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A good strategy for developing a supportive online course community is to design a course with a balanced set of dialogues. This means designing a course so that the three dialogues of faculty to student, student to student and student to resource are about equal. In most online courses, the dialogue of faculty to student is provided with (1) mini-lectures in text or video or audio podcasts, (2) weekly coaching and reminder announcements and (3) explanations/interactions with the students.

Online learning is just as intensive as learning face-to-face, and time to do the work needs to be scheduled and planned for, just as if one were attending face-to-face classes. Being clear as to how much effort and time will be required on a weekly basis keeps surprises to a minimum.

Early feedback surveys or just informal discussions ask students to provide feedback on what is working well in a course and what might help them have a better course experience. This early feedback is done early in the course so corrections and modifications can be made. It is an easy opening for students who might have comments or suggestions or questions.

Quick One-Liner Hints Create open-ended questions that learners can explore and apply the concepts that they are learning Model good Socratic-type probing and follow-up questions. Why do you think that? What is your reasoning? Is there an alternative strategy? Ask clarifying questions that encourage students to think about what they know and don't know. Stagger due dates of the responses and consider mid-point summary and /or encouraging comments Provide guidelines and instruction on responding to other students. For example, suggest a two-part response: (1) what you liked or agreed with or what resonated with you, and (2) a follow-up question such as what you are wondering about or curious about, etc.

As courses come to a close, it is easy to forget the value of a good closing experience. In the final weeks of a course, students are likely to be stressed and not take the time to do the lists and the planning that can help reduce stress and provide a calming atmosphere. A favorite image of mine is from David Allen of Getting Things Done. Allen notes that making a list helps us to clear the "psychic ram" of our brains and we feel more relaxed and more in control. Once we have made our list and schedule, we don't have to continually remind ourselves of what needs to be done and when. Here are a few hints for closing out a course experience with style and panache. Take time to remind students of what's next and when assignments and readings are due. Announcements of this type provide a "To Do" list and schedule for the learners. And by implication this list provides a helpful "To Do" list and schedule for you. As always, it is good to post reminders and make references to the planning list in your comments. And update as you go. Plan the ending of the course experience. A well-designed ending of a course provides opportunities for reflection and integration of useful knowledge. It is also a time to wrap up positive social and cognitive experiences.

How is the learner supporting the community of learners and contributing to the overall growth of the group? We have much to learn about teaching and learning and specifically about teaching online. The good news is that in 2011 we now know much more than what we did in 1990 or even 2000. The list of references that follow are starting points for both general teaching and for teaching online.

Should we consider students to have two separate lives--a relatively digital free life at school and a digitally saturated life away from school--or should we consider them to have one life that integrates their lives as students and digital citizens?

It is a good idea to discuss and identify the tasks at the beginning of the group work. The key is to divide the work and let individual team member’s work on their tasks. Finally, bring together all the work and make sure it blends in. The work should flow and sound as if it was don

by one person only

It is recommended to define a communication plan and communicate regularly with an instant manager or video chat.

All group members should have their own tasks for which they are responsible. If done accurately, they should be rewarded in terms of acknowledgement in the form of a group thank you message

Dewey believed there needed to be an intimate relationship between experience and education and that students had to construct their own learning.

This is the challenge of creative teaching. I

Teachers need to be on the alert to see what attitudes and habits are being developed and this requires that the teacher has some ideas of what is going on in the mind of the learner. The teacher is an important part of any learning experience.

Self-evaluation is a potentially powerful technique because of its impact on student performance through enhanced self-efficacy and increased intrinsic motivation

STUDENT SELF-EVALUATION: WHAT RESEARCH SAYS AND WHAT PRACTICE SHOWS By Carol Rolheiser and John A. Ross

STAGE 1- Involve students in defining the criteria that will be used to judge their performance.

One teacher resolved the conflict by redefining her metaphor of assessment from that of "fair judgment" to providing a ‘"window into a student's mind" (p. 309),

Alternate assessment must be transparent (Fredericksen & Collins, 1989), meaning that the criteria for appraisal, the population from which tasks are drawn, the scoring key and interpretive schemes must be visible to students, even when the teachers who devised these procedures have an imperfect grasp of them

Involving students in determining the evaluation criteria initiates a negotiation

If students have been involved in a negotiation in Stage 1, the criteria that result will be an integrated set of personal and school goals.

- Give students feedback on their self-evaluations.

Teachers need to help students recalibrate their understanding by arranging for students to receive feedback (from the teacher, peers, and themselves) on their attempts to implement the criteria.

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).

Students will learn more because (i) self-evaluation will focus student attention on the objectives measured, (ii) the assessment provides teachers with information they would otherwise lack, (iii) students will pay more attention to the assessment, and (iv) student motivation will be enhanced.

Our own research and that of others substantiate these four arguments.

Positive self-evaluations encourage students to set higher goals and commit more personal resources to learning tasks (Bandura, 1997; Schunk, 1995).

regardless of locations

allowing them to learn from the best sources

allowing them to progress at their own pace.

Allows them to meet students and teachers from around the world to experience their culture, language, ideas, and shared experiences.

ability to review parts that are misunderstood,

A major roadblock or barrier to the implementation of this model is that many educators do not know what to do within the classroom

They become hooked through personal connection to the experience and desire to create meaning for and about that experience (ala constructivist learning).

Students become interested in the topic because of the experience

It is the teacher’s responsibility to structure and organize a series of experiences which positively influence each individual’s potential future experiences

content-based presentations are controlled by the learner as opposed to the lecturer as would be the case in a live, synchronous, didactic-driven environment.

My experience as a student was that I was focused on my routines from the other class and interpreting feedback to what I was thinking Alex meant and it wasn’t the same.  Then, we I began to trust Alex’s words and it became clear to me that she wanted to use to think deeper about the questions.

My question is how do we get our students motivated to think critically when, students just want to get the right answer?

In this process I learned a lot about myself as a learner and teacher.  I really need to promote more critical thinking activities and discussion.  It is very hard especially, with the children who I teach because they just want to get the right answer and have no motivation to further discuss any math concepts.

 I also need to think more critically as a person and a teacher.  In my school we put a lot of the blame on the parents because the parents don’t help students at home.  Meanwhile, many of these families can’t do it because they don’t know how the do the homework assignment, can’t read English, or are working.

 I know I have learned this because now I have a deeper appreciation in using technology as a learning tool.

What hindered my learning was time.  This course was a big adjustment in how much time I needed to set aside for this course.  I feel as though my school activities got in the way.  I really put too much on my plate this year as far as being involved in school activities.  This coming school year I am not going to do as much so I can focus more on taking the online courses.

Millennials tend to be highly collaborative and optimistic and are very comfortable with technology (cell phones that are cameras, iPods, and PDAs). Like their parents, they focus on a work/life balance

Table 1. Successful Communication Strategies for Four Generations

Table 2. Teaching/Motivational Strategies for Four Generations

online learning in k-12 students

part.

am having a hard time picturing my unenthusiastic, too cool for that, high school students being responsible enough to take an online course.

community.

August 4, 2012

design.

module 1

  In this class, i had to wrap my head that I have to design a course that the student is responsible for their learning with me as a facilitator. 

 I have so many ideas that I have learned from this course that I want to implement them all into my class.  But, I really need to stand back and reflect.  The most I got from this class is all the information that everybody shared on diigo.com and in their discussions.  I am very proud of everybody’s  contribution to my education and their own.  I loved how everybody had a share in the teaching presence and how Alex facilitated the learning.  This was an an excellent example of an effective student-centered learning environment.

. Apply strategies for identifying and solving routine hardware and software problems that occur during everyday use. 2. Demonstrate knowledge of current changes in information technologies and the effect those changes have on the workplace and society. 3. Exhibit legal and ethical behaviors when using information and technology, and discuss consequences of misuses. 4. Use content-specific tools, software, and simulations to support learning and research. 5. Apply productivity/multimedia tools and peripherals to support personal productivity, group collaboration, and learning throughout the curriculum. 6. Design, develop, publish, and present products using technology resources that demonstrate and communicate curriculum concepts to audiences inside and outside of the classroom. 7. Collaborate with peers, experts, and others using telecommunications and collaborative tools to investigate curriculum-related problems, issues, and information, and to develop solutions or products for audiences inside and outside of the classroom. 8. Select and use appropriate tools and technology resources to accomplish a variety of task and solve problems. 9. Demonstrate an understanding of concepts underlying hardware, software, and connectivity, and of practical applications to learning and problem solving. 10. Research and evaluate the accuracy, relevance, appropriateness, comprehensiveness, and bias of electronic information sources concerning real-world problems. I do believe that these standards should assist the students in either online or face-to-face class to succeed with learning.  I am actually going to observe and take notes of my 8th graders to see how many standards that they can achieve. I had a great summer learning and being challenged to do my best at learning.

    The sad fact is that we far too often fail to invest either the time or the necessary resources to reach and build Phase III teachers. My personal experience suggests that on average it takes anywhere from three to five years for wide spread single component teacher behavior changes to be firmly implemented among a building faculty and from three to eight years with the same general educational reform agenda to accomplish anything close to systemic change.

classroom teachers or teacher educators, we must take the time to reflect on our past efforts and make needed mid-course corrections. Looking for patterns within our reform projects and helping teachers see reform as an evolutionary process and not an either/or response, will help all of us grow as professionals and ultimately improve the education of our children.

The second limitation relates to design and organization (DE).

The third limitation relates to the locus of research investigating teaching presence which has been limited largely to threaded discussions.

Lastly, a careful review of the original teaching presence indicators developed by Anderson et al. (2001) reveals that they are largely reliant upon the threaded discussion activities of the instructor and thus fall short in identifying and articulating the full range of online collaborative tasks and effort demonstrated by both instructors and students.

If students’ perceptions indicate that they place a premium on instructor interaction (Anderson, 2003; Shea et al., 2006) instructors must actively manage students’ expectations about the nature of online learning and the role of the instructor in this process. Online instructors can accomplish this by taking the time to communicate that online courses are not teacher-centered models of learning and by explaining the rationale behind student-to-student interaction in negotiating shared meaning through discourse.

These results suggest that students’ teaching presence may have a “floor” threshold level and when the instructor's participation within the threaded discussion drops to zero students attempt to recreate “instructional equilibrium.”

When accounting for instructor teaching presence in all areas of a course, we see that there is a certain ebb and flow to teaching presence.

restricting analysis of teaching presence to discussion areas may present too narrow a view of individual instructor’s effort. Some instructors may take a strategic approach by participating in early discussions to model how to formulate probing questions and by providing direct feedback with the goal of withdrawing once this scaffolding is completed

These results also document a significant correlation between instructional effort reflected in frequency of teaching presence behaviors and learning outcomes evidence through instructor-assigned grades on closely related assignments. 

Where does teaching presence occur in online courses? 2. How do instructors employ communicative functionality within the course to   demonstrate teaching presence? 3. In what ways do students demonstrate teaching presence? 4. Does teaching presence shift over time? 5. Does teaching presence correlate with learning outcomes reflected in instructor-assigned grades?

In this study we found that the effectiveness of the instructor did not depend on participation within the threaded discussion per se, but that responsiveness and effective interaction with students was carried out through a variety of forums, including the ask-a-question area, email, and other modes of communication.  We suggest that benchmarks for effective interaction be communicated to instructors and that institutions provide training and support for online faculty around teaching presence. 

Jun 21st,

I do not know all that there is to know about online learning

I need to move outside of comfort zone to make this course work!

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