Middlesex Community College: MCC's New Teaching And Learning Tool Promotes Student Success

Press release from the Middlesex Community College:

Caitlin Buckley

6/9/2021

Throughout the pandemic, Middlesex Community College has provided faculty, staff and students with the tools they need to succeed in online learning. In the Fall 2020 semester, MCC’s Office of Academic Technology and Distance Learning piloted a new teaching and learning tool called VoiceThread to help make online learning more efficient and meaningful.

“VoiceThread provides an easy-to-use virtual space for interaction around rich media as a way to create fun and engaging online assignments that encourage participation even from the shyest of students,” said Roxanne McCorry, MCC’s Director of Online Learning and Blackboard Support. “VoiceThread projects and assignments are embedded directly in Blackboard and can be downloaded if enabled by faculty and students.”

By making it easier for students to express their opinions in class, VoiceThread promotes accessibility, according to McCorry. In addition to offering students a variety of ways to make their comments – from typing to recording video responses – the application works with screen readers, supports most closed captioning files, has a mobile app option, allows for visual conversations through a web camera, provides an open online communication to ASL, and uses low bandwidth requirements for easy access from anywhere.

A tool that can be used across all subjects, VoiceThread allows faculty to share knowledge, create assignments, make presentations and lectures, assign students into group projects, and comment on and annotate class materials at any time. Students can also create presentations, build virtual galleries, work on interactive group projects, upload their work in progress, receive feedback, and have their final work reviewed through the application.

Jan Arabas, MCC Professor of Art, used VoiceThread in her Figure Drawing class for an artistic anatomy group project. The class drew 3-D models of the human body and worked together to look up names and label muscles and bones on their model. Being able to have her students collaborate on a project in an online class was important to Arabas, especially because of the pandemic.

From feedback using VoiceThread for the project, Arabas said students thought the application was fun and helped them improve their skills. She also believes they made more meaningful connections to the content because they were able to work on the annotations themselves.

“Research into how we learn suggests that when we write annotations – or explain something in a video or audio recording – we better understand and retain that learning,” Arabas said. “VoiceThread has a lot of potential as a peer-to-peer learning tool. Students can present information to each other, discuss what they are learning and how to apply that learning.”

Paulo Barrio, MCC’s Chairperson of Human Services, took advantage of VoiceThread in his online Counseling Skills course to create brief mock counseling sessions. As this course did not include specific meeting times, using both the audio and written commenting functions to review the videos helped him to highlight skills and concepts students needed to practice.

“It provides another format to engage students above and beyond a written discussion board,” he said. “Student feedback I received on the piloted videos included appreciation for running commentary on topics. It helped them ‘see’ what they were reading about for better understanding, and I noticed improvements in the one-on-one virtual skills assessments students completed this semester.”

Arabas is looking forward to using VoiceThread in more of her classes, including as a tool to provide constructive criticism. Learning new technology tools provides Arabas with constant learning opportunities, which builds a community-feel with her students in the class. It is important for her as a professor – and also within the art field – to continue finding and taking advantage of new technologies.

“Being able to also draw on a tablet with a stylus and a drawing app opens up whole new approaches to working in my discipline,” she said. “There is a long history in art and design of exploring new technologies and using them to expand what artists and designers can create. Our students deserve to learn about all the tools they will have at their disposal as they move into advanced course work and then careers.”

As Barrio also enjoys using different types of tools and technology in his classes, he is interested in learning more about VoiceThread’s features. By participating in the pilot program of VoiceThread, Barrio was able to learn from what he was doing and as he said, “step into a new student’s perspective.”

“My overall experience was positive,” he said. “With any new app or tech feature, I’m going to run into bumps, so having the opportunity to try it out and ask questions was great. I can’t assume my students know how to use everything even though some of the tech is second nature to me. This was a good reminder of that.”

As an award-winning leader of online education for over two decades, Middlesex offers innovative and immersive online courses. The college will move forward with using the cloud application in the future, as VoiceThread has provided MCC with another way to help students build relationships with professors and their classmates online.

Featuring flexible course formats and a variety of student support services and resources, MCC is registering now for the Summer and Fall 2021 semesters. Visit www.middlesex.mass.edu or call 1-800-818-3434 to register for classes.

Discover your path at Middlesex Community College. As one of the largest, most comprehensive community colleges in Massachusetts, MCC has been a proven leader in online education for more than 20 years. We educate, engage and empower a diverse community of learners, offering more than 80 degree and certificate programs – plus hundreds of noncredit courses. Middlesex Community College: Student success starts here!

This press release was produced by the Middlesex Community College. The views expressed here are the author’s own.