Have the students read and reacted on my personalised emails?

Personalised Communication

The most commonly used communication methods between teachers and students these days probably are Moodle Forum announcement and mass email. But how effective the methods are? Are the students reading those notifications and mass emails? 

The answer normally is: we do not know. Normally we do not have any method to track whether the students have read the emails. But often when we talk to the students, we might have the impression that they are not very interested in those messages. It is hard to blame them as many of us might have the same attitude to similar messages in our mailbox.

However, students might have different attitudes to the personlised emails from their lecturers' Monash email address. Zoee Cohen from the University of Arizona has also been sending personlised emails to students for years and seeing improvement in student academic performance: Small Changes, Large Rewards: How Individualized Emails Increase Classroom Performance.

TaLT has tried to answer that challenge by trialing using a learning analytics system to communicate with students with personlised Emails with one Business Law unit and one Econometrics and Business Statistics unit. The project Using Learning Analytics System to Communicate with Students with Personalised Emails was presented at the Monash Re-engineering Education Teaching Symposium last month. You can read more about their work in our TaLT Practice Papers series. 

Does it work?

We have used the SRES, Student Relationship Engagement System, to send the personlised emails to the students. The system has a function to track whether the students have opened the email. From the logs, it is safe to say that almost all students would open the emails. It is not that a surprise as we can imagine that we would check the emails from our department heads.

However, have the students read it? Have them acted accordingly? The questions are still not answered.

SETU as a test

Students are encouraged to answer the SETU questions about their units at the end of the semester. The Monash Business School average response rate is 40.63% in S2 2018. We took the chance and did a small experiment in the two units. A persoalised email addressing the student first name from the lecturer's email address was sent to all students to encourage them to complete the SETU questions. 

One unit got 81.88% response rate from 138 students and the other unit got 87.76% from 384 students. Both response rates are much higher than the Buseco average and have significantly increased from the previous year.

It is now safe to say that yes, the majority of the students would read personalised emails from their lecturers and they would act on the email content in terms of completing a SETU online survey.

Getting more students for the department

One of the lecturers Charanjit Kaur has sent the newest email to high achieving students in her units. The email congratulates the students on their excellent performance and invites them to choose more advanced units in Econometrics and Business Statistics in their 2d semester on behalf of the Acting Department Head. The email is formatted as a formal letter so that students can print it even use it as part of their portfolio during job applications. 

Also, we will find out whether the personlised invitation will bring more students into EBS next semester. And if you would like to keep up with the student enrollment competition with EBS using personlised messages or any other new ideas, please talk to your Educational Designers. We would be very happy to assist you in the new year.

An Overview of Monash Teaching and Learning Technology

Choose the right teaching and learning technology 

Are you not sure which technology can be used for your learning activities in the class or on your Moodle unit? Are you planning to create something innovative and fun but tired of searching for the right software on the Internet? Are you tired of asking eSolutions to help you install new software on your computer? Are you tired of going through the whole process to purchase a software license?

We guess that it often happens. That is why TaLT has provided a list of the teaching and learning technology available to Monash staff.

The List

Here is the list of some teaching and learning technology available to Monash staff. It provides an overview of the related application, operating system, and cost for each product.

My Software

You might be surprised to learn that Monash makes available to you some of the most convenient software with advanced teaching and learning technology. You might also be surprised at the range of applications available, and most of them are FREE!

On a Monash managed Windows PC, click the Start icon on the left bottom side of the screen and then click My Software which will open the list of 148 free software applications.

Search and install the software that you need. In a few minutes (usually) the software will be installed automatically on your computer.

Other resources

• A list of software for staff personal devices 
• A list of software for Monash devices
• Learning and teaching technology eLAB from Monash Library

If you are interested in any product or have any questions, feel free to contact us at buseco.teaching-learning@monash.edu. TaLT is always happy to assist.

Using Learning Analytics System to Communicate with Students with Personlised Emails

Learning Analytics

With the growing size of the class in Monash Business School, teachers have found it is hard to track individual student learning path and maintain quality communication with them as there are simply too many students in the class. More and more communications initiated by the teachers are now sent as a general message to address all students. For example, the same messages are posted on the online forum, sent via SMS, or email to all class participants to reduce the teachers’ workload. Recently, with the innovation in educational technology, it is possible for lecturers to use information technology to draft and send personalised emails to students in bulk according to their online engagement, tutorial attendance records, and assessment results. Learning analytics allow us to identify certain student groups with different selecting criteria and reach them via personlised emails.

Zoee Cohen from the University of Arizona has also been sending personlised emails to students for year and seeing improvement in student academic performance: Small Changes, Large Rewards: How Individualized Emails Increase Classroom Performance.

TaLT has tried to answer that challenge by trialing using a learning analytics system to communicate with students with personlised Emails with one of our Business Law units in S1 2018 and the results are very encouraging.

SRES - The Student Relationship Engagement System

The SRES, Student Relationship Engagement System, empowers teachers to collect, analyse, and act on data to better engage students at scale. It was developed by built, run, and supported by a bunch of teachers primarily at the University of Sydney. Monash Biology has set up a server for those who are interested: https://sres.biol.monash.edu/

Here is a short introduction to the system:

Our trial

Last semester we have trailed SRES to send personalised emails to certain student group worked on his BTF5903 unit with 389 students. We think that it improves student engagement as well as their classroom performance. We have attached a brief report here:

Time/Event	Students No. Received Emails	Students No. Read Emails	Student Action
Week 4 before 1stassessment	57 students who did not do more than 4 online learning activities	51	Students finished 3.1 activities on average in the following days.
Week 5 after 1stassessment	24 students who scored 100% in the 1stassessment	23 (3 left feedback to consider the email useful)	2 students wrote back to the lecturer
Week 8 before 2ndassessment	185 students who did not do more than 3 activities in Week 5-7	180 (4 left feedback to consider the email useful)	Finished 2.1 online activities on average in the following days.
The mean student final grade increased by 6.7 and the median grade increased by 8 compared to the previous semester together with other unit design improvements

And here is an example of the email:

Dear XXX

I hope you are well. As you know we will hold our first major assessment for BTF5903, the Mid-Semester Feedback Test, this week.

In the first three weeks there were 8 online Lessons and Quizzes on our Moodle site that you needed to complete. We noticed that you completed 1 of them: that’s no more than 50%! Our past student records prove that those students who fail to complete half of the online learning activities by the middle of semester are TWICE as likely to fail the ENTIRE unit when compared to those who complete more than half of the online learning activities.

We strongly advise you to complete your online Lessons and Quizzes, as well as all other relevant study materials to prepare for the test in Week 4. The test result will contribute to your final grade.

Good luck and see you next week.

Regards

Lecturer

What is not so good?

The system is not integrated with our Moodle yet. We have to export results from Moodle into CSV files and then import those files in SRES.

Would like to try?

If you are interested in using that in your unit this semester, just let us know. All you need to do is to sit with us for an hour to discuss and then we will take care of the system set up, etc. 

Build Your Equations Easily

Designed for math symbols and expressions 

Many of our Business School units require teachers and students to build math equations on their computers. Simply use Microsoft Word equations is quite time-consuming and inconvenient. Word always works better with normal letters and number, but when it comes to the special symbols and equations, extra help is definitely needed. This month we have looked into a software programme EquatIO which is known as g(Math) previously. It is specially designed for math symbols and expressions. The software makes it easier than ever to write with math and science symbols in Google Docs, Sheets, Forms, Slides, and so on.

EquatIO

Equatio easily creates mathematical equations, formulas, and quizzes in Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms on mobiles, tablets, Mac, PC, or Chromebooks. It requires intuitively type or handwrite but does not require learning any coding.

You can type or handwrite virtually any mathematical expression directly on your keyboard or touchscreen. Therefore it is easy for teachers and students to use.

The software can recognise the mathematical abbreviations. For example, when you type ‘sq’, it knows that you mean ‘square root’. It is also able to do voice recognisation. It is smart enough to ignore ‘umms’, ‘errs’ and other unwanted non-math words.

The following video is a demo of the EquatIO software.

What is good?

What is so good about it? Let's count:

1. Speech to text:

   2.  Handwriting recognition so that you can draw the math expressions

    3. You can write on your mobile phone or iPad while synchronising to the computer:

   4. Copy and paste LaTex to generate your equations:

   5. Draw the graphics easily with your equations:

What is not so good?

The programme works quite well with Google Doc and Form. But you cannot integrate the software into Word. Even though it has a Windows version and a Mac version, but we are not able to make it work on our PC. We would still suggest you use it with your Google Chrome browser to edit your Google Docs and Forms.

What's in it for us?

With EquatIO, we can easily create mathematical equations, formulas, graphics, and quizzes. LaTex, speech, typing, or handwriting, you name it. And the full version is free to teachers. It is well integrated with Google Doc. Therefore, you can create equations in the Google Doc and convert that into Word later if you prefer that way. However, you will have to use Chrome browser to use the extension software.

If you are interested, give it a try. Keep following our TaLT communications. We will introduce more useful and interesting tools in the future.

Teach with Videos and Overcome Boundaries

How far have videos come?

It is very easy to let multimedia content go by unnoticed these days, only because they have become so ingrained in modern society. Ever since the rise of video-sharing platforms like Youtube in the last two decades, and the dominance of other social video players such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat (to name a few), videos have disrupted the way we absorb and digest information for good.  

More videos are being watched every day on Facebook (over 8 billion videos in 2016), videos are getting shorter (up to 2 minutes long), and more than 50% of videos are watched on mobile devices (TechCrunch, 2016; Wistia, 2016; Ooyala, 2016, as cited in Lua, 2017). MOOC providers such as Coursera, Lynda and edX have attracted millions of users and are proving the demand for e-learning options. This speaks volume about the future of information consumption, and the inevitable changes in education alike. 

Young generations are now considered “digital natives” who are growing up with every aspects of their life submerged in technology (LiteracyPlanet, 2016). Education at K12 level has been preparing children to be equipped for future work in the 21st century, so it is imperative for higher education institutions to continue with this roadmap and incorporate digital technologies in teaching and learning. 

Why should we care about teaching with videos? 

You have probably come across this video of Salman Khan sharing inspiring stories on how he accidentally embarked on a journey to lead a global change in education technology and pedagogical methodology. 

The idea is by that by utilising technology that is seemingly dehumanising, specifically talking into a microphone and illustrating on a screen, Salman was able to bring a human touch to the learning experience in three ways: 

• First, by allowing lectures to be watched online prior to class, valuable time in class is now devoted to meaningful interactions between teacher and students, as well as among fellow students. 
• Second, learning is personalised to students’ pace and to their level of understanding. Teachers are enabled to identify students’ deficiency and have more meaningful conversations with students about their progress based on video analytics. 
• And third, videos have removed boundaries in terms of time and space, i.e. limited class time and physical classroom space. Now students are able to watch, pause, rewind their lessons in the comfort of their own home. 

All of these benefits point to an increase in efficiency in education, which has been threatened by the increase in size of cohorts and restricted time and space at many institutions. As a result, our effort in maintaining high quality teaching is facing critical challenges, and video teaching could be the answer. Ljubojevic and colleague’s research (2014) echoed the same sentiments when they found that using videos in teaching has led to an increase in students’ engagement and efficiency of the self-learning process, their satisfaction, and overall improved quality of learning experience.

More importantly, this approach puts students in the driver’s seat and encourage them to take ownership of their own learning journey. Videos could assist students in mastery learning, allowing them to explore and review a subject matter as much as they would like to in private, while taking the load off of lecturers (Galbraith, 2004).

What’s the catch?

The blended teaching method and flipped classroom model have sparked many fascinating debates regarding its efficacy and its impact on the effectiveness of teaching and learning. It is an evidence-based practice, and whether these models are suitable for every educator is subject to professional judgement. The literature has not offered a systemic look on the outcomes of using videos in teaching, and a consistent framework in how videos could be used to optimise the teaching and learning experience.

What is the best practice for using videos in teaching? 

What we can suggest, however, is how to best adopt videos in your teaching to achieve the optimal results: 

• Videos could be considered as a complementary element of lecture delivery, not necessarily a substitution (Ljubojevic et al., 2014; Ramlogan et al., 2013). Keep your videos short and sweet, as this keeps students focused on the relevant information and support students' self-learning process (Ruiji, 2012).

• Videos need to be accompanied by interactive learning activities (Meguid & Collins, 2017). A few simple examples include using Mars and Poll Everywhere in real time to keep students engaged and gaining immediate feedback on students’ understanding, or accompanying online lectures with interactive content such as H5P activities on Moodle. For more ideas on how to engage students on Moodle, visit the support site.

• Constructive alignment is still at the core of teaching, regardless of the chosen tools and teaching approach. A connection between video materials and other components of the learning package must be clearly and actively communicated to students. Lectures are advised to be mindful of closing the loop between pre-class, in-class and post-class activities, and how videos could support the achievement of learning outcomes.  

What is available to us? 

Monash has been progressive in this space for years. We have seen a significant growth in the use of lecture recordings, online lesson packages, internally produced animation videos and YouTube content to support teaching. This year, we are excited about the introduction of Panopto, the new video management platform to help manage your teaching video content. From Semester 1, 2018, you will be able to create, edit, upload, store, search and share videos all in one secure place. Panopto will be integrated fully with Moodle so that all learning materials are centrally stored. Read more on Panopto in our blog, and be sure to get yourself up to speed by watching a quick start guide for Panopto. 

 

Further reading: 

Galbraith, J., (2004, September). Active viewing: and oxymoron in video-based instruction?. Paper presented at the Society for Applied Learning Technologies Conference. Retrieved from designer.50g.com/docs/Salt_2004.pdf

Khan, S. [Ted]. (2011, March 09). Let’s use video to reinvent education. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education

LiteracyPlanet. (2016). eLearning in Australian classrooms [Report]. Retrieved from https://www.literacyplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/LiteracyPlanet-eLearning-Report.pdf

Ljubojevic, M., Vaskovic, V., Stankovic, S., & Vaskovic, J. (2014). Using supplementary video in multimedia instruction as a teaching tool to increase efficiency of learning and quality of experience. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 15(3). Lua, A. (2017, February 16). 50 Video Marketing Stats to Help You Create a Winning Social Media Strategy in 2017 [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-video-marketing-statistics Meguid, E. A., & Collins. M. (2017). Students'Perceptions of Lecturing Approaches: Traditional versus Interactive Teaching. Advances in Medical Education and Practice (8), 229–241.  Partnership for 21st Century Learning. (n.d.) Framework for 21st century learning. Retrieved January 29, 2018, from http://www.p21.org/our-work/p21-framework Ramlogan, S., Raman, V., & Sweet, J. (2014). A comparison of two forms of teaching instruction: video vs. live lecture for education in clinical periodontology. European Journal of Dental Education, 18(1), 31-38. Ruiji, L. (2012). The development on multimedia teaching resources based on information processing theory. International Journal of Advancements in Computing Technology, 4, 58-64.