>> You've tuned into HubTalk, a podcast about teaching, learning, and technology.

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>> Welcome back to this episode of HubTalk. I'm Colin Stapp.

>> I'm Bill Hamlin.

>> And today, we're tackling the topic of RSI, regular and substantive interaction. Today, we have with us Beth Hale from the Center of Academic Innovation and faculty member Jeremy Trabue, who teaches in the English department. Thank you for joining us.

>> Sure, thanks for having us.

>> So, Beth, could we just start with an overview of what RSI is, why it's in the news, or why it's at the forefront of what we're talking about in online education these days?

>> Okay, so RSI, or regular and substantive interaction, has really become a hot topic in online education, and for a couple of reasons. Partially, we're looking at the quality of online instruction, and we're trying to make sure that students are receiving a similar experience, instructional experience, that they would receive in the face-to-face environment. And that's completely possible now in online learning, with technology. As we know, teachers really are the important thing about instruction, so regular and substantive interaction is all about that instructor interaction, and facilitation, and delivery. And so, it's important because it matters that our students are getting a good experience. The other reason, though, that we're hearing a lot about it is that RSI is an aspect that the U.S. Department of Education looks at when they audit programs to make sure that they're meeting the criteria for distance education.

>> And so, on your last sabbatical, Beth, you did a little research around RSI. Can you kind of give a CliffNotes version of what you did?

>> Yeah. A couple of years ago, I took a one-term sabbatical, and I looked in-depth at the recent audit findings on Western Governors University, or WGU. And that audit found that they were lacking in RSI, in meeting the RSI requirements. And so, it really created a lot of controversy in the field of distance education, and it was in the news a lot in my industry. And so, it was really very interesting, first of all, to look not only at the -- at how the U.S. Department of Education had defined the criteria around RSI, but also how they had evaluated that. And then, it was very interesting to see how WGU responded, and WGU is known for its innovation. And so, it was interesting also to see how kind of more traditional criteria around RSI were being applied to a very innovative and progressive instructional model, and the impact that that had.

>> So Jeremy, Colin mentioned you teach in our English department. What do you teach, and where does RSI come into play in your teaching?

>> So for the past four or five years, I've basically taught one class online, which is English 106. That's introduction to poetry. That's a literature class, and I didn't realize I was doing RSI until Beth told me. I was just teaching and groping my way forward towards, you know, teaching in the way that seemed best, and met my students' need the most. One of the things we hear as faculty all the time about online classes is, "I never heard from the teacher. I never hear from the teacher. The teacher never posts any feedback," I mean, when they're complaining.

>> Sure.

>> I'm not saying they complain all the time, but when we talk to students about positive and negative experiences, those are the -- you know, that's the number one negative experience. And also, I came to online education from the classroom. I mean, I -- certainly, there was no online education when I was a student, or even when I started teaching, really. So I suppose I carried those habits with me. Also, the subject, right -- we're discussing literature. It's a subject that is learned in conversation. You know, it's not something where we give multiple-choice tests, and there's sort of objective criteria that students master. It's something that, you know, they need to demonstrate through words, through the use of language. And what I came to, after many years of sort of experimenting with this model and that model, trying it this way and that way, is basically, I kind of flipped. And I have students ask two questions a week, and they also post a couple of -- I call them observations, so it's questions and observations. The observations are really more for them. I'm not too closely looking at or assessing those, but I answer each of the questions fully. And they have to be original questions, which means the other students can't have already asked them. Did I go off-script? Am I --

>>

>> No, you're good.

>> -- out of sequence here? Okay.

>> No.

>> So they need to make sure -- you know, that forces them to read other students' questions, and see what the whole conversation is being like. And then I answer them, and I answer them completely. And then I don't let it drop there. I grade the discussion, and I've built a little -- I forget what you guys call them in Blackboard. It's not a rubric. It's --

>> Just a grading form type thing?

>> -- yeah, you know, where instead of seeing a letter grade, I can sort of customize what they see. So on the back end, I put a numeric value, but that numeric value turns into feedback on the student's, you know, My Grade module that says, "You have an unanswered question from the teacher," or, "Your question" -- you know, "A response is required." And that's basically -- they're not getting credit until they've gone back, read my response, and followed up. So I'll ask, "Does that make sense? Do you have an additional question?" Or sometimes, I'll do something a little more Socratic, and say, "Well, if you want to know this, first, why don't you tell me that?" You know, and there's a followup. So I'm using, you know, sort of a combination of extrinsic and intrinsic prompts to get them to engage in the first place, and then to reengage. Because what I found a lot of times is, students weren't even reading the answers to my questions. So I realized I needed to, like, add a second loop, and you have to train the students to do this. It takes two or three weeks before they kind of, like, click into, oh, he's serious. He really is answering these. This really is happening. So I have to be, you know, both patient and firm with giving those -- I'm making little air quotes, studio audience -- those "bad grades," so that they're like, oh, wait, wait. And then, once you've used those sort of extrinsic tools to get them engaged, then generally what I find is the intrinsic motivation of having an actual conversation takes over.

>> See, I think that's huge, because you're closing that loop of just answering two questions, you answering or responding, and then moving on and forgetting. Because you're not -- in English, you're wanting them to kind of build on all this, like you said.

>> Yeah, and a lot of times, that stops after just, like, the one additional cycle. I ask a follow-up question. They come back, and they respond, but sometimes it goes on for a long time. There may be, you know, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And I try to e strategic about that, in terms of my own workload, and also in terms of value to the student. Like, does this seem like a tangential sort of an issue that I could push them on? Maybe I won't. I'll let the answer sit at a, you know, slightly less depth, but if it seems like a core issue to the course content, I'll push it harder and say, "Okay, well, yes, but what's the next thing?'

>> Okay, so you just touched on something that I wanted to find out about, and your workload and time commitment for responding to two questions for every student, every week, and just the practicality of that.

>> Yeah, I mean, I want to be clear that I teach one online class, and the enrollment is usually about 20. Usually, you know, I get to 25 or 28 on the books, a couple of them are not real students. They're sort of just zombies. Maybe they participate the first week or two, and then they're gone. You know, if I was teaching social science, and I had five sections with 40 students each, this would be utterly impossible.

>> Right.

>> There's no way. I mean, I think you could still do an abbreviated version, where you, you know -- not every week multiple things, but it's a small class. Also, I don't -- I barely give any other homework. I'm not, you know, grading quizzes every week. I'm not, you know, taking a weekly response paper that they write, or anything like that. There's sort of a midterm assignment, and there's a final assignment. And other than that, this is all I do. I'm not -- I've taken out other graded assignments, and it's just this dialogue that's going on, except those other two points. Midterm, there's sort of a bigger writing project, and end of the term, there's kind of a bigger writing project.

>> So it almost also seems like, while some folks might be hesitant to add even more of this interactive component to a class, where you're answering questions and doing that loop back and forth, maybe they're concerned it might add to their workload, but perhaps also to the students' workload. But if you're focusing on that as the main way of assessing what your students are getting from your content, and eliminating some of the busy work, or just kind of hoops they have to jump through, then it's probably not really adding much more to their plate either. In fact, it might be streamlining, or making things more efficient.

>> Yeah, it can be. I mean, you know, it's all about intelligent course design on the front end. I have a friend who's a game designer actually. I mean, he's not a teacher at all. He codes video games, and does some design work. But he said something to me once that had almost more impact on my teaching practice than anything else. He said, "People play the game you write." That was it, and that, like, still echoes in my head, like a big bell. Like, whatever you set up as the teacher, that's what students will do. Students are rational actors, and if class participation is worth 5%, and they can do it in a token way, then they'll do it in a token way. You know, you have to set up a structure that creates a process, and directs that process towards the outcomes that you want. You know, so for this class, for this subject matter, the back and forth every week is not only the process that I feel like is going to be most useful for these students. It's also how they're going to learn this material the best. There's no -- like, I can't give them homework exercises, like a math teacher could, and get a sense of their progress by, you know, oh, they got 78% of these quadratic equations correct. They must be sort of learning the material. I need to hear their thoughts about the material, and interact with them to get -- you know, to bounce off what's happening. So designing for the outcome you want, write the game that you want them to play. And so, you know, definitely I streamline. I don't do a lot of things that other people might do in a similar class, in terms of -- well, like a weekly reaction paper is very common in a literature class, and I don't do anything like that. So I've tossed all those things out of my workload and the students' workload, and tried to focus instead on this, that I think is -- they get a lot more out of it, and honestly, so do I. You know, most teachers get into the field because we like teaching, and I think most teaching happens in a conversation, as opposed to, you know, a lot of just assignment, grade, assignment, grade kind of turns into sort of a punitive loop.

>> Sure.

>> Keeps you from going on autopilot as well in your teaching, because you're interacting and active with the students.

>> Absolutely.

>> That quote is huge.

>> Yeah, right?

>> I mean, it's so simple, but so profound.

>> It was for me.

>> And your comment on intelligent design up front is actually what, in the tech hub, we encourage in course design. So that's cool, that you're designing for those outcomes, and meeting those outcomes. What are some of the big-picture benefits, you think, of the interaction for the students?

>> I mean, I guess I'm reporting secondhand on what I, you know, infer from what students tell me. But it creates a sense that there's a real experience there. I mean, I think we've all had experiences -- I won't name any names, trainings we might have to go through for work, where you're reading something you actually care about with 80% of your brain, and clicking through a PowerPoint slideshow with the other 20% of your brain. And students will do that, too, if there's no, you know, sense that there's another human being on the end of the line. It gives them -- especially, I think, the way I sort of flipped it into they ask the questions, instead of answer my questions. It gives them more of a sense of agency, like they're driving, and that's not really true. I mean, I'm controlling the curriculum, and the content, and everything that I'm giving them to ask questions about. I have structured and shaped, but I think it creates the sense that, oh, I have control here. I can push the content of this class towards what I'm interested in. And that's not entirely an illusion, either. I mean, you know, so we have students obviously with, you know -- this is an elective class. Nobody has to take this class for any major. So I get students who are -- I want to be a -- you know, I'm in the nursing program. I want to be a welder, or I want to be a teacher. And when I let them drive the questions, I will see -- not usually right away, but as the term goes on, they start sort of, you know, applying. Oh, you know, in this poem, where the person is ill, I never thought about the way that a sick person responds to how the EMT treats them, and that's what this poem -- I'm in the EMT program. So I wondered if you thought -- you know, and as a poetry teacher, I don't care about EMTs, except that I hope they take care of me when I finally stroke out. But I -- by letting the student drive the dialogue, I'm just letting them build the connection towards where I want them to get, which is better understanding and appreciating the poem, and seeing that this content area has something for them, even if they're not going to be an English major when they grow up.

>> Again, it just seems so simple, but it has a profound impact on the student engagement, and them learning how to interact with one another, draw conclusions, things like that.

>> I think so. You know, and it also -- if there's a downside -- I don't know if you were going to ask this later. Sorry if I'm jumping the script, but --

>> No, go ahead.

>> -- if there's a downside, it can be that -- and this is, I think, a problem anytime we innovate as educators. Some of my students just get so like, what? What? What are you -- I don't understand what you want from me, and that can be a real barrier, where they're just like, I don't -- why am I asking questions? What is it -- you know, I took an online class because I wanted to only use 20% of my brain, and click through some PowerPoints. So, you know, sometimes you get that. There's some resistance there. I find most students overcome that, and that's one of the challenges as a teacher, is you -- especially up front, like, the first two weeks of the term, I try not to go to bed with any unanswered questions. And that makes those first couple weeks pretty busy. I mean, generally, I put my kids to bed, and then I sit down in my office, and I make sure that it's cleared. But what I've found is, you know, it's just like a puppy. You don't have to swat the puppy every week if you just swat it the first couple times it pees on the rug. It learns, right? So you can set an expectation in the first couple of weeks that I'm there. I'm watching. I'm paying attention. I'm going to respond quickly, and once you set that tone, you know, later in the term, I can wait a couple days, you know. But I'm still maintaining the students' attention, and, you know, they're there and present.

>> Yeah, that's huge, too.

>> You know, Jeremy, you make an excellent point there, and I've heard that from other veteran online instructors, particularly one that's worked with all of us, and that is Marsha Suitor [assumed spelling], who was a mentor for many of us. She said the exact same thing. If you set the tone and the expectations up front, early in the term, it's huge. You just -- you cannot undervalue the benefit of doing that. And from there on out, your students will follow your model. You can slack off a little bit, and -- but the tone has been set. And everyone knows that that's what's going to happen in this online classroom.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> Marsha Suitor was my mentor teacher when I was first hired here, and I wasn't even teaching online. I didn't teach online, I think, my first five years. I was all face-to-face, but she was my mentor teacher. So I'm sure that, embedded deep in the kernel here, deep in the code, is some Marsha Suitor lines are in there, for sure.

>> That's interesting.

>> I was going to say something about that, you know, and part of establishing that tone -- I found that I did need to add that -- I call it extrinsic, you know, a little bit of a stick, where they're, like -- because, you know, in my ideal world, I wouldn't give grades. You know, I'm not interested in that stuff. I'm interested in the content. But, you know, we're in a system, and the students are participating in the system. And you kind of have to speak the language of the system in order to get them to take it seriously, at least at first. So, you know, part of that being on it the first couple weeks is being on giving bad grades the first couple weeks. And, you know, this is part of my whole teaching practice also, is nothing in my class is permanent until week eight. They can always revise. They can always finish. They can always sort of come back to stuff. But if a student opens -- they blow off their week one orientation assignment, and they don't write the self-introduction. Then they come back in week two without having checked for five days, and they've got a bunch of zeroes, and, like, a zero-percent average, F, that suddenly gets their attention.

>> Sure.

>> And they're like, oh, wait, you know, even though I wasn't here to notice that he's responding to other students, I checked out for a week. Now when I come back -- oh, wait, there were consequences. So I try to -- again, it's all about design, right? What do I want? I want my students to try hard. I want it to be safe for them to fail, and if they do fail, I want them to do it again. The banner in my writing class website -- not this class, but -- is this Japanese saying, "Fall down seven times, stand up eight," which, you know, hopefully the sense of it is clear. But if you -- we all -- everybody almost would agree. Oh, yeah, sure, that's what my students do, but again, you have to create a game that actually plays that way, where there is no permanent, you know, punitive damage for failing the first time, or the second time even. And that incentivizes, in that extrinsic system, coming back to the same task over and over again. So I -- you know, I -- at first, I didn't attach grades to it. I was just like, well, you know, at the end of the term, I'll assess your participation with a, you know, letter grade. And I got much less participation from students than -- you know, now, again, those first couple weeks, I'm really on top of -- and then they can see their grades change. Oh, I answered his question. I followed the instructions. I actually wrote something meaningful. Oh, now I got credit, and then, you know, it's another part of that -- it's not enough that I just am there answering the questions. It's also, you know, a grading structure that pushes students towards the behavior I want and reinforces it.

>> Jeremy, you were mentioning that it -- you've landed on these strategies of -- you've eliminated other assignments. You keep your assessment and activities in the class to these two questions, and then maybe responding to another prompt. How long did it take you to kind of figure out a strategy that would work for you?

>> How long have I been teaching [laughter]?

>> That's a great answer.

>> It's continual improvement. I'm always, like, restlessly reassessing -- what did I do? How could I have done it better? And, you know, when I think, "what did I do, and how could I have done it better," that includes for myself, too. I mean, I will give you guys a Russian vocabulary lesson. This is one of my favorite words, and I'm constantly trying to bring it into English. There's this word in Russian, Stankovite [assumed spelling], and it derives from this Russian guy, Mr. Stankovich [assumed spelling]. Mr. Stankovich was the greatest coal miner in the history of the Soviet Union. He was constantly exceeding his work quotas by a factor of two, of four, of seven, and as a consequence, Mr. Stankovich was the most hated person in the mine, because the bosses were always saying, "Oh, why can't you produce seven times as much coal as you're supposed to, like Mr. Stankovich" so that his name became an insult in the Soviet Union, in the Russian language. He's a real Stankovite, meaning he's making the rest of us look bad. My point is, when I'm talking about, like, continual improvement, I'm continually trying to improve my own quality of life also. You know, it's like, what am I doing that is wasting my time? You know, where am I putting in effort that doesn't seem to be helping students, that's extraneous? Because, I mean, the last thing I want when I wake up in the morning is, what am I going to do to make more work for myself today? That is, you know, never anything I think. I always think, you know, what can I do to make this the best experience I can for students, and then how can I do that without going crazy? You know, like, I noticed, for instance, one term, the class went all the way to 30, which is our cap, and some programs have caps higher than that, and it stayed there. Like, I think, one student dropped, and even in week eight, week nine, I had 27, 28 fully participating, wide-awake students. And I changed it to one question a week around week six or seven, because I couldn't keep up. You know, continual improvement and continual change means for the teacher also. Like, you know, is there work that you're doing that is dead weight, or, you know, that's not -- that's not adapted to the realities of your situation? So I'm always trying. I'm always resetting, and, like, with this last kind of iteration of -- big iteration of the class design, I'm trying to think where I -- that was maybe three or four years ago. And I've gone through things with textbooks also. You know, first I had an expensive book, and then I tried -- I had a sabbatical, a long-term sabbatical where I sort of wrote in tidy form, and formatted, and did all the HTML, all my sort of lecture notes, and I said, "We're going to do this textbook-free. I'm going to look to poems that are out there on different websites, that I felt were reliable," and that didn't work. Great. So then I went to another textbook, and then finally, I did a textbook through Chemeketa Press. So when I brought the new Chemeketa Press textbook in, I kind of rebuilt the class from the ground up, because I had a new text. And I wanted everything kind of aligned with it, and that was maybe three years ago. I'm doing something similar. I've got a hybrid writing class, and I alternate with them. One week in class, we're having a test, or some kind of, like, activity, and the next week, we have kind of discussion/mini lecture. So the weeks when we're having a test or a writing activity in class, students are doing online questions, just like in the poetry class. So they're supposed to go to the reading for that week, come up with one concept that they didn't understand. You know, and it's working great as a -- you know, just sort of slotted right into the hybrid thing. Again, I'm doing that instead of -- a lot of teachers would have, like, you know, a weekly mini-essay, or, you know, something where you're getting -- and the theory is kind of the same. Keep the students engaged, but I want, you know, something that's more interactive, and that's more student-centered, in terms of them driving it, you know, towards where they want to be.

>> That's great. So we got two for one from you, because you talked about online, and then you just mentioned hybrid, and some strategies for that, too. So that's -- this is great.

>> Can I add something?

>> Sure.

>> Another thing that I cut out completely is mandatory student-to-student responses.

>> Why is that?

>> Because in my experience, it's 99% trivial. I -- the metaphor I use is it's all noise, and no signal. Students do exactly what you tell them to do. You must respond, so they respond, "Hey, great ideas, Brittany." Why? Why? It's a waste of everyone's precious few moments of mortal life.

>> Right.

>> I get the idea that we're trying to replicate, you know, a peer-to-peer conversation. I think any experienced teacher would tell you it's hard to generate peer-to-peer conversations in a face-to-face class with six people. Students are resistant for lots of reasons we could talk to -- talk about another time. But, you know, in an online environment, hope I'm not making anybody mad, but I think it's a complete waste of time. Now, every now and then, you get some more structured thing, like a -- you know, a peer review of an assignment, and there's a form that they need to follow. And sometimes, those kind of things can be useful, and every class has that one great student who actually does, like, oh, you asked about this. Well, did you know this? And they're -- you know, but you can't design for the exception, right? Like, it's folly to design your class for, like, that top 2% teacher's pet. You got to, you know, kind of design your class for the middle, the average. What I do, as I said earlier, is students really do have to at least read the other students' posts. Because if they ask a question somebody else already asked, then I say, zero, repost, you got to do this over again. So they're at least seeing kind of how the conversation is going, and I say, you know, if you want to jump in, please do, and that sort of gives permission to those little eager puppies. But everybody else, if you don't have anything to say, then don't say anything.

>> But it's not a prescribed, respond to three people.

>> Yeah, no.

>> It has to be 100 words.

>> No, I have never seen in my own work or as a guest in somebody else's shell that generate anything meaningful.

>> Well, and you make a great point, because in a face-to-face class, just because you have a small group discussion doesn't mean everyone's going to contribute equally, or someone may speak more than the other, just because of a comfort level. Same thing online, so --

>> Same thing online, yeah, and I think -- you know, I don't have, like, research data to prove this, but my felt sense would be, it's actually harmful when you force people to do -- there's a threshold. Almost all of education is forcing people out of their comfort zone, and that's good. But when you push them too hard, too fast, all it does is, they just recoil from it. You know, I teach mostly electives, or the classes I love the most are electives. So I think about this all the time. You know, people have other options, and that's really always true of any education. People can always drop out, you know, and so, I think, you know, we need to kind of keep that in mind. Yes, you know, we push our students. We push them out of their comfort zone, but at the same time, be strategic about it,you know. Inflict the discomfort where there's a payoff, not just to make them say, "Nice job, Brittany" to each other 70 times a term.

>> Yeah, that's huge.

>> We certainly learned from both Beth and Jeremy some excellent strategies for boosting RSI, but I think it goes even beyond that. I mean, obviously what you're doing in the classroom, Jeremy, is not only helping your students interact with your content, but perhaps even setting them up for more meaningful learning experiences down the road.

>> Hope so.

>> Yeah. I think you should lead a workshop for the Center for Academic Innovation. I think you'd do -- just about this topic. I think our colleagues would really respond to it.

>> I'll put you in touch with my agent [laughter]. Have your people call my people.

>> Nice [laughter].

>> We could do lunch sometime [laughter].

>> Thank you for tuning into this episode of HubTalk, and stay tuned for our next episode.

>> HubTalk is produced by the Center for Academic Innovation at Chemeketa Community College. Visit our website, facultyhub.chemeketa.edu, to find helpful resources about teaching, learning, and technology integration, along with video tutorials and more podcast episodes just like this one.

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