1. Effectively Teaching Accounting Online or Hybrid
Kate Demarest, CPA
Carroll Community College
Briefly discuss teaching assignment and Carroll Community College (location, size, type of students).

2. Greetings from Carroll Community College
Kate Demarest, CPA Professor, Accounting Assessment and Program Analyst
Talk about my current role – 60% teaching and 40% assessment – evolved out of my interest in technology and student success
Talk about experience teaching online – more than 15 years – started with telecourses to pure online – variety of classes including Intro to Business, Principles of Accounting (2 semester sequence), and Individual and Corporate Taxation

3. Why go hybrid or online? Build enrollment Generate additional revenue
Free up tight resources
Engage learners
Create flexibility

4. But… Higher drop rates Lower grade distributions Concerns about rigor
Questions about student integrity

5. Chronicle of Higher Education
July 18, 2011
Community-College Students Perform Worse Online Than Face to Face
By Ryan Brown
Community-college students enrolled in online courses fail and drop out more often than those whose coursework is classroom-based, according to a new study released by the Community College Research Center at the Teachers College at Columbia University.
The study, which followed the enrollment history of 51,000 community-college students in Washington State between 2004 and 2009, found an eight-percentage-point gap in completion rates between traditional and online courses. Although students who enrolled in online courses tended to have stronger academic preparation and come from higher income brackets than the community-college population on the whole, researchers found that students who took online classes early in their college careers were more likely to drop out than those who took only face-to-face courses. Among students who took any courses online, those with the most Web-based credits were the least likely to graduate or transfer to a four-year institution.

6. Before you start Do I have the resources? General technology skills
Responsiveness to
Learning management system
Institutional support
Tolerance for ambiguity

7. Getting started
Course learning objectives in the classroom = Course learning objectives online Course learning objectives in a hybrid class
There is a lot of concern about quality, particularly in online courses. Some of the concern emerges from the fact that the professor doesn’t see the student face to face. However, additional concern has emerged as some people have chosen to scale back their expectations for online students. (Although the same could be true for some summer courses.) It is important to remember that your learning objectives for the student in an online or hybrid class must be the same as they are for a student in a traditional course. It is essential, therefore, to design intentional learning activities so that students can learn and master content and demonstrate their competency.

8. Developing a course platform
Build your own
Blackboard, Moodle, Angel, etc.
Publisher site

9. Build your own Customized solution Limited cost to the institution
Lots of time for you, your TA, or an instructional designer
Limited functionality

10. Blackboard, Moodle, Angel, etc.
Common student experience across courses
No additional cost to student
Built-in gradebook and discussion board
Some integration with publisher content

11. Publisher site Lots of content and assessments
Discussion board and gradebook with some publisher solutions
Additional learning support (varies widely by product)
Publishers are now realizing that the extended product of a textbook includes the digital solution. When evaluating a text, I think that you have to think about the whole package.

12. My experience
FrontPage
Blackboard
MyAccountingLab

13. Designing your course For each student learning objective,
how will students be introduced to the concept?
how will students learn the material?
how will you assess learning?
The most important thing that you can do is create a system that would allow a student to be successful. For many years, most of my learning activities centered on reading the textbook, with assessment through a variety of methods. The assessments were sound, but students were not successful as they were resistant to reading the text.

14. Choosing the right course design
Multimedia learning

15. Choosing the right course design
Help when students are“stuck” or don’t know the next step.

16. Choosing the right course design
Multiple learning activities
Multiple assessments
Opportunity for additional help
If you think about your classroom, it is probably really uncommon for you to introduce a concept and never revisit the topic. The same should be true in an online course. You need to have multiple required activities designed for learning (reading the text, watching a PowerPoint, viewing a video) and multiple assessments (homework, quizzes, tests, written assignments). Finally, you need to have a remediation strategy for students who are stuck. Think about what you do in the classroom. When students look puzzled, you loop back or cover a topic from another angle. Online, we need to provide students with the opportunity to discover that they need additional help and we need to provide that help. In MyAccountingLab, the Study Plan can help.

17. Required or optional?
Sheila Huskey,
Principles of Accounting 1 and 2
“If the MyAccountingLab homework were not required, I would not do it. I would also probably fail the class.”

18. More student feedback
“With MyAccountingLab, I can complete homework anywhere I have internet access. Although, I still consult my text frequently, I find that I can learn just about everything in the text (general concepts) by use of MyAccountingLab and it's resources. I think it is saving my back, since I don't have to struggle with carrying the large textbook around all the time.”
Tom Cossentino,
Principles of Taxation 1 and 2

19. Best practices for online classes
Keep in touch
Be a trail guide

20. Best practices for online classes
Get real about collaboration
Algorithmic problems on homework and tests
Proctored final exams
Individualized assignments
One of the most significant concerns about online classes is integrity. How do we know that the student at the other end is the actual student? How do we prevent students from working together?
In reality, there are no closed book tests online. Their book, their notes, and everything on the web is available to them all the time. Even a lockdown browser does not prevent students from using another computer.
You will need to understand your school and your students to know what is appropriate. Consider the availability of algorithmic problems. These are just as important on homework as on tests. We use proctored finals for many classes. Use example of auditing and individual assignments.

21. Best practices for online classes
Feedback, feedback, feedback!
response time
Feedback on written assignments
Regular professor -> student contact
Non-digital connection
If there is one thing that I’ve learned from teaching online, it is understanding the disconnectedness of online students. They feel like they are lost at sea. When they are stuck, they send an and minutes are like hours as they wait for you to reply. Just like you, I get dozens of s per day. I’ve developed a triage system with s from online students being the highest priority.
In my face to face classes, I have time with the whole class when I can provide feedback on assignments. In my online classes, I have found that I need to provide much more feedback to students, both as a group and individually. I generally provide an announcement and to the whole class after every assignment and also provide a specific, private, and positive to each student.
Regular contact is the key to retention. I use the feature within the gradebook on a weekly basis to encourage students who are doing well and reach out to students who have missed an assignment. In MAL, you can quickly sort into a few groups and generate s that look personalized to the student (they see only their name in the address).
Something that I discovered more recently was the need for non-digital connection, especially for students who aren’t doing well. Last semester, I had a student in my online tax class who was not doing well. She didn’t really have the experience that most of the other students had and struggled, especially on tests. I ed her often, but she seemed increasingly frustrated. As the issue escalated, I asked her if we could find a time to talk. When we talked, I found out that she was a student who took the class because it was available online and she was taking 24 credits and working 2 jobs for a total of 40 hours a week. This student was set up to fail. I couldn’t fix all of her issues, but we talked about life and time management and developed a personal relationship. It is much easier to be angry over rather than the phone or face to face. She was much more receptive to my suggestions and managed to pass the course.
I also regularly invite students to come to my office hours. Some students need just a little additional support and every semester I have a student or two who are weekly visitors.

22. Best practices for online classes
Be clear about:
response time
Turnaround time for grading
Accepting late work
Your actions will create expectations. Use example of grading quizzes in tax. In my tax class, each week, students are expected to read the chapter, complete homework, post to the discussion board, and take a quiz. I have set aside a regular time in my week where I grade the discussion board and quizzes. Although I tell students in the syllabus that all work will be graded within a week, I generally have the discussion board and quizzes graded within 24 hours of the due date. This makes sense since they have another chapter to start on and the material builds upon itself. However, I have discovered that students quickly come to expect this. If they don’t get a grade and an by Tuesday night, I get worried s – why didn’t you grade my quiz? I know that I completed it. As a result, if I am not going to be able to grade in the normal window, I post a quick announcement to assuage their fears. Ditto for when I go to Mexico.
Finally, you need to make a policy about late work and be consistent. I don’t accept late work without prior approval, but I am generous with reasonable requests. Give example of Mary and cruise.

23. Best practices for online classes
Don’t forget the feedback loop!
Design/redesign your online course
Implement your design
Collect data
Identify opportunities for improvement
Aggressively collect data about how to make your class better. This is how I developed the chapter guides. I jumped in mid semester and have continued this semester with great success.

24. What about hybrid classes?
What is a hybrid class?
Defining a hybrid class can be difficult. I would expect that most of us expect students to do some work outside of class, often online or through , and also attend class. However, I would define an online class as a class that meets in the classroom for less than the standard hours expected for the number of credits.

25. Designing your hybrid class
In the classroom:
Introduce new concepts
Review difficult concepts
Integrate
Apply
Take tests
Online:
Interact with multimedia learning aids
Complete homework and assignments
Take tests
In a hybrid class, you have the opportunity to decide which concepts can be learned and developed independently and which are more effectively mastered face to face. Use the item analysis to see which homework problems caused a challenge and then focus on these. Don’t spend your limited class time on things that students understand.

26. Questions?
Kate Demarest, CPA Professor, Accounting Assessment and Program Analyst Carroll Community College Westminster, MD