.S. News & World Report released their annual guide to American colleges and universities and again ranked 51��Ƶ-Dearborn among the best in the Midwest.

Just last week, they again included 51��Ƶ-Dearborn in their rankings of nearly 1,200 online programs. This time including the College of Business’ online MBA, and online Master of Science in Finance, the College of Engineering & Computer Science’s online master’s in Information Systems and Technology and online master’s programs in engineering and the College of Education, Health, & Human Services’ online master’s in education among the best.

This isn't the first time this year that COB programs have been recognized. The online MBA was ranked No. 31 in the U.S. out of more than 130 programs considered by Princeton Review. The “Top 50 Online MBA Programs” ranking is based on a combination of institutional and student survey data, including career outcomes, technological infrastructure, academic rigor, cost and affordability, among others. The publication also named the college a “Best Business School” for the 13th consecutive year.

Earlier this fall, Poets&Quants, a leading online publication for business education news, ranked the online MBA No. 49 in the US and last week again ranked COB’s undergraduate programs among the best in the nation. In the comprehensive assessment of undergraduate business programs, the publication ranked COB’s program 70th in the country on the list headed by Wharton and Ross business schools. Poets&Quants compiled the 2022 undergraduate programs rankings based on a representative survey of alumni and an extensive set of school-reported data like admission standards, academic experience and career outcomes. Learn more about the 2022 rankings methodology.

Academic Excellence

College of Education, Health, and Human Services

College of Business

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Off

Mon, 01/31/2022 - 17:55

Several ranking outlets — like U.S. News & World Report and Poets&Quants — highlighted 51��Ƶ-Dearborn programs.

Students show off their Formula SAE car in the new ELB Atrium. Photo by Rudra Mehta

How students felt about their year-plus of pandemic learning

lblouin — Mon, 12 Jul 2021 13:45:03 +0000

How students felt about their year-plus of pandemic learning lblouin Mon, 07/12/2021 - 09:45

A collage graphic representing online learning, featuring a male college professor teaching from "inside" a laptop screen surrounded by students in "bubbles.""

How will the pandemic reshape our lives — even after things go back to “normal”? It’s a question folks are asking in all kinds of contexts, from workplaces, to restaurants, to our social lives. There’s a ton of buzz in the higher education world too, particularly around which pandemic-spurred innovations might be worth keeping around. While that’s a topic that will take months to sort through, some recent student focus groups hosted by The Hub for Teaching and Learning Resources offer some substantive initial insight into what worked for students and what didn’t. The full report is definitely worth a read, but we’ve broken down some of the key takeaways below for an appetizer. Special thanks to Hub Instructional Designer Jessica Riviere and CECS Academic Advisor Roberto Novelli for taking us through the report. And they both wanted to give a shout out to Hub alum Alfonso Sintjago, who helped organize the student focus groups and has since moved on to a position with U-M’s Language Resource Center.

Hybridity is popular, and it could reshape student expectations

One of the overarching themes of the Hub’s report is that doing some things in-person or synchronously online and doing other activities asynchronously has its benefits. Novelli says short-form recorded lectures, for example, were generally a big hit with students (more on this below) “because it gave them this new ability to go back and review a concept if they didn’t get it the first time.” Conversely, group work was something that many students reported was tougher in a remote environment. “Looking forward, my hunch is these experiences will shift everyone’s tolerances a little,” says Riviere. “For example, students’ tolerances for being able to sit quietly in a classroom and listen to a lecture for 50 minutes with no break and no chance to repeat it may be diminished. And there may be a bigger appetite for using that in-person time to collaborate or get questions asked and answered, and much less tolerance for using class-time for transactional stuff that could easily be in Canvas.” In other words, students appear to be coming out of this pandemic learning experience with more sophisticated views of what activities work best in each format — and a desire for course designs that can capitalize on that.

Recorded lectures were popular, discussion boards were a struggle

Recorded lectures and discussions boards were two of the most relied upon tools for faculty as they pivoted to remote class formats. But only one of these online learning staples got high marks from students. In general, students really liked recorded lectures, though Riviere and Novelli note students’ clear preference was for shorter lectures (in the 5-20 minute range), and for lectures that focused on material directly related to things they were going to be assessed on. (Riviere says it’s also important to note that some recent research shows students often feel like they’re learning the most from lectures compared to some other activities, but that’s not always an indicator of actual learning.) Interestingly, one thing students didn’t comment on was production values. “I thought this was significant because I know some of our faculty feel under a lot of pressure to create professional-looking videos, and at least in our focus groups, this was not the criteria that students were judging them on,” Riviere says. Instead, students seemed to care most about content and the instructor’s ability to connect. “We were all craving connection during this time, and frankly, it might have been harder to connect with a really polished-looking video.”

Headshots of Jessica Riviere and Roberto Novelli

Discussion boards, on the other hand, got a pretty consistent thumbs down. Novelli says many students felt like it was “busy work,” and reported “fatigue” with the format, especially when they had several classes using the same discussion board formula. “I think many students’ experience of the discussion boards was that they were going to pick through the thread, look for their opportunity to make a quick comment so they could check that box and move on,” Novelli says. “There was just no way they were going to read through everyone’s comments, especially if they had to do the same thing for three more classes.” Riviere doesn’t think that means we should junk discussion boards as an online learning tool, but it does warrant some rethinking of what exactly we’re trying to achieve. In an in-person class discussion, not everyone is going to speak up and we’d have no problem considering that a successful discussion, Riviere says. “But typically with a discussion board, we’re asking everyone to participate. So do we need to be creating more options for participation? And is some form of watching from the sidelines viable, similar to how some people in an in-person class are going to take in the information just through listening?”

So is this a transformative moment for higher ed?

It’s still early days, but there are some signs that our pandemic experiences could be spurring change in areas of our lives that once seemed pretty durable. (How remote work is changing our ideas of the office is a good example.) So is higher ed heading for a moment of fundamental transformation? Riviere’s take is “we’re about to find out.” But she has her eye on one less talked about aspect of the educational environment in particular: how our physical bodies factor into our learning experiences. She said our struggles to create functional spaces at home to learn or work showed just how much our physical environment matters, and many scholars are doing very interesting research into how taken-for-granted things like that 10-minute walk between classes, or physical interactions with peers in a language class, actually aid learning. This is especially relevant because it could help us sort through this fundamental question of which activities benefit from in-person interactions, and which can be handled remotely or asynchronously.

In the student support resources space, Novelli says he’s hopeful that we’re heading toward an era of more flexibility and informality. “I think it’s a great opportunity for us to meet students where they’re at,” Novelli says. “If it’s not possible for a student to physically come to campus between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., I think we should totally have remote options. And even in our office, I personally want it to be more welcoming. Enough of working behind a desk. Let’s work side by side, together, sharing experiences. Our offices should not be intimidating; they should be inviting.”

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Want more details about students’ experiences during the pandemic? Check out the Hub’s full report from its recent student focus groups.

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Mon, 07/12/2021 - 13:37

Recent student focus groups hosted by the Hub offer a candid look at what went well, what didn’t, and what ideas might have staying power post-pandemic.

How serious is the COVID “learning gap”?

lblouin — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 17:46:46 +0000

How serious is the COVID “learning gap”? lblouin Wed, 04/07/2021 - 13:46

The pandemic has magnified many inequities within American society, including in education. Teachers, administrators and scholars are now sounding the alarm that the “learning loss” brought on by a disrupted school year may have long-lasting impacts, particularly among students in schools that were already short on resources. 51��Ƶ-Dearborn Associate Professor Dara Hill says the emerging research in this area generally supports that storyline, but it may not capture all the nuances of how students, parents and teachers have been affected by a year of “trauma-informed teaching,” as she dubbed it. Recently, we got a chance to talk with Hill about some of her observations of pandemic learning, how we might approach the effort to catch students up, and why she expects the K-12 classroom could be permanently transformed by the pandemic experience. We’ve summarized some of the major takeaways from our conversation below.

So how serious is COVID “learning loss”?

Recent surveys and studies on this topic are just starting to trickle out, but the early indications are that learning loss could be significant. One of the bigger studies, conducted by consulting group McKinsey & Company, found that students, on average, could be behind by up to nine months in math, for example. For students of color, it increased to 12 months. That finding seems to be largely supported by data from individual districts, where many schools are seeing sharp increases in the number of failing grades. Given these trends, Hill says learning gaps from the pandemic could be more pronounced than ones we’ve witnessed during past natural disasters. “This situation is really unprecedented, but one of the first things I looked to was research that was done on students who were impacted by Hurricane Katrina,” Hill says. “In that case, schools were shuttered for months, and students had essentially no contact with school. But the impact, at least on test scores, ended up being fairly nominal. So we may be dealing with a much different situation here.”

A headshot of Associate Professor Dara Hill

In addition, while Hill says it’s true that families with more resources have fared better during the pandemic, it’s important to realize outcomes for individual families may not fit the trends. Through her work with the ongoing longitudinal study, The Best Classroom Project, she’s basically seen it all during the pandemic: Affluent parents hiring tutors and forming learning pods; students learning virtually with the help of a parent at their side full-time; students learning virtually with no parental supervision, either because the parent was working from home or had to continue a job in-person; even schools continuing in-person instruction throughout the pandemic, including in one case, in outdoor classrooms. “We’re definitely going to be dealing with macro-level learning losses that track with our traditional achievement gaps. But because the adaptation strategies have been so uneven, and there are so many different family situations, I think we also have to understand that we’re dealing with hundreds or thousands of individualized learning gaps,” Hill says. “So assessing that will be key as we figure out how to help students get back on track.”

So how do we catch students up?

For Hill, if there was ever a time to relax our fixation on fixed timelines for achievement, it’s now. “Number one, I think we have to assess where kids are at at the start of next school year, preferably in person. And then we have to keep focused on informed instruction for where kids are functioning instead of where they ‘should’ be according to standard grade-level benchmarks.” This more individualized approach to learning plans is a mainstay of modern special education, for example, and could, in the long run, strike a balance between catching kids up academically and keeping their social networks intact. “I don’t think it necessarily makes sense to have a kid repeat kindergarten if they’re not hitting those benchmarks. This is a year where policymakers should lighten the load.”

Parents, teachers and administrators are also looking to seize the opportunity summer might provide. Hopeful that warmer temperatures and vaccinations will make more in-person learning possible, some schools have announced expanded summer school options. Schools in Detroit, for example, are expecting double the demand for summer school this year. Hill says parents can also look to area nonprofits, which are planning their own offerings. Brilliant Detroit, which partnered with 51��Ƶ-Dearborn this year to have teachers in training tutor K-12 students online, has a network of learning centers embedded in the city’s neighborhoods. DAPCEP, the Detroit Area Pre-College Engineering Program, is offering reduced rates for its STEM-focused summer camps. And some employers are even planning summer educational support for children of employees.

The pandemic’s impact on schools could be long-lasting

Hill says it could take multiple school years to erase COVID learning losses, but that might not be the pandemic’s biggest legacy for education. “I think the 30-student classroom isn’t coming back, at least for a while,” Hill says. “I imagine there are many families who won’t want to go back in the fall, whether that’s short-term because of safety or longer-term because they prefer virtual learning. If you were a kid getting bullied or discriminated against, for example, why would you want to go back?” The big question is how schools will respond if enrollment numbers drop. Prior to the pandemic, schools were already in fierce competition for students and the per-pupil state funding that follows them. If they see a meaningful falloff in enrollment, it could put pressure on districts to continue virtual learning options (and policymakers to allow that). It might ultimately even spark interest in something we haven’t seen before: permanent home school options offered by your local public school.

Short of that, Hill expects districts to experiment with their learning formats, drawing in part on lessons they’ve learned during the pandemic. Hybrid learning could be hot — and allow students, particularly high schoolers, flexible schedules that don’t require them to be there all day, every day. That, Hill says, might even be a better way to prepare them for the college experience. One of the broader questions on Hill’s mind, though, is whether technology and innovative learning formats will help under-resourced schools close traditional achievement gaps; or whether they’ll actually exacerbate them. “Theoretically, technology allows you to operate in ways that are more economically feasible, so under-resourced districts could have an opportunity to get really creative about restructuring,” Hill says. “But if, as we’ve seen during the pandemic, better resourced parents and districts are able to take better advantage of new technologies, it could absolutely go the other way.”

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Dara Hill is an associate professor of education specializing in literacy, urban education and culturally relevant pedagogy. If you’re a member of the media and would like to interview Associate Professor Hill on this topic, please drop us a line at 51��ƵDearborn-News@umich.edu. Story by Lou Blouin.

Coronavirus

College of Education, Health, and Human Services

Student Success

Education

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Wed, 04/07/2021 - 17:43

A 51��Ƶ-Dearborn education professor talks about the impact of pandemic learning, how we can catch students up, and why the K-12 classroom may never be the same.

Credit: Allison Shelley/Alliance for Excellent Education via Flickr/Creative Commons

Pro tips for synchronous teaching

lblouin — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 16:45:42 +0000

Pro tips for synchronous teaching lblouin Wed, 03/10/2021 - 11:45

A college student smiles at his laptop while engaging in a synchronous class session.

It will likely take many years for universities to unpack everything we’ve learned from the year-plus we’ll spend in a pandemic-altered instructional environment. One of the themes that will no doubt get a lot of attention is how we can get the most out of online learning. Pre-pandemic, asynchronous courses were by far the dominant format. But now a year in, students, faculty and instructional designers have been increasingly drawn to activities where people can be together virtually in real-time. At face value, that makes synchronous learning more like a face-to-face class. But as Hub Instructional Designer Sarah Silverman recently explained, getting the most out of Zoom class time often means embracing what’s different about the format. Our conversation with her has been condensed and edited lightly for clarity.

So Sarah, in the early days of the pandemic response, most classes went asynchronous, which again, meant real-time virtual class sessions weren’t generally part of the mix. Now there seems to be a lot of interest in making class time more synchronous. What’s shifted?

I think in the emergency remote Winter 2020 semester, there was a feeling that with all the hardships people were facing, it was not going to be realistic to have everyone convene at particular times for class sessions. At that time, it was also not guaranteed that people would have access to the technology they needed to do that. Now, though, I think what students are starting to feel is the connection with their instructors and their fellow students is supported by synchronous learning. This doesn’t mean that you need to be on Zoom three times a week for an hour to listen to a lecture. But I have heard a lot of people say they like the immediacy of being able to ask and answer questions in real-time, or hear what their instructor and fellow students think about a topic. Also, I think that while asynchronous does provide you this maximum level of flexibility, what we’re learning is that it may also require more cognitive bandwidth. First and foremost, students have to arrange and manage their own schedules. I mean, I’m a student in an asynchronous course right now, and I find many of these things challenging myself.

So on the synchronous side of things, how do you get it “right”? Because we’ve all sat through some pretty unengaging Zoom sessions.

I think the major challenge is a lot of instructors tend to think about a synchronous class session in ways that it’s going to mimic a classroom. Number one, they think they’ll be able to see all the students’ faces and therefore get facial feedback. But even if students were to keep their cameras on, which we’ve learned is mostly not their preference, it’s still not really the same as being face-to-face. Because of this, a lot of the work I’ve done with faculty involves thinking about what’s good about synchronous that doesn’t necessarily involve having the camera on. Number one, the chat feature is very useful for students, because you can ask a question and get immediate feedback. Second, it sidesteps one of the big drawbacks of the technology: It’s very difficult to know when it’s OK to speak and when someone is supposed to respond, so people end up talking over each other. In Zoom, you can also offer feedback via the Raising Hand function, or using emoji or the polling feature. These features also illustrate one of the overall thoughts I have about synchronous teaching, namely, that it’s alright to have more than one thing going on at the same time. It’s OK, for example, if the conversation in the chat is a little tangential to the lecture. These devices were not designed for us to be passive in front of the screen, and I think when we are passive, that’s one reason you see things like Zoom fatigue.

One other thing I’ll mention is that I’m very interested in issues that impact neuro-diverse students. One of the things I found is that a lot of students enjoy being with other people, but not necessarily speaking in class. So I’m a really big fan of synchronous learning activities that are actually quiet. Maybe you ask students to do an independent reflection, or write a paragraph that they then pass along to a partner for their comments. I think of it kind of like the experience of people meeting at a coffee shop to study. We’re not necessarily meeting up to talk, except maybe during breaks. But it’s helpful to be in the presence of people who are doing the same thing that you are.

That’s super interesting. Can we go back to the camera thing, though, because I feel like this is a really nuanced topic. Can you explain why we can’t just require everybody to have their cameras on?

Well, there are really a variety of issues. First, there is a very basic concern that current students at 51��Ƶ-Dearborn did not sign-up to learn exclusively remotely, and their home situations may not be set up for that. Many students are not even living in the same situation they were pre-pandemic, and people’s families and kids and whatever else is going on in their homes are not predictable at the moment. We believe that many of our students don’t even have a private space in which they can “go” to their synchronous classes.

There’s also the general privacy issue, and what counts as a private versus a public space. We’re asking people to attend public classes from their private spaces, which presents a number of challenges. Some solutions are fairly straightforward; for example, I can use a virtual background if I don’t want to show my space. But there may be other personal, cultural, age or experience-related reasons why someone might not feel comfortable presenting themselves on camera in the same way they want to appear to, say, their family in their home. In addition, there is research that indicates that for some people, looking at yourself on camera or being aware that you’re being watched can trigger a trauma response.

So I don’t think it makes sense to require cameras to be on. But if instructors find it really challenging to not see people’s faces, one thing I’ve suggested is that they just communicate with their students that they personally find it really helpful. And then they can explain that they have a lot of options for how they can do this. They can use the virtual background. They can turn their camera on and off, depending on what the activity is. Or they could simply put a picture up. For a lot of instructors, a photo or a cartoon avatar is still a lot better than teaching to a bunch of black boxes. Personally, I’m sympathetic to faculty on this issue. I find it very difficult to have conversations that are deep and transformative if you don’t know who’s there. So I think it’s good to find ways to develop presence and identity in the online environment, even if that doesn't mean having cameras on.

So I know you’re really tuned into some of the interesting things people are doing in this synchronous format. Can you share some simple techniques that people could try?

There was a recent op-ed in The New York Times by Professor Viet Thanh Nguyen from USC, and he was explaining how instead of having large class discussions, each day he asks a panel of students to be the discussants. So there is a day on which you and three other students will have your cameras on, and the instructor will ask you questions and you’ll share your thoughts, but you won’t be in the “fish bowl” every day. I don’t know if that’s great for every student, but I like that this instructor is thinking creatively about how to use the medium in a way that brings students' voices in. Along these same lines, I do really like student presentations. I think it’s a good use of Zoom to let students take the reins of the space.

I also think the potential is huge for bringing in special guests. In academia, it’s a longstanding tradition to fly in an expert and get them a hotel room and they talk for an hour and then we take them out to lunch. That’s all been thrown out the window now. But what’s amazing is that you could actually have a prominent researcher from another city or country stop by your Zoom class for 15 minutes. Often all you have to do is ask and people are happy to do it.

And do you think any of these techniques we’re discovering through necessity will stick around even when we have an opportunity to go back to more traditional instruction?

Based on my conversations with faculty, there are very few people who say they won’t have any digital component to their classes going forward. The number one thing I’m hearing is that whether it’s online or in-person, they’re never going to use their synchronous time just to lecture and click through slides. They have really seen the benefit of, say, recording a 10-minute video on a topic, and then using their class time for other things. There’s just a much greater appreciation for our time together and what we can do with it.

I also think students have reorganized their priorities. In the beginning, a lot of students said they didn’t like learning online. And I think alongside that feeling, they’re now feeling that they don't want to just go back to sitting in a lecture hall either. There’s some other type of connection or collaboration that they want to get — and may start expecting — when they show up for class.

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Interview by Lou Blouin. If you’re a member of the media and would like to interview Instructional Designer Sarah Silverman about this topic, please drop us a line at 51��ƵDearborn-News@umich.edu.

Opinion or Voices

Student Success

Off

Wed, 03/10/2021 - 16:44

A Hub expert explains how to embrace Zoom teaching as a medium unto itself.