Emphasize Time on Task
Jump to:
Introduction |
Relevance |
in Practice
Welcome to the Age of Information. The Internet continues to grow faster than any other technology in history. There have never been so many people producing and sharing so much information across so many different media and time zones. Cyberspace emphasizes time and information. Where else can you search billions of web pages, images, multimedia, newsgroups and stores in seconds? Teaching and learning have "left the building" as today's busy learners pursue a variety of formats requiring few or no physical classroom visits. Accessible 24 hours a day and seven days a week, Internet-based virtual classrooms, laboratories and library collections integrate course activities into the homes and personal lives of faculty and students. “At your own pace, at your own place” learning turns travel time into time on task, and time and energy saved accessing materials at a distance is more time and energy for learning itself. “Energy plus time equals learning. There is no substitute for time on task.” Chickering and Gamson, Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education Changing the “where” and “when” of teaching and learning requires new strategies and expectations. Lacking a habitual place and time for meeting and familiar expectations, distance learning does not easily become a habit. Emphasizing time on task means communicating expectations so that “misdirected energy plus time does not equal attrition.” Distance educators clearly and carefully lead their students through the administrative, procedural and technical aspects of the course to the details, guidelines and time commitments of their task. Learners use this knowledge to organize their own participation and engage the course tools, materials and participants . “Boiled down [...] regardless of what else is going on, the more ‘quality’ time students spend engaged in content, the more of that content they learn.” Bill Pelz, My Three Principles of Effective Online Pedagogy Distance educators plan their courses by estimating learner time on task for course activities. Sharing this information in the course syllabus assists learners in organizing their available time for participation. Use visual explanations that stand out onscreen and show development over time with a minimal amount of text and no onscreen “scrolling.” Summarize learner activity in a timeline:
Direction lines for assignments should always include a suggested time for completion in hours, weeks or days. Most reference materials are text-based or text-driven. The President of LERN , William Draves, assigns “20 pages an hour for nonfiction, 10 pages an hour for extremely technical information, and 40 pages an hour for fiction” (Online Learning, 79). Multimedia means fixed time limits and you should allow time for multiple viewings. Since waiting for streaming audio and video files to download is not the type of time on task you want to emphasize, provide multiple formats to accommodate slower download speeds. Once the time commitments and procedure are available and clear, the features of course management systems (like WebCT , Blackboard ) emphasize time on task. Announcements provide critical updates and reminders as learners enter the course, intercepting them before they can do anything else. Use announcements to synchronize students to the course timeline at least once a week. A course calendar identifies important course dates and events. Some calendars allow students to plug in their own important dates and activities and can even integrate elements from the university’s academic and event calendars. Email, chat rooms and discussion forums form the communication hub of course management systems and are available for one-to-one or group communication in a synchronous or asynchronous manner. Self-grading quizzes allow multiple attempts with immediate feedback for the learner. Students can practice as often as necessary to master a concept or to review. Students and faculty receive a detailed report of each attempt. Take the time to build a bank of questions that challenges your learners and rewards time on task. Course (a.k.a. "learning") management systems track how long learners spend in different sections of a course. Some even search the course site to determine which learners have not participated in certain activities or within certain time limits. You cannot, however, simply trust the numbers: “Some may be spending more time because they’re unfamiliar with the medium. Some may be spending more time because instructions for assignments are not well-written for online use. Some may be spending more time because they want to: the assignments are more interesting. […] Depending on the reasons, ‘spending more time’ may be a) a triumph, b) a problem to be fixed, or c ) a temporary situation to be endured.” The TLT Group, Seven Principles Library Distance educators periodically distribute online surveys for rapid feedback regarding progress and time on task. Assessments combining formative and summative elements elicit student perceptions of their own learning and the instructional process and can dramatically improve the course either in process or for the next offering. Request student opinions on the length of assignments, depth of topics covered, and time spent downloading information and communicating with peers in email, chat rooms or discussion forums. Each day the Internet evolves as a visual medium as more and more graphical and multimedia elements are added. Many newly-created web resources favor visual learners , supplementing briefer text passages with visual and multimedia explanations. The works of Edward Tufte demonstrate the effectiveness of visual explanations and encourage their use. SmartDraw offers a 30-day free trial of its software to produce Gantt charts, concept maps, and other visual explanations for education. The timeline and Gantt chart on this web page were created with Microsoft Visio . Some web browsers are customized to emphasize time on task. The Mozilla Firefox 0.91 check browser features extensions that allow you to highlight an unknown word on a web site and look it up in an online dictionary instantly, or even to translate it into another language! Spending quality time on task relies on information literacy. Get literate at the Cornell University Library . These days information also means multimedia. Get your plug-ins, turn on your speakers and go Full Tilt! Easy-to-use multimedia production hardware and software will result in the widespread creation and incorporation of multimedia elements. More complex efolios will result. Technologies like Serious Magic’s Visual Communicator will revolutionize presentations, offering network news quality broadcasts for educators and learners. Role-playing and other computer games like the Sims are often described as addicting. Review the current state of E-Learning Simulation Products and Services 2004. As educators and learners integrate all available media with these powerful new tools and techniques, project and time management skills will be even more essential. Mind Tools can help you organize your time on task to great effect. The Ohio Learning Network would like to thank Content Specialist Chris Fahey for thoughtfully gathering and organizing the content about this Principle.  |
