Guess The Untruth is an activity that I adopted years ago when teaching English as a Second Language at the University of Lethbridge. Originally, it was a way to encourage students to practice the present perfect tense. This activity can be very interesting and engaging. It offers the students an opportunity to share their cleverness, their sense of humour, and some interesting aspects of their lives. In other words, the students can start sharing and shaping their identities.
Most recently, I have been using this activity with my master-level students at the beginning of the semester. It gives the students a break from the usual welcome forum introductions in which we ask them to tell us about themselves and why they are taking the class. (I can’t tell you how many times I was asked to do this when I was a student.)
Modalities
Asynchronous (recommended): warm up activity. Makes use of biography tool (LMS, blog, etc.) and text-based discussion forums with moderation. I employ this activity almost exclusively in asynchronous environments.
Synchronous (possible): warm up in VOIP (Skype, Blackboard Collaborate, Adobe Connect, etc.). But, this activity works best when the students can draw upon some information from profiles updated in the LMS (or other tool) biography pages.
Preparation
Biography tool: most LMSs and social networking systems offer a means for the students to write a personal profile.
Discussion board: set up a discussion forum specifically for this activity. For me, it is usually the “welcome” forum.
Teacher demonstration
The teacher (or facilitator) asks the students to update their profile/biography pages within LMS (or other system being used.
The teacher then asks the students to go into the discussion forum and start a thread with two true statements about themselves and one untrue statement.
The teacher prompts the students to read each other’s profiles.
Then, the teacher prompts the students to read each thread in the discussion forum and guess which statement is untrue.
Set a time limit (a week) for the students to guess each other’s false statement. Then, ask the students to confess.
The teacher starts the process by
Updating his/her profile.
Starting a discussion thread with the three statements about him/herself.
Guessing about one or two of the students’ statements and demonstrating the logic processes by comparing what is said in the profile and how the three statements might be truthful or not.
Fessing up! This, too, is part of leading the group: ending the activity and debriefing.
Comments
I often send out a welcome letter to the students a week or two before an online course starts. On the course start date, I then explain this activity in a video as well as in text. (I recommend offering text scripts of videos just in case the students have bandwidth issues.)
Wthin a day of starting the activity, there can be 100 or more discussion messages posted for a class of 20 students. It can be a high volume activity, so be prepared.
I have had consistently good experience with this activity and I highly recommend it. Try drawing upon interesting snippets from your own life. For example:
I have been marooned on the Orinoco River.
I like catsup on my waffles.
I have practiced Judo in Spain.
Which do you think is the false statement?
Rating: 5 stars
Note: My students recently shared this article with me:
Dixon, J. S., Crooks, H., & Henry, K. (2006). Breaking the ice: Supporting collaboration and the development of community online. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 32(2). Retrieved from http://cjlt.csj.ualberta.ca/index.php/cjlt/article/view/51/48
In this article, the authors discuss a similar activity called “Liar, Liar”.
As higher education embraces educational technologies to greater extents, it is not uncommon for faculty to find themselves suddenly facilitating online classes. They might be asked to lead online discussions through synchronous tools such as Adobe Connect, Blackboard Collaborate, and Big Blue Button to name a few of the tools available. Asynchronous, text-based discussions remain common likely due to temporal and spatial flexibility.
Those new to online facilitation might feel that the online environment is one of disembodiment offering few contextual or physical cues that instructors traditionally rely upon in face-to-face classrooms in order to determine comprehension, prior knowledge, and attentiveness. Some instructors might feel a sense of isolation because they cannot see and, therefore, feel they cannot get to know their students well enough to anticipate their needs.
Some scholars suggest that online learning offers a more egalitarian environment where learners can interact unimpeded by issues of race, nationality, gender, and social status; others suggest that the online environment is simply another modality. I take the position that online modalities offer an array of social cues. Walther (1996) proposes that participants in mediated environments form impressions of one another much as they would in face-to-face environments, but that it takes longer to generate and collect observations. He argued that online interaction can even become hyperpersonal?leading to greater intimacy as individuals employ additional techniques to plan, contemplate, edit, and project identities of self and others (Chayko, 2008, Henderson & Gilding, 2004; Merchant, 2006, Walther, 1996). Furthermore, anticipation of future interaction has been found in some longitudinal studies to prompt “communicators to seek more information about one another, to act more friendly, and to cooperate in negotiations” (Walther, 1996, p. 12).
Beyond the notion of the hyperpersonal, we might also see students actively shaping their identities based on what they would like to project. Walther et. al. (2006) propose that, in the absence of visual cues in online interactions, people will actively select aspects to present, taking more time to compose their messages. In return, those who receive these messages will develop “idealized attributions of their online partners” (p. 637).
And, humans are never disembodied. In any given online class, students and facilitators are tapping on keyboards, speaking into microphones, snapping pictures, and sharing videos. They are using their fingers, voices, ears, eyes and minds to manipulate the technologies that surround them. They are situated within physical contexts; they have been socialized in physical contexts. And, they bring their situatedness, their prior knowledge, with them into their online interactions. As online facilitators, we need to harness the tools at our disposal in order to get to know our students. We need to learn how to read online cues. Our students also need opportunities to share their prior knowledge and express who they are outside ofandin relation to their instructors and fellow online classmates.
To this end, I am going to start sharing and collecting what I am calling “identity accelerators”. These are activities that can be used in a variety of online contexts. I would like to invite anyone out there in the world to share ideas on how to increase engagement and identity development in online teaching and learning environments.
And, I am always looking for ideas and collaborators. Send ideas.
References & related materials:
Chayko, M. (2008). Portable communities: The dynamics of online and mobile connectedness. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Henderson, S., & Gilding, M. (2004). “I”ve never clicked this much with anyone in my life’: Trust, and hyperpersonal communication in online friendship. New Media & Society, 6(4), 487–506.
Koole, M. (2010). The Web of Identity: Selfhood and Belonging in Online Learning Networks. In The 7th International Conference on Networked Learning (Vol. Aalborg, D). Retrieved from http://www.networkedlearningconference.org.uk/
Koole, M., & Parchoma, G. (2013). The web of Identity: A model of digital identity formation in networked learning environments. In S. Warburton & S. Hatzipanagos (Eds.), Digital identity and social media (1st ed., pp. 14–28). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. doi:10.4018/978-1-4666-1915-9.ch002
Walther, J. B. (1996). Computer-mediated communication: Impersonal, interpersonal, and hyperpersonal interaction. Communication Research, 32(1), 3–43.
Walther , J. B., Loh, T., Granka, L. (2005). Let me count the ways: The interchange or verbal and nonverbal cues in computer-mediated and face-to-face affinity. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 24 (2005), pp. 36–65. Retrieved from: http://knowledge.sagepub.com/view/hdbk_nonverbalcomm/n24.xml
Before using any of these tools, check the legal agreements. In some cases, you might forfeit ownership over your creative work. Nonetheless, these are some useful tools. For the most part they are free except where indicated. If you know of any additional tools, let me know . . . leave a comment.
Masher: http://www.masher.com/studio/
Create videos with pictures, add videos
If you’ve done some on an iPad or desktop computer, add music, add text, save. Then, you can link, embed, etc.
Looks very easy
PhotoPeach: http://photopeach.com/
Create a slideshow
Educator’s version allows the creation of multiple student accounts good for group projects
PowToons: http://www.powtoon.com/edu-home
There is a free account with some limitations: max 5 min, watermark
PowToons cannot be downloaded to your own account, but you can export to YouTube
Sparkol VideoScribe: http://www.sparkol.com
Really nice, but costs approximately $25/mo.
Prezzi: http://prezi.com/
Provides an interesting online interactive tool.
Free version: presentations public, open to everyone; free for educators
Various pricing options
iPad tools
Educreations: http://www.educreations.com
Looks like an excellent way to create a video/animated lesson with voice, writing, drawing, etc.
Mobile Tools
Socrative: http://www.socrative.com/video-page
Mobile classroom / Smart Student Response System
Works on smartphones, tablets, and computers (multiple platforms)
Students sign up by entering the “virtual room number” provided by the teacher (student privacy)
Could be nifty for a blended environment
Could be used for group work
Infuse learning: http://teacher.infuselearning.com and http://student.infuselearning.com
Very similar to Socrative, free
Other than the “My Quizzes”, it appears that it is a tool that is used in a face-to-face classroom where learners are asked a question, and they input their answers into their mobile device/computer.
