1. MEANINGFUL INTERACTIONS IN ONLINE FOREIGN LANGUAGES (AND IN OTHER ONLINE CLASSES) Kelley Melvin, Department of Foreign Languages University of Missouri – Kansas City

3. Create community ■Self introductions that mean something and are worth something ■Quality Matters

4. Create community

5. ■Balance of student-content, student-instructor- and student-peer interactions ■Assignments that will be fun for you (the instructor) too! ■Midterm poll or review lecture ■Quality Matters ■Self introductions that mean something and are worth something

6. Student Learning Objectives

7. Backward design + a regular schedule of interactions ■3 mini-lessons per week, often building on and expanding a prior topic. ■Auto-graded or simple manually graded assignments to increase the frequency of interaction and hopefully not increase grading burden. ■Cumulative assignments to review and build upon previous important material. ■Stepped assignments to give feedback before final versions are submitted.

8. Interactive tools to complement learning objectives ■Journal, Bb Assignment – individual ■Blog, VoiceThread – individual or class Is the learning activity best suited for student-instructor or student-student interaction?

10. Interactive tools to complement learning objectives ■Blog, journal, or Bb Assignment – individual ■VoiceThread – individual or class ■Video conferencing (synchronous) via Google hangouts, Skype, Bb Collaborate, Adobe Connect – one-on-one or groups, instructor present or not present. –Doodle or Starfish for scheduling. ■Discussion board – class forums Is the learning activity best suited for student-instructor or student-student interaction?

11. Interactive tools to complement learning objectives (cont’d) ■Interactive textbook or other resources for self-guided study - individual ■Variety of resources for delivery of information: –powerpoints –screen capture lectures (Kaltura, Tegrity, Panopto) –videos, articles, with outline provided for student independent note-taking ■Assign students to upload self-recorded videos for the items that would be a “comment” or discussion in class. VoiceThread and Kaltura are great for this. Is the learning activity best suited for student-instructor or student-student interaction?

12. Interactive tools to complement learning objectives (cont’d) ■Overloaded with a large class? “Self and Peer Assignments” in Blackboard! ■Tip: select a handful of tools and stick to using them regularly so that students aren’t always having to learn a new tool on top of coursework.

13. Rubrics! They communicate a lot! Rubrics are naturally a great way to interact with students on course content, and to be clear about expectations and evaluation.