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The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
This is the Transform Your Teaching Podcast. The Transform Your Teaching Podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Ryan:Hello, and welcome to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. Today, Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles continue our series on online teaching practices by talking about the importance of clarity in an online course. Thanks for joining us.
Rob:Jared, last time we talked about collaboration, and now we're kind of focusing down on particular aspects of how to run an online course a little bit here. Yep. And we're talking about clarity today.
Jared:Yes.
Rob:And so some of the things that I think about in terms of clarity and that go on with an online course, we're talking being clear in announcements, you know, content. You know, we do content overviews, so making sure that you're guiding the students well by what you're saying. Assignment descriptions, your rubrics so that the students actually know what you're actually assessing. Yep. You know, assignment interactions, things like feedback.
Rob:Are you giving them clear feedback in the discussions? Are you being clear in refining points where they might be off? So Yeah. That kind of feedback. And also, obviously, you're hoping that your your objectives, if you've done good design, your objectives should be clear at this point and even your module level objectives.
Rob:So those are just some of the things that we we think about in terms of clarity and communication in an online course.
Jared:Yeah. The reason that it's so important to talk about it specifically in online education, everything you just said is also important in a face to face. Right? But the reason that in an online course it's so much more important is because there's not that one to one face to face interaction. You have more limited time with students in an online course.
Jared:So the only real interaction you may have with some of your students is just the grade you give them and the feedback you give them. They may not reach out at any point in the semester. And we'll talk about this in our next episode. I'm trying to keep as much as I can in the holster. Yep.
Jared:But the environment that you create in your online course can help those students who may not reach out, actually reach out. But for some students, the only kind of communication you're going to get from them is what they turn into you to grade. And that could be the only actual one on one conversation that you have with them. So they may have questions they're not willing to share with you because they feel like it's dumb or he's not gonna answer this question or whatever it is. But you can answer the questions they have even if they don't ask them by being clear with what you share in the course.
Jared:Right. You talked about in the last episode about how we, as a department, are trying to clear up as many variables as possible Yes. So that our process is clean, clear, and there's no confusion along the way. That should be your goal in your online course as well, is to anticipate any variables that you have. And that one of the best ways of doing that is having clear communication.
Jared:Right. Think of everything and then fix it.
Rob:Well, and this is something that we talked about, oh, nigh on two years ago now when we had the conversations with doctor Shultz in servant teaching, you know, communication with students was being clear with communication with students was one of the key areas, being upfront about what they could expect. And the more detail detail within reason, if you get too detailed, then people can get lost, you know, can't see the forest for the trees. So there's a balance to be struck there, right, with clarity as Right. Brevity on one side and conciseness Yeah. With the right amount of information.
Jared:Yeah. If it's too long, they're not gonna read it. Right. That's all there is.
Rob:TLDR. It's too long, didn't read.
Jared:If it's too long, give them a TLDR at the top. I mean, I've done that several times myself. And, you know, hey, this is lengthy. If you don't wanna read the whole thing, here's your big takeaway, and put it up front or something like that. Now if you wanna know the nitty gritty of what I'm talking about, then let's go into the details of it.
Rob:I want the nerdy,
Jared:nitty gritty. I knew you were gonna do that.
Rob:You said it.
Jared:Just going to do that.
Rob:You just keyed me, and you know you did.
Jared:I know. I almost did the the did it myself, but I stopped. Alright. Set me up then.
Rob:So let's run down through this, Jared. You know, I've just mentioned a bunch of things. You've discussed the importance of it. You know, clarity, I think most people would agree. Yes.
Jared:We we want to be clear. Your students shouldn't be approaching your announcements or your content by playing 20 questions. They shouldn't be like, is this an assignment? Yes or no? Yes.
Jared:Okay. Is this a discussion? Maybe.
Rob:You're giving me a good idea for a sign for the
Jared:Dag gone it.
Rob:So we've talked about needing clarity. How should we be clear? Is there any way that we can give something to our listeners that will stick?
Jared:So I had ChatGPT because I was sitting here in my at my desk going, I need a clever acronym to do again, going back to our previous episode.
Rob:Mhmm.
Jared:I'm not good at making acronyms. Yeah. And I know none of you are either in my close circle except for Ryan who's in, like, the third circle. And I know none of you I mean, I'm not expecting you guys. I don't have an acronym person yet in my inner circle.
Jared:But so I asked I collaborated with Chad Chad GPT, and I said, give me an acronym that best I don't know my exact prompt, but give me an acronym that best explains the importance of being clear in communication in an online course. And I kid you not, the acronym it gave me was unclear. Like, u n c l e a r. And I ran it by Rob and Ryan, and they loved it. So here we go.
Jared:So the u is unexplained jargon or acronyms. Avoid that. Right? No unexplained jargon or acronyms. This is why I'm explaining this acronym now.
Jared:Right? In nonspecific instructions or vague prompts. Don't be vague, especially when it comes to your assignment descriptions. Be very specific on what it is that you want your students to do. To a fault, almost.
Jared:Again, like I said earlier, try to eliminate all variables to the communication. Anticipate the questions they might have. Even more so than in your face to face course, because again, if you're presenting something in class, students are more apt to come up to you afterwards or even during class and ask a question about asking for clarity. They may not do that in an online course. C, avoid complex run on sentences.
Jared:Complex run on sentences. Number one, don't write and run on sentences, period. As an English teacher, how dare you even have them that idea? But even more so in the in you're trying to create clarity in an online course. The l is lack of examples or concrete models.
Jared:Again, you may in your and this is the hard part because you almost have to play the role of the student in order to provide clarity. Because you may, in your head, understand this, whatever concept it is that you're throwing at them, without a need for an example. But your students who are new to the content for the most part, especially if you're going back to your objectives, you're having them define or identify, providing examples or concrete models for them to use as a source of understanding or identification is going to help them tremendously.
Rob:Mhmm.
Jared:So that's UNCL. E in the unclear acronym, erratic formatting or inconsistent styling.
Rob:Man, we talked about that in just an organization. Remember?
Jared:Yeah. I mean, again, not only is this just helpful from a reading standpoint Right. But for screen readers and accessibility purposes, use correct formatting and keep consistent styling. It seems like I can just bold this and make it bigger. Sure.
Jared:But visually, that may look fine, but screen readers are melting down with all these bolded giant text, especially red or green when people who are color blind like me are like, I don't know what color that is. Yeah. Select the green text. Okay. Just give me the f.
Jared:I'll just move on from there. That's I mean, seriously, it's what it feels like. That's the e. A, don't make assumptions. Assumptions about prior knowledge.
Jared:Again, this goes back to your objectives. Right? Mhmm. And having an understanding of where students are coming from. What prior knowledge, that's the buzzword they always use, what prior knowledge do they already have coming into your class?
Jared:You can't assume they know that or, like, oh, that they probably covered that or
Rob:They're supposed to.
Jared:They're supposed to. Sure. But then you can't yeah. Sure. They they could, but students get a's all the time and miss content that maybe you thought was groundbreaking or that they had to have that was so important that they didn't because, you know, you can get a's without and miss a couple questions.
Jared:You know what I mean? So don't make assumptions about their prior knowledge. And finally, our rushed or delayed feedback. Take the time to leave feedback. And what I love doing, and I've talked about this before, if a student sends me an email and I don't have a lot of time to answer the question, but I know the question is important, I won't rush through and send something really quick to them because it could have typos, it could have errors in it, it could be something that I sent on a whim and then I realize, oh crap, I said that wrong or that was wrong information, so I to send a follow-up and say disregard the previous, stuff like that.
Jared:My favorite thing to do and something I recommend because I wanna keep make sure the student feels connected in the course, and we'll talk about relationship, we'll talk about community in the next episode. But sometimes I'll have a boilerplate response that says, hey, I've received your email. I'll answer it later when I have more time. So it makes a connection point. The student knows I read their stuff.
Jared:I'm not ignoring them. And also it lets me go back later and communicate clearly when I have more time. So don't rush or don't delay. This goes back to grading too. Don't put your grading off to the last minute.
Jared:It's so easy to do, especially if it's assignment that you know. Like for me, when I'm grading, and I know leading up to it, my formative assessments have not been that great, but I've been rushed for time to get through stuff. I know that summative is there for me, waiting for me to grade, and I know it's probably going to be bad. Mhmm. And I don't want to even I wanna keep the box closed, not look inside of it.
Jared:You know what I mean? I didn't punch holes in there, so whatever's in there is probably dead kind of a thing. It's Shreddinger's cat? Yeah. Whatever it is.
Jared:You know? But, like, I just I don't wanna I don't wanna look in the box, but sometimes you just have to. But don't put it off. Just rip off the Band Aid, and I keep at I keep mixing my metaphors here. Rip off the Band Aid and go at it.
Rob:Get her done.
Jared:Get her done.
Rob:I think that's a pretty cool acronym, unclear.
Jared:Yeah. Be clear by being unclear.
Rob:Yeah. Use unclear. So let's just recap. Avoid unexplained jargon that's a u. N, don't use nonspecific instructions or vague prompts.
Rob:C, avoid complex run on sentences.
Jared:Keep it simple, stupid.
Rob:Yep. L, make sure there is no lack of examples or concrete models. In other words, you need to provide those.
Jared:Yep.
Rob:E, don't be erratic in your formatting. We've talked about that on several occasions, making sure that you're using proper formatting so that screen readers can read it properly, but also it just provides consistency and continuity throughout the course. Make sure that you're providing for the assumptions that scaffold the course and the course content. A, make sure that you are providing for assumptions and scaffolding the class appropriately. You don't just assume that students come to this content knowing everything that they should know.
Rob:It might be helpful to also put in just a resources area per, you know, module Yep. Where you can say, if you don't feel like you've got these particular underlying concepts down, here's a place where you can go.
Jared:What I like doing instead of being negative like that is say, if you need a refresher
Rob:Yeah. If you need a refresher, I think that's good. Yeah. If you need a refresher, here's some here's some resources that you can use. And then finally, r, don't rush and make sure you provide deliberate feedback.
Rob:And then also don't delay
Jared:Yes. Your feedback. So Exactly.
Rob:Don't rush, but also don't delay.
Jared:If you set a standard for yourself, let's say, I'm going to respond to emails in forty eight hours or I'm going to return grading in seventy two hours, do that. And then if you can't keep yourself accountable to it, find someone else, collaborate with someone else, or just keep yourself accountable by saying, hey. Could you help me make sure that I grade this stuff in three days? If not, call me out on it. Let me know.
Rob:Yeah. One of the best ways to do it that I found helpful for me, and we've talked about this in terms of, you know, the podcast and the work that we've done just in the podcast and preparing for that, is we actually put times in our calendar where it blocks that time off
Jared:Yes.
Rob:For us to do that work.
Jared:Yes.
Rob:So, you know, I've trained others and also been trained on creating the ideal week for myself. And that ideal week looks at my week as a whole in terms of time and time slots and the things that are important to me and then putting those actually on my calendar. Yep. So this would be another one of those things that I would need to put on my calendar. Because like you said at the beginning of this podcast, there's only so much time in the day.
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:And so to be clear, I need to do like my mentor told me a long time ago and continue to preach at me. He said, Rob, fit the task to the time.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:Fit the task to the time. And the same thing goes with these things in terms of being clear. Right. Make sure that you provide the time to be clear.
Jared:Yeah. I would say that, you know, we talk about announcements, we talk about content, assignment descriptions. That that is huge as far as having specific instructions, unexplained jargon. And if you've got unexplained jargon, you can include it, but just then define it. Right.
Jared:You know what I mean? I mean, that's not a big takeaway that I took from early on in my dissertation writing was that my adviser was always like, if you introduce a new term, you need to define it first. Right. Like, well, they should know it. And they're like, yeah, you can't assume.
Rob:Don't make those assumptions.
Jared:Don't make those assumptions. Yep. So with assignment descriptions, keeping examples, doing concrete models, could provide exemplar stuff Mhmm. Well with that or giving, like, I'm not a math person, but it's super helpful when you're introducing new content with math problems to give example math problems. You see that in every single math textbook.
Jared:Right? Rubrics are extremely important for that stuff, especially having specific instructions, having very specific prompts.
Rob:And formatting of your rubrics. There should be a rhythm to the format of your rubrics Yeah. Terms of just terminology.
Jared:Right. It's so easy to have way too complicated rubrics, especially if you've got complicated points or values that you wanna add to it. And then when it gets down to grading it later, you're like, wait a minute. Okay. They I mean, it's even helpful to make sure everything's clear in your rubric for grading because you can be like, wait, I put this in this criterion, but I also put it here.
Jared:So where should I take the points off? You know what I mean? Or where should I which one should I assess? So being clear from the jump for you
Rob:And keeping your criterion clear and Right.
Jared:Especially if because I love giving my students rubrics ahead of time so they know how I'm going to how I'm going to assess them. So they know specifically. Because the question I always get is, well, how do I get an a? Well, I've given you a rubric that shows you how to get an a. But if that rubric is confusing, then I'm just sending them down a a path with no map or the map is upside down or photocopied wrong or whatever it is.
Jared:Yeah. So being absolutely clear is is is important. And then being clear in your feedback, in your discussions as well. Mhmm. But I think the discussion specifically with, like, don't be delayed with your feedback.
Jared:Be active in the discussion. Don't come in a week after the discussion's done and leave comments because they're useless at that point. They've moved on. It's like when you have a bonfire and then afterwards there's ash, you come back a week later and try to stick a match into the ashes and be like, okay, let's start over again. Everyone's gone.
Jared:There's no fire left in there. Why are you trying to reignite something? Stay there. Add wood to the fire while the discussion is going on. Keep the fire going.
Jared:Keep the discussion going. Mhmm. Discussion's a lot like a fire. I just realized that. Like a good bonfire.
Jared:Yep. You know?
Rob:Right. So let's run through one of these types that we just talked about earlier, and I'm gonna run through the acronym, Jared, and I want you to be able to explain to me how you would avoid these things. Let's talk about rubrics. Okay. Okay?
Rob:So let's start with you, unexplained jargon or acronym. How would you make sure that you don't do this with rubrics?
Jared:I would make sure that whatever terminology I've put into the rubric has been defined, if it's new material or it's something that the students are already aware of or have an understanding of based on previous assignments or previous courses.
Rob:Okay. How would you avoid nonspecific instructions or vague prompts?
Jared:This one's pretty simple. You just have to be very clear in what it is that you're expecting students to do. If you are taking off points for grammar mistakes, you gotta put specifically how many points are taken off for. Like, I know that some instructors do five to seven grammar mistakes and then seven to nine grammar mistakes. Like, that's to me, put very specifically, it's five, it's six, it's seven, or something like that, or don't include a number at all.
Jared:Just be very specific and don't write yourself into a hole where you're like, oh, I don't know how I'm gonna close this. Be very simple and specific with it.
Rob:Okay. C, complex run on sentences.
Jared:Be very simple and simplistic. I just said that with n. Yep. L, lack of examples. Pass.
Jared:It doesn't fit with a rubric. Okay. Lack you can't put examples inside of a rubric. I don't think you can.
Rob:Let's see. We got concrete models. Again, models. Supposed to be a concrete model. Yeah.
Rob:The rubric itself is concrete model. We'll say n a. N a. N
Jared:a to l. Yeah. E. Make sure it's readable. Don't copy and paste from a Word doc.
Rob:With all all the tags and everything that come with that, make sure it's clean.
Jared:Especially if you're using something like Canvas, you don't know what it's bringing what when you're copying and pasting from Word to any kind of web browser or something in Canvas, you don't know what's leaving behind. So just Right. If if you're gonna copy and paste, do the paste as real text, where I think it's like a command shift v or something like that. Add the shift in there so
Rob:that you just just gets rid of all the tags.
Jared:All the gets rid of all the formatting, just has the text in there.
Rob:What do you think about erratic or inconsistent styling with rubric tables?
Jared:I I I don't know. I mean, anymore you have enough you can ask a generative AI model to just generate one for you that has the correct formatting in it, especially for Canvas and copy and paste it in there. So I don't I mean, if if you're going to create one by hand, make sure that you've got your your top row your top row and then your left hand column that usually has all the the descriptions of your criteria and just make sure it's bolded or different looking text than clear text, not like Comic Sans. Don't ever use Comic Sans for anything. Make sure it's clear and, you know.
Rob:Okay. Let's talk about a, assumptions in this area. How would this apply to rubrics from your perspective?
Jared:I I would say that assumptions about prior knowledge fits with unexplained jargon in a way that don't assume that they know this stuff. Only assess them well, this is a kind of a weird one because
Rob:You would have to make sure that you've already designed well ahead of time. Right?
Jared:Yes. So the the rubric would be a reflection of what it is you've already I mean, a good rubric is just going to be checking the boxes on stuff they've already done, and can see it in the
Rob:It's almost like a restatement of your not modular objectives, but maybe assignment Yeah. Assignment objectives, if you will, or your description.
Jared:Yeah. Going back to, oh, the way that we develop things at CTL here at Cedarville, we have an expectation section of our assignment descriptions. I always have my expectations be, like, bulleted points, and then later on, those exact wordings are very close to it, show up in the rubric. So if I'm saying 12 Times New Roman, double spaced, and I'm expecting that, I'm gonna put that in the rubric exactly like that. Or if it's going to be three sources cited correctly in APA seven or whatever it is, I'm putting that specifically in the rubric that way.
Rob:Alright. Last one. Rushed or delayed feedback. I mean, how does this really
Jared:go into rubrics? Just make sure I mean, if you have a good rubric, you're more apt to dive into grading and use it and And
Rob:be able to get it done. So in other words, don't do something that's 17 criteria.
Jared:You're not gonna be able to get that done in a reasonable amount of time.
Rob:Especially if you have, like, five columns to each criterion.
Jared:Right. And you're and you're going down to the nitty gritty Yeah. And expect and, like, I I'm going back to the whole, like,
Rob:grammar take way too much time.
Jared:I'm going back to the whole grammar mistakes that some people put into their rubrics. Yeah. And if anyone who's worked with me and has done this, I apologize. But I'm no longer for those at all. If you put eight to 10 mistakes in a 5,000 word paper, do you really expect you or your, whoever's teaching the class to go through and count every single one of those?
Jared:And let let's be real here.
Rob:Yeah. But not only that, but you should expect that they're using something like Grammarly or some sort of I mean, even Word has a built in editor. You shouldn't be seeing these kinds
Jared:of mistakes. Right. So don't even don't, you know, don't
Rob:Don't even make that a tell them
Jared:tell to run Grammarly or spell check-in Word
Rob:Mhmm.
Jared:Which has existed since the eighteen hundreds, and just and just do that. You don't have to go through and count. If you're not going to do it, don't expect your students to check and make sure, one, two oh, man. I used the wrong form of receive. I spelled it wrong.
Rob:You've had nine errors and not eight.
Jared:And their head, they're going, I before e except after oh, I gotta go back and do that. Don't do it. Yeah.
Rob:Well, I think that's really good and helpful.
Jared:So, Rob, what are some major takeaways from this episode?
Rob:Major takeaways. I think your acronym was actually pretty good.
Jared:Well, thanks. Unclear. Thanks. Thank you, ChatGPT.
Rob:Thank you, ChatGPT. For
Jared:the collaboration.
Rob:Probably the big ones for me is avoiding jargon, defining your terms, because I'm always asking that question when I'm reading, and my PhD work did that to me. Like, when somebody uses a word, I'm like, what do you actually mean by that word? We we tend to use a lot of words, and we don't always pay attention to what we're actually saying with those. So be clear, define them.
Jared:Especially in an online course where there's no tone Right. Or anything.
Rob:There's nothing where I can try it out on the audience like I do in a face to face class and then see if it lands. Right? I get no feedback for the most part. Even in a video or something, I'm not getting feedback. And that's one of the things that, like, a lot of faculty will say they don't like about online learning.
Rob:That's because they're used to getting immediate feedback. Yes. Right? The very thing that their students want from them when they give them something is immediate feedback. So being clear takes time.
Rob:You have to think like you said just a minute ago, another major takeaway is put yourself in the receiver shoes or hearken back to the collaboration, something we didn't talk about in the collaboration. Well, we kinda did. That is using students to review what you've already done and say, does this make sense to
Jared:you? Mhmm.
Rob:What would you do with it? Can you show me what you would do with it? Like, don't give them any help. Don't sit there and coach them through it. Just let them read what you have and see how they respond and, you know, just ask them questions.
Rob:So what did you take away from that? And then if it's not the response you're looking for
Jared:Yep.
Rob:Then, you know, you know you have a gap to cover, I think. You need to be clear with your either assignment or content that you've put in front of them or even your feedback.
Jared:And even to hearken further back, our episode on back channel communication. You could have if you don't have a clear assignment description or not clear content, you could have, assuming maybe, there's a back channel communication happening within your students, and they're coming up with conclusions and then which becomes a rumor becomes a fact, and then they're emailing you about something. You're like, where'd you get that from? Right. It's not even close to what I'm wanting you to do.
Jared:It's because if you're not clear with that, then there's the students will try to fill that gap with something. If
Rob:there's a void Yeah. People will fill it.
Jared:Oh, maybe they meant this. Okay. Well, that's what it is. That's why I'll do my assignment. Okay.
Jared:I'll do mine that way too. Yeah. And then you're like, what is this? Yeah.
Rob:So I'd say, you know, those are the the the major ones. And, again, it just goes back with what we were talking about. We've used this theme quite a bit, and that is just iterative design, continuous process improvement, trial and error, even in clarity. You think you're being clear, but then you get something back and it's not. And also, one thing we didn't talk about, but I would say would be a good takeaway for folks is when you have good responses or good feedback, you'll find these things that are common that you keep saying.
Rob:Right? Write those down. And a lot of programs nowadays have a place for you to even I know Canvas has this where you can put commonly used phrases so you know Canned responses. Canned responses. I know it sounds canned.
Rob:Yeah. But they're good for a reason because they get to the point, they say what you wanna say, and they've shown themselves to be helpful, and there's nothing wrong with reusing those. Don't reinvent the wheel if you don't need to.
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:So those are the three that I would, you know, that I would look at.
Jared:Yeah. I think those are great takeaways. I wouldn't add anything else to those.
Ryan:Thanks for joining this episode of Transform Your Teaching. If you would like to reach out to us via CTLPodcast@cederville.edu feel free to send us a question, or you can connect with us on LinkedIn. Also, free to check out our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.