JIT Performance Tips for Online Students TechEd Handout (April, 2008)

JIT Performance Tips are developed as a student or group of students exhibit what the course instructor considers a course management or learning and study skills problem. By placing your tips in this word document, you will have an effective and efficient way of assisting your online students with the skills and competencies that they need in their online course activities. Please feel free to copy and paste and adapt the JIT performance tips listed above for your use with your students in your online courses. You may want to keep these tips on a thumb drive for quick access. BTW, having two monitors will make using Performance Tips more efficient.

Below are some examples of the JIT Performance Tips that can be used with students in online courses. Add your own to this list. Also, modify a tip by inserting your institution or course title.

Technology Tips

Find someone -- a friend, colleague, neighbor, the computer expert on your campus, a campus technology help desk -- that you can ask for help when you have a problem with your computer and especially with your courseware.

Have a backup location for computer access to your course. This may be on a campus in the computer commons, the library, or the campus learning center.

Course Content & Assignment Tips

In the first week of your course, overview all of the on screen course material (master schedule, syllabus, etc.) as well as your assigned textbooks so that you have some idea of the extent and possible difficulty of the course.

If you have not read the course syllabus, do it now. You will be tested on its contents next week at our classroom session.

Look at the course announcement every day - preferably early in the day. Additions, deletions, and other changes may be added. You can identify the changes since they are printed in a red font after the initial announcement post on Mondays.

Be sure to read your classmates information in the Discussion Board and to view their homepages in the Communication section so that you become part of your learning community.

Access the Discussion Board at least once a day. Scroll down the list of forums. If you see under “Messages” a yellow highlight over a number preceding the word “New,” this indicates that one or more messages have been added – messages that you have not read. Click on the underlined title of the forum to see the unread messages. Example: [11 messages]

If you have not already done so, start your course three-hole binder to keep course material where you can read and refer to it off-line. Use dividers in your course binder to store course information like the syllabus, the master schedule,     

Follow this daily routine for online course mastery: 1) log on to course and look at announcements to see if there have been any changes or additions, 2) Look at all the Discussion Board forums to see if there are any new messages (A yellow bar can be seen at the right of the forum description indicating that there are new messages, 3) Review your course binder to see what you need to do for your course.

Always place your name and the title of the assignment at the top of any assignments. Most of you did not identify yourself and the specific assignment when you posted it to the Digital Drop Box. Never turn in an assignment without identifying yourself and the topic of the assignment. Use a footer on every page to identify it so that your instructor knows to whom each page of an assignment belong

Whenever you make an assertion in a professional paper, document its source unless it is a universally known fact.

Always check any URL that you post so that you know that it is a hyperlink to the site that you are citing.

 Before publishing their writing, writers often have others read their writing to catch unclear statements, misspellings, grammatical errors, lack of clarity, and critical thinking inconsistencies.

Find the approved APA style for your citations quickly by referring to your course binder where you have a print version of APA examples as listed in the 5th Edition of the Publication Manual

To find the approved APA style for your citations quickly, store APA examples as listed in the 5th Edition of the Publication Manual (2001) in your course binder.

Always read the Announcements each time that you access Blackboard for any additions to the original announcement. Note that additions to an original announcement will be printed in a red font. Scroll down to the end of the announcement. Your screen may not show all the announcement items until you do so. Most additions are placed. xxxxxxxx

Use Blackboard's "Electric Blackboard" to make notes while you are in this course. You will find it in Student Tools. When you click on it, a small window opens that you can use to make notes as you are reading course materials. Your notes will remain in it until you cut and paste to Notepad or Wordpad or until you choose "Close." Choosing Submit after you make a note or add a note, will save it and you will view it each time that you choose to use it. Click on the "X" box at top right of the window to close it or the "-" to minimize it for later use as needed

Use a routine to stay on schedule in this online course. Every morning, access DEED 605 and look at the announcement to see if there is a new one or if there have been changes (in a red font) to the current announcement. Next, look at the Discussion Board. Wherever you see a yellow highlight which is to the right of the forum title, open the forum and look at the new message to see if it may be relevant to your course questions, concerns, assignments.

Look again at the "Course Reading Questions Help Manual' that is in Learning Support to remind yourself how to begin answering reading questions by starting your answer as a statement based on the question.

The Help Manual, "Course Reading Questions Help Manual" which you can find in the "Learning Support" section, is helpful for you to use as you answer these reading questions. Print it and store in your Course Binder for offline study and use.

In grading answers that do not answer the specifics of a question, I can see that one problem some of you have relates to how you misread the question and therefore answer the question in your mind brilliantly but you have not answered the question that was asked.

Consider this: Grade your assignment before your instructor does. Use the instructor's directions to grade your assignment.

You may be able to improve your course skills and performance by reading the "Learning Support” article: “Advice from Former Students," which you, of course, have printed and stored in your course binder.

You may want to try Dr. Benson's stress reduction exercise --an exercise that is free, that can be done almost anywhere, takes about seven minutes, and WORKS to reduce galvanic skin response, blood pressure, and promotes deep breathing. Directions for it are now accessible in the External Links section as Stress Reduction Exercise.

Review the special Learning Support Help manual “Reading & Answering Reading Questions” and follow its recommendations as you answer the reading questions.  

Always plan your workweek to include quality time for both online and offline course reading, reflection, and writing. Then set due dates to complete your proposed tasks. Finally, follow through and “work your plan.”

Remember to use the GSU Electronic Library for collateral reading on course topics. You can access it from Blackboard in "External Links."

Begin your research paper now and set aside time each week to update it

If you don't know what plagiarism is and it is not tolerated in this course, access

Email Tips

Always end your email with your signature file so that the instructor can easily recognize you and your affiliation. Your signature file contains your full name, institution, email address, and the URL of your web page if you have one. For directions in creating a signature file, go to Help in Netscape and Explorer and search for "signature."

Always proof read your email before you send it. Spelling errors are an embarrassment and indicate less than an acceptable academic style.

Do not be a cyber bully. If you are criticizing another student, send the email to your drafts folder and in a day or two go back to it and consider rewriting your comments.

Learning & Study Strategies Tips

Read, print, and use the "Task Organization Notes" page that is in Course Documents. It is a useful task management tool for your course assignments.

FOLLOW DIRECTIONS.

The Study Guides web site contains over 150 learning and study strategies handouts that you can print and store in your course binder when you need to review these skills.

If you feel shaky about your learning and study strategies skills, consider purchasing a study skill handbook to review these critical success skills. A list of recommended texts can be found in the course syllabus.

Online Student Skills & Strategies Handbook

For the following JIT Performance Tips, your students must have access to the Online Student Skills &Strategies Handbook either on reserve in the library or have a copy as an ancillary text for your course.

Performance Tips. The following performance tips can be used whenever you see the need to remind either one student or all students about a specific skill or competency that is needed. By cutting and pasting a performance tip into an announcement, a discussion board forum, or an email, you give students Just In Time assistance with a problem whenever a tutorial is needed. You also save valuable time and effort in indicating course problems and handbook solutions to your students – problems that occur frequently among online students.

When you send a course related email, always use an appropriate subject header followed by a slash and your initials to identify for your instructor both what it is you are discussing and who you are. See 3.1, 3.3, and 3.4 in your Online Student Skills and Strategies Handbook for tutorial assistance.

Remember that you can access this course from any computer that you have access to, such as a friend's, at a public library, at the institution's Computer Commons, at a Kinko's, or Starbuck's. See 4.1. in your Online Student Skills and Strategies Handbook for tutorial assistance.

Remember to print and store in your course binder any material that you can read, reflect upon, and respond to away from a computer connection – material like the course syllabus, grading policy, semester schedule, assignment directions, and any special help material that your instructor has placed in the course. See 4.5, and 5.1 in your Online Student Skills and Strategies Handbook for tutorial assistance.

You might consider going to your campus and getting F2F help with someone from its learning support center. See 6.6, 6.8, 6.9, 6.12, and 6.13 in your Online Student Skills and Strategies Handbook for tutorial assistance.

You may want to see a campus counselor to help you cope with this course. See 6.1, 6.6, and 6.14 in your Online Student Skills and Strategies Handbook for tutorial assistance.

Follow Directions. You evidently misread or omitted one or more of the steps in the assignment. See 6.15 in your Online Student Skills and Strategies Handbook for tutorial assistance.

You are not using the bibliographic format that is required for course assignments. Remember that all citations and references are to be formatted as described in the course syllabus. See 5.7 in your Online Student Skills and Strategies Handbook for tutorial assistance.

Remember that you need to consider getting some visual and physical rekief whenever you spend a lot of time at your computer. Not to do so can result in stress and visual fatigue. See 6.1 and 6.2 in your Online Student Skills and Strategies Handbook for tutorial assistance.

Your management and control of your time is critical to complete deadlines for your course assignments. For a tutorial, see 6.8 in your Online Student Skills and Strategies Handbook for tutorial assistance.

Your use of language is not acceptable as you email or post a response in the discussion forums. You may want to review 3.10, 4.7, 4.8, and 4.10 in your Online Student Skills and Strategies Handbook for tutorial assistance.

You have a serious problem in writing your responses to questions on the assigned readings. Consider following the steps in 5.9 of the Online Student Skills and Strategies Handbook for tutorial assistance- assistance that will help you not only respond well to reading questions but will result in increased points for your responses.