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After reading that statement, I felt as though many things clicked for me. The course design and teaching practices are closely linked. The social, cognitive, and teaching presence are related and depend on each other. What does this mean for my course? For me it translates to making sure my course design contains a careful balance to establish the community of inquiry, and that my teaching practices are supported by my course design.

First that instructors must give control over the learning to the students, and second that instructors must be skilled at guiding discussions in order to help students learn what is necessary through interactions with others. I especially liked an analogy that Luke used in one of his discussion posts, “Yoda (the teacher) guided Luke (the student) in the ways of the Force, he pointed him where he needed to go but had Luke do the work.” I think this is very relatable for those of us who are star wars fans. Yoda is this incredibly wise mentor, who says very little. The statements he makes are brief but have a lot of meaning. I do see how this relates to effective teaching online. I had to help facilitate a discussion in a past online class, and always felt hesitant to jump in. My sense was that you only want to add something when the thinking stops. You only want to ask enough questions, or statements to get the thinking going again.

I really appreciated that the course was able to allow me to reach these conclusions in my own way, rather than just telling me “the line between direct instruction and facilitation of discourse can be blurred”. 

I have been able to make the big connections, and form ideas in a way that previously has been difficult for me. 

I feel as though the reflection assignments have provided the context for my brain to think in a different way.  This not only gives me confidence for the future, but it also helps me to discover the connections I have made unconsciously!  It seems kind of strange to say that, but it is true!  I am hoping to continue to use blogging as a tool to document my insights and learning after the course ends.

I definitely was struggling with motivation when I felt the connection to my classmates and the instructor fading.

Through ETAP640, I have really learned how important reflection is for deep learning. It is through my blog posts that I have been able to tie all the ideas together in my head and makes sense out of the information. The course manual suggests that you ask your students why they are taking the course within the ice breaker.

Maree (4)

This could also be due to my “millennial” nature and my “self-absorbedness” when it comes to my grades—something that Luke (4) also mentioned.

A lot of what I was saying had to do with the instructor facilitating instruction rather than purely teaching it…something very common in our discussions. By the end of this course, I learned that along with being a facilitator, the instructor must be a supporter and help the online learner throughout their successes and struggles—something that I often do not experience in asynchronous learning.

My discussion postings have gone from “skimming” the top of empirical research to truly digging into the topic and making my learning visible for my professor and my classmates. I learned how to research topics properly and write my findings in a clear, conversational way.

so maybe I’ll work on developing my very own perplexity fairy. 

In this course not only will I remember my instructor’s name – I will also remember my classmates’ names. That’s pretty remarkable!

A teacher’s ethical caring means genuine caring, aspiring to understand and make an effort for pupils’ protection, support, and development. Because of this pedagogical caring, the teacher especially pursues pupils’ potential to develop and thus help them to find and use their own strengths.

Pedagogical love has been considered the core factor in the definition of good teacherhood for decades, though the characteristics of a good teacher have always included a variety of features. Features such as the ability to maintain discipline and order, set a demanding goal level, and the mastery of substance have been especially emphasized (e.g., Davis, 1993; Zombylas, 2007; Hansen, 2009)

Love influences the direction of people’s action as well as its intensity. Positive emotions, joy, strength, and the feeling of being capable lead mental energy toward the desired goal (Rantala & Määttä, 2011). Negative emotions, grief, fear, and anger cause entropy, an inner imbalance that burns off energy, brands the target with negative status, and pursues nullifying and undervaluing (e.g., Isen, 2001).

he educator’s task is to provide pupils with such stimuli and environment where students are guided to limit their instincts by controlling enjoyment and vital-based values, in order to be able to achieve higher values and skills (Solasaari, 2003).

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990, 2000) has launched the concept that refers to an optimal or autotelic experience where people are riveted so comprehensively by a challenging performance that the awareness of time and place blurs. Flow is possible when the challenges in a task are balanced with an actor’s abilities. Flow is an enjoyable state of concentration and task orientation, leading to optimal performance, whether the case is wall creeping, chess playing, dancing, surgery, studying languages, painting, or composing music.

This sets challenges for skill development. If a task is too easy, it will bore. If it is too difficult, it will cause anxiety and fear. The exact experience of flow and the active sense of well-being resulting from the former, encourage people to develop and improve their skills. People are willing to strive for flow whether it was about love for math, art, programming, or orthopedics (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).

In an interview, Gardner (as cited in Goleman, 1999) said flow is intrinsically rewarding without the hope for reward or threat of punishment. We should use learners’ positive moods (love) and through it get them to learn things about fields they can succeed in. People have to discover what they like, what things and doings they love and do these things. Even a child learns the best when he/she loves what he/she is doing and finds it enjoyable. (p. 126)

Pedagogical love might contribute to pupils’ learning and success by providing them with positive learning experiences, initial excitement, and perceived successes. These are the seeds of expertise as a positive feeling that can be considered the source of human strengths (Isen, 2001).

Pedagogical love springs from an individual learner’s presence persuading it to come forward more and more perfectly and diversely. A skillful educator does not just sit by and watch if a learner makes worthless choices or fails in his or her opportunities to grow and develop.

Haavio emphasized the meaning of pedagogical love in teachers’ work and considered that teachers’ work consists of the following two obligations: attachment to learners and dutiful perseverance of life values.

Pedagogical love speaks to interdependence—the recognition and acceptance that we need others.

Love appears in teaching as guidance toward disciplined work, but also as patience, trust, and forgiveness. The purpose is not to make learning fun, easy, or pleasing but to create a setting for learning where pupils can use and develop their own resources eventually proceeding at the maximum of their own abilities

A loving teacher reveals for a pupil the dimensions of his or her development in a manner of speaking. This is how a pupil’s self-esteem strengthens and he or she can develop toward higher activities from the lowest, pleasure-oriented ones. Achieving high-level skills is rewarding because it brings pleasure, and yet, it often demands—as mentioned previously—self-discipline and rejections

A teacher’s work is interpersonal and relational, with a teacher’s own personality fundamental to building relationships with students. A teacher’s work involves plenty of emotional strain. In addition, a teacher inevitably has to experience frustration in his or her work. There are many situations when a teacher will feel like she or he has failed regardless of the solution he or she creates.

Consequently, teachers are likely to experience guilt because they cannot sufficiently attend to all pupils in an appropriate way that is congruent with the notion of caring.

However, teachers have to realize that their own coping, motivation, and engagement require attention; they are not automatic.

Pedagogical love emerges through teachers’ emotions, learned models, moral attitude, and actions

Good teachers are examples to learners even in the most difficult life situations. Teachers have to believe in their work and endeavour to build a nurturing environment and a more humane world.

To be happy about life, to guide students to see the wonder and joy in the mundane is a teacher’s most important skill. Being able to help students find and negotiate the joy, wonder, happiness, and pain in the everydayness of life is an increasingly important quality in today’s insecurities, with the mounting pressure of increased demands for efficiency

makes students responsible for learning

focuses not only on what students are learning but how they are learning

Instructors are now guides, facilitators, coaches and not just sages

The ability to solve problems builds on declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge.

eas, such as math versus writing

problem solving involves a sequence of steps, beginning with establishing a representation of the problem, then selecting a strategy that seems appropriate for resolving the problem, followed by evaluating the results of employing that strategy

Declarative knowledge involves information one can state verbally. Therefore, tasks will require students to state, explain, discuss, or declare in some other way what they know

He described declarative knowledge as a network of propositions, whereas procedural knowledge represented productions. While declarative knowledge involves knowing that something is the case, procedural knowledge involves knowing how to do something

To assess problem solving, students are presented a problem to solve or a situation from which they must infer the problem that needs to be solved. Typically, any number of strategies might be used to successfully solve the problem. When scoring student performance where the focus of the assessment is on problem solving, proficiency with particular strategies or other types of procedural (or declarative) knowledge generally is not scored. What is scored are qualities such as the establishment of a clear and appropriate problem representation and sense of goal, the selection of a strategy that is reasonable given the goal to be achieved, and the adequacy with which outcomes from using the selected strategy are evaluated.

This belief is explained by the Constructivist Learning Theory.

This theory states that learning is an active process of creating meaning from different experiences. In other words, students will learn best by by trying to make sense of something on their own with the teacher as a guide to help them along the way.

(direct instruction, collaborative learning, inquiry learning, etc.),

Critical thinking is self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fair-minded way.  People who think critically consistently attempt to live rationally, reasonably, empathically.   They are keenly aware of the inherently flawed nature of human thinking when left unchecked.  They strive to diminish the power of their egocentric and sociocentric tendencies.  They use the intellectual tools that critical thinking offers – concepts and principles that enable them to analyze, assess, and improve thinking.  They work diligently to develop the intellectual virtues of intellectual integrity, intellectual humility, intellectual civility, intellectual empathy, intellectual sense of justice and confidence in reason.  They realize that no matter how skilled they are as thinkers, they can always improve their reasoning abilities and they will at times fall prey to mistakes in reasoning, human irrationality, prejudices, biases, distortions, uncritically accepted social rules and taboos, self-interest, and vested interest.  They strive to improve the world in whatever ways they can and contribute to a more rational, civilized society.   At the same time, they recognize the complexities often inherent in doing so.  They avoid thinking simplistically about complicated issues and strive to appropriately consider the rights and needs of relevant others.  They recognize the complexities in developing as thinkers, and commit themselves to life-long practice toward self-improvement.  They embody the Socratic principle:  The unexamined life is not worth living, because they realize that many unexamined lives together result in an uncritical, unjust, dangerous world. ~ Linda Elder, September, 2007

Having familiar, collegial, and multiple points of contact helps them develop and maintain the confidence they need to be successful teachers. And, mentoring is a proven-effective strategy for support, improvement, and community building.

. Adjuncts who know that they are working for a professional organization are more likely to feel a sense of pride in their affiliation, and feel accountable to the institution.

These required training opportunities allow new adjuncts to actively learn about FCCJ's instructional culture, and build community with other instructors. They actively discuss their teaching experiences, best practices, learn new strategies for teaching online, and apply those strategies to the courses they are currently teaching.

In the online environment, Virtual Adjuncts need to know clearly what the institution's expectations are of them, and whether they are meeting those expectations. There is very little continuity among contemporary online programs, and each institution has its own instructional priorities, goals, constituencies, and definitions of excellence. Many adjuncts teach simultaneously at multiple institutions, and so it is important to define expectations clearly.

Peer-based sharing is the most effective model for the professional learning community

Maria Puzziferro-Schnitzer

teachers should ‘present students with a true picture or representation of another culture and language’ (Singhal, 1998). And this will be achieved only if cultural awareness is viewed as something more than merely a compartmentalised subject within the foreign language curriculum; that is, when culture “inhabits” the classroom and undergirds every language activity

stu- dents use their own existing knowledge and prior experience to help them under- stand the new material

And the professor, instead of being the "sage on the stage," functions as a "guide on the side," facil- itating learning in less directive ways