Durrington, Berryhill, & Swafford (2006) indicated that when designing an online learning course, one must insure that the environment for which it is designed for is supportive, open, and respectful. In other words, the tools which the learner will be asked to use should support the objectives of the course while allowing the learner to feel free to discuss openly their views without fear of embarrassment or failure. The educator is hence responsible for serving as the expert who will guide the progress of the learner while facilitating interaction between all members of the class. In thinking about how I would like for my class to look, I find that the discussion threads provide students an opportunity to reflect on reading materials while learning from the views of others. I would definitely implement this process as a tool in developing a class. In order to engage class members during assigned projects and possibly a group project, I would ask that the learning groups develop a wiki page and exchange email addresses in order to facilitate the completion of the project. Although I think that Skype and Twitter or additional tools which would facilitate active communication between the members, as adult learners, this may create a problem for those who may be in working or living outside of the U. S. due to the time zone.
In addition to a wiki page, I would establish chat rooms for group members to meet and discuss assignments and project ideas at least once a week or more. I like this better than the blog as I find that the blog is less interactive and requires additional time which may be inconvenient for adult learners. I think that it is important to allow the learners to become experts through discovery and interaction with their peers, hence, I would use tools which would facilitate this effort and as the instructor become a monitor on the side. I think that even in a discovery mode, all learners require the expert knowledge of the instructor to insure that what is being learned is correct.
ReferenceAnderson, T. (2008). Teaching in an online learning context. The theory and practice of online learning. Edmonton: AU Press.
Durrington, V. A., Berryhill, A., & Swafford, J. (2006). Strategies for enhancing student interactivity in an online environment. College Teaching, 54(1), 190-193.
Siemens, G. (2008). Learning and knowing in networks: Changing roles for educators and designers. ITForum.
Please let me know how you were able to post the image on your pages. I can not seem to get this to work. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteYou have included a catalog of online tools here, all of which are important for the asynchronous format. In my reading of it, the use of these tools (wikis, etc.) are enough to engage learners. Yet, we know this is not the case. I think the strategies to engage learners is not described. Without this, students might just be chatting and agreeing with each other in the online environment.
ReplyDeleteI think that Wiki is a good tools to start any strategy to engage communication with the student in a creative form. Any strategy to provoke construction knowledge, collaboration and work with past or new content can be used with the wiki tools. With this tool, instructor as you wrote, become a monitor on the side.
ReplyDeleteWho ever posted the image of your concept map, you did a great gob. As a matter of fact, I only created the concept map that essentially copied from the example given. Way-to-go with your imagination. It is a fastastic job. I am still working on my video presentation. It will be 75 percent done by this Friday.
ReplyDeleteI have been a little bogged down with high school finals and trying to get these children passed; it's not easy for 50 percent of them.
Anyway you guys are super, I salute you for the great job you have done.
Bill Sharp
Brenda--
ReplyDeleteI guess this was you who posted the concept map. I especially liked your divided the categories into columns rather than rows; sort-of-like a newspaper layout. Very good. I completely forgot about the VoiP, and the streaming you can do; even though I do this all of the time with special events. And the Podcasts, e-books, and of course email. Oh, and I almost forgot he instant messaging.
Bravo! Your blog is by far the best I have ever seen. Mine was just a basic ConceptMap.
You put us all to shame.
Way-to-go.
Bill Sharp