Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

June 21st,

What I would like is to have the option of posting and assessing it as NG (no grade)

Finally, I carefully considers there are no place where Alex might say “can you tell me more”

Since our blogs are shared work-spaces, we are suppose to engage in collaborative reflective discourses,  creating a shared understanding, leading to collaborative knowledge

I will investigate and use group Wikis

when a student finally understands that their discussions need to encompass teaching, cognitive engagement, and social presence, then the discussion forum truly becomes a awesome learning tool!!!!!!  

I will do this because I care about their learning.

I knew I needed this course to become the better online teacher, what I didn’t know was the transformative change  that I would experience this summer.

Certainly, some of the most important roles of online discussion moderator/tutor revolves around their duties as an educational facilitator

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

When the teacher dominates the learning, students take shallow approaches to learning.

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).

focuses on student responsibility for learning and how to promote it.

transforming passive students into autonomous learners

The more structured we make the environment, the more structure students need

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)

The more we decide for students, the more they expect us to decide.

eimer explains several strategies for creating a climate that produces self-regulated intrinsically motivated learners: 

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.

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.

, 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.

overcome student resistance to learner-centered approache

The communication is frequent and explicit The communication encourages and positively reinforces The communication solicits feedback from students The communication resists their resistance.

developmental approach to transforming passive dependent learners into self-confident autonomous learners. Learners become self-directed in stages, not in one sin

moment of transformatio

The main reason they do not work is because of a misguided, outdated, and pseudoscientific stigma against the teaching of knowledge. The evidence for the importance of knowledge is clear. We have a strong theoretical model that explains why knowledge is at the heart of cognition. We have strong empirical evidence about the success of curricula that teach knowledge. And we have strong empirical evidence about the success of pedagogy that promotes the effective transmission of knowledge. If we fail to teach knowledge, pupils fail to learn.

By neglecting to focus on knowledge accumulation, therefore, and assuming that you can just focus on developing conceptual understanding, today's common yet misguided educational practice ensures not only that pupils' knowledge will remain limited, but also that their conceptual understanding, notwithstanding all the apparent focus on it, will not develop either. By assuming that pupils can develop chronological awareness, write creatively, or think like a scientist without learning any facts, we are guaranteeing that they will not develop any of those skills. As Willingham and others have pointed out, knowledge builds to allow sophisticated higher-order responses. When the knowledge base is not in place, pupils struggle to develop understanding of a topic.

In a lot of the training material I read, these knowledge gaps were given very little attention. Generally, the word "knowledge" was used in a very pejorative way. The idea was that you were supposed to focus on skills like analysis, evaluation, synthesis, and so forth. Knowledge was the poor relation of these skills. Of course, I wanted my pupils to be able to analyze and evaluate, but it seemed to me that a pupil needed to know something to be able to analyze it. If a pupil doesn't know that the House of Lords isn't elected, how can you get him to have a debate or write an essay analyzing proposals for its reform? Likewise, if a pupil doesn't know what the three branches of government are in the United States, how can she understand debates in the papers about the Supreme Court striking down one of Congress's laws?

the best way to teach students how to write more effectively is to have them write more often.

In the traditional F2F classroom, the instructor asks a question, and the same four or five extroverted students inevitably raise their hands. They offer spontaneous, often unresearched responses in the limited time allotted for discussion. In the online environment, discussions enter a new dimension.

explain, share, comment upon, critique

unresearched responses

However, I have heard from very few faculty members who are not energized by the creative process of achieving the same instructional goals in an entirely new format.

On average, online courses are far more writing-intensive than traditional classes have ever been.

he first response that comes to mind rather than the best possible response

Many online students have indicated that this is the first time they have ever "spoken up" in class and that they enjoy the opportunity

Geared to lifelong learning

as a result of the relative anonymity

online education can be done well,

In their everyday lives, individuals do not have a teacher at their side to direct them in their acquisition of new information. One of the roles that we need to perform as educators, then, is to teach students to find and learn information on their own or in concert with their colleagues. The online environment fosters self-motivated education. Students direct their own use of Internet links, search engines, discussion boards, chat, e-mail, and other media. While such resources cannot guarantee student initiative, they establish a framework that gives precedence to the autonomy of the learner.

develop course materials among themselves in a manner rarely seen in the F2F classroom.

 Synthesizing and formulating a mini-thesis is where learning becomes meaningful for me; this is where mere information becomes MY knowledge

I don’t know yet if my online students will step up to the plate, actively and enthusiastically contribute what they know to the community.

Kind of like a wedding planner who walks through the empty reception hall and can foresee the problems with lighting, photography, food, and traffic pattern…  I am the course designer, it is my job to minimize any possible glitches.  It is my job to provide students with a doable and engaging learning environment.

I see more clear vision of myself as an educator.  During this summer course I was confronted with questions that challenged my teaching practices. I started asking myself why I wouldn’t try to trust my students more, let them develop the social presence in the f2f class?  What was the harm in that I wouldn’t even consider trying it?

For weeks and weeks I was obsessed with making Jing videos, trying new communication tools. 

have 2 weeks left.  I want to make a difference.  I CAN make a difference.  I can use the web 2.0 applications as my allies.  There is enough time for me to plan and implement changes in the f2f courses before school starts.

My reflecting puddle may seem small, because there is so much to learn and I’ve just begun.  But my puddle is deeper and its water runs clearer now.  Taking education courses  is like a spring that feeds into my puddle, bringing fresh new perspectves and ideas.  I needed it.  It’s reshaped my outlook on teaching.

2 weeks ago I wrote my tagline on this blog as my “reflecting puddle”.  I still think it’s a puddle; it is still small(but so much deeper!).  I can recount the discoveries on this etap687 journey when I stare into the puddle.  I see the following things:

’t believe we are coming to the end of this course.  It wasn’t that long ago I was installing diigo toolbar, signing up for voice thread, and setting up this blog site.

Now the excitement of trying new tools has settled a bit.  I start to think how technology tools will impact my teaching. 

My self efficacy is low.  Does it matter in the end?  I only have two  options:  If I cant’ seem to do the work, I should leave the course.  Or, I try with my darnedest effort, and see where I land. Time to take a chance!  I think I will have a lot to gain!

So this is what I’m gonna do:  I will blog here periodically and document my journey in the Ed Psych course.  Let’s see if I can be honest with myself.  Learn because life in general is interesting and worth exploring, and I can’t capture all on my own.  So I go to the experts and learn knowledge from them.

For weeks and weeks I was obsessed with making Jing videos, trying new communication tools.  I thought WOW, these are the coolest things I’ve learned this summer!  Now the excitement of trying new tools has settled a bit.  I start to think how technology tools will impact my teaching.  What other tasks should be let go in order to make room for the new things in my practice?  What educational principles do I base on to justify the changes?  What kind of measured learning outcomes and students’ perceived learning do I anticipate after the changes are implemented?

One benefit of flow theory is that it presumes that motivation, cognition, and affect are situational

have the skills to accomplish them

Flow Theory Print Collect It! var shared = false; if(!window['loadedCollectionJS']) { window['loadedCollectionJS'] = true; Asset.javascript('/js/moo/collections/collections.js'); } var scripts = $$('script'), thisScriptTag = scripts[scripts.length - 1], el = thisScriptTag.getPrevious('.collect-button-wrap'); if(el) { el.store('collectPath', "http://www.education.com/reference/article/flow-theory/") } var switchTo5x=true;stLight.options({publisher:'d0d0d8a8-d1f8-49ff-9318-fed5383cff80',doNotHash:true,NotCopy:true,hashAddressBar:false});Email var sharedemail = false; (function() { stLight.options({ onhover: false, clickCallBack: function(){ if(typeof window.sharedemail != 'undefined') { new Request({ method: 'post', url: '/service/service.'+'php?sn=sharelog&f=ase&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.education.com%2Freference%2Farticle%2Fflow-theory%2F&ceid=41882&click=email'}).send(); sharedemail=true; } } }); stWidget.addEntry({ 'service':'email', title:"Flow Theory", summary: "", url: "http://www.ed"+"ucation.com/reference/article/flow-theory/", element: document.getElementById("sharethis-7167") }); })(); if(!window['plusoneloaded']) { new Asset.javascript('https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'); window['plusoneloaded'] = true; } function plusone_vote( obj ) { //track in Google Analytics _gaq.push(['_trackEvent','plusone',obj.state]); //track in Omniture if((typeof(window.Omniture) != 'undefined')) { var params = {evars:{5:obj.state}}; if(obj.state == 'on') params.events = [6]; Omniture.fireEvent(params,'Google Plus One Click'); } } By Amy Schweinle | Andrea Bjornestad Updated on Dec 23, 2009 MAJOR RESEARCH METHODS FACTORS INFLUENCING FLOW AND MOTIVATIONAL CONSEQUENCES IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHERS Flo

not only do activities with high challenge matched with high skill offer the best opportunities for learning, but they also provide an optimal environment for positive affect and intrinsic motivation.

eachers must provide optimal challenge and support for competence (or skill)

(a) provided immediate, constructive feedback, (b) encouraged students to persist, (c) encouraged cooperation rather than competition, (d) supported student autonomy, (e) ensured that new challenges were tempered with support to match students' skill, (f) emphasized the importance of the material, and (g) pressed students to understand the principles rather than memorize algorithms.

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)