In order to change to a learner-controlled instructional system and to
maximize interaction, I had to change my role from that of a teacher at the
front of the classroom and the center of the process to that of facilitator who
is one with the participants and whose primary role is to guide and support the
learning process.
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Facilitating Interaction in Computer Mediated Online Courses - 0 views
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The result was a course designed as a learner-centered system based on dialogue and cooperation among students (1992, p. 61).
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Such a move engenders a radical shift in the power and interaction structures in the classroom as the students must accept the responsibility for their own knowledge creation, and the instructor must relinquish a certain amount of control over the process.
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From oracle and lecturer to consultant, guide, and resource provider From passive receptacles for hand-me-down knowledge to constructors of their own knowledge Teachers become expert questioners, rather than providers of answers
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Teachers become designers of learning student experiences rather than just providers of content Students see topics from multiple perspectives
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Teachers provide only the initial structure to student work, encouraging increasing self- direction Students refine their own questions and search for their own answers
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Teacher presents multiple perspectives on topics, emphasizing the salient points Students work as group members on more collaborative/cooperative assignments ; group interaction significantly increased
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From a solitary teacher to a member of a learning team (reduces isolation sometimes experienced by teachers) Increased multi-cultural awareness
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From teacher having total autonomy to activities that can be broadly assessed Students work toward fluency with the same tools as professionals in their field
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From total control of the teaching environment to sharing with the student as fellow learner More emphasis on students as autonomous, independent, self-motivated managers of their own time and learning process
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More emphasis on sensitivity to student learning styles Discussion of students’ own work in the classroom
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Teacher-learner power structures erode Emphasis on knowledge use rather than only observation of the teacher’s expert performance or just learning to "pass the test" Emphasis on acquiring learning strategies (both individually and collaboratively) Access to resources is significantly expanded
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shared by Danielle Melia on 18 Jun 12
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EBSCOhost: The Relationship between Flexible and Self-Regulated Learning in Open and D... - 0 views
ehis.ebscohost.com.libproxy.albany.edu/...detail
interaction courses online education teaching learning
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Flexibility in learning provides a student room for volitional control and an array of strategies and encourages persistence in the face of difficulties. Autonomy in and control over one's learning process can be seen as a condition for self-regulated learning. There are a number of categories and dimensions for flexible learning; following professional publications, time, location, lesson content, pedagogy method, learning style, organization, and course requirements are all elements to consider. Using these categories and the dimensions of flexible learning, we developed and validated a questionnaire for an open and distance learning setting. This article reports on the results from a study investigating the relationship between flexible learning and self-regulated learning strategies. The results show the positive effects of flexible learning and its three factors, time management, teacher contact, and content, on self-regulated learning strategies (cognitive, metacognitive, and resource-based). Groups that have high flexibility in learning indicate that they use more learning strategies than groups with low flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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Review of Weimer, Learning-Centered Teaching - 0 views
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Chapter two examines the effects of too much teacher control and its adverse effects on student motivation, confidence, and enthusiasm for learning. Students are more likely to become self-regulated learners when some of the conditions of their learning are more in their control. Weimer does not advocate abandoning our professional responsibility and letting students determine course content or whether they will do assignments; instead she recommends that teachers establish parameters within which their students will select options. Increasing the decisions students can make about assignments and activities more fully engages them in the course and its content. Among Weimer’s suggestions are providing a variety of assignments to demonstrate learning the course outcomes (students choose a combination), negotiating policies about class participation, and letting students choose which material the teacher will review in class the period before a major test.
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. The function of content in a learner-centered course changes from covering content to using content
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describes the changed role of the teacher in a learner-centered classroom from sage on stage to guide on the side
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1. Teachers do learning tasks less. Assign to students some of the tasks of organizing the content, giving examples, summarizing discussions, solving problems, and drawing diagrams, charts, and graphs. 2. Teachers do less telling; students do more discovering. Give a quiz on your syllabus and policies without going over it first. Let students discover information in assigned readings without presenting it first or summarizing it later. 3. Teachers do more design work. Design activities and assignments that move students to new skill levels, motivate engagement in the course content by doing the work of practitioners in the discipline, and that develop self-awareness of their learning of the content. 4. Faculty do more modeling. Demonstrate how a skilled learner (the teacher) continues to learn. Show them drafts of your articles, notes on your own reading in professional journals; talk aloud as you solve a problem, thereby revealing and modeling your thinking process. 5. Faculty do more to get students learning from and with each other. Create work for small groups to do in class. 6. Faculty work to create climates for learning. Create a climate that promotes interaction, autonomy, and responsibility (more in chapter five). 7. Faculty do more with feedback. In addition to assigning grades, use other means of providing frequent feedback (more in chapter six).
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The more motivation we provide, the less they find within themselves. The more responsibility for learning we try to assume, the less they accept on their own. The more control we exert, the more restive their response. We end up with students who have little commitment to and almost no respect for learning and who cannot function without structure and imposed control. (p. 98)
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eimer explains several strategies for creating a climate that produces self-regulated intrinsically motivated learners:
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The instructor should “make the content relevant, demonstrate its power to answer questions, and otherwise show its apparent intrigue.” Make the student responsible for learning decisions by relying on logical consequences of action and inaction, rather than punishment. For example, to deal with lateness, present important material or assignments early in the period that you do not repeat, rather than deduct attendance points for lateness. Do not summarize chapters if students have not read them. If they arrive unprepared, put the unread material on a test; give frequent tests. Be consistent in administering policies. If your syllabus says late homework is not accepted, never accept late homework despite the heart-wrenching excuse offered by the student. Involve students in a discussion of creating a climate that promotes learning. Have this discussion early in the semester. Weimer’s suggestion for starting the discussion is to have students complete sentence stems such as “In the best class I ever had, teachers . . .” “In the best class I ever had, students . . .” “I learn best when . . .” “I feel most confident as a learner when . . .” (p. 108) Obtain feedback on the classroom climate occasionally and revisit the discussion of policies and procedures. Employ practices that “encourage students to encounter themselves as learners” (p. 111). Explain the purposes and benefits of assignments and projects; tell students what problems they might run into in doing the assignments and suggest remedies. Help them with time management. With group projects, provide guidance in managing the project, handling group dynamics, and assigning individual responsibilities.
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helps us deal with the fact that almost all students will resist their teacher’s learning-centered approaches. Most of the learner-centered strategies recommended in this book change what students have become accustomed to. Understanding the reasons will help teachers deal with the inevitable student resistance when they present learner-centered practices and policies that withdraw the support students have become dependent upon during their first twelve years of schooling. The good news is that most students see the benefits of learner-centered approaches and benefit from them.
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, why do students resist it? Based on her research, Weimer lists four reasons: Learner-centered approaches are more work. When the teacher does not summarize the important points in the chapter, the students will have to read it for themselves. When the teacher asks small groups to produce five applications of a concept, rather than supply it in a handout, the students have to do more work. Learner-centered approaches are more threatening. Students who lack confidence in themselves as learners become filled with anxiety at the prospect of becoming responsible for decisions that might be wrong. Students who are not used to questions with no single, authority-approved right answer are fearful of being wrong. Learner-centered approaches involve losses. The strategies recommended in this book are designed to move students to higher stages of self-directedness and higher stages of intellectual development. Moving from one stage to another requires a loss of certainty and the comfort that certainty brings. Learner-centered approaches may be beyond students. Some students’ lack of self-confidence or intellectual immaturity may prevent their accepting responsibility for their own learning.
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The communication is frequent and explicit The communication encourages and positively reinforces The communication solicits feedback from students The communication resists their resistance.
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developmental approach to transforming passive dependent learners into self-confident autonomous learners. Learners become self-directed in stages, not in one sin
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Metacognition: An Overview - 1 views
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Metacognitive experiences involve the use of metacognitive strategies or metacognitive regulation (Brown, 1987). Metacognitive strategies are sequential processes that one uses to control cognitive activities, and to ensure that a cognitive goal (e.g., understanding a text) has been met. These processes help to regulate and oversee learning, and consist of planning and monitoring cognitive activities, as well as checking the outcomes of those activities.
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Self-questioning is a common metacognitive comprehension monitoring strategy. If she finds that she cannot answer her own questions, or that she does not understand the material discussed, she must then determine what needs to be done to ensure that she meets the cognitive goal of understanding the text.
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Knowledge is considered to be metacognitive if it is actively used in a strategic manner to ensure that a goal is met. For example, a student may use knowledge in planning how to approach a math exam: "I know that I (person variable) have difficulty with word problems (task variable), so I will answer the computational problems first and save the word problems for last (strategy variable)." Simply possessing knowledge about one's cognitive strengths or weaknesses and the nature of the task without actively utilizing this information to oversee learning is not metacognitive.
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Cognitive Strategy Instruction (CSI) is an instructional approach which emphasizes the development of thinking skills and processes as a means to enhance learning. The objective of CSI is to enable all students to become more strategic, self-reliant, flexible, and productive in their learning endeavors (Scheid, 1993). CSI is based on the assumption that there are identifiable cognitive strategies, previously believed to be utilized by only the best and the brightest students, which can be taught to most students (Halpern, 1996). Use of these strategies have been associated with successful learning (Borkowski, Carr, & Pressley, 1987; Garner, 1990).
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Metacognition enables students to benefit from instruction (Carr, Kurtz, Schneider, Turner & Borkowski, 1989; Van Zile-Tamsen, 1996) and influences the use and maintenance of cognitive strategies.
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The study of metacognition has provided educational psychologists with insight about the cognitive processes involved in learning and what differentiates successful students from their less successful peers. It also holds several implications for instructional interventions, such as teaching students how to be more aware of their learning processes and products as well as how to regulate those processes for more effective learning.
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Metacognition refers to higher order thinking which involves active control over the cognitive processes engaged in learning. Activities such as planning how to approach a given learning task, monitoring comprehension, and evaluating progress toward the completion of a task are metacognitive in nature. Because metacognition plays a critical role in successful learning, it is important to study metacognitive activity and development to determine how students can be taught to better apply their cognitive resources through metacognitive control.
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shared by Diane Gusa on 16 Jun 11
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The Ed Techie: Using learning environments as a metaphor for educational change - 0 views
nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/...or-for-educational-change.html
module 2 21stcenturylearning e-learning WEB2.0 education learning_environments
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It has often been noted that when a new technology arrives we tend to use it in old ways (eg Twigg 2001), before we begin to understand what it really offers
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t has often been noted that when a new technology arrives we tend to use it in old ways (eg Twigg 2001), before we begin to understand what it really offers
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t has often been noted that when a new technology arrives we tend to use it in old ways (eg Twigg 2001), before we begin to understand what it really offers
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It has often been noted that when a new technology arrives we tend to use it in old ways (eg Twigg 2001), before we begin to understand what it really offers. So, for example the television was initially treated as ‘radio with pictures’
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In an attempt to move towards the possibilities offered by a completely digital, online world, they have started with the education model we are familiar with. They are, in effect, a virtual classroom, or course, with content (which map onto lectures) laid out in a linear sequence with discussion forums linked to this (mapping onto tutorials). In one LMS (the open source Bodington system, http://bodington.org) they even went as far as to make this mapping explicit by making the interface a building which you had to navigate to your lecture room.
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Heppell (2001) argues that “we continually make the error of subjugating technology to our present practice rather than allowing it to free us from the tyranny of past mistakes.
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Daniel (1996) has argued that elearning is the only way to cope with expanding global demand for higher education, claiming that “a major university needs to be created each week” to meet the proposed demand.
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f we view our online learning environments not as analogies of how we currently teach, but rather as a metaphor for how we engage with changes required for a digital society, then this provides us with some insight in to how to tackle the issues above (and others).
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Siemens (2008) argues that “Learning theories, such as constructivism, social constructivism, and more recently, connectivism, form the theoretical shift from instructor or institution controlled teaching to one of greater control by the learner.”
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To learn is to acquire information Information is scare and hard to find Trust authority for good information Authorized information is beyond discussion Obey the authority Follow along
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Why would we seek to recreate the sort of learning affordances Wesch highlights in a virtual environment, when we are free to construct it however we wish?
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Arguably then there has never been a better alignment of current thinking in terms of good pedagogy – i.e. emphasising the social and situated nature of learning, rather than a focus on knowledge recall with current practices in the use of technologies – i.e. user-generated content, user-added value and aggregated network effects. Despite this, the impact of Web 2.0 on education has been less dramatic than its impact on other spheres of society – use for social purposes, supporting niche communities, collective political action, amateur journalism and social commentary.”
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"Tools such as blogs, wikis, social networks, tagging systems, mashups, and content-sharing sites are examples of a new user-centric information infrastructure that emphasizes participation (e.g., creating, re-mixing) over presentation, that encourages focused conversation and short briefs
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connectivism (Siemens 2005) places decentralisation at the heart of learning:"Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual. Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing"
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Wikipedia succeeds by decentralising the authoring process, YouTube succeeds by both decentralising the broadcasting production process, but also by allowing embeds within blogs and other sites, thus decentralising the distribution process
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Knowing how to link to and locate resources in databases and search engines is a skill for a decentralised information world. The result is that online references are forced into an existing scheme, which has an inherent preference for physical resources. The traditional reference is often provided in papers, when it is the online one that has actually been used because the referencing system is biased towards the paper version.
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‘eduglu’
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SocialLearn has been conceived as a deliberate attempt to discover how learners behave in this sphere, how to develop the appropriate technology and support structures, what pedagogies are required and what are the business models for education in a disaggregated educational market.
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Interactivity: A Forgotten Art? - 1 views
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Interactivity in learning is "a necessary and fundamental mechanism for knowledge acquisition and the development of both cognitive and physical skills" (Barker, 1994:1)
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Interaction is intrinsic to successful, effective instructional practice as well as individual discover
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The implementation of interactivity can be perceived as an art because it requires a comprehensive range of skills, including an understanding of the learner,
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the importance of rigorous instructional design and the application of appropriate graphical interfaces
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Similarly, Ambron & Hooper (1988) described interactivity as a state in which users are able to browse, annotate, link and elaborate within a rich, non-linear database
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understand that quality in an instructional resource is a function of the design effort, not the technology.
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The five levels included the modality of the learner's response, the nature of the task, the level of processing, the type of program and the level of intelligence in design. In relation to these levels, it was also suggested that the level of interactivity would affect whether surface or deep learning would occur
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The taxonomy however does provide a useful starting point for developing our understanding of interactivity. The three levels, which significantly extend the definition of Rhodes & Azbell (1985), range from basic stimulus:response interactions (reactive) to learner construction and generative activity (proactive) to mutual "artificial or virtual reality designs, where the learner becomes a fully franchised citizen in the instructional environment" (Schwier & Misanchuk, 1993:12)
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In contrast, Jonassen (1988) identified five levels of interactivity which focused more on the user's involvement with the application and the subsequent effect on learning.
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The construct class of interactivity (proactive elaboration) is an extension to update interactivity, and requires the creation of an instructional environment in which the learner is required to manipulate component objects to achieve specific goals
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With hyperlinked interactivity (proactive navigation), the learner has access to a wealth of information, and may "travel" at will through that knowledge base.
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The first dimension, engagement, refers to interactivity which is either navigational (where the user moves from one location in the application to another) or instructional (where the user is involved with the content in a way designed to facilitate learning). The second dimension, control, refers to the extent to which the system (program control) or user (learner control) is making the instructional or navigational decisions. The third dimension, interactive concept, provides an indication of the type of interaction which might be expected under the varying conditions defined by the model.
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STUDENT SELF-EVALUATION: WHAT RESEARCH SAYS AND WHAT PRACTICE SHOWS - 1 views
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Self-evaluation is defined as students judging the quality of their work, based on evidence and explicit criteria, for the purpose of doing better work in the future.
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Do students self-evaluate fairly? Many teachers, parents, and students believe that if students have a chance to mark their own work they will take advantage, giving themselves higher scores regardless of the quality of their performance. We have found that students, especially older ones, may do this if left to their own devices. But, when students are taught systematic self-evaluation procedures, the accuracy of their judgment improves. Contrary to the beliefs of many students, parents, and teachers, students' propensity to inflate grades decreases when teachers share assessment responsibility and control (Ross, et al., 2000). When students participate in the identification of the criteria that will be used to judge classroom production and use these criteria to judge their work, they get a better understanding of what is expected. The result is the gap between their judgments and the teacher's is reduced. And, by focusing on evidence, discrepancies between teacher and self-evaluation can be negotiated in a productive way.
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E. Is simply requiring self-evaluation enough, or do students have to be taught how to evaluate their work accurately? Students harbor misconceptions about the self-evaluation process (e.g., the role that evidence plays). As a result, self-evaluation is unlikely to have a positive impact on achievement if these misconceptions are not addressed by teaching students how to evaluate their work. Simply requiring self-evaluation is unlikely to have an effect on achievement. Students have to be taught how to evaluate their work accurately and need time to develop the appropriate skills.
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G. What is the greatest challenge for teachers incorporating self-evaluation into their assessment repertoires? One of the greatest challenges for teachers is the recalibration of power that occurs when assessment decisions are shared. Data collected in one of our projects (Ross et al., 1998a) suggested that teachers found it difficult to share control of evaluation decision-making, a responsibility at the core of the teacher's authority. Such difficulty may be due to the fact that teaching students to be self-evaluators involves the implementation of fundamental changes in the relationship between teachers and students in the classroom. Changing root beliefs, behaviors and relationships is difficult and takes time. Accordingly, another challenge is time. Teachers need considerable time to work out how to accommodate an innovation that involves sharing control of a core teacher function with their existing beliefs about teacher and learner roles. As well, students need time to understand what self-evaluation is and how it relates to their learning, in addition to learning how to do it.
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shared by Lauren D on 11 Jul 12
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Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning - 0 views
www.aupress.ca/...ractice_of_Online_Learning.pdf
strategies critical_thinking teaching direct_instruction motivating research
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ScienceDirect.com - Computers & Education - Learning presence: Towards a theory of self... - 1 views
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This line of research indicated that the multivariate measure of learning represented by the cognitive presence factor could be predicted by the quality of teaching presence and social presence reported by learners in online courses. The relationship between these constructs is illustrated in Fig. 1 below.
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Given the electronic, social, and “self-directed” nature of online learning, it seems imperative that we examine learner self- and co-regulation in online environments especially as they relate to desired outcomes such as higher levels of cognitive presence as described in the CoI framework.
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We suggest that this constellation of behaviors and traits may be seen as elements of a larger construct “learning presence” (Shea, 2010).
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self-efficacy can be viewed as a subjective judgment of one’s level of competence in executing certain behaviors or achieving certain outcomes in the future. Self-efficacy has been identified as the best predictor of college GPA and among the best predictors of college persistence through meta-analytic research (Robbins et al., 2004). Further, commenting on the state of the art in self-regulated learning research Winne suggested that self-regulation is contingent on positive self-efficacy beliefs, arguing that “learners must subscribe to a system of epistemological and motivational beliefs that classifies failure as an occasion to be informed, a condition that is controllable, and a stimulus to spend effort to achieve better” (Winne, 2005). This contrast of failure attribution as trait (e.g., “I’m just not good at math”) versus failure as occasion to be informed (“I can control, adapt, and learn from this”) is a classic view of maladaptive and adaptive self-efficacy beliefs.
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In the current study we therefore examine the relationship between CoI constructs and elements of self efficacy in order to begin to investigate the larger theme of collaborative online learner regulation and learning presence.
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Thus, self-efficacy is “concerned not with what one has but with belief in what one can do with whatever resources one can muster” (Bandura, 2007, p. 6).
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Bandura has noted that slightly elevated efficacy can have a bigger impact on subsequent performance. Overestimating one’s capabilities to produce a behavior and outcome may boost performance and give rise to motivation to persist in face of obstacles and seatback, while the opposite is true for underestimating one’s capabilities, which may suppress productive goals, persistence and effort (Bandura, 2007). Thus there is an important connection between self-efficacy, effort, and subsequent performance.
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Positive psychological and emotional states in the aftermath of successful execution of certain academic behaviors naturally lead to sense of competence and subsequently results in enhanced sense of efficacy.
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We suggest here that elements within the CoI framework may serve as mechanisms for supporting self-efficacy. Specifically we conjecture that effective teaching presence and positive social presence should serve as sources of social persuasion and positive affect supportive of self-efficacy.
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(Bandura, 1997). These and other studies have suggested that self-efficacy has a substantial role in predicting student engagement, motivation and performance ( [Bong, 2004], [Caraway et al., 2003], [Chemers et al., 2001], [Choi, 2005], [Smith et al., 2001] and [Vrugt et al., 2002]).
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The participants in the study were a random sample of 3165 students from 42 two- and four-year institutions in New York State.
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Gaining knowledge about the reasons for learning and achievement of online students has attracted a great deal of attention among both researchers and practitioners. Understanding the factors that have an influence on the success of online education has significant implications for designing productive online communities.
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This ongoing project to document all instances of teaching, social, and cognitive presence in complete online courses also resulted in identification of learner discourse that did not fit within the model, i.e. could not be reliably coded as indicators of teaching, social, or cognitive presence ( [Shea, 2010] and [Shea et al., 2010]).
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Additional work on the CoI model (Shea, Vickers, & Hayes, 2010) suggested that past research methods may have resulted in a systematic under representation of the instructional effort involved in online education.
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These exceptions represent interesting data for refining and enhancing the model as they suggest that learners are attempting to accomplish goals that are not accounted for within the CoI framework.
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In this paper we examine the Community of Inquiry framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) suggesting that the model may be enhanced through a fuller articulation of the roles of online learners. We present the results of a study of 3165 students in online and hybrid courses from 42 two- and four-year institutions in which we examine the relationship between learner self-efficacy measures and their ratings of the quality of their learning in virtual environments. We conclude that a positive relationship exists between elements of the CoI framework and between elements of a nascent theoretical construct that we label “learning presence”. We suggest that learning presence represents elements such as self-efficacy as well as other cognitive, behavioral, and motivational constructs supportive of online learner self-regulation.
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the CoI framework attempts to articulate the social, technological, and pedagogical processes that engender collaborative knowledge construction. It therefore represents an effort to resolve the greatest challenge to the quality of online education
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Learner discussions also included efforts to divide up tasks, manage time, and set goals in order to successfully complete group projects. As such they appeared to be indicators of online learner self and co-regulation, which can be viewed as the degree to which students in collaborative online educational environments are metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally active participants in the learning process (Winters & Azevedo, 2005).
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the authors concluded that all the studies converged on advantageous outcomes for providing support for “metacognitive” learning strategies including self-reflection, self-explanation, and self-monitoring.
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successfully orchestrating a dialogue demands fairly sophisticated skills. Conversational contributions need to be simultaneously parsed according to their disciplinary value, their location within the chain of collective argumentation, their relevance to the instructional goals, and their role as indicators of the student’s ongoing understanding. The outcome of this complex appraisal is a sense of the amount and quality of the guidance that specific contributions and the conversation as a whole require to support learning.” (Larreamendy-Joerns & Leinhardt, p. 591)
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Zhao et al. also concluded that studies in which instructor interaction with students was medium to high resulted in better learning outcomes for online students relative to classroom learners.
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shared by Maria Guadron on 14 Aug 12
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Lee Hamilton: Digital Disorder - 0 views
leehamilton.blogspot.com/...digital-disorder.html
knowledge miscellaneous student-centered learning disorder
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Health Communicator's Social Media Toolkit - 0 views
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Second Edition Now Available! The Enhanced and improved second edition of the Health Communicator's Social Media Toolkit [PDF - 2.42MB] now available.
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InstructionalDesign - 0 views
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Examples are traditional classroom lectures, reading assignments, and watching educational television.
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typically characterized by problem-solving and scaffolded guidance that supports learning from an inductive, case-based and example approach.
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Teachers' Invisible Presence in Net-based Distance Education | Hult | The International... - 0 views
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The stance taken in this paper, then, is constructivist – that conversation is learning in the making.
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Any conversation, that is, draws on heteroglossia (Bakhtin’s neologism) – pools of different ideas whose elements, when exchanged, foster learning. According to Bakhtin, every utterance has a double significance. It is an expression of a 'unitary [common] language' used to conduct the conversation and, at the same time, it builds on the 'social and historical' differences embedded in the heteroglossia (1981, p. 272).
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described conversations as multi-authored texts rather than as multi-voiced heteroglossia (see Bakhtin, 1994,
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fulfilled best when the codes of the speaker and the listener most completely coincide and, consequently, when the text has the maximum degree of univocality” (1988, p. 34). The generation of new meanings occurs when there are differences between the speaker and the listener. Texts used in educational exchanges cease:
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online adult education is not the delivery of texts but, rather, the creation and insertion of ‘thinking devices’ into conversation.
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For this article we have concentrated on teacher and student views of teachers’ role orientations in online courses.
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our intention has been to identify and clarify teaching ‘saliences’ that have emerged in online adult education in Sweden. In a wider sense, however, our analysis is also a response to the question: ‘Whatever happened to teaching in the learning society?’
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When asked about their views, all students felt that teachers played a central role in supporting Net-based learning. Indeed, some of them suggested that moderation in online settings of adult education is more important than in face-to-face settings.
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In this perspective, teachers gave students tasks that activated them and, thereby, fostered their understanding of subject matter.
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Some students spoke about being activated by stimulating tasks that led them to engage with the Web and libraries, with one of them adding ‘seeking by your self is a pre-condition for learning.’ Active searching also meant that students came into contact with information which extended their learning beyond the task itself.
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None of the teachers, however, was entirely satisfied with their dialogic or conference practice. Levels of engagement, dialogue, and initiative-taking were not as high as they had hoped. In response, they tried to promote conversation by encouraging students to react to each other’s postings, by organising tasks where cooperation and interaction was needed, or by introducing new aspects and questions when discussion faltered.
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Further, teachers reported that they also tried to act as models of good behaviour by giving swift replies to student postings and by making their own postings appropriate yet concise.
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felt that sharing different aspects of the subject matter with the teacher and fellow students raised fresh questions. It made them reach beyond the book, evoking learning and thinking along new pathways. Even if they thought that well-chosen tasks were the most effective way of fostering dialogue, they also expected the course leader to participate fully, developing new themes if student postings declined, and remaining alert to student proposals that might enhance the interchange of ideas and knowledge.
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None of the teachers, however, spontaneously offered this view as their primary role or orientation. Nevertheless, when asked whether they had any correspondence with students through private mailboxes rather than ‘conferences’ and ‘cafes,’ some of them said that they occasionally responded privately to correct misinterpretations.
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This task raises many questions about teaching, highlighting the difference, for example, between instructionist and constructionist paradigms for learning (Wilensky, 1991). Would a too well-planned course be instructionist, thus constraining student influence and the pursuit of democracy? In their postings, teachers in this study felt that there was no necessary contradiction – that well-planned courses could, indeed, strengthen student influence. Nevertheless, busy distance education students, according to the teachers, often appreciate instructionist courses with clearly stated activities and tasks, even if the students are left with limited opportunities to ‘construct their own relationships with the objects of knowledge’ (Wilensky, 1991, p. 202).
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Teacher’s invisible presence is exemplified in taking a stand-by role and/ or being reluctant to intervene. ‘The [teachers’] silence should be deafening,’ one teacher recommended. Although most of the teachers agreed that well-planned courses do not inhibit course dialogue, the fact that in their own online course deliberations they set aside time to discuss this issue may reflect ambivalence in their stance. The question of when and how teachers should intervene remains impossible to resolve, except in practice.
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a second conclusion – that the promotion of learning in an open environment requires an animating or steering presence. Such teaching, however, is not a process of instruction. And for this reason the word teacher may no longer be appropriate. In English, the word tutor is commonly used in adult education, because it has connotations of ‘supervision’ and ‘guardianship’ as well as ‘instruction’ (see Oxford English Dictionary). More recently, Salmon has suggested ‘e-moderating,’ but even moderation carries instructionist connotations – to exercise a controlling influence over; to regulate, restrain, control, rule (OED) – that may not be appropriate to all forms of liberal education. In the context of mainland Europe, the word pedagogue may be appropriate since, etymologically, pedagogue denotes someone engaged in 'drawing out.'
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Intellectual development, however, can be an intra- as well as an inter-personal phenomenon. That is, learning may not come directly from teachers but rather from their absent or invisible presence. Online pedagogues, therefore, can be present in different ways. They may be present in person, participating in learning conversations. They may constitute an absent presence that, nonetheless, is embodied in the learning resources directed towards students (e.g., the selected readings or activities). Or pedagogues may exist merely as inner voices, inherited from the language of others, that (invisibly) steer the desires, self-regulation, and self-direction of learners. Indeed, this last pedagogic position ‘auto-didacticism,’ has always been central to the post-Enlightenment ideals of liberal adult education.
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Social media - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views
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The honeycomb framework defines how social media services focus on some or all of seven functional building blocks (identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups).
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By applying a set of theories in the field of media research (social presence, media richness) and social processes (self-presentation, self-disclosure) Kaplan and Haenlein created a classification scheme for different social media types in their Business Horizons article published in 2010. According to Kaplan and Haenlein there are six different types of social media: collaborative projects (e.g., Wikipedia), blogs and microblogs (e.g., Twitter), content communities (e.g., YouTube), social networking sites (e.g., Facebook), virtual game worlds (e.g., World of Warcraft), and virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life). Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing and voice over IP, to name a few. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms. Social media network websites include sites like Facebook, Twitter, Bebo and MySpace.
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he authors explain that each of the seven functional building blocks has important implications for how firms should engage with social media. By analyzing identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups, firms can monitor and understand how social media activities vary in terms of their function and impact, so as to develop a congruent social media strategy based on the appropriate balance of building blocks for their community.[2]
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one of the foundational concepts in social media has become that you cannot completely control your message through social media but rather you can simply begin to participate in the "conversation" expecting that you can achieve a significant influence in that conversation.[7]
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Several colleges have even introduced classes on best social media practices, preparing students for potential careers as digital strategists.[
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Out of this anarchy, it suddenly became clear that what was governing the infinite monkeys now inputting away on the Internet was the law of digital Darwinism, the survival of the loudest and most opinionated. Under these rules, the only way to intellectually prevail is by infinite filibustering."[34]
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social media in the form of public diplomacy creates a patina of inclusiveness that covers traditional economic interests that are structured to ensure that wealth is pumped up to the top of the economic pyramid, perpetuating the digital divide and post Marxian class conflict.
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He also speculates on the emergence of "anti-social media" used as "instruments of pure control".[36]
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Social networking now accounts for 22% of all time spent online in the US.[15] A total of 234 million people age 13 and older in the U.S. used mobile devices in December 2009.[16] Twitter processed more than one billion tweets in December 2009 and averages almost 40 million tweets per day.[16] Over 25% of U.S. internet page views occurred at one of the top social networking sites in December 2009, up from 13.8% a year before.[16] Australia has some of the highest social media usage in the world. In usage of Facebook, Australia ranks highest, with over 9 million users spending almost 9 hours per month on the site.[17][18] The number of social media users age 65 and older grew 100 percent throughout 2010, so that one in four people in that age group are now part of a social networking site.[19] As of June 2011[update] Facebook has 750 Million users.[20] Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.[21] Social Media has overtaken pornography as the No. 1 activity on the web.[21] iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months, and Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months.[21] If Facebook were a country it would be the world's 3rd largest in terms of population, that's above the US. U.S. Department of Education study revealed that online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction.[21] YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world.[21] In four minutes and 26 seconds 100+ hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube.[21] 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media.[21] 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum.[21]
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Behavior.org | Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies - 1 views
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This is an amazing resource on defining behavior. It is so helpful in understanding the function of behavior in students with ASD. There is a great podcast titled Marshall Lev Dermer-Defining Behavior. The podcast downloaded to my ITunes, so I wasn't able to bookmark it. This is an amazing resource for me!! Defining
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Hi Heather this seems like a great resource for you. I can't wait to see how you use it in your course. Do you plan on placing the entire podcast in the course or are you going to use parts of it? Diana
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VIRTUAL TRANSFORMATION: WEB-BASED TECHNOLOGY AND PEDAGOGICAL CHANGE - 2 views
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One online instructor (Alley 1996) has described this changing pedagogical consciousness as an �instructional epiphany�.� Alley tells of a personal transformation, stimulated by online instruction, marked by two "milestones". First, he had to totally redesign his course to fit and leverage the new learning environment. Second, he had to rethink what he calls his �basic approach�: �As long as I held on to the traditional �sage-on-stage� style of teaching, I would keep reinventing ways for students to be a passive audience� (1996:51).� Similar changes in pedagogical belief and practice have been reported by other faculty who have taught web-based courses (Brown 1998; Jaffee 1997; Cremer 1998) as well as researchers who have interviewed online instructors (Frank 2000).�� There are clearly some �structural constraints� built into the virtual classroom ecology that make it difficult to implement traditional modes of delivery and, in this sense, almost force instructors to entertain active learning strategies. As Frank (2000) discovered in her study of online instructors, "All of the participants saw online learning as empowering for students. The most valuable benefits were the facilitation of active learning, critical thinking, collaboration, confidence, and lifelong learning habits. A common theme was the way in which the teacher is forced to give up the control that one has in a face-to-face environment and re-examine the traditional role of content deliverer".� Just as the physical classroom architecture imposes constraints on, and opportunities for, particular pedagogical practices, so too does the virtual classroom. John Seely Brown (2000) has described the environment of the world-wide-web as a �learning ecology� that is a self-organized evolving collection of cross-pollinating overlapping communities of interest.� Asynchronous web-based courses that include a discussion forum possess many of the same ecological features. All members of the class can receive and broadcast information at any time. This critical communication feature distinguishes the virtual classroom from prior forms of instructional technology.�� While instructors can mediate and guide, they cannot entirely control the flow of communication. Thus, instructor and student roles and relations are less hierarchical and more overlapping and interactive. These greater opportunities for participation can contribute to a greater diversity of opinion and perspective. It is hard work to establish these social dynamics in a physical classroom constrained by a fixed space, a designated time block, and trained inhibitions. The virtual classroom, in contrast, has the potential to establish new patterns of instructor and student interaction and, accordingly, different teaching and learning roles and practices (Girod and Cavanaugh 2001; Becker and Ravitz 1999). ��������� In making comparisons between the physical and virtual classroom, it is important to emphasize a cautionary caveat. The pedagogical ecology, be it a physical classroom or a virtual interface, cannot entirely determine a particular pedagogical practice or learning outcome. The pedagogical ecology offers opportunities and constraints that will shape and influence classroom dynamics and learning outcomes, but much will also depend on the principles informing, and the actual design of, the teaching and learning process (see Chamberlin 2001). The various practices that are employed in both a physical and a virtual classroom indicate the range of possibilities. However, if we believe that, for the purpose of student learning, active student engagement and interaction is preferable to the passive reception of information, we should consider the degree to which this principle is advanced or facilitated by the expanding virtual learning ecology.�
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Sociological theories and concepts have an important role to play in analyzing and interpreting these developments. A central sociological proposition is that structural environments influence the social perceptions, roles, and relations of human actors.� As increasing numbers of students and faculty find themselves operating in virtual learning environments, we might also expect to find some changing instructional dynamics. More specifically, there are a number of questions worth exploring. What are the relationships between the technical, the social, and the pedagogical infrastructures?� How has the introduction of new instructional technologies influenced established pedagogical practices? How does the shift from a physical classroom to a virtual learning environment shape and reconfigure the social roles and relations among faculty and students? What consequences will these technologies have for developing pedagogical practices?
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have less to do with the proven effectiveness of the particular practice than the desire to appear legitimate or conform to normative expectations.�
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Managing the Platform: Higher Education and the Logic of Wikinomics (EDUCAUSE Review) |... - 0 views
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Wikipedia and other social networking sites provide a space or platform upon which all kinds of activities can flourish, with the idea of a platform transcending any particular technology or application and referring to either virtual or physical worlds. Collaboration among many users upon such a platform often produces unplanned and emergent
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the logic of commons-based peer production, and the logic of platform management transform the idea of the university and the very activities—teaching and learning, research, and publishing—that lie at the heart of this enterprise
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But at its heart, the university was born to provide a structure to govern the student-teacher relationship.
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development of Wikiversity (http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page), an initiative from the Wikimedia Foundation
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materials are produced by Wikiversity participants, who are, like their counterparts in Wikipedia, motivated volunteers. In addition, the Wikiversity course materials, unlike those made available by MIT, are editable by users
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. Instead, students are invited to work together, to engage in discussion, to solve problems, and to otherwise “construct their knowledge.”
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Put another way, the role of the teacher in a constructivist setting is like being a “procedural author,” as defined by Janet Murray when discussing virtual reality spaces.9
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transformed into a kind of platform where students were invited to explore/create/construct knowledge. Peer production is very much a part of the constructivist classroom setting.
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are more theme-parks than sandboxes,” meaning that learning is made as uniform and as controlled as possible (under the name of “standardization” and “outcomes-based” assessments).
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In contrast, a sandbox conjures up images of unstructured, unplanned, emergent play that is determined by the players. Imagine a university organized and managed like a sandbox, where teachers and students are invited to play and create in an unstructured environment—or, rather, in an environment structured by their own actions, choices, and decisions.
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Concerns would surely be raised about the quality of these credentials, similar to the debates about the quality of the articles in Wikipedia
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To what degree will such informal learning and “credentialing by reputation” be legitimated and accepted by society?
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emerge from the decisions, the edits, the additions, and the deletions of a number of people, all bound by the rules and protocols of Wikipedia
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The wiki-ized university will probably not displace the traditional university but will likely exist alongside it, albeit in direct competition.
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My experience in NY - 0 views
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the teacher only has to think creatively and give the students good instructions, he hasn’t have to give them lists of words and definitions that is the most boring part of constructing a course, and a lot of work.
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I love to think that the process of re-conceptualizing a curse to go online can change the way teachers teach this way, and as I learned too, this change is not only for online classes, in face to face too, because it opens their minds, it makes them think and evaluate their old classes, their old evaluations, and most teachers change the way they teach face to face too, because they realize that traditional teaching doesn’t work face to face either. And they don’t change because they have to change, they have an excuse for changing, so online teaching is a catalyst for transforming teachers.
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A lot of students never felt engaged and I have never understood that until now. The kind of activity I used to do was active and contextualized to the world, but not everybody has the same word or interests, so I think the only way to engage everybody is to ask them what they want to learn, or make them choose. Something I have never done is to empower my students to lead their own learning process. I have had problems trusting in them I have never give them freedom to be creative, lead a group, do research, look for something new, let them teach me something. I haven’t tried to get out the outlines, be more risky. I don’t know how it would be not to have the control of their learning process, but I would like to try. I learned a very interesting thing: they can find their own material, they can learn the things they like and are related with their own interests, they can lead a discussion about a topic they like and engage others in the discussion. They are able to do a lot of things and we have to take advantage of that as teachers because, if we do all the work, who is learning?
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So, as I learned form Alex, the question is not “what can I teach online?”, the question is “how can I teach online the thing that I want to teach?”,
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I don’t know if the question is “which students can be good online learners”, the question is “how can I engage most of them and help them to learn” however they are, because we can’t control that.
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That is why I think it is so important to have questions in order to construct our knowledge, so I really understand that to make people think you have to guide them to have questions , not answers. And how to do that? The best way to do that, according to what I read in The role of questioning teaching, thinking and learning, is making the students do things, if they are passive they are not going to have questions, and also, make them good questions that are provocative and makes them think about what they are interested in solve or understand or do, and other kinds of question that lead students to critical thinking.
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I think that in order to achieve a sense of community between your students you have to give them diverse and frequent opportunities for interaction between them and with you, it is not about knowing each other and working in groups in some activity, you have to interact a lot with all your classmates to build a community and feel that you belong to the class. So you have to design diverse activities and spaces for interaction, sharing and communication between students and with you. Also, you have to teach and guide the students in how to interact, how to contribute, how to add knowledge to the conversation, how to give their classmates feedback, how to reinforce their opinions, how to support them, how to answer their questions, how to evaluate them, how to question them, how to agree or refute them, how to make a comfortable climate for learning and a lot of other things related to create a sense of teaching presence and a sense of belonging to the group.
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By teaching to their classmates students can understand more deeply the content, develop other skills like being creative, they have to think deeper in how to explain a concept and create good examples, and learn from their classmates, from their questions and from the interaction between them.
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I like the idea of having a community blog
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I needed a Blog
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sometimes we think the only way of engaging students is entertaining them. That is not true,
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And even better, how Shoubang sounds so familiar and close to the students in the welcome document without anything fancy technology, only text, but it seems so easy to find him in there and so friendly.
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I think that this work is very creative, and as I remember in one of the first reading of this course (”10 ways online…”),
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I don’t know why but I love it! I can review it forever, and I always have new ideas, and I love that.
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some faculty’s opinions is that they feel younger because they feel the same feeling that they felt when they were teaching for the first time, and I think that they feel rewarded by their creation, their new product.