Category: Resolution

otl301 – Post 6

Summarizing My Learning

In this post, I am going to share with you my reflections about my work throughout the course. I will briefly discuss what lessons and strategies I gathered from the course and how those have changed my teaching styles in face-to-face and online environments.

I think the ideas and strategies discussed in the modules about social presence and teaching presence have had the most significant impact on my approaches towards teaching. Majority of the suggestions are useful and applicable especially in distance and online education. I now believe it is more about teaching presence rather than teacher presence and how the two concepts are different.  My views about different components of effective teaching presence including design and organization, facilitation of online discourse, and well-focused direct instruction have changed since I started this course.

Additionally, I am now a strong believer of collaboration and social activities in education since I became familiar with the concept and role of social presence in the context of teaching. By applying the principles of social presence, participants are encouraged to establish a community of learning and to openly get involved in critical discourse and generating constructive ideas. My role as an educator is to provide engaging learning activities to increase different types of interactions among learners including student-student, teacher-student and student-content.

In my future courses, I will try to implement all these valuable lessons that I gathered from this course. Firstly, now that I know more about the importance of effective and cohesive communication in distance education, I will continue to welcome students to my courses with the hope to establish an online persona and to start building a sense of community. I found out that sending a one-minute video message is very useful to introduce myself and my course to new students and to welcome them to my virtual classrooms. With the presence of tools like WordPress in todays’ education, utilizing multimedia including audio/video messages and feedback are much more effective than just text-based messages. Additionally, audio and video files can also be a way of capturing course content that would otherwise be difficult to explain in a textual format. During this lesson, I researched several methods and software including screen streaming and audio/video capturing software for making and editing digital contents.

Secondly, I will provide opportunities for collaboration and sharing of knowledge in my online and face-to-face teaching. Online courses can be more enjoyable and effective when students have the opportunity to work through topics and assignments with either one or two or more fellow learners. To address all types of learning styles, I believe I should incorporate activities during design phase which provide options and opportunities for all types of learners whether they prefer to work collaboratively with peers or work individually.

Thirdly, in light of what I learned in the course, I will provide my students with a combination of feedback, feed forward and feed up to ensure their success. These new concepts in providing learning support to students tell me the importance and role of teaching presence and the distinction between facilitation and direction. I think a perfect teacher must consider the dual role of both facilitating and shaping the direction as both seem essential for a successful community of inquiry.

Finally, I think that unlike face-to-face setting where the responsibilities are ranked with emphasis on teaching then learning, for the online courses the emphasis should be on learning then teaching. CoI model of learning and teaching appears to be a suitable platform for today’s online and blended education. I learned great lesson throughout these courses. I have realized that for online courses students and teacher are partners in the learning process. I firmly believe collaboration and partnership can make learning easier to achieve and less expensive. CoI is a great model in presenting this concept of shared responsibilities between learners and teachers. This way we can create a true community of inquiry where everyone contributes in educational activities and learning outcomes are shared.

otl301 – Post 5

Self-Coding Activity and Reflection

Reflection

After I have completed categorizing my posts according to the different phases of the critical inquiry model, I would like to briefly share my thoughts about the cognitive strategies that I used during the course by answering the following questions:

 

Did you engage in each of the phases of the critical inquiry process?

All my posts can be categorized as one or two of the phases of the critical inquiry model; however, I put many of them under the categories of exploration and integration. I think in each lesson I was very focused on understanding the nature of existing shortcomings in online education and obviously on searching for possible answers and solutions.

 

Were you able to resolve any problems or dilemmas?

The ideas presented in the course “Engage” about promotion of social presence were very practical and to a great extent cleared up the area.  Before doing this course, I had little information about the importance of social presence in online education. The presented approaches to effectively promote trust and a sense of community among learners are key in ensuring maximum interactions of learners with the content and teacher.

 

What might you do differently in a future course?

The thing that I will do differently in a future course is to emphasize more on collaboration and dialogue among learners. I think this can be a good starting point for critical discourse, involving students, assessing the state of knowledge, and generating constructive ideas. I, as a teacher will direct the discourse and provide learning activities that are engaging and aligned with the learning objective.

 

How might you engage with your students to ensure that they are working through the entire inquiry process?

I will try to explain this inquiry process and the phases of the critical inquiry model in a simple language to students. I think this will take time but it’s worth doing it as students should eventually grasp the point behind all these theories. Having said that, educators should be very cautious on their selected approaches and topics for introducing self-coding and promoting reflection because students can easily get overwhelmed and bored by these concepts.

 

Do you think that working through this course in an open platform like WordPress helps to encourage reflective learning?

Most definitely. The whole idea of internet was to offer an open and neutral platform for expressing and sharing ideas, views and different formats of contents. People can use different formats in expressing their thoughts and that’s the beauty of using a platform like WordPress for a course. Now I appreciate more the value of such tools than before after knowing about the CoI model. Learners need to be connected through their views, by exchanging ideas and sharing their knowledge and all these things are possible by utilizing all these web-based tools such as WordPress and similar platforms.

otl201 – Post 6

Herein, I would like share with you an updated version of my Learning Activities Portfolio:

It is essential to set the climate from the beginning of a course. In online courses, I would like to provide engaging opportunities for students to introduce themselves to me and their classmates. My suggestions include:

  1. A discussion forum where each student makes an introductory post and reply.
  2. A collaborative Google slide presentation where each student takes a slide to introduce themselves with text, images and/or video.

I believe maintaining regular communication with learners is key. Emailing my students on a weekly-basis provides connections, offers tips/suggestions, point to exemplary student work, and encourage students to interact. Communication is a two-way street. Thus, as a teacher, I should also encourage students to maintain a conversation that supports learning process. Students will find that increasing their participation level also increases their motivation, which is likely to contribute to success in the course. My other suggestions in the content of learning activities which promote engagement and motivation include:

  1. Providing opportunities for collaboration, such as group projects and team discussions that ask students to explore the world around them.
  2. Encouraging students to use the course discussion forums and/or blogs to communicate with classmates and teacher.
  3. Asking students to read all course communication thoroughly so they don’t miss out on important announcements/information.
  4. Another interesting option, in my opinion, is providing an opportunity for students to find out if any of their classmates live in their area. This way students can voluntarily meet up in certain occasions. This opportunity would support effective student-student interactions if students are properly guided and encouraged to do certain group projects.

otl201 – Post 5

I believe the content of the course otl201 is by far the most important of all the topics discussed so far in these series of lessons.  In an online course, applying the principles of social presence helps participants establish a community of learning by projecting their personal characteristics into the discussion. As discussed in the lesson, the goal is to further different types of interaction including student-student, teacher-student and student-content.

Firstly, during this lesson, I realized that effective communication is key in distance education. Welcoming students to the course helps to establish an online persona, add to belongingness, and helps to build a social presence in the community and is also beneficial for introducing the students to the setup of the course. In the light of what I have learned in this lesson, I am going to send a one-minute video message to my new students and welcome them to my virtual classrooms. I think this will be much more effective than just a text-based message.

Secondly, this lesson helped me understand that implementation of videos, audio files and podcasts are also useful methods of addressing diverse learning styles in the online and distance education. Additionally, audio and video files can also be a way of capturing course content that would otherwise be difficult to explain in a textual format. During this lesson, I researched several methods and software including screen streaming and audio/video capturing software for making and editing digital contents.

Thirdly, a community (I am so obsessed with this word since I heard it in this context!) works well when there are a variety of activities and experiences. Online courses can be more enjoyable and effective when students have the opportunity to brainstorm and work through concepts and assignments with either one or two or more fellow students. Based on my experience so far, this is an area in which there is still room for improvement. We, as educator should better encourage our students to work with their peers. I agree with the fact that some students work and learn best on their own. Therefore, it’s the responsibility of the educators to provide options and opportunities for students to both work together and individually.

Finally, I believe for many educators, student engagement is the key factor in creating, designing and implementing interesting course material. The growth of technology and e-learning options has further strengthened engagement. In our technologically enhanced world, educators can use a diverse range of technologies and innovative solutions for engaging students. We are so lucky that we live in this era!

otl101 – Post 5: Reflections

In this post, I will discuss the following items:

  • Take a look back through your previous posts and apply the ‘Showcase’ category to your best work.
    • Write a few words about why you think that post or those posts stand out.
    • If you would like, add a widget to your sidebar or footer to display posts in the ‘Showcase’ category.
    • What are 2-3 of the most important ideas that you have studied during this course?
    • What are 2-3 questions that you have as a result of this course? Identify ways that you can begin to answer those questions.
    • Identify 2-3 specific goals that you would like to achieve in light of what you have learned about cognitive presence, approaches to learning, and feedback;
    • identify strategies you intend to use in order to meet your goals.

 

Part 1:

The one post of mine that I think it will showcase my teaching philosophy best is otl-post 4. In this post, I have discussed my practical experience in using a series of formative assessments in my classrooms. My teaching style is based on a philosophy that believes learning is a journey, and is more than rote memorization and dry application with many challenges for students. By providing constructive assessments to my students, I try to act as a motivating force to students to be engaged in every moment of their learning journey. In addition, students are challenged constantly to create, collaboratively where possible, and provide written reflections based on their understandings.

 

Parts 2 & 3:

The two most import ideas that I liked during this course are the concept of Community of Inquiry (CoI) and the value of feed up and feed forward along with feedback. I think that unlike face-to-face setting, where the responsibilities are ranked with emphasis on teaching then learning, for the online courses the emphasis is on learning then teaching.

CoI model of learning and teaching appears to be a suitable platform for today’s online and blended education. From my experience in both settings, I have realized that for online courses students and teacher are partners in the learning process. Partnership makes the success faster, less expensive, and easier to achieve. CoI is a great model in presenting this concept of shared responsibilities between learners and teachers. There is great opportunity in putting this concept into the hands of teachers and supporting their change in thinking with exposure to excellent mentoring. Therefore the contents of the CoI model are not only useful to teachers, but also to students as community members without any separation.

I believe in providing continual feedback to students on their performance using various strategies. As a result of this course, my attention was also drawn to providing feed up and feed forward. Feedback focuses on current performance and challenges; feed forward, on the other hand, looks ahead to the next tasks and offers constructive guidance on how to improve. A combination of feedback and feed forward ensures that assessments have an effective developmental impact on learning. These new concepts in providing learning support to students tell me the importance and role of teaching presence and the distinction between facilitation and direction. I think a perfect teacher must consider the dual role of both facilitating and shaping the direction as both seem essential for a successful community of inquiry.

 

Last part:

I would like to share two goals that I am going to achieve in light of what I have learned in this course. Firstly, in order to improve my feedback to students, I will focus at least half of my comments both on correction and giving direction by December 2016. My second goal is to improve my teaching skills by completing these three learning and teaching modules by the end of August 2016 leading to more students evaluating quality of instruction as excellent on the overall rating.

For the online courses that I am teaching, I am dedicated to ensuring that I am fully accessible to students. This includes encouraging students to be in touch with me and being readily available by email and phone. From my teaching experiences I have become a skilled educator, however, I always endeavor to continually improve my abilities by incorporating new techniques and personal competencies into my teaching practice.

 

 

otl101- post 4

Herein, I reflect on the following questions about offering feedback to my students:

Are there any gaps between your practice of offering feedback to students and what Hattie recommends?

In what ways can you improve the effectiveness of the feedback that you provide for your students?

Providing students with feedback whether in classrooms or on their assignment paper and exams can, at times, seems a daunting task. However, I know, both from my experiences and from research like the one conducted by Hattie, that feedback is essential. Therefore, I always see feedback as integral part of my teaching philosophy and formative assessments. First of all, I make sure that I am fully accessible to my students and they can ask for help as much as they want. Secondly, I strive to provide timely, relevant, and action-oriented feedback.

Thirdly, I frequently use technology in providing feedback. In addition to written comments and feedback, I provide my students with visual and audio feedback as well. Instead of texts, I often sketch a drawing or capture an image. That would allow me and my students to annotate and use screenshots. This ability can work for students too as they can capture images of their work and reflect on it.

Contentwise, however, with the knowledge that I acquired from Hattie’s research on feedback, my feedback which is now mainly focused on fixing students’ problems should be shifted further to collaboration with students and promoting forward learning (Feed up and feed forward types). In order to do so, I should create a culture of feedback based on the process and self-regulation models of feedback through which feed my students’ interests. In my opinion, implementing the following strategies should improve the effectiveness of my feedback to students in online courses:

  • Encouraging reflection, so students could go back to revisit their assignments and refine their work;
  • encouraging self and peer evaluation using formats such as blogs and discussion forums;
  • enabling learners to exchange messages using commentary boxes and audio notes;
  • giving instant feedback through auto-scoring computer quizzes;
  • enabling learners to access archives of their work to see and value their progress;
  • supporting learners to set goals by making their learning visible to them;
  • providing learners with data to review targets and identify focus areas.