Welcome to our website which provides faculty development modules related to effective teaching in an online environment. Each module contains a suggested Brief Hybrid Workshop using short, online media presentations; follow-up resources and references; and feedback from users. The Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education has provided a framework for the development of these resources.
This e-magazine article provides researched-based information on the importance and components of teaching presence in the on-line learning environment. Blog format with related topics.
Such discussion places many learners at a disadvantage - those who are
introverted, those for whom English is not their first language, those who don't
like to interrupt, those who like to think more before they speak, and many
others
This constant interaction with the subject
matter greatly increases learning retention.
Students are more active and self-directed in their learning.
discussion is richer because it is recorded
class discussions easily cross week boundaries.
It is very common for a discussion which began in the first week of the course
to resurface in the fourth week when new learnings shine a fresh perspective on
it. This type of dialogue feels much more natural than the fragmented
discussions I experienced in the classroom.
My experience with teaching online is that it is a different thing. I encourage
us all to experiment in both our face-to-face and virtual learning encounters
and to share what seems to work and not work.
The TfU model nicely compliments CATs and UbD - I personally use a hybrid version of all three and I see many similar ideas in our readings for this class from JISC
Online enrollments continue to increase substantially (Allen & Seaman, 2010, p. 2), as nearly one third (30%) of higher education students take at least one online course (Allen & Seaman, 2010, p. 2).
These data revealed that online learning has been adopted in the mainstream of higher education with trends indicating continued growth. Unfortunately, however, institutions often require instructors to design/develop online courses and/or transition into teaching in the online learning environment sans an understanding of the fundamental pedagogical/andragogical differences among face-to-face (f2f), blended/hybrid, and online learning environments.
Thanks...will be teaching 2 online and 2 hybrid in the Spring...applying all I learned in your class....well maybe most is a better word :) Still learning.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
This is the "feeling of satsfaction" Lisa Martin referred to in her Module 3 posts on social presence.
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.
(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]).
The participants in the study were a random sample of 3165 students from 42 two- and four-year institutions in New York State.
SLN? See how many things you can learn with one really great data set?
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.
Reviewing studies that investigated elements of online learner self-regulation
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]).
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.
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.
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.
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
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).
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.
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)
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.
Perhaps a school wants to be able to recognize the master teacher who is caring and constructive mentor to new teachers in her school. Isn’t that a fantastic contribution that so many teachers make, day in and day out, that, currently, goes unrecognized? (An aside: I loved the “Go, Teachers!” thread that ran throughout yesterday’s program.) Perhaps there’s a national network of auto mechanics that would like to be able to come up with a way of credentialing high school drop outs who happen to be great at fixing hybrid cars but who cannot afford to go to for-profit trade school that offer formal credentials. I’m making this up, but I can see applications that could help participants and communities to recognize those with achievements “outside the system” and yet crucial, to the community and to their own success in the workplace. What do we have now to offer? Multiple choice tests, ABCD grades, transcripts, resumes: that is an extremely narrow r
Our current, standardized systems of credentialing are very rigid and often restrictive. Badges allow groups of people—organizations and institutions--to decide what counts for them and how they want to give credit. Every contribution isn’t measured by ABCD. If you contribute, you can have a record of that contribution. That’s the beauty of digital badge systems or eportfolios such as Top Coders where you can actually click on the badge and see all the specific contributions or skills of a person that were recognized by peers in the form of a badge.
This article describes the benefits of blended learning programs and also provides various examples of schools that already employ this method successfully.
Online teaching is increasingly common at many types of higher education institutions, ranging from hybrid courses that offer a combination of in-person and online instruction, to fully online experiences and distance learning. The following resources provide guidelines for creating an online course, best practices for teaching online, and strategies for assessing the quality of online education.
“You have created a way to teach students without faculty,” a professor in a workshop session sa
“No,”
“We are creating a way for you to spend time in class teaching different things, freed from the burden of teaching basic skills.” The software gives individualized instruction in 12 subjects, using sophisticated tracking of skill development and offering instant feedback and help based on the student’s mastery of concepts. The idea is to use this to teach basic statistics, say, instead of using a professor’s lectures—and time—on the fundamentals.
“We want professors in these courses, which are first- and second-year classes, talking about more sophisticated ideas with the students,”
Research published on the Carnegie Mellon course modules indicates that they are effective. At a large public university, 99 percent of students taking the program’s formal-logic course online completed it, compared with 41 percent of students in the traditional course. At Carnegie Mellon, students who took an accelerated-statistics course in hybrid form completed it in eight weeks, and learned as much material, and performed as well on tests, as did students taking a traditional 15-week course