1. Assessing when opportunity costs exceed switching and maintenance costs for tools supporting remote learning collaborations
…or…why I am using Collaborate and Discussion Boards for non-classroom student interactions.

2. Talk agenda

3. Talk agenda What was I trying to accomplish?1
What was I trying to accomplish? 2
What information problems was I trying to address? 3
How did I make the task-technology fit decisions? 4
How do you go about assessing your own switching costs?
Discussion boards
Bb Collaborate/Collaborate Ultra

4. Collaborate/Collaborate Ultra objectives
Increase experience with real-time, virtual learning environment
Increase experience with real-time, virtual collaboration environment

5. Discussion Board objectives
Allow for additional class participation contributions beyond online/virtual session (since limited real-time opportunities)
Allow for students with lower participation scores to increase their scores
Allow students to practice virtually bouncing ideas off one another

6. Talk agenda What was I trying to accomplish?1
What was I trying to accomplish? 2
What information problems was I trying to address? 3
How did I make the task-technology fit decisions? 4
How do you go about assessing your own switching costs?

7. Information problems exist at three levels
Operational: smooth in-session (a)synchronous interactions and information sharing
Tactical: assurance of learning assessments (formative/summative) and analytics for topic/subject matter whether usefulness and usability issues
Operational:
Ability to share work in small groups (just like in Snell and Dodge high-tech, multi-screen locations)
Low risk of technical issues resulting in students being ignored by faculty or one another - whether in real time during a virtual class session, or over time on a discussion board
**There is no back of the room where students can hear those speaking from the front row
Tactical:
○ Relatively easy method to capture student attendance and assess student contributions
○ Relatively easy way to allow students to be clear on their own individual understanding level of
Strategic:
○ Relatively easy way to review and assess the efficacy of pedagogical methods
**(e.g., that students respond with greater understanding when the lecture was done before or after this particular type of case study?)
Strategic: deciding whether collaboration platform is enhancing or diminishing learning (i.e., what feasibly works "online")

8. Talk agenda What was I trying to accomplish?1
What was I trying to accomplish? 2
What information problems was I trying to address? 3
How did I make the task-technology fit decisions? 4
How do you go about assessing your own switching costs?

9. Assessing whether the platform is likely to help or hurt learning
Usefulness: to what degree will address your previously identified learning objectives and information problems?
Usability : to what degree is the platform intuitive and user-friendly (i.e., requiring no separate training)
Social influence: this includes both decreased social inhibitions as well as network effects from prior adoption

10. Some additional considerations about adoption

11. BLACKBOARD Discussion forums/boards created

12. Blackboard Collaborate use (both classic and ultra versions)
Adoption.stats: BlueJeans, another video conferencing option was introduced in 2015

13. Talk agenda What was I trying to accomplish?1
What was I trying to accomplish? 2
What information problems was I trying to address? 3
How did I make the task-technology fit decisions? 4
How do you go about assessing your own switching costs?

14. Switching costs in this case are moderated by…
No hardware investment
No additional software (at least for collaborate ultra in discussion board)
No data conversion (the disadvantage of course being the need to set up new sessions and forms)
Training support from ATS (don’t go it alone, but don’t wait till last minute to get help either)

15. Don’t forget about the opportunity cost of not switching
Having a backup for weather-related class cancellations (I never cancel anymore)
Provide students with virtual work skills practice opportunity
Capture and later review of assurance of learning assessments (polling integrated into collaborate ultra)
Capture and later review of small group interactions (in collaborate ultra in discussion board)

16. Additional slides time permitting
Which it probably won’t be…

17. [What could ever go wrong, right?]
This is a placeholder to tell the story about Bobby the Little drummer boy tech failure incident

18. Six discussion board best practices
Explicitly share your expectations. Possibly create a separate document/forum where students can read about norms online contributions (how not to be a troll or free rider).
Model proper online interaction and reinforce appropriate behavior with public recognition.
Craft an effective questions that do not have a clear yes/no answer to stimulate intellectual debate.
Incorporate multimedia resources into your questions to reduce the monotony of purely text-based interactions (encourage students to do the same).
Encourage new ideas by treating the discussion form as you would in class/on ground class participation (redundant comments are not contributions).
Moderate the discussion to maintain civility and professionalism.
Adapted from: