Vince Cyboran, Ed.D., Associate Professor Graduate Program in Training and Development Evelyn T. Stone College of Professional Studies “Confronting ‘You Can’t Do That Online’ ”: Using Guest Speakers in a Fully Online, Asynchronous Course

Overview The challengeThe solution Provide a guest speaker for students in a fully online, asynchronous course. Make it easy for both students and the guest speaker: No separate software. Keep the promise of ‘time and location flexible’ for online courses at RU: Respect students’ schedules, allowing Q&A over a period of a week (a module). Don’t overwhelm the guest speaker. Choose a guest speaker who had graduated from the MATD program. Example of success. Example of ‘giving back’ to the program. Familiar with Blackboard. Example of continuing our outreach to our graduates. Has one week to answer questions and ‘interact’ with students. 2

Preparation-1: Handle the Mechanics 1.Beginning of course: On the syllabus, inform students that there will be a guest speaker : 2.Obtain and test a Blackboard ‘guest speaker’ account: trdvguest. 3.Once speaker is confirmed, create a discussion board forum for the Q&A. 3

Preparation-2: Build anticipation 1.Once speaker is confirmed, post speaker’s picture and bio in Blackboard. 2.A few weeks prior, post a general announcement about the guest speaker and about the discussion board forum for posting questions. 4

Preparation-3: Week of… 5

Implementation-1: Monitor the forum 6

Implementation-2: Example of Q&A 7

Lessons Learned and Caveats Students rated this as a very useful experience. Tell students to ‘Add a Thread’ to add their questions. First student add his question as a response to the guest speaker’s ‘Hello’ post. Other students followed his lead. This caused some confusion for the speaker. These were graduate students. It’s an introductory, core course so we didn’t focus on a specific topic or topics. 8