Huge congrats to Dr. Hongyan Yang, completing a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Education with a concentration in Learning Design and Technology at The University of Tennessee Knoxville, who yesterday defended her dissertation titled “Interactions in Asynchronous Courses: Students Perspectives and Instructors Design Strategies”! #GoVols
Committee members: Dr. Rachel Wong (Chair), Dr. Enilda Romero-Hall, Dr. Jennifer Morrow, Dr. Miriam Larson
Abstract:
Asynchronous learning is becoming increasingly prevalent, making it essential to ensure its effectiveness for the academic success and satisfaction of distance learners. Designing interactive engagement in asynchronous courses is a challenge for many asynchronous instructors. This study aims to investigate students’ perspectives and experiences regarding interactions within asynchronous courses and explore effective instructional design strategies to integrate meaningful interactions to foster students’ learning.
This dissertation research addresses three primary questions: (1) What is the relationship between students’ general satisfaction and diverse types of interactions, including learner-learner, learner-content, learner-instructor, and learner-interface interactions? (2) How do students rank the importance of these interactions? (3) What strategies do instructors use to facilitate these interactions?
Data were collected from 378 students using an online survey, and from 14 experienced asynchronous course instructors through qualitative interviews conducted via Zoom. For the survey quantitative data, correlations and multiple regression analysis were performed using SPSS, while interview qualitative data was analyzed using NVivo with descriptive coding.
The results of this study reveal that learner-content interaction is the strongest predictor of student satisfaction in asynchronous courses, highlighting the importance of high-quality, multimedia-rich, and well-organized course materials. While learner-instructor interaction also significantly influences satisfaction, the study emphasizes the need for timely communication, clear guidance, and a strong instructor presence. Additionally, the findings underscore the role of user-friendly technological platforms and the integration of peer interaction to foster a supportive learning community. Furthermore, the interviews with experienced instructors indicate that strategies such as the use of instructional videos, guided learning paths, and collaborative platforms, etc. are vital for improving learner engagement and success.
The findings suggest that enhancing student satisfaction and learning outcomes in asynchronous learning environments requires a balanced approach that prioritizes content quality, effective instructor support, and accessible technology. These insights contribute to the ongoing development of best practices in asynchronous course design, providing actionable recommendations that educators and instructional designers can implement to optimize the effectiveness of their courses.
This seems like the perfect time to come back to write a blog post again, after recently returning from the 2024 AECT International Convention. I am worried that if I share everything that I want to share, this blog post would be super lengthy. So, I going to do my best to it keep short and sweet!
I first joined AECT in 2009 and that year I attended my first AECT conference. I had ZERO funds to attend the conference but a classmates of mine offered to let me crash in her hotel (at no extra cost) and share her per diem with me (our plan was to live off pizza for a a few days). The organization she worked for was paying for her trip and she wanted to support me. I am never going to forget that. Thank you Dr. Sonya Bland-Williams!
Back to #AECT24.
This year the AECT International Convention was special in many ways. First, the conference was returning to Kansas City. A place that is very special to my heart:
In the spirit of sharing stories, which is the theme of AECT 2024, I thought I would share a short but special story with all of you: Exactly twenty years ago, I embarked in my higher education studies in the United States. I was accepted into an International Business program at Emporia State University in Emporia, KS. I left the safety of home and started my own journey. The first stop on that journey was Kansas City and very specifically this hotel, The Kansas City Marriott Downtown. So, in many ways, getting to do this AECT keynote here, in Kansas City and in this hotel, feels to me like I have come full circle. So, for that I am very thankful!
Also, conferences in Kansas City are wonderful opportunity to meet with my college roommate, Mikelle. There is something about sharing a college dorm with someone else, you either become really close or you may never want to see each other again. Mikelle and I have been friends from the moment we met, 20 years ago! She is such a kind soul! Her and her family were so incredible welcoming of me when I was in college. Mikelle was living in the dorm just for fun, because her family actually lived in our college town. So I was able to spend time with them (her family) regularly!
Another aspect that made this conference so special was that I was attending #AECT24 with my doctoral advisees: Wei Wang, Ashley King, and Yuexin (Jennifer) Duan. We have been working on projects for some time but we were finally able to start sharing some of the findings from our research with the AECT community this year. Wei is a force to be reckoned with! He is making moves as a researcher and a graduate assistant for the Digital Learning team at UTK. This year, Wei and his colleagues from Digital Learning presented “Implementing Generative AI in Practice: Designing Assessments and Learning Activities in Faculty Development Programs“. This work focuses on professional development that Digital Learning has been doing in the UTK campus to engage in conversations with faculty about the use of generative AI in higher education and its implications.
Ashley and Jennifer presented on a “work in progress project”. As a research team, we have been working a on a range of different systematic reviews. The project that Ashley and Jennifer shared related to “small group dynamics in asynchronous online learning”. The presentation primarily focused on the introduction of the topic up until the process of analysis of the journal articles for inclusion in the systematic review. We will continue to move forward with data extraction and the remainder of the process. Also, quick shout to all the members of our team who were not able to attend but have worked with us on this project!
The best way I can describe this experience is that: I am a proud advisor and that I am lucky to work with such an amazing team!
Then there is Dr. Lucy Santos Green! What else do I need to say! Lucy is the mastermind behind this project called “Online Ready”. Long story short, Online Ready is a federally funded project that aims to equips school librarians to deploy effective practices for culturally competent and inclusive K-12 online instruction. Having Lucy at AECT to speak about this project with me, was definitely a highlight! We have been working on this project for the last 3 years virtually and getting to see her and feed off her energy is just so amazing! Here are our slides. Our presentation at AECT 2024 focused on the implementation of Online Ready with school librarian with the goal of receiving feedback during Summer 2023. Online Ready will be available open access for anyone to use and share by next spring! More on this coming soon!
This is getting long! Yikes!
This year, it was such a humbling experience to also be the closing keynote for the conference. When the organizer of AECT 2024, Drs. Tonia Dousay, Tutaleni Asino, andRebecca Reese reach out early this year, I was so incredibly honored! I know that we have a wide range of colleagues who are doing impactful work, so it meant a lot to be considered for this role. What made it even more special was that a dear friend and colleague was also going to be a keynote speaker, Dr. George Veletsianos. George’s keynote, as expected “delivered”! It already had a major impact on my advisees and their career goals. So, I am very grateful for his message!
Technology, Imagination, and Education Futures: Education systems worldwide face profound economic, demographic, political, environmental, and social challenges. Traditionally, our field has responded by either embracing the latest technological advancements or striving to make instruction more effective, efficient, and engaging. However, these approaches are not enough. They are limiting and insufficient. They constrain our imagination and curtail our ability to create better educational futures for ourselves, our students, and our societies. In this talk, I will explore how speculative methods can offer creative, exploratory, and fruitful ways to examine, produce, and rethink the learning environments we are developing and supporting.
As George’s colleague, Dr. Bruna Damiana Heisfeld mentioned: “great minds think alike.” Because both keynote discussed how we can move forward as a field considering ways in which we can humanize learning design research and practice. Here are the slides from my closing keynote and my abstract:
(Re)Igniting Empowered Actions: Over the last few years, we have seen many political, social, and educational shifts that have impacted how we live, work, and learn. We have also experienced a global pandemic that changed us. In many ways we have spent a great deal of time simply surviving. All of these experiences have shaped who we are as individuals, but also as learning designers, educators, and researchers. Today, as we move forward, it is even more important than ever before that we critically reignite our purpose with empowered actions. This talk reflects on why and how we connect with the world around us in intentional empathetic ways that at the core aim to humanize learning design practice and the use of emerging technologies in education. Let’s tap into the power of our stories to share the narratives that often go untold. For good reason, there is a strong focus on the reimagining of our educational futures. Yet, we need to be cognizant that our actions today already shape those visions of tomorrow. Today, equitable and ethical learning design practices and research are not just a “good idea,” they must be the norm. The reality is that efficient, effective, and engaging in not enough to fully capture the socio-cultural context of the world we live in.
Thank you AECT for such a memorable experience!
Also because I always take a million photos: Here you go! Also, thanks to those who shared photos with me!
Every year the College of Education, Health, and Human Services organizes a Graduate Student Research Colloquium. Of course, when the notification for the graduate colloquium was shared with faculty, I encouraged all the Learning, Design, and Technology (LDT) graduate students to submit their research to the colloquium. I was extremely excited to find out that three of our LDT students were accepted to present! Unfortunately one of the students was unable present due to another commitment. Ashley King and Wei Wang were there to share their projects with attendees of the colloquium.
Ashley King is a lecturer at University of Tennessee Knoxville in the College of Business. She is a LDT Ph.D. candidate. I am her advisor and dissertation chair. She is also a research team collaborator! Wei Wang is an LDT first year doctoral student and I serve as his co-advisor (along with Dr. Josh Rosenberg). He recently presented at AERA 2024 in one of the graduate students research-in-progress roundtables!
Session: “Politic Born of Necessity”: Latina and Latinx Feminists Remembering Genealogies, Imagining Futures
Lugones, Maria A. 2003. Peregrinajes/pilgrimages: Theorizing coalitions against multiple oppressions. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield. Google Scholar
Session: “Rupturing the White Gaze: Centering Chicana/Latina Feminista Methodologies and Epistemologies in Qualitative Research” Symposium Resources
You are welcome to pre-order it via Amazon. You also can wait until it is released because it will be available open access! As the date gets closers and we find out more information, I will be sharing more about the book. So excited!
I should add that Athabasca University Press has stated that it is possible that the book could be release Fall 2024. More than anything just know that the book is coming either later this year or early 2025 we will have the pleasure of sharing with you!
Last year, I received an invitation from my colleague, Clare Daniel, to present in a panel to discuss the Feminist Pedagogy for Teaching Online digital guide and other scholarly efforts related to the digital guide in person at Tulane University. The invitation to travel to New Orleans was extended to Niya Bond and myself (Clare, Jacque, and Liv live in New Orleans). The goal was for all the five editors of the digital guide to join in the panel.
Fast forward to February 2024, Niya and I travelled to New Orleans for the in-person panel. Meeting my colleagues in-person for the very first time was a joyous occasion. I have been personally interacting and collaborating with the FTPO editors for the last 3 years and we had only met through Zoom. It was so nice to fully interact outside the Zoom software and engage in informal convos that allowed us to learn more about each other personally and professionally.
“We want to acknowledge that this panel discussion is part of a lecture series dedicated to Adele Ramos Salzer (NC ’40). Her interest in academic programs focusing on women’s experiences led to the establishment of the Salzer lecture series. Her donation endowing the series has been generously strengthened through gifts in her memory from her family, friends, and classmates.”
Clare Daniel
During our visit to Tulane, we all got to have an short meeting to discuss panel, have dinner to talk about every under the sun (also, celebrate Clare’s new promotion at Tulane University), and have the panel at the Tulane University’s Newcomb Institute for students, faculty, and staff.
The editors of the FPTO digital guideThe editors of the FPTO after the panel presentation
During the panel we:
Provided a brief explanation of the origins of the digital guide and the idea for the forthcoming book
Shared why and how we expanded our team of editors
Shared a brief description of the forthcoming book
Discussed how and why we expanded the guide to include annotated assignments
Shared an explanation of the blog and the collaborative editing process
Allowed for Q & A
It was really nice to have such a strong presence of students during the panel session. The students were very curious about of opinions on online learning, now past the COVID-19 pandemic. We also had some good questions and conversations with faculty who attended the event. I am very thankful for the invite to participate in this panel. I am also grateful for the opportunity to meet my colleagues in-person for the first-time. Online environments, synchronous and asynchronous, have allowed is the opportunity to genuinely connect and communicate. However, it is always nice to further engage in-person to deeper our understanding of each other (personally & professionally), converse about the future of the digital guide, and discuss upcoming projects.
I guess it is time for me to write a blogs post about my forthcoming book 😊
It has been a while since I first announced that I was working on my next book and sadly due to various reasons I had to rescheduled my submission of the book to the publisher twice! But over the last two months I have moved full steam ahead with this book project.
I love how it is taking shape and that I get to work on it. Today, I was working on chapter 12 (in a coffee shop) and I was just smiling thinking that someone else would get to read this work.
This is not a book in which I tell someone else’s stories or tell you how to be a learning designer. The book is about learning designers telling their stories. It is about conversations, experiences, and journeys.
Super excited to connect with a second cohort of school librarians this summer as part of the Online Ready project led by my colleague Dr. Lucy Green and funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
As part of the project, I am teaching an online asynchronous mini-course on Culturally-Competent Design. Here is an overview of the mini-course: tiny.utk.edu/MiniCourse_CCD
Also, here is a short video I made for one of the modules:
You know when you go to an interview and the hiring committee ask you to predict the future! The typical question: Where do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years? Honestly, can we even answer this question? Don’t get me wrong I have asked this question and I have answered this question. We’re my predictions accurate? I don’t remember 😊
Today I was trying to make my way through my to-do list when I got a notification on my phone. It was one of those were you see a photo “on this days” years ago. I looked at it and it show me that:
10 years ago today I was hooded by my doctoral advisor, Dr. Ginger Watson and I celebrated my earning my doctoral degree (I actually had a bunch of revisions and didn’t really graduate until the end of summer but who cares I still partied like a rockstar!). I remember my mom and my brother came to celebrate with me and that was pretty awesome.
Drs. Ginger Watson and Enilda Romero-Hall
5 years ago I was in Zurich, Switzerland leading a study abroad program with primarily undergraduate students and an alumni of the Instructional Design and Technology program from The University of Tampa. My co-coordinator Merrie was honestly the best! I don’t know how I would have finished this trip without Merrie! 💖
Switzerland study abroad program
Reflection on this post:
So I am now, 10 year later from getting hooded, wrapping up my first year as a faculty member at The University of Tennessee Knoxville. I am working on a research plan with my first doctoral student. I am conducting research with two additional graduate students. I am the graduate coordinator of the learning, design, and technology doctoral program and we are in the process of welcoming a nice group of doctoral students this fall (very exciting!). I am also working on other research and writing projects.
If you had asked me 10 years ago or even 5 years ago, where I was planning to be in ____ number of years, I do not know if I would have even been to come up with my current life. As we say in Panama: la vida es loca y a cualquiera le toca!
So I am a little bit in my feelings. Tonight as I wrapped up AERA 2023 and was posting about it on LinkedIn. I realize that this year marks my 10th anniversary of attending this annual meeting of educational researchers.
I do not know why I feel it is special, the 10th anniversary. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that 10 years ago, I just embarked in this adventure (on my own – without my advisor – self-funded) without any clear idea of what I was doing but I just did it.
I remember a few months before AERA 2013 my advisor was talking to me about conferences and she told me: “AERA is where Sweller goes to present about Cognitive Load Theory. It is a hard to get accepted. But if you are doing education research, that is where you want to go.” I do not know why but my immediate thought was: “well that is exactly were I am going to go.” I went home and I told my partner: “I want to go to AERA, I need to invest on my professional development.” Without hesitation, he just said: Sounds like a plan!
BTW, in my post from 2013 I wrote this “The AERA program was massive! Thankfully, I had browsed through the online program and downloaded my schedule to the mobile app before my arrival to San Francisco.” Dear AERA can we go back to whatever app we used in 2013? The App this year was awful!
Here are other blogs posts I have written about AERA throughout the years:
On December 2015, I gave birth to my son. I was not initially planning to attend AERA 2016 but a dear friend and colleague asked me to moderate a panel and so I made my way to Washington DC (It was the first time I travel after having my son): The “Quick Update” Post
I guess I did not blog for AERA 2017 (San Antonio), AERA 2018 (New York), and AERA 2019 (Toronto). But I was there lol
AERA 2020 was cancelled. I was really looking forward to San Francisco but glad that the conference was cancelled.
During AERA 2015, I participated in the Division C – Early Career Mentoring Program. I met some pretty awesome scholars as part of the program. Here is a blog post about it: New Faculty Mentoring Program: 2015 Cohort [Research, Teaching, Collaboration, & Support] #AERA15 #AERADivC. This year during AERA 2023, I had the opportunity to connect with colleague Bodong Chen, who in addition to his amazing scholarly work, is genuinely a wonderful person. The first thing he said to me when saw each other was: “Remember we met here in Chicago 8 years ago in the mentoring program!”
This has been a journey. Somehow in the massive sea of people that is AERA, I have created my own community and network.
Some highlights of AERA 2023:
The first three nights in Chicago for the conference, I had dinners in which we (me and other who were with me) just spoke Spanish and that was pretty freaking awesome!
Meeting colleagues from Universidad de Sevilla (Thanks to Jeff Carpenter): Paula Marcelo-Martinez, Carlos Marcelo, and Paulino Murillo. In one dinner outing we enjoyed some Chicago style pizza together, It was pretty awesome to do the Chicago style pizza with colleagues from Spain. Paula and Carlos are doing some research on Edu Influencers in Spain: Here are slides from their presentation titled “Don’t call me an influencer: New digital artisans in education.”
Definitely getting to catch up with Bodong in person for the first time in a long time.
Presenting two awards at the SIG Instructional Technology business meeting and starting in my role as program chair (please submit to SIG IT and sign up to review!)
Presenting work that colleague Maria Luna-Thomas and I already published on Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in Digital Praxis: tiny.utk.edu/CRP_AERA23
Attending the University of Canterbury breakfast on Sunday morning and experiencing a Māori start of the day, Karakia. Thank you for the invite Cheryl Brown!
Catching up with doctoral students from Old Dominion University (Go Monarchs)!
Presenting a paper session on some part of the work that I started with Dr. Lina Gomez-Vasquez and our teams of graduate and undergraduate researchers on the use of digital networks by academics in higher education.
Getting to see so many friends, colleagues, and connections.
Two resources that I want to add to this blog post because I can come back to them later:
Design Goodiness 
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