NCU Alumna, Dr. Allison Moore is a Learning Disability Teacher Consultant and an adjunct faculty member at Grand Canyon University. In this episode, she discusses the importance of presence and offers strategies for supporting online students in higher education and in K-12 virtual settings.
NCU Alumna, Dr. Allison Moore is a Learning Disability Teacher Consultant and an adjunct faculty member at Grand Canyon University. In this episode, she discusses the importance of presence and offers strategies for supporting online students in higher education and in K-12 virtual settings.
Dr Barnhart 0:02
And welcome back to another special edition of vesc voices from ncu students and alumni driving research and practice podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Ryan Barnard adjunct in the School of Education here at NC U. I'm very pleased to introduce our next guest, Dr. Alison Moore. She's in the NICU alumna and she's joining us today. Dr. Moore. Welcome. Hello. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us today. We always like to start out our podcast here, allowing our guests to tell our listeners or viewers a little bit about yourself. So kind of your background, how you're affiliated with ncu. And what you're doing in your career now.
Dr. Moore 0:42
Sure. So I started teaching in 2001. As a special education teacher working at the elementary level, I was a teacher for about five years until I moved into the role of being a learning disability teacher consultant. And I work on a child study team in a public school. So I've been doing that for about 15 years. My position is unique to New Jersey. I was in 2015, I started at ncu, my Doctor of Education Program in special education. And I had some wonderful professors. And while I was in my coursework, I knew I wanted to do some form of online education once I completed that coursework, so I completed the program in 2018, I had an amazing chair, Dr. Linda Bloomberg, who has always inspired me to continue my research, and continue learning, she actually recommended me for doing this currently. And so for the past year and a half, I've been an online adjunct instructor at Grand Canyon University, where I'm working online, with students who are completing their masters. And I've taught about four to five different courses in special education. And I've grown to really like it. It's my part time job, but I look forward to doing it and teaching courses throughout the year.
Dr Barnhart 2:07
Well, and that's great to hear. And I would say talk about a great time to get into virtual education. Right. And working as an as an online instructor in our midst like the the ultimate online learning experience. Right. So so that's a great segue, you know, our podcast really focuses on the practice and the research areas of our alumni and kind of their, you know, how they interact in virtual education. So let's talk a little bit about that, you know, that use that as a jumping off point. In practice, you know, what are some of the things from in virtual learning maybe that you've learned, you know, from time to ncu, from, you know, a great chair like Dr. Bloomberg, or, you know, just to, you know, what kind of practice or you practices or best practices are using in the virtual classroom now, whether it's training or you know, things to pass on to your students, little tips and tricks, that kind of thing?
Dr. Moore 3:05
Well, I feel that it's so important to build a relationship with your students, whether you're in the classroom, you know, forced to do virtual instruction, I have chosen to do virtual learning, it's so important to build a rapport with students. And I always go back to the whole time I worked with Dr. Bloomberg, we only spoke on the phone three times. But through our correspondence, whether it be email, text message, feedback in the paper, she knew me and I knew her. And I knew she was always there for me, and she always responded to me. So that inspired me to make sure I was always there, that I'm always there for my students. And one great thing that Grand Canyon University does, you'll get feedback from the students once the course is over. And as far as there's a rating response from the instructor, and a lot of the students will comment that Oh, Dr. Moore gets back to me right away. And I was really happy to see that because working a full time job sometimes and having a family sometimes I can't get back to people as quickly as I like, but I'm happy to hear that they feel that I'm present in the classroom. And I think that brings to another point that presence, whether it's synchronous or asynchronous when you're working online. Grand Canyon does all asynchronous, I feel it's important to have a presence. So not only providing feedback to students or responding to their discussion questions, but providing opportunities, you know, if I'm grading assignments, and I see that some students are consistently making errors or as a whole, I feel that maybe students need more research resources related to let's say, APA formatting. I like to provide additional resources. Because I think in a live classroom, you it's very easy to identify what students need or when they may be lacking, but not being present. And together, sometimes that can be missing. So it's really important to be in tune with your students and be present and provide them resources that will help them. Absolutely.
Dr. Moore 5:13
And I think, you know, thinking along those lines, in terms of this practice, and I almost want to say it's like, availability, you know, and I feel that even before like, COVID, and being in a virtual format, you know, teaching online, that the bet in my experience, you know, I have a few degrees that I did 100% online as well, my doctor being one of them, also. And that, uh, that feeling of availability, you know, like you said about not speaking on the phone more than maybe a handful of times, but the text messaging and, and the email correspondence So how has that kind of how have you maybe brought that best practice or even like a philosophy in terms of you're approaching your students would you say it's more more of than not just like best practice, but something you've adapted or adopted into how you approach education in general, certainly. So I feel as an educator, I like routines. So I make sure I stay in a routine, where during the school day, when I'm at work, I'm not able to check my email, typically, or log on to Grand Canyon University. So I make an effort to log in, in the morning before I leave for work, and then certainly my emails up once I get home, and I'm just as much as I can checking that email being in that routine. And then I let students know that I'm, you know, I'm more present on the weekends again, because I'm home, but that if they didn't hear from me, it might be that I just missed, they missed me in that time period, but that they will hear from me soon, I give students multiple ways to contact me. So obviously, in the form through that GCU GCU uses, they use loud cloud, there's a form there, they can reach out, they can also email me and I do give my phone number and I asked that they just emailed me to set up a call, don't just, you know, call me because I might not be available. So I, I do set clear boundaries of when I'm available so that students can reach out to me. And I think it's I think that's important for students to know, because there's nothing like having an assignment do and you're not sure what to do. And that's another thing I like to do is I do weekly, we're required to do weekly announcements, but it's not just simply taking the syllabus and cutting pasting, it's giving them a little bit more information that, you know, might say that three scholarly resources are needed. Well, here's resources, this is a scholar, scholarly resource. And remember, so just doing simple tricks of underlining highlighting, color coding, I feel is helpful to students. Because, you know, again, these students also have a full time job, most of them and are busy. And I think in today's time, sometimes we don't take the time to read every single thing. So that's why I like to highlight and really stress what's important. So this way, you know, maybe I can answer those questions before they even arise. So that's what I'd like to do. One thing I did at ncu. And my advice to all students currently ncu is to read the instructions, four or five times read the assignment four or five times, step away from it, read that assignment, again, the guidelines and make sure you understand and then if you don't certainly reach out to Professor, I mean, they'd be happy to answer the question. But sometimes it's important to take that time to read and be sure that you, you know, try to figure out on your own because as an online student, you have to be a self learner. Absolutely.
Dr Barnhart 8:35
I think, you know, that kind of philosophy in terms of, you know, we're almost kind of like on demand 24 seven for our students with text, you know, especially if you give yourself a number out, and and I found, at least in my practice to is, is that most students don't abuse it, you know, they're pretty good about it. And and the, the amount of times where I've gotten, like a very simple text message that might only take a minute or two to answer has resolved a call or an email, you know, what I mean? So, so being available in that respect, I have to give credit, you know, for that philosophy, that's great that to see you adopting that, and, you know, delivering it to your to your classroom. We talked about some of the, you know, you mentioned some of these briefly some of these other resources, what are the some of the, you know, maybe go to virtual resources that you share with your students that maybe like some of our current NCU students could use as well.
Dr. Moore 9:25
Sure. So most of my students are currently teachers, various roles K through 12. And I do like to share practices that they can use, because still a lot of them are virtual or possibly hybrid, but there is certainly a virtual component. So programs that they can use for their students. free ones are always nice. There's a great program called get epic. Get epic comm so that's something that students can go on. Teachers can set up classrooms or set up levels for the students but students can access books. online that can be read to them. It tracks their progress. It tracks how many books they've read, they earn badges. So it's nice for the teachers to see, teachers can also assign books, I feel that that's a great resource to use. I also recommend Khan Academy, again, another kind of looking at the stem realm and problem solving. So those are some helpful websites. For the younger kids. I like handwriting without tears as a program, but it's called Learning without tears, has a lot of great resources for educators. So I'm always looking and I usually in my courses, what I'll do is I'll start a post where I'll share those and ask them to share and we all we learn from each other. So it's so great that I can bring that back to the teachers I work with. So those are some great, you know, ways to kind of navigate this virtual world, my, a lot of the school districts do use Google platform. So I am constantly using Google, Google meets. So that again, you know, it's your face to face with people. One thing I would like to incorporate into my practices, maybe some video lessons, or just some video clips, you know, so that my students get to see me and we get to interact. But again, I try to tailor those resources, you know, to the population that I'm working with,
Dr Barnhart 11:20
those are excellent, and definitely things that our listeners, hopefully that they'll look into, too. I'm a big fan of Khan Academy, you know, it got me through some sticky situations. And before, I know, I definitely, you know, promoted heavily to my students as well, on this, this is kind of off the charts a little bit, but, you know, knowing what, you know, now a year into, you know, online learning, is there anything, you know, any challenges that you're looking at, that you feel are looking forward to meeting, or things that you might do a little differently now that your whole year in, you know, with this experience and the online platform?
Dr. Moore 12:01
Well, I think, you know, I was used to the online learning the Virtual Learning prior to this, because of my, the, the doctoral program. So I do feel that I had a step ahead of everyone, because I was used to that. But I think it's still not important to underestimate, not being in a live classroom, working with people, it's very important to, again, establish that relationship. But I think that related to, you know, kind of upcoming issues, a lot of the coursework at Grand Canyon University is field experience. So students aren't AYP still are not able to get into classrooms, or even if the schools are open, they're not letting visitors in. So if a student doesn't have access to a certain population, they're not able to complete a field experience. And we've used supplemental videos, YouTube videos, so that they could maybe observe a ninth grade English class. So I'm always looking for those resources. And I would love to be able to branch out and maybe even work with some of the teachers in my school district. It's hard to have someone just observe, but because we've been virtual and use Google Classroom, hopefully, this is something that I could pursue and set up because I think it's always great to observe a teacher versus just watching a video that we found online. So I do see that as a potential problem for maybe not just, you know, just first teacher, you know, students and teacher training programs to get that quality hands on learning experience.
Dr Barnhart 13:35
Excellent. Sounds like a good strategy there and you know, be able to put put the practice on this good experience as well. Okay, so this is my favorite part of the podcast. It's the most fun question, at least in my opinion. We ask everyone this one too. So tell us one about one, like Virtual Education hack. What's your one Virtual Education life hack that you that you use or you're using? And that maybe we could use to and hack our make our lives a little bit easier as well?
Dr. Moore 14:08
Sure. So when I heard that something that make my life easier, I'm using Google so I think I came across it because I've used Google so much more. I think prior to this pandemic, it was like Google meet. What's that? What are you talking about? But just exploring Google and all the resources it has to offer in if you open up a Google Doc in the tools, there's a tool called voice typing. So it's a dictation software. It's great. I eat I recommend it for students to use who maybe have difficulty spelling or writing. It's a great feature, but it's great for adults, because again, you might just want to jot something down, start a document and you're doing several things. So I feel like it's a great way to save some time.
Dr Barnhart 14:55
That's great. You know, those are the tools. I think a lot of times that maybe we don't think about as top But maybe folks on our classrooms or students of ours can really utilize. That's a great one to share. I'm definitely gonna check that one out, too. You know, I would probably recommend that for all of our dissertation students as well, you know, when you're trying to get through some of those sections, maybe the the voice typing might be best for you. Well, before we go, we always like to allow our guests to kind of let you know ncu students and alumni know where they can connect. So are there folks where maybe places where folks could connect with you in the digital space as well?
Dr. Moore 15:30
Sure. So of course, I have an MTU email. And I also have my home email. So my MTU email, I believe I would be in a directory and my home email. It's Allison A l l i s o n s more m o r e@msn.com. And I am on Instagram. As Allison s more 35 awesome.
Dr Barnhart 15:58
Again, we want to thank you, Dr. Moore for joining us today on another special edition of best voices from ncu students and alumni driving research and practice podcast. Good for Dr. Moore. I'm Ryan Barnhart from the School of Education. Thanks for joining us. We'll catch you next time