While attending a panel presentation by students pursuing degrees online, I heard one of the student panelists share something to the effect of, “Oh, I don’t do Office Hours. However, instead of Office Hours, one of my instructors had these ‘Afternoon Tea’ sessions on Zoom that I loved to attend when it worked with my schedule. She answered my questions, and I feel like she got to know me better. She was also available to meet by appointment.” What wasn’t revealed was why this student wouldn’t attend something called “Office Hours” but did attend these other sessions. Did “Office Hours” sound too formal? Was she unsure of what would happen during office hours, or unsure of what the purpose was? Did she think office hours was something students only went to if they were failing the course? The student didn’t say.
There is some mystery around why this student wouldn’t attend office hours, and her comment reminded me of what I had read in Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes, by Flower Darby and James Lang (available digitally through the Valley Library if you are part of the OSU community). In Small Teaching Online, under the section titled, “Get Creative with Virtual Office Hours,” several tips are highlighted for how to enhance participation in office hours. Here is a summary of a few of those tips presented in this book, which are based on Lowenthal’s 2017 study (pp. 119-121, Darby & Lang, 2019):
Rename office hours to sound more welcoming: “Afternoon Tea,” “Consultations,” or “Coffee Breaks” are some ideas to consider (p. 188, Lowenthal, 2017).
To enhance participation, plan just 3-4 well-timed sessions instead of weekly office hours, and announce them early in the term. For timing, think about holding a session before or after a major assessment or project milestone is due, for example.
Collect questions ahead of time, and make office hours optional.
Additionally, outside of office hours, remind students that you are available to meet with them individually by appointment since students’ schedules vary so widely.
Putting these tips into practice, here is what the redesigned office hours can look like in an asynchronous online course, where this “Coffee Break” happens three times in the term and is presented in the LMS using the discussion board tool or the announcements feature as needed:
What I like about this design is that the purpose and expectations of the session are explained, and it is flexible for both students and faculty. The “Coffee Break” is presented in an asynchronous discussion board so that students’ questions can be collected ahead of time and at their convenience. Further, if something comes up with the faculty and the live “Coffee Break” is canceled, the faculty can answer questions asynchronously in the discussion board. There is also a reminder that students are invited to make a separate appointment with their instructor at a time that works for them.
Have you tried rebranding your office hours? How did it go?
References
Darby, F., & Lang, J. M. (2019). Small teaching online : applying learning science in online classes (First edition.). Jossey-Bass, a Wiley Brand.
Lowenthal, P. R., Dunlap, J. C., & Snelson, C. (2017). Live Synchronous Web Meetings in Asynchronous Online Courses: Reconceptualizing Virtual Office Hours. Online Learning (Newburyport, Mass.), 21(4), 177-. https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v21i4.1285
As a follow-up to discussing equity in grading and group work, Feldman (2019) offers a compelling case against the use of extra credit. “But wait a minute,” I can hear you saying, “Extra credit is optional—students have to opt-in if they want to do it! And it can be fun! What’s wrong with that?” Many instructors may think of extra credit as a way to benefit students and give them extra opportunities in a course, especially at the end of a term, to improve their grade, take on additional challenges, and demonstrate additional skills they have learned. (I know I thought about extra credit that way at one time!) However, there is more at play with extra credit than you might think. Let’s return to Feldman’s three pillars of equitable grades:
“They are mathematically accurate, validly reflecting a student’s academic performance.
They are bias-resistant, preventing biased subjectivity from infecting our grades.
They motivate students to strive for academic success, persevere, accept struggles and setbacks, and to gain critical lifelong skills” (Feldman, p. 71).
With these three pillars in mind, let’s examine some potential issues with extra credit:
Accuracy: There are many ways extra credit can obscure what information a grade includes. First, it can be used to incentivize certain behaviors, which obscures a grade by not assessing academic performance or learning. (For example, extra credit for turning things in on time.) Second, it can obscure whether a grade reflects what students know by turning grades into a commodity (more about this below). In this way, grades are a reflection of how many points students are able to accumulate, not necessarily how much they have learned or whether they have met all of a course’s learning outcomes.This kind of extra credit can unintentionally signal to students that their behavior and non-academic performance in a course is more important than their learning.
Bias: Sometimes extra credit is awarded to incentivize students to participate in extra events or opportunities, like attending a webinar, guest lecture, local event, etc. However, in addition to treating grades like a commodity, this kind of incentive also makes it difficult for students without outside resources or help to engage. What about students without the money for event tickets, transportation, child or family care, and/or without the time away from work, family, etc.? They are unable to participate, even if they want to, due to external factors outside of their control. And often these are the students who could potentially benefit the most from additional points if they are already struggling because of these exact conditions. For extra credit that provides extra challenges beyond the course materials, only the students already doing well will be able to participate and benefit from the opportunity, additionally shutting out students who are already behind.
Motivation: Having extra credit, especially at the end of the course, can also be damaging to student motivation, as it places an emphasis on grades and points instead of learning. For example, some students may prioritize obtaining a desired grade above learning important content, while other students may use extra credit to bolster a weak area they were unable to fully grasp, thereby giving up on learning that material entirely. Both of these potential mindsets set students up to focus on a product (grade) more than learning and any future perspectives they might have about their learning.
One additional issue of extra credit to consider is the additional work and time on instructors for both designing additional assignments and grading the extra work, especially at the end of a term when there is usually a plethora of assignments, exams, and projects to grade.
“If the work is important, require it; if it’s not, don’t include it in the grade.”
Feldman, p. 122.
So, what options can we give students that are more equitable as an alternative to extra credit? Instead of creating additional assignments, allow students to revise and resubmit work. This shift can help support students by encouraging them to learn from past mistakes, build on their learning, and see their growth over time. Revisions and resubmissions don’t have to only happen at the end of the term, so instructors can also consider timing of revisions based on course design, formative and summative assessment timing, and their own workloads. It also helps students who may be struggling with outside barriers to have additional attempts to complete work they may have missed. It also means that students cannot opt-out of important work or concepts because they cannot substitute those points from other areas of the course. Lastly, it saves the instructor time from designing and implementing additional assignments and complicated grading setups at the end of a term when instructors are often the busiest. While the use of extra credit is often from a place of good intentions, I hope this brief outline helps recontextualize how it may have a larger, negative impact in your course than you may have initially thought, as well as a strategy for replacing it in your course designs.
One of the most common concerns that instructors raise about teaching online is how to engage students in meaningful interactions. Online discussion boards is the default for simulating the types of conversations that take place in a classroom, albeit the online environment favors written communication in the form of posts and replies. These written posts may be the easiest ways of communication in online learning environments offering students less overwhelming experiences and more opportunities for critical thinking and building community (see benefits of discussion boards). However, written communication is not the only way in which students can interact with one another -images, audio, or video can increase engagement and motivation. Still, these options are not intuitively built into online discussion forums.
The discussion board option appears to be boring and demotivating -it sounds more like a chore than an activity where students build community and participate in the exchange of ideas and perspectives – where they grow intellectually and as individuals. Online discussions can turn into spaces for dialogue, debates, and community. How do we design these spaces so that students engage and interact more meaningfully? Well, let’s explore a tiered approach to spark engagement in online discussions.
Tier 1: Revamp Discussion Boards
Consider the Community of Inquiry framework (CoI) in facilitating deep, engaging, and meaningful learning. The three elements of this framework can be used to design discussion boards: social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence. Ragupathi (2016) describes these presences in online courses as follows: “Social presence that will encourage students to present their individual personalities/profiles, help them identify with the community, communicate purposefully and function comfortably in a trusted environment; (2) Cognitive presence that will get students to introduce factual, conceptual, and theoretical knowledge into the discussion and be able to construct/confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse; and (3) Teaching presence to provide necessary facilitation of the learning process through effective discussion.” (p. 4). Social presence in particular can be achieved through discussions (although not the only tool) to promote a sense of connection and community.
Apart from a strong foundation on a sense of connection and community that the CoI promotes, the structure of the discussion assignment plays an important role. To this effect, “structure” and “why” are the key
Revise Structure and Format
Establish a clear purpose and add value to the participation/contribution:
Instructor-led: contextualize the outcomes, make explicit expectations
Student-led: ask students to share their takeaways from the discussion participation (e.g., reflection, embedded in assignments)
Connect the content to the discussion assignment (e.g., ask students to refer back or cite previous readings/videos completed in the weekly content)
Clearly set expectations for:
Grading criteria (e.g., provide a rubric or grading guidelines)
Timeframe
Resources (e.g., from the course or external)
What is a “good post” (e.g., provide an example, describe an example that does not meet expectations)
Clarify terminology (e.g., link to a glossary of terms)
The next tier is to augment the opportunities that discussion boards offer. Structure and creativity will intertwine in layers to turn discussions into collaborative spaces. Here, there is greater emphasis on community as a place where students take a more active role, embrace challenges, and own their contribution role as active participants in building knowledge together.
Start with setting the discussion board as a place for a conversation:
Introductions: encourage students to use additional elements to introduce themselves to the class (e.g., images, videos, goals, expectations). With the caveat that it is optional so they feel comfortable choosing what and how to share.
Create discussion scenarios/questions/prompts that elicit more than one response:
Post first before you see previous posts
Students post follow-up questions and bring additional examples. Students reply to more than 2 peers who have not received replies yet
Encourage students to bring their experiences, outside readings, and additional resources to share
Encourage posts in different formats (e.g., video, images, infographics, mindmaps)
Student-facilitated discussions:
Create small groups and ask students to select a leader (rotate leadership role) Alternatively, randomly assign a leader
Student leaders post summaries of discussions in small groups and/or in whole-class discussions
Set expected participation:
A minimum number of responses (1 post; 2 replies; number of posts in total)
Consider self-paced discussions and encourage students to post a certain number of posts throughout the term or week. (Caveat: the first few students that post might need to wait until others post)
Create a learning community for future assignments:
Students share initial drafts, outlines, and research topics and ask for comments/feedback. Alternatively, students post their initial work and share their goals, and ideas about how it is relevant. Students are encouraged to read the shared work or not.
The linearity that many discussion board platforms have could make the interaction feel inauthentic, boring, and tedious to navigate. An alternative to a linear discussion is the concept of social annotations and collaborative spaces where students intersect transversally and with multimodal elements.
Social Annotations: students can add comments, post questions, vote, and interact with peers over learning materials such as readings, videos, visuals, and websites. Students interact and collaborate based on interests and questions they have while studying the content. You can use social annotations as a learning tool.
Asynchronous conversations: increase the collaborative nature of group work with multimodality where students not only post and reply but also create their own content for others to comment on. Explore asynchronous conversations in VoiceThread.
Collaborative work: online discussions do not have to be about posts and replies only. Students can engage in meaningful conversations through collaborative work. For example, students can do collaborative assignments, interact synchronously or asynchronously, and comment on each others’ contributions. Some web platforms you can explore include Microsoft Whiteboard and Miro.
Tier 4: Unleash the Discussion Boards
While discussion boards are mainly associated with asynchronous learning environments, discussions can play an important role in hybrid learning. You may be wondering why when we know that one of the underlying features of hybrid learning is to use the class time for active learning, collaborative and team activities, increased participation, and social interaction. But these activities do not have to end when the class time is over. Discussions can help keep students engaged in the class topics and activities after the in-person experience. Any of the tier approaches described above could be integrated seamlessly into hybrid learning to give continuity to class conversations, prep for future in-person activities, foster metacognitive and reflection skills, and strengthen social presence.
*Note: The use of other tools outside of the Canvas learning management system will require a careful evaluation of accessibility and privacy policies.
Engaged learning design helps students comprehend the learning materials and apply the newly learned knowledge and skills to new contexts. Jessie Moore proposed six key principles for engaged learning, namely: * “Acknowledging and building on students’ prior knowledge and experiences; * Facilitating relationships, including substantive interactions with faculty/staff mentors and peers, and development of diverse networks; * Offering feedback on both students’ work-in-progress and final products; * Framing connections to broader contexts, including practice in real-world applications of students’ developing knowledge and skills; * Fostering reflection on learning and self; and * Promoting integration and transfer of knowledge” (Moore 2021; Moore, 2023).
This blog will showcase three course design projects using engaged learning principles to overcome design challenges, including challenging content, lack of student motivation, and/or difficulty transferring knowledge.
Design Case #1 Engaged learning Principle: Acknowledging and building on students’ prior knowledge and experiences Design Challenge: Students are non-accounting majors and need more motivation to study accounting. Design Solution: College students have all bought textbooks and paid bills for college education, even though they may not have any accounting training before. Building on students’ prior knowledge of bill paying and textbook purchases, the instructor created a mock-up student-run company and assigned students to work with accounting related to students’ activities, such as buying and selling textbooks and offering tutoring services, in order to make learning materials of “BA 315 Accounting for Decision Making” relevant and meaningful to students. The instructor also collaborated with Ecampus media team to create an online monopoly simulation game modified with Oregon State University themes to further engage students in accounting practices.
Design Case #2 Engaged Learning principle: Facilitating relationships, including substantive interactions with faculty/staff members and peers and developing diverse networks. Engaged Learning principle: Offering feedback on students’ work-in-progress and final products. Engaged learning principle: Fostering reflection on learning and self. Engaged learning principle: promoting integration and transfer of knowledge. Design Challenge: trauma-informed helping skills are challenging to teach in HDFS 462 online. Design Solution: Building on students’ prior knowledge and experiences (Discussion board activities)
The course developer used case study and group case discussion on developing a plan to help a client; Students individually practice attending and listening with single-word responses. Instructor provides feedback on both group work and individual work. Also, instructor Modeling the empowerment process with recorded videos, students practicing helping skills, and the instructor offering feedback on students’ helping skills practices with peer partners in the classmates. Connections to Broader contexts and promoting integration and transfer of knowledge: students practice helping skills with non-classmate clients; and instructor provides feedback.
Design Case #3 Engaged Learning Principle: Framing connections to broader contexts, including practice in real-world applications of students’ developing knowledge and skills. Design Challenge: There is a lack of full access to construction sites especially for students in CE 427 Online Course to get hands-on experience and understand construction site structure fundamentals. Design Solution: the instructor and instructional designer collaborated with the media team to design an interactive simulation called Clickable Structure to help students understand the most difficult concepts in the course: elements of structures and how various pieces relate to each other. The Clickable Structure simulation enables students to see each group of structures layer by layer according to their functions and the corresponding equations needed for calculations of weight bearing, etc.
What we see versus what students in CE 427 needs to learn
As a Reflection Tool Another way to use the six principles of engaged learning is to change the statements in the principles to a list of questions for students to reflect: 1. What prior knowledge do I bring to this topic? 2. What new knowledge and skills I learned about this topic? How are these new concepts and skills and principles and relationships related to each other? How does individual pieces of information connect to make sense? 3. What feedback did I receive from instructor and classmates that gives me insights to this topic? 4. How is this topic related to broader contexts of main learning outcomes of this course or real-world applications? 5. How could I use what I learned about this topic into real-world application? 6. What new understandings did I gain from this reflection activity?
If you find these six principles of engaged learning meaningful and have adopted or adapted them in your teaching and learning, I encourage you to share with us (email tianhong.shi@oreognstate.edu) so we can build a collection of engaged learning cases and examples.
This article has its roots in a discussion I had with an Ecampus intern about going on the job market. This intern is working in an academic technologies role at a higher ed institution already, but also getting the Instructional Design certificate here at OSU. It was my first time thinking about what the growth of instructional design certificate and degree credentials means for all instructional designers. Very few of the instructional designers I’ve met and worked with here or at my previous institutions actually have degrees in instructional design, including myself. The field of instructional design emerged out of a specific institutional and educational need in higher education and corporate education, which makes for an ever-growing, ever-changing, but always innovative membership. How do we, as a field, continue to be inclusive of all instructional designers, regardless of their academic or educational backgrounds?
One potentially positive fact is that academia moves very slowly, so we have some time to strategize. Instructional design is still an emerging speciality within higher education, with each institution classifying that role differently, and providing that role with different levels of support. Some institutions, even today, do not have any instructional designers. Current research indicates that this must change. One of the best sources of data about the field of instructional design in higher education and instructional designers is the Changing Landscape of Online Education (CHLOE) Project. The participants in the CHLOE survey are “the senior online officer at each participating institution.” This survey pool recognizes the variance in organizational structures at different institutions by focusing on the COO’s purview. In the 2019 CHLOE 3 survey, it was reported that the median number of instructional designers employed at 2-year colleges, and public and private 4-year institutions, was four, regardless of enrollment or institution size. In CHLOE 7, one of the conclusions was that “insufficient instructional design staffing may be one of online learning’s most serious long-term vulnerabilities,” with only 10% of Chief Online Officers surveyed describing their ID capacity as sufficient for their current needs, and only 3% believing they would be able to meet anticipated need.
These findings signal that universities should be moving towards a significant fiscal investment in hiring instructional designers. Joshua Kim wrote a few key takeaways from the CHLOE 7 in CHLOE 7: The Present and Future of Instructional Design Capacity. Kim predicts that universities will need to not only hire more instructional designers, but that these roles will need to be hybrid or remote to attract the post-pandemic workforce. In addition to hybrid and remote options, Kim posits that, “Forward-thinking universities may find that they need to start offering star non-faculty educators the same recognition and incentives that have long been necessary to recruit and retain star tenure-line faculty.” But what does this mean for instructional designers? How would an instructional designer even be able to become identified as a “star” within the field or even at a specific institution?
Understanding Branding for Faculty and Non-Faculty Educators
Circling back to my initial inquiry about what instructional designers can do to ensure the field stays inclusive, I believe an individual enterprise will have a collective impact that will benefit the largest number of people: personal branding. In What’s the Point of a Personal Brand? Executive coach Harrison Monarth uses the story of his client, Mike, to illustrate how important it is for employees to think about how personal branding is now a strategy for gaining visibility within organizations, and that visibility is now a key component when employers are thinking about promotion. Monarth observes that “In high-performing organizations, at certain levels, everyone is exceptional. To clearly differentiate your value and what you bring to the table, you need to do more than have a good reputation. You need to have an outstanding personal brand.” Having a brand isn’t the same thing as being a celebrity, although I think many would agree that there are celebrities in every field, even instructional design.
Creating a personal brand is a successful career strategy outside of the corporate world as well, and one of the fields that is encouraging faculty to think about branding is not, as one might think, business but medicine. In 2019, the Academic Medicine blog published Knowing Your Personal Brand: What Academics Can Learn From Marketing 101, the purpose of which was to persuade medical professionals that a brand identity can be empowering. According to the article,
[K]nowing one’s academic brand can (1) help faculty members approach projects and other responsibilities through the lens of building or detracting from that brand, (2) provide a framework for determining how faculty members might best work within their institutions, and (3) help faculty members better understand and advocate their own engagement and advancement.
Although this article specifically speaks to and about academic teaching faculty, Instructional designers at institutions are often placed in the professional faculty role, along with librarians or program directors, and have many of the same professional demands on their job descriptions. As former faculty, I can attest that both of my careers have included independent research, departmental service, and conference or publication responsibilities.
Finding Your Personal Brand
If a brand is defined as opinions that people have about you based on your work, it is important to be self-aware, and intentional about the work that you do. Creating your brand can be a difficult task if, like me, you have a variety of experiences and interests. It requires self-reflection about one’s accomplishments and body of work as a whole, and the need to generalize what are sometimes very disparate activities. In Using Your Personal Mission Statement to INSPIRE and Achieve Success, an article published in Academic Pediatrics, the official journal of the Academic Pediatric Association, the authors describe a framework for building a personal mission statement (INSPIRE):
Identify Your Core Values
Name the Population You Serve
Set Your Vision
Plan How You Will Achieve Your Vision
Identify Activities That Align With Your Mission
Review, Revise, and Refine Your Mission Statement
Enlist Others to Help You Accomplish Your Mission
A slimmed down version of this same framework can be a helpful starting point for creating a brand identity. It enables you to identify your core values, name the population you serve, and identify activities that support those values and populations. But unlike a mission statement, this framework is best completed in reverse; a backwards brand design, if you will. (Sidenote: Instructional designers love to do things backwards). I call this framework SIFT:
Start with your experience and accomplishments
Identify keywords or topics
Frame your work and interests
Tie everything together
I believe that SIFT-ing has the potential to be a reflective process that will lead to a changing self-awareness of different types of instructional designers, for ourselves, and collectively.
Start with your experience and accomplishments
The best place to begin is with your complete resume or CV. It might be tempting to start with the tailored version you used to get your last position, but you don’t want to limit your view to only things that you think are relevant to instructional design. I can trace some elements of my brand back to my undergraduate and graduate degrees. I also include my two years as a contracted captioner for 3play and Rev within the same brand. Finding a brand that encompasses all that you are will only be successful if you use the most complete picture of yourself.
Identify keywords or topics
Your brand is more than just the places that you’ve worked at, the committees you’ve served on, and projects you’ve worked on. To understand your brand, you should begin by identifying a perspective, or positionality, that informs the decisions you’ve made in the past, however unconsciously that might have been, and looks towards the future. Keywords can be a useful next step, but you will want to avoid the potential to find yourself trapped within categories! In a field like medicine, there are already established research interests and specialties. As a field, instructional design hasn’t reached the point of specialization, but we are trending towards accepting that there are too many topics that fall under the broad umbrella of instructional design for everyone to be experts in everything. For example, the Quality Matters Instructional Designers Association has 21 expertise categories that you can select from when joining the association that others can use to find you to connect with you.
A screencapture of the list of categories from the QM IDA website
When I first joined the QM IDA, I didn’t know what boxes to check, or even what some of these categories were. And since they are presented without explanation, the criteria for self-identification are unclear. I can check almost all of these boxes as things I have experience in—with the exception of K12 and the Continuing and Professional Education Rubric, but is experience the same thing as expertise? It might be my imposter syndrome talking, but I am more inclined to identify with interests than areas of expertise. (Sidenote: I still haven’t checked any boxes.)
Frame your work and interests
I hadn’t noticed a pattern to my interests while I was doing them, but by reflecting on my professional journey, I realized that I could trace one interest all the way back to my undergraduate honors thesis, through to my current career as an instructional designer. I’ve always had an interest in communities and the community spaces they inhabit—especially if they are online. Community doesn’t appear on QM’s list of categories, but it is the lens through which I approach many of the categories on that list. Accessibility, Computer-Based Learning, Distance Education, Hybrid instruction/Design, LMS, Multimedia Creation, Problem-Based Learning—all of these categories need to address questions of community by addressing inclusivity, access, equity, and authentic student-student and student-teacher interactions. Community is the keyword I use to frame my research interests and approach to instructional design, in all of its various forms.
Tie everything together
If you go to my LinkedIn profile, you’ll see that I have “Humanities girl in an instructional technology world” as my headline. That’s my brand. You might notice that it does not include “instructional design” or “community.” But at the same time, by labeling myself a humanist, I am evoking the words associated with humanities and humanism–things like communities, kindness, compassion, human potential, and the arts. Technology is often viewed either as the savior of humanity, or its destruction. In reality, of course, it’s both. By framing myself as a humanist working with technology, I am clueing people in that my perspective on technology will incorporate potential negative impacts for people. The playful nature of the headline i.e. using “girl” to rhyme with “world” also reveals my personality. Compare this headline with something like, “I am interested in humane approaches to technology used in education.” It’s true, but it doesn’t tell you about me as a person outside of my interests.
Being “On Brand”
To declare a brand is not to limit your interests, nor should it be criticized as promoting a non-interest in other topics. Another observation from Kim is that instructional designers are likely very busy, and overstretched. In his words, there is “a significant mismatch between institutional demand for instructional design services and the available supply.” To avoid burnout, instructional designers need to be strategic with the projects they commit to. A brand can also help you be selective about which conferences you attend, or committees you serve on. Being “on brand” can be a way of focusing your energy, and also a touchstone of your identity.
Using the SIFT framework, you can reflect on your professional values, and your professional goals. One of my colleagues in the field is an accessibility expert, and gets called in to consult on all things related to accessibility in addition to her daily work as an instructional designer. She recently became a certified Accessibility Professional with the IAAP, and this credential is visible on her LinkedIn profile as an emblem of her brand. Knowing her brand allowed her to appeal to her institution to allow her this opportunity that enriches not only her own skillset, but the prestige of her institution by having an IAPP certified accessibility professional on their staff. In that sense, personal branding can also help institutions build diverse departments that are teams of specialists.
To return to the three benefits of branding for faculty outlined in the Academic Medicine article, knowing my brand helps me decide where to devote my limited bandwidth by pursuing professional activities that are “on brand” for me. I can also use my brand to search for specific opportunities that will build my brand, even if those fall outside the typical skillset of instructional designers. However, moving towards a “branding” mindset also benefits my colleagues, who are equally, individually, uniquely talented, and should be recognized for their specialties and allowed to follow their passions, rather than be constrained to their job duties. As instructional design teams at universities grow, having a team of specialists can also help alleviate burnout by allowing people to play to their strengths. This can ensure that instructional design remains a space where all career pathways are valid and not contingent on specific credentials.
Oregon State University has prioritized diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, and it is up to us as educators and those who support teaching and learning to actively co-create a culture that promotes tolerance and inclusion, for our students, our staff, and our community. To do this, we must challenge exclusion and commit to inclusive practices that promote real equity and extend opportunity to all students. University staff and instructors may be intentionally or unintentionally signaling their institution’s, their department’s, or their own levels of inclusion by the policies, rules, statements, systems, symbols, and representations they choose and use, so it is important to reassess what messages we are sending to students. While students may develop feelings of belonging on their own, it is more likely when the community actively, publicly, and earnestly offers a place at the table for everyone.
Ecampus strives to understand the unique issues faced by our online students and implement research-based solutions and strategies for increasing our students’ sense of belonging. Our commitment begins with high-quality, collaborative course design that enables instructors to work directly with the instructional design team to build interaction into course content, supplemented with faculty training opportunities to expose Ecampus instructors to a wide range of facilitation strategies that complement good design.
There are a few general conditions that provide a foundation for belonging that we should be aware of, backed by extensive research.
Support and flexibility
Online students choose our program for the flexibility it offers, and this often means that they are studying outside of business hours, at night and on the weekends. Likewise, their student support needs are likely to come at non-traditional times, so anticipating this and offering support services on demand and for extended times becomes important. Being aware of these needs and creating policies and practices that allow students to get the support they need in a timely manner can be a critical factor in online student success.
Representation
Students need to see themselves represented, both amongst the staff and faculty they interact with and in the course materials they use. When students from marginalized groups see people who openly share their identity or background, they are reassured that they, too, belong. OSU is committed to building and retaining a diverse workforce and has implemented several strategies towards this goal, including a suite of trainings including the Social Justice Education Initiative (SJEI) and Search Advocate program, among others. Faculty and course designers can contribute to these efforts by considering how course content serves to further amplify previously ignored or excluded voices by choosing to include rather than exclude diverse voices, images, perspectives, and ideas.
A safe environment that supports the conditions for learning
We support a safe learning environment when we actively challenge unhealthy beliefs about who can be successful and become more aware of behaviors that may harm others. In practice, this translates into making it clear that our school is a safe space and is not accepting of intolerance, bullying, stereotyping, or harassment. This effort is supported when faculty are knowledgeable about online learning best practices and work to welcome, inspire, engage, and mentor students learning online.
Encouragement and acknowledgement
When we create learning environments that combine high expectations and rigor, we can support students’ achievement by affirming their ability to excel. Recognizing barriers and helping students overcome hurdles helps them build strong identities as scholars. Acknowledging students’ intersecting identities, celebrating diversity, and fostering respectful relationships between students lets students know that they are a valued part of our community.
Additionally, we can help online students create a sense of community and connection to OSU, their peers, and their instructors. Small acts of inclusion can go a long way toward creating a warm, friendly, welcoming space for students.
Connecting with the university
Online students may identify more strongly as an online learner than an OSU student. They may feel unseen in comparison to on-campus students. This may be compounded when multiple, intersecting identities further this sense of disconnection. To combat this, we can strive to reinforce to our online students’ that they are indeed an important part of our community by welcoming new students, celebrating milestones and successes, and providing coaching, tutoring, and resources to support advancement and matriculation. Ecampus sends incoming students an OSU graduation tassel as a reminder that they are part of the OSU community and to encourage them to persevere throughout their studies.
Connecting with other students
Campus affinity organizations, such as OSU’s seven unique cultural centers, and clubs can offer students the chance to meet and become involved with students and staff who share their identity and/or interests. Peer mentorship programs can be another way of providing direct supportive connections to fellow students.
Connecting with support staff
Oftentimes, the first OSU representatives new students interact with are support staff who handle welcome or orientation programs, so they play a large role in setting the stage for belonging by being explicitly inclusive and communicating OSU’s commitment to DEI. Academic Advisors can be crucial to success, helping navigate the policies, procedures, and schedules online students must be aware of. Another key support role is that of the Success Coach, who works closely with students to identify barriers to success, find available resources, develop good study habits, and collaboratively build out plans to achieve academic goals. Online open houses, info sessions, newsletters and engagement events can strengthen online students’ sense of belonging, as can sharing relevant social media channels with online students, providing a substitute experience for on-campus visits and activities. Overall, it is important that university staff meet online students where they are, bringing the campus experience to them as much as possible via the LMS, social media, email, and Zoom.
Connecting with faculty
Undoubtedly, the group that has the most significant impact on online students’ experience of belonging is the faculty they learn from. Students resoundingly report that instructor interaction and feedback are the most influential aspects of online course satisfaction. This is reflective of the reality that instructors play several roles in online classrooms, serving as course manager, technical support, and social facilitator in addition to subject matter experts. This gives instructors of online courses many opportunities to influence how welcome students feel in their online courses, and they communicate this via the implicit and explicit tone of their communications, the learning materials and activities they choose, their course policies, and the feedback they provide.
The chart above, from the Student Academic Experience Survey 2022, echoes our internal Ecampus student survey results, with a large proportion of students indicating that instructor access is key to success and happiness in online courses.
Beginning with the syllabus, an instructor signals their own beliefs and attitude towards learning by both what they say and how they say it. If the course lacks face-to-face or synchronous meetings, online students must look at course design, learning materials, and instructor communications for clues about how included they can expect to be. Syllabi written in a warm, welcoming tone serves as an indicator that an instructor first and foremost cares about students, and simple tweaks to syllabus language can go a long way toward conveying this to students. Using language that references learning together, respecting differences, and building of community can reassure students that their instructor cares about them and wants them to succeed. Ecampus recently released updated online and hybrid syllabus templates for the 23-24 academic year, with some sections rewritten in a more inclusive and welcoming tone.
This short video by Ana Lu Fonseca, OSU Assistant Director of Diversity, highlights the importance of using inclusive and affirming language.
Course design and content is another area where instructors can have direct influence on students’ sense of belonging. Ecampus courses are designed via collaboration between an instructional designer and faculty developer, using our Ecampus Essentials as a guideline. Instructors who want to improve their online courses can ensure that they meet not only the essential standards but also the exemplary ones, which represent research-based best practices that help students have better outcomes when learning online.
Creating courses that are accessible for all students is a priority at Ecampus, and our designers often turn to the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) guidelines, which outline concrete steps to make courses more learner friendly for all students. Our OSU Canvas LMS also has built-in accessibility tools, including the UDOIT checker for faculty and Canvas’ own checker in the Rich Content Editor box, that can assist instructors in finding and fixing accessibility issues. We also have Ally, which checks the accessibility of course content, helps fix the content, and helps students by generating alternative forms of content.
Representation is another important factor related to belonging where faculty can have a significant influence. Instructional materials that reflect diverse perspectives can help students understand whose voices, perspectives, and contributions are deemed worthy, valued, and legitimate. Acknowledging and helping students understand how certain groups have contributed to or been left out of certain fields and areas of study is an important facet of challenging and countering negative stereotypes. Instructors can choose to include a wide range of images, stories, and voices in the learning materials for their courses. When students see themselves represented in the course in positive and inclusive ways, they are more likely to be engaged and willing to learn. If materials in a course present a limited viewpoint or show only a small fraction of human races, genders, nationalities, and experiences, students may struggle to find them relevant to their own lives.
Creating a sense of community within a course has a positive effect on students’ sense of belonging, and instructors have opportunities to foster community throughout the term. Structuring courses so that students have varied opportunities to interact with the instructor and fellow students is an important part of community building, especially in asynchronous courses. Group work, peer review, and collaborative projects can help students get to know their classmates, which is another component of belonging. Consider giving students chances to interact both academically and socially. This might include not just offering but actively inviting them to synchronous study sessions, happy hours, or office hours, assigning some group or pair work or peer reviews, or providing forums such as discussion boards or chat tools like Teams or Slack where students can informally interact.
An significant but often unstated role of an instructor in online courses is that of guide, helping students make sense of the course layout, format, and flow as well as framing the big picture when it comes to content and learning outcomes. This can take many overlapping and complementary forms, such as making announcements that recap the prior week or assignments and remind students what is coming and how it connects to the prior lessons, providing study guides, timelines, flowcharts or other big-picture supports, or helping steer online discussions in the right direction. Rubrics are another meaningful way to convey relative importance and weight of different aspects of graded work, with the added benefits of communicating clear expectations and making it easier to grade work fairly.
Related to serving as a guide to course materials, instructors can help students connect to their field of study in more personal and comprehensive ways. How an instructor chooses to address students can facilitate them seeing themselves as practitioners and experts, and by addressing them as future scientists (or artists or historians), can instill a measure of confidence in their self image. Course content can also be adapted to include clear connections to professionals in the field and professional organizations that might be of interest. Helping students become cognizant of the norms, vocabulary, and typical work conditions they can expect can help motivate and prepare students for life and work after graduation, and sets a foundation for belonging within their discipline and track.
Perhaps most important ways an instructor impacts student belonging is how they facilitate a course in progress. Regular communication and clear presence of the instructor within the online course site, along with timely and meaningful feedback on assignments, consistently rise to the top as critical for online student success. These findings underpin many of our Online Teaching Principles, a guide for faculty focusing on the art of facilitating courses online, developed in 2022 to complement our Ecampus Essentials. These principles include suggestions aligned with best practices that support creating an inclusive environment.
Feedback is one of the most critical ways instructors influence students’ learning, and research supports a 24-hour turnaround time for responding to questions during the week and a five-day turnaround for grading and feedback, both essential for online students to be able to progress through course content in a timely manner. How feedback is given is equally important- comments for improvement should be couched in positive and encouraging language, focusing on improvement rather than perfection. Carol Dweck’s concept of growth mindset can be a powerful lens through which to view providing feedback, as it focuses on attitudes towards failure as a part of learning, stressing potential and improvement rather than perfection. Multiple studies confirm that promoting a growth mindset can empower students to take initiative in their learning, build self-efficacy, be more resilient when facing difficulties, better regulate emotions, and persevere through stress and challenges. Instructors can encourage this mindset by framing failure as part of the learning process, praising effort over intelligence, avoiding negative language and insults, and reassuring students of their own capabilities.
Oregon State University’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion requires the entire OSU community to commit to understanding how belonging can be nurtured and how inclusion can be extended or denied. When all students, employees, and community members have a seat at the table and feel welcomed, valued, and included, then we are succeeding. A recent update from Executive Director of Student Experiences & Engagement Damoni Wright and Associate Provost & Dean of Students Kevin Dougherty, sums it up well, “Social justice work cannot be done in a vacuum and cannot be done only in one or two departments, it must be understood, committed to, and integrated into every facet of our work, and we are dedicated to continuing our efforts to make this happen… Through our work together, we will continue to positively change our campus and support student success.” This is a goal we all contribute to daily, in many large and small ways, and is work that must continue to be prioritized and supported.
“Belonging is a universal human need that is fundamentally linked to learning and well-being. It describes an individual’s experience of feeling that they are, or are likely to be, accepted and respected as a valued contributor in a specific environment.”
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a helpful framework when discussing belonging, which falls in the middle, at level three, just above the basics for survival (level one: air, water, food, shelter) and safety (level 2: health, employment, family, security).
Have you heard the word belonging recently in reference to students and employees? At OSU, it seems to be popping up frequently in conversations and discussions, onboardings and trainings, online and off, becoming a buzzword for those concerned with teaching and learning, recruitment and outreach, employee satisfaction, and student success, and has become a focal point of our ongoing efforts towards diversity, equity, and inclusion. This increased focus on the concept of belonging at OSU is reflected in the university’s 2018 Innovate & Integrate: Plan for Inclusive Excellence, and is echoed by the 2021 Oregon Department of Education’s passing of the Every Student Belongs rule, which states, “It is the policy of the State Board of Education that all students, employees, and visitors in public schools are entitled to learn, work, and participate in an environment that is safe and free from discrimination, harassment, and intimidation.” These initiatives reflect a growing understanding that traditionally prevailing systems of power have historically marginalized certain groups and excluded them from many realms of life, including education, and prioritize a commitment to changing the status quo explicitly and with intention.
At Ecampus, belonging is an area of active study, and our effort to extend the feeling of belonging to our online students is an important part of our mission, vision, & values and our own Inclusive Excellence Strategic Plan’s goals. We realize that our Ecampus students come from a wide range of backgrounds, seek online learning for a variety of reasons, and comprise higher numbers of students from historically marginalized backgrounds, and thus, combined with the nature of online learning, can feel increased isolation and less of a sense of belonging than their on-campus peers.
What is belonging and why is it important?
Belonging is a complex, multi-layered, and changeable quality that is nonetheless very important for student success. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs places belonging in the category of psychological needs, just above the basic needs including food, water, air, safety, and shelter. While there are many definitions, the concept of belonging generally encompasses feeling safe, appreciated, welcomed, valued, and respected in a given situation. Humans learn to search for and interpret signals that they belong or do not belong when entering into new situations or contexts. Marginalized groups have had to learn to be cognizant of where and when they could expect to be excluded and on the alert for cues signaling such. Traditionally, educational institutions have been places of exclusionary practices, often closed to large groups in both policy and practice. Students from marginalized populations, facing this problematic history of exclusion, may be looking for signals and signs that indicate the extent to which they are valued and respected as members of the school community. Students may not be sure they will be accepted in institutions, departments, courses, and other school environments and may be consciously or unconsciously searching for such clues as reassurance that they do, in fact, belong.
Belonging is important for student success because it conveys a host of positive benefits and is a crucial aspect of educational accomplishment. When students find welcoming, inclusive attitudes, see others like themselves being accepted and thriving, and are made to feel safe, protected, supported, and valued, their sense of belonging increases, which in turn allows them to relax and be confident sharing more of their full selves. Students who have a strong sense of belonging show increased academic performance, better attendance, persistence, retention, and motivation, and less likelihood of dropping out. Dr. Terrill Strayhorn, Professor of Urban Education and Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs at LeMoyne-Owen College, in his book College Student’s Sense of Belonging, concludes that “deprivation of belonging in college prevents achievement and wellbeing, while satisfaction of college students’ sense of belonging is a key to educational success for all students.”
In education, as in our society at large, belonging is often related to larger systems that privilege and prefer certain groups and their ideas, beliefs, and ways of being. Those whose race, ethnicity, sexual identity, gender, class, indigeneity, language, or ability are not of the majority are especially likely to be anxious and “on alert” to othering, exclusion, bullying, and stereotyping. This can have dramatic negative short and long term effects, including lowered cognitive capacity, increased stress, and reduced persistence and achievement. Students who lack a sense of belonging may feel uncomfortable in class or group work, unable to concentrate, and may experience self-consciousness and worry, which makes it that much more difficult to attain higher-level needs such as self-confidence, recognition, respect, fulfillment, and achievement. When students face active discrimination, bullying, or other forms of harassment, they may become depressed, choose to disengage, drop courses, or discontinue studying. With such dire consequences, taking the time to understand and assist in ensuring all OSU students are made to feel welcomed and accepted is well worth the effort.
Why do online students sometimes feel less of a sense of belonging?
There are many contributing factors to the disparity between online and traditional students’ development of a sense of belonging, starting with the very nature of the modality in which they study. Students living and studying on campus often have more frequent contact with instructors, campus staff, and other students, both structured and impromptu, providing opportunities to build relationships that can enhance their sense of community and belonging. The pacing of on-campus courses tends to be predictable, with regular meetings during which students often have the chance to ask questions (and receive answers quickly) and get to know fellow students and instructors. Instructors have dedicated class time to review important concepts, check understanding, and provide opportunities for students to get to know them and their fellow students. The traditional on-campus experience is geared towards taking a diverse group of students and building a cohesive community in many ways- students have a wide array of support services available to them, many activities, sports, and clubs they can join, and have a host of opportunities to participate in the rich culture of OSU and in academic and social communities, most of which are easily accessible on campus. Indeed, the very nature of on-campus learning seeks to provide a community for traditional students, many of whom are young and leaving their own homes and communities for the first time.
In contrast, Ecampus courses are asynchronous, featuring no scheduled meeting times, as our students live around the USA and the world. While this format allows for increased access for students who cannot attend in person, the lack of face-to-face interaction can make it difficult for both students and instructors to make personal connections. Unless their courses are carefully designed to provide chances for interaction, conversation, collaboration, and community building, online students may not often interact with their instructors or peers. Online students can experience feelings of isolation, loneliness, and disengagement, which can greatly affect their sense of belonging as an OSU student as well as their success and performance.
Complicating things even further is the tendency to experience digital miscommunication, the concept that humans are less able to infer tone, underlying sentiment, and in general not understand nuance when communicating by text and online, to some extent due to the lack of context and/or visual clues one gets when interacting face to face. A 2016 literature review on the topic of establishing community in online courses found digital communication to be a consistent issue, noting “…the absence of visual meaning-making cues such as gesture, voice tone, and immediate interaction can frustrate students and lead to feelings of isolation and disconnectedness in an online classroom” and recommended that instructors who teach online learn the nuances of these different communication needs.
It must be noted that some online students, who may be older, working full or part time, caring for family, or otherwise already leading (sometimes overly) full lives do not particularly want or need the sense of community that younger traditional students may seek out from their university. They may have little time to devote to community building and little interest in superfluous interaction, shying away from an increased social burden they may not have time and energy to fully commit to. Since we cannot know in advance the detailed makeup of our student body, planning with an assumption that creating belonging is an important aspect of our approach serves online students best.
Stay tuned for Part 2: What can we do to help? for research-based strategies you can use to improve belonging and inclusion.
“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” ~ Will Rogers
As Winter Break has begun it’s rapid decent into the start of a new term, it’s time to take a look at how we will welcome our students back to school in the new year. Winter term brings new beginnings for students as their papers now contain the date 2024. Maybe they’ve made resolutions to do homework on time, or read every last page you request, or just be more present, whatever it is, that first message or impression from you in the new term sets the tone for the class. I’m sure that everyone wants to start a class off on a positive note, so let’s look at 5 ways you can create an informational, welcoming, and inclusive message to start the term/semester off right.
Welcoming tone
Talk about your class
Offer support (and remind them to review the syllabus!)
How to get started
Inspire them
Create a Welcoming Tone
I don’t know about you but when I think back to the professors and teachers that I enjoyed learning from, I remember who they were and how they communicated with the class. They weren’t just an educated, knowledgable, and smart person, they were personable too. Empathy for their students, calling out the fact that we all have a bad day from time to time or might have just missed a deadline made it not seem daunting if we had to come “begging” for an extension. It didn’t seem like begging, it was known and called out that it could happen. Give your students the ease as you recognize them as people and not just a name on a roster.
Talk About the Class
Just think, a brand new set of classes, so many new syllabi to read and materials to devour. Hype your class up by talking about exciting topics, real world applications, and maybe mention an assignment or two that they’ll be working on.
Offer Support
We know that each of our students begins our class with a different set of circumstances on the other side of that screen. With that in mind, including a reference to support for these students can be helpful in letting them know the resources are there and it’s ok to use them. Mention your syllabus, the getting started or introduction module, and make sure they know resources are listed and available in all of those places and not only for your class but for all those other things that life tosses their way.
How to Get Started
So much information is available at the start of a new term. Sometimes it’s hard to know where to start! Wait, what happens when it’s before the term starts? Can we help our students prepare for their classes ahead of time and maybe ease their mind a little bit? How about a Canvas email to your students that introduces them before the term starts to their upcoming class. You could include information about if the class is published already, even if it’s just the welcome page and what OSU Ecampus calls the “Start Here” module that includes information about the class (syllabus) and resources that they have access to as Ecampus students. In that same email, you can help them to figure out where they should start. By telling them directly, and maybe even providing a link, you can give them the information to get started with less anxiety as they know they’re starting where you think they should.
Inspire them
Your excitement about working with them often evokes excitement and positive anticipation of a great class. Share with them a quote or why you love this topic and maybe give them an interesting fact that can pique their curiosity. The point here is to get them inspired and excited to learn.
Example
Dear Students,
Welcome to QLT 123: Introduction to Quilting! My name is Professor Seam and I’ll be your instructor for this online course. We are going to learn so much this term, the first three months of quilting are simply mind-blowing as you move from not knowing how to start to drafting a mockup of one you’d like to make, and finishing your first quilt! We’ll explore the basics, you’ll have opportunities to show off your success and funny failures (because guess what, they happen!) and in the end, you’ll get to showcase all of your hard work in your finished quilt. Guess what? There are no textbooks for this class! Instead, you get order in some fun fabric (but not yet!) Hop into our Canvas site and take a look at the syllabus, find resources for support if you are in need, introduce yourself in the first discussion board and take a look at what’s in the first module. We’ll start next week when the term begins so get ready to sew the seams of creativity because you’ve just started the most sew-perb quilting class and I can’t wait to embark on this journey with you. -Professor Seam
Share out!
Got a great welcome message? Share with us in the comments!
In my last post, I outlined my search for a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) program that would fit our Research Unit’s needs. We needed a program that would enable our team to collaborate across operating systems, easily adding in new team members as needed, while providing a user-friendly experience without a high learning curve. We also needed something that would adhere to our institution’s IRB requirements for data security and preferred a program that didn’t require a subscription. However, the programs I examined were either subscription-based, too cumbersome, or did not meet our institution’s IRB requirements for data security. It seemed that there just wasn’t a program out there to suit our team’s needs.
However, after weeks of continued searching, I found a YouTube video entitled “Coding Text Using Microsoft Word” (Harold Peach, 2014). At first, I assumed this would show me how to use Word comments to highlight certain text in a transcript, which is a handy function, but what about collating those codes into a table or Excel file? What about tracking which member of the team codes certain text? I assumed this would be an explanation of manual coding using Word, which works fine for some projects, but not for our team.
Fortunately, my assumption was wrong. Dr. Harold Peach, Associate Professor of Education at Georgetown College, had developed a Word Macro to identify and pull all comments from the word document into a table (Peach, n.d.). A macro is “a series of commands and instructions that you group together as a single command to accomplish a task automatically” (Create or Run a Macro – Microsoft Support, n.d.). Once downloaded, the “Extract Comments to New Document” macro opens a template and produces a table of the coded information as shown in the image below. The macro identifies the following properties:
Page: the page on which the text can be found
Comment scope: the text that was coded
Comment text: the text contained in the comment; for the purpose of our projects, the code title
Author: which member of the team coded the information
Date: the date on which the text was coded
You can move the data from the Word table into an Excel sheet where you can sort codes for patterns or frequencies, a function that our team was looking for in a program as shown below:
This Word Macro was a good fit for our team for many reasons. First, our members could create comments on a Word document, regardless of their operating system. Second, we could continue to house our data on our institution’s servers, ensuring our projects meet strict IRB data security measures. Third, the Word macro allowed for basic coding features (coding multiple passages multiple times, highlighting coded text, etc.) and had a very low learning curve: teaching someone how to use Word Comments. Lastly, our institution provides access to the complete Microsoft Suite so all team members including students that would be working on projects already had access to the Word program. We contacted our IT department to have them verify that the macro was safe and for help downloading the macro.
Testing the Word Macro
Once installed, I tested out the macro with our undergraduate research assistant on a qualitative project and found it to be intuitive and helpful. We coded independently and met multiple times to discuss our work. Eventually we ran the macro, pulled all comments from our data, and moved the macro tables into Excel where we manually merged our work. Through this process, we found some potential drawbacks that could impact certain teams.
First, researchers can view all previous comments made which might impact how teammates code or how second-cycle coding is performed; other programs let you hide previous codes so researcher can come at the text fresh.
Second, coding across paragraphs can create issues with the resulting table; cells merge in ways that make it difficult to sort and filter if moved to Excel, but a quick cleaning of the data took care of this issue.
Lastly, we manually merged our work, negotiating codes and content, as our codes were inductively generated; researchers working on deductive projects may bypass this negotiation and find the process of merging much faster.
Despite these potential drawbacks, we found this macro sufficient for our project as it was free to use, easy to learn, and a helpful way to organize our data. The following table summarizes the pro and cons of this macro.
Pros and Cons of the “Extract Comments to New Document” Word Macro
Pros
Easy to learn and use: simply providing comments in a Word document and running the macro
Program tracks team member codes which can be helpful in discussions of analysis
Team members can code separately by generating separate Word documents, then merge the documents to consensus code
Copying Word table to Excel provides a more nuanced look at the data
Program works across operating systems
Members can house their data in existing structures, not on cloud infrastructures
Macro is free to download
Cons
Previous comments are visible through the coding process which might impact other members’ coding or second round coding
Coding across paragraph breaks creates cell breaks in the resulting table that can make it hard to sort
Team members must manually merge their codes and negotiate code labels, overlapping data, etc.
Scientific work can be enhanced and advanced by the right tools; however, it can be difficult to distinguish which computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software program is right for a team or a project. Any of the programs mentioned in this paper would be good options for individuals who do not need to collaborate or for those who are working with publicly available data that require different data security protocols. However, the Word macro highlighted here is a great option for many research teams. In all, although there are many powerful computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software programs out there, our team found the simplest option was the best option for our projects and our needs.
Are you interested in qualitative research? Are you currently working on a qualitative project? Some researchers find it helpful to use a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) program to help them organize their data through the analysis process. Although some programs can perform basic categorization for researchers, most software programs simply help researchers to stay organized while they conduct the deep analysis needed to produce scientific work. You may find a good CAQDAS program especially helpful when multiple researchers work with the same data set at different times and in different ways. Choosing the right CAQDAS for your project or team can take some time and research but is well worth the investment. You may need to consider multiple factors before determining a software program such as cost, operating system requirements, data security, and more.
For the Ecampus Research Unit, issues with our existing CAQDAS prompted our team to search for another program that would fit our specific needs: Here’s what we were looking for:
Needs
Reasoning
General qualitative analysis
We needed a program for general analysis for multiple types of projects; Other programs are designed for specific forms of analysis such as Leximancer for content analysis
Compatibility across computer operating systems (OS)
Our team used both Macs and PCs
Adherence to our institution’s IRB security requirements
Like many others, our institution and our team adhere to strict data security and privacy requirements, necessitating a close look at how a program would manage our data
Basic coding capabilities
Although many programs offer robust coding capabilities, our team needed basic options such as coding one passage multiple times and visually representing coding through highlights
Export of codes into tables or Excel books
This function is helpful for advanced analysis and reporting themes in multiple file formats for various audiences
A low learning-curve
We regularly bring in temporary team members on various projects for mentorship and research experience, making this a helpful function
A one-time purchase
A one-time purchase was the best fit for managing multiple and temporary team members on various projects
Testing a CAQDAS
I began systematically researching different CAQDAS options for the team. I searched “computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software” and “qualitative data analysis” in Google and Google Scholar. I also consulted various qualitative research textbooks and articles, as well as blogs, personal websites, and social media handles of qualitative researchers to identify software programs. Over the course of several months, I generated a list of programs to examine and test. Several programs were immediately removed from consideration as they are designed for different types of analysis: DiscoverText, Leximancer, MAXQDA, QDA Miner. These programs are powerful, but best suited for specific analysis, such as text mining. With the remaining programs, I signed up for software trials, attended several product demonstrations, participated in training sessions, borrowed training manuals from the library, studied how-to videos online, and contacted other scholars to gather information about the programs. Additionally, I tested whether programs would work across different operating systems. I kept recorded details about each of the programs tested, including how they handled data, the learning curve for each, their data security, whether they worked across operating system, how they would manage the export of codes, and whether they required a one-time or subscription-based payment. I started with three of the most popular programs, NVivo, Dedoose, and ATLAS.ti. The table below summarizes which of these programs fit our criteria.
NVivo
Dedoose
ATLAS.ti
General Qualitative Analysis
✓
✓
✓
Cross-OS Collaboration
✓
✓
Data security
✓
Basic coding capabilities
✓
✓
✓
Export codes
✓
✓
Low learning curve
✓
✓
One-time purchase
✓
✓
A table demonstrating whether three programs (NVivo, Dedoose, and ATLAS.ti) meet the team’s requirements. Details of requirements will be discussed in the text of the blog below.
NVivo
I began by evaluating NVivo, a program I had used previously. NVivo is a powerful program that adeptly handled large projects and is relatively easy to learn. The individual license was available for one-time purchase and allowed the user to maintain their data on their own machine or institutional servers. However, it had no capabilities for cross-OS collaboration, even when clients purchased a cloud-based subscription. Our team members could download and begin using the program, but we would not be able to collaborate across operating systems.
Dedoose
I had no prior experience with Dedoose, so I signed up for a trial of the software. I was impressed with the product demonstration, which significantly helped in figuring out how to use the program. This program excelled at data visualization and allowed a research team to blind code the same files for interrater reliability if that suited the project. Additionally, I appreciated the options to view code density (how much of the text was coded) as well as what codes were present across transcripts. I was hopeful this cloud-based program would solve our cross-OS collaboration problem, but it did not pass the test for our institution’s IRB data security requirements because it housed our data on Dedoose servers.
ATLAS.ti
ATLAS.ti was also a new program for me, so I signed up for a trial of this software. It is a well-established program with powerful analysis functions such as helpful hierarchical coding capabilities and institutive links among codes, quotations, and comments. But the cross-OS collaboration, while possible via the web, proved to be cumbersome and this too did not meet the data security threshold for our institution’s IRB. Furthermore, the price point meant we would need to rethink our potential collaborations with other organizational members.
Data Security
Many programs are now cloud-based, which offer powerful analysis options, but unfortunately did not meet our IRB data security requirements. Ultimately, we had to cut Delve, MAXQDA, Taguette, Transana, and webQDA. All of these programs would have been low-learning curve options with basic coding functionality and cross-OS collaboration; however, for our team to collaborate, we would need to purchase a cloud-based subscription, which can quickly become prohibitively expensive, and house our data on company servers, which would not pass our institutional threshold for data security.
Note-taking programs
After testing multiple programs, I started looking beyond just qualitative software programs and into note-taking programs such as DevonThink, Obsidian, Roam Research, and Scrintal. I had hoped these might provide a work around by organizing data on collaborative teams in ways that would facilitate analysis. However, most of them did not have functionalities that could be used for coding or had high learning curves that precluded our team using them.
It seemed like I had exhausted all options and I still did not have a program to bring back to the Research Unit. I had no idea that a low-cost option was just a YouTube video away. Stay tuned for the follow-up post where we dive into the solution that worked best for our team.
