We need to be safely, appropriately, and powerfully using technologies like videoconferencing to engage students and connect them with other novice as well as expert-learners more than we are in most classrooms today relative to the cost of fixed-room videoconferencing equipment. I had a conversation yesterday with a first grade teacher who said she would LOVE to do videoconferencing like this, but doesn’t know where to start and doesn’t have anyone to help her in her school building.
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http://www.mentormob.com/hosted/cards/71141_b44ac5ed2dac0a90985e4d8a0c2901b3.pdf - 0 views
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z, 'Colleges and universities ought to be concerned not with how fast they can "put their courses on the Web" but with finding out how this technology can be used to build and sustain learning communities' (1998, p. 7). Furthermore, the world's increasing dependence on lifelong access to new knowledge is transforming the landscape of higher education and forcing the academy to rethink virtually all of its systems and traditions (Rowly et al., 1998).
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Criticalness - looking at the underlying assumptions, looking at theory base; * Scholarship - quality of the writing/discourse community. Ability to use language to refer to other people such as other scholars. Are we referencing each other? Are we learning from each other?; * Connection to experiences - building on our learning from ideas and concepts gained from our experiences as educators and learners; and * Professionalism - acting professionally, using the correct grammar and contributing on time (Article No. 78)
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My objectives in developing this course were twofold. Firstly, the aim was to promote interactions amongst learners and to promote interactions between the learners and myself. Secondly, the aim was to create a student-centred approach to learning where students could own their learning and feel a sense of responsibility towards their own and the learning of others.
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Using social constructivism as a referent for my teaching approach, I encouraged students to engage in peer learning through focused discourse that was based on the theoretical ideas they read and shared with others. It was made clear to the students that the unit, and in particular the Activity Room (as the hub of the unit), was designed based on social constructivist theory to enhance opportunities for peer learning
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Moving at the Speed of Creativity - Connecting learners with outside experts and each o... - 0 views
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Development and validation of the Online Student Connectedness Survey (OSCS) | Bolliger... - 0 views
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hat interaction between peers is important to online students and suggests that “the psychological presence of peer students can also bring a positive effect on various aspects of distance learning”
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“people with high levels of connectedness are better able to manage their own needs and emotions through cognitive processes”
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are on their own, likely to be anxious, defensive and unwilling to take the risks involved in learning”
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artments and instructors need to create safe learning environments (Stelzer & Vogelzangs, 1994) in which learners feel comfortable and are encouraged to participate without fear of persecution.
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they are more likely to limit their interactions with an instructor and peers or less likely to ask for support
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The Technology Source Archives - Seven Principles of Effective Teaching: A Practical Le... - 0 views
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Learners should be required to participate (and their grade should depend on participation). Discussion groups should remain small. Discussions should be focused on a task. Tasks should always result in a product. Tasks should engage learners in the content. Learners should receive feedback on their discussions. Evaluation should be based on the quality of postings (and not the length or number). Instructors should post expectations for discussions.
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Lesson for online instruction: Instructors need to provide two types of feedback: information feedback and acknowledgment feedback.
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We found that instructors gave prompt information feedback at the beginning of the semester, but as the semester progressed and instructors became busier, the frequency of responses decreased, and the response time increased.
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The rationale was that many students needed flexibility because of full-time jobs. However, regularly-distributed deadlines encourage students to spend time on tasks and help students with busy schedules avoid procrastination.
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Lesson for online instruction: Challenging tasks, sample cases, and praise for quality work communicate high expectations.
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http://ejournals.ebsco.com/Direct.asp?AccessToken=5W69W4JTRQPPQS9R4RPBWFUR9U69T66FU4&Sh... - 0 views
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Abstract: Although problem solving is regarded by most educators as among the most important learning outcomes, few instructional design prescriptions are available for designing problem-solving instruction and engaging learners. This paper distinguishes between well-structured problems and ill-structured problems. Well-structured problems are constrained problems with convergent solutions that engage the application of a limited number of rules and principles within well-defined parameters. Ill-structured problems possess multiple solutions, solution paths, fewer parameters which are less manipulable, and contain uncertainty about which concepts, rules, and principles are necessary for the solution or how they are organized and which solution is best. For both types of problems, this paper presents models for how learners solve them and models for designing instruction to support problem-solving skill development. The model for solving well-structured problems is based on information processing theories of learning, while the model for solving ill-structured problems relies on an emerging theory of ill-structured problem solving and on constructivist and situated cognition approaches to learning.
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The Future of Online Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: The Survey Sa... - 0 views
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misconceptions and myths related to the difficulty of teaching and learning online, technologies available to support online instruction, the support and compensation needed for high-quality instructors, and the needs of online students create challenges for such vision statements and planning documents.
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Adding to this dilemma, bored students are dropping out of online classes while pleading for richer and more engaging online learning experiences.1 Given the demand for online learning, the plethora of online technologies to incorporate into teaching, the budgetary problems, and the opportunities for innovation, we argue that online learning environments are facing a "perfect e-storm," linking pedagogy, technology, and learner needs.
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cation. In this study, Keeton interviewed faculty in postsecondary institutions, who rated the effectiveness of online instructional strategies. These instructors gave higher ratings to online instructional strategies that "create an environment that supports and encourages inquiry," "broaden the learner's experience of the subject matter," and "elicit active and critical reflection by learners on their growing experience base."12
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When asked about several emerging technologies for online education, 27 percent of respondents predicted that use of course management systems (CMSs) would increase most drastically in the next five years. Those surveyed also said that video streaming, online testing and exam tools, and learning object libraries would find significantly greater use on campus during this time. Between 5 and 10 percent of respondents expected to see increases in asynchronous discussion tools, videoconferencing, synchronous presentation tools, and online testing.
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this study found that the most important skills for an online instructor during the next few years will be how to moderate or facilitate learning and how to develop or plan for high-quality online courses (see Table 2). Being a subject-matter expert was the next most important skill. In effect, the results indicate that planning and moderating skills are perhaps more important than actual "teaching" or lecturing skills in online courses. As Salmon pointed out, online instructors are moderators or facilitators of
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As a result, enhancing pedagogy is perhaps the most important factor in navigating the perfect e-storm. In the present study, respondents made predictions about the quality of online education in the near future and about how online courses would be taught and evaluated.
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Our findings also indicated that, in general, respondents envisioned the Web in the next few years more as a tool for virtual teaming or collaboration, critical thinking, and enhanced student engagement than as an opportunity for student idea generation and expression of creativity.
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What if institutions took the opposite stance and measured face-to-face courses based on whether they could accomplish all that online instruction can?
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Through the Open Door: Open Courses as Research, Learning, and Engagement (EDUCAUSE Rev... - 0 views
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Although courses are under pressure in the "unbundling" or fragmentation of information in general, the learning process requires coherence in content and conversations. Learners need some sense of what they are choosing to do, a sense of eventedness.5 Even in traditional courses, learners must engage in a process of forming coherent views of a topic.
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the position of curriculum: rather than being a prerequisite for a course, curriculum becomes an output of a course.7
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Using Content Curation Tools to Engage Students | Faculty Focus - 0 views
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content curation online content curation software ScoopIt
shared by Alicia Fernandez on 23 Jun 14
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The abundance of freely available information also has changed the role of educators. It's no longer about us standing in front of class and providing information. It's about helping these learners contextualize that information. Helping them connect it to what is out there in the real world and give it foundation and meaning. They have access to the information already, but can they critically evaluate it and figure out which piece goes into which puzzle? Then the question becomes, how should we, as instructors, be helping them? One method to facilitate this process is to have the students contribute to the class content. There are a variety of sites out there that combine content curation with a social networking component, thereby allowing users to discover, organize, and share content around a specific topic.
▶ Jack C. Richards on Learner Centered Teaching - YouTube - 0 views
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Podcasting: A Stepping Stone to Pedagogical Innovation - 1 views
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odcasting was defined for instructors as a technology that allowed students to receive course materials through the convenient, RSS-based subscription mode and listen to them anywhere, anytime. The goal of the podcasting theme was to enable instructors to experiment with audio modes of learning. Audio has the power to capture and focus attention, helping learners acquire content and process complex information (Bishop, Amankwatia, and Cates, 2008).
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Furthermore, informal, personalized audio presentations are thought to create a feeling of social presence that helps learners integrate new information with their existing knowledge (Moreno and Mayer, 2004).
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Some instructors used podcasting as a way to provide recordings of lectures to students. However, many more experimented with podcasting as a way to expose students to additional course content in engaging formats. They created course podcasts that were mock radio programs, case studies, and interviews with national and international figures. Still others used podcasting as a method for delivering course audio files or assigned students to create podcast presentations for their class. These varied pedagogical strategies were used by instructors across all disciplines.
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Cognitive Apprenticeship, Technology, and the Contextualization of Learning Environments - 2 views
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The authors (Collins, Brown, & Holum, 1991; Collins, Brown, & Newman,1989) as well as other researchers (Herrington & Oliver, 2000) have refined this model to the belief that useable knowledge is best gained in learning environments featuring the following characteristics: Authentic context that allows for the natural complexity of the real world Authentic activities Access to expert performances and the modeling of processes Multiple roles and perspectives Collaboration to support the cooperative construction of knowledge Coaching and scaffolding which provides the skills, strategies and links that the students are initially unable to provide to complete the task Reflection to enable abstractions to be formed Articulation to enable tacit knowledge to be made explicit
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The goal of learning, therefore, is to engage learners in legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991). Through community, learners interpret, reflect, and form meaning. Community provides the setting for the social interaction needed to engage in dialogue with others to see various and diverse perspectives on any issue. Community is the joining of practice with analysis and reflection to share the tacit understandings and to create shared knowledge from the experiences among participants in a learning opportunity (Wenger 1998).
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The goal of cognitive apprenticeship is to address the problem of inert knowledge and to make the thinking processes of a learning activity visible to both the students and the teacher. T
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Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0 (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUC... - 0 views
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30 million people today qualified to enter a university who have no place to go. During the next decade, this 30 million will grow to 100 million. To meet this staggering demand, a major university needs to be created each week.
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Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, which has provided free access to a wide range of courses and other educational materials to anyone who wants to use them.
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Web 2.0,
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e that our understanding of content is socially constructed through conversations about that content and through grounded interactions, especially with others, around problems or actions. The focus is not so much on what we are learning but on how we are learning.5
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Students in these groups can ask questions to clarify areas of uncertainty or confusion, can improve their grasp of the material by hearing the answers to questions from fellow students, and perhaps most powerfully, can take on the role of teacher to help other group members benefit from their understanding (one of the best ways to learn something is, after all, to teach it to others).
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The dichotomy between Cartesian and Social Learning is problematic, and this is one of the reasons why. If Social Learning still comes down to group learning from each other, it remains unclear what would be the "alternative" model of learning/teaching between group users, if not substance/pedagogy.
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But viewing learning as the process of joining a community of practice reverses this pattern and allows new students to engage in “learning to be” even as they are mastering the content of a field.
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open source movement
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Digital StudyHall (DSH)
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We now need a new approach to learning—one characterized by a demand-pull rather than the traditional supply-push mode of building up an inventory of knowledge in students’ heads. Demand-pull learning shifts the focus to enabling participation in flows of action, where the focus is both on “learning to be” through enculturation into a practice as well as on collateral learning.
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Not only is it a matter of "if" such campuses are a possibility, but "should" such campuses be a priority. If online and distance education can yield at least comparable results to traditional academic settings, then their ease of accessibility and lower overhead costs warrant further exploration as a viable possibility.
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“I think, therefore I am,” and from the assumption that knowledge is something that is transferred to the student via various pedagogical strategies, the social view of learning says, “We participate, therefore we are
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How does the open source idea fit with fields like medicine or chemistry where knowledge is less "socially constricted"?
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Open Source/Access research. One of the problems right now is that the NIH or fed government will pay for research, but the public then had to pay for the results of that research. We are paying for the same research twice. Open Access Journals (see Harvard Memo) hopes to change this.
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seeking the knowledge when it is needed in order to carry out a particular situated task.
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Knowledge that is obtained when "needed" then answers the famous question many high school students ask their teachers, "When will I ever use this?"
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I grew to see high school as a time for exposure to all disciplines in order to find what best suited one in preparation for college or the workplace. Now I am wondering if the multiplicity of disciplines will be "tailored" to fit the personal interests of the learner. Will differentiating for all eradicate the question Ben mentions?
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This form of education was also based on what could be called an industrial style of education. They education system became an extension of industry--students were passed along on the assembly line from one course to the next, year after year and came out a finished produce with similar skills and altitudes as their peers. Now education has and can become more narrow and niche based and less industrial.
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This involves acquiring the practices and the norms of established practitioners in that field or acculturating into a community of practice.
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In this open environment, both the content and the process by which it is created are equally visible, thereby enabling a new kind of critical reading—almost a new form of literacy—that invites the reader to join in the consideration of what information is reliable and/or important.
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And at the third level, any participant in Second Life could review the lectures and other course materials online at no cost. This experiment suggests one way that the social life of Internet-based virtual education can coexist with and extend traditional education.
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Through these continuing connections, the University of Michigan students can extend the discussions, debates, bull sessions, and study groups that naturally arise on campus to include their broader networks. Even though these extended connections were not developed to serve educational purposes, they amplify the impact that the university is having while also benefiting students on campus.14 If King is right, it makes sense for colleges and universities to consider how they can leverage these new connections through the variety of social software platforms that are being established for other reasons.
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he site’s developers note: “We fundamentally believe that the new electronic environment and its tools enable us to revive the humanistic spirit of communal and collaboratively ‘playful’ learning of which the Decameron itself is the utmost expression.”
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As more of learning becomes Internet-based, a similar pattern seems to be occurring. Whereas traditional schools offer a finite number of courses of study, the “catalog” of subjects that can be learned online is almost unlimited. There are already several thousand sets of course materials and modules online, and more are being added regularly. Furthermore, for any topic that a student is passionate about, there is likely to be an online niche community of practice of others who share that passion.
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that will support active, passion-based learning: Learning 2.0. This new form of learning begins with the knowledge and practices acquired in school but is equally suited for continuous, lifelong learning that extends beyond formal schooling.
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In addition to supporting lecture-style teaching, Terra Incognita includes the capability for small groups of students who want to work together to easily “break off” from the central classroom before rejoining the entire class. Instructors can “visit” or send messages to any of the breakout groups and can summon them to rejoin the larger group.
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ETAP640 Summer 2011 Blog - 2 views
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So far I am enjoying the experience
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What are the most effective instructional technology tools available to me to help me meet my instructional objectives?
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challenge!
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I have been much more aware of the idea that today’s younger generations (those who are 30 and younger) are much more technologically savvy.
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I want to challange you, just like i challanged Ian (who is currently smitten with Prensky : ) to challenge the notion of natives vs. immigrants. Read this (http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2011/05/natives-are-revolting.html), find other articles (and there are many) that unpack the problems with this notion, and come back and tell us all about it.
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I have been spending quite a bit of time and energy learning the Moodle system,
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I think I spent the entire weekend last week playing around in Moodle, learning how things worked, and trying to set up my basic module outline. Once I got the hang of it, I kinda like it. I find with technology that it just takes time and patience (not my forte) to really grasp it. I don't think computer skills of any kind can be learned from a book alone; it needs to be hands on learning.
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I completely agree! I am a very hands on and visual person, I need to INTERACT with the material in real life or else it's just text on a page.
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It is ENGAGING
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Blackboard
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I’m really starting to get the hang of the expectations for posts
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I had the same thought. I only hope that the computer lab is open during my class time.
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Your sticky notes are usually "floating" so I never know what you're commenting on. Can you make them stationery?
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I wonder the same thing...this applies to several blogs ago. I guess we need to add a date or title.
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I was teetering between dropping the class
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punishment
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I am still under the impression that the interactions required of us in the discussion space are too numerous.
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I LOVE LOVE LOVED that Bill Pelz commented on our posts! I felt like a celebrity walked into the room and his comments could be equated to getting an autograph.
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I have learned a lot this module, especially: NEVER give up (this has been especially resonant with me) Passion for teaching and learning go hand in hand, and are a must-have for online educators The best training tool for an online teacher is to be an online learner BE ORGANIZED MANAGE YOUR TIME Support your students and your faculty (whatever your role is) And last, but not least (yes, this was intentional) don’t procrastinate.
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half of the requirement for this class.
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There was absolutely nothing about my course learning activities that was learner-centered, or, one could argue, learning-centered! I was being extremely teacher-centered in my approach!
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Because of that, I need to embrace these tools, explore new ideas, and for goodness sake- think about the STUDENT.
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It took me almost two and a half hours just to set up a voicethread that didn’t crunch all of my text and pictures together! Or get the right size and color font. I realize that these are all things that cannot be explained to anyone, or if you did try and tell them, they wouldn’t understand how much work it is until they tried it themselves.
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I think that embedding a youtube video or loading a podcast are in my future and I can’t wait!
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I made all of my assignments turned in to me, privately,
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This week, as we are supposed to have the course “done done” I am doubting myself. Every time I log in to my course I change something, add wording, create new links to rubrics where there weren’t any, etc. It just seems like I’m never satisfied.
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So glad I'm not alone. I keep logging in as well, looking to change something. Over the past 3-4 days I've definitely made changes, but I'm getting to the point now that I'm wondering if I should just leave it alone. I'm the same way about large writing project...always looking to edit. Thinking it might be time for me to step back from the computer.
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I thought done, done, done is at the end...aren't we going to have peer feedback next module?
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I’ll have my master’s in December and I couldn’t be more proud.
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#1- I’m scared of the idea of real live students actually taking my course #2- I’m really disappointed that real live students will never take my course
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I'm glad you said this, because I've been thinking it for several weeks now. I really want a chance to teach it, but I'm afraid of getting a chance to teach it. I'm not a teacher by profession, so I think I have more fear than most that I won't be able to facilitate my course properly. For instance, how do I open modules, are grades recorded automatically or do I manually put them in, how do I get them to show for each individual student, etc. I've put so much time and effort into building this course, I want a chance to teach it, but having never taught at the college level, I don't know that I'll get the opportunity. I will still give it my best shot as soon as I graduate in December. If SUNY isn't interested, I'll try other avenues.
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"live students" when you do teach live students you will discover kinks you never saw...this semester I had a great activity that 18 of 19 students loved! The discussions were full of every presence. The I discovered that my student from China was so lost and overwhelmed. Now I am rethinking cultural sensitivity in my activities...how do I balance a activity that engages 99% of my students 110%, but looses one student because of a cultural difference...still thinking on this.
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feedback
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I don't know if I should have done this, but I actually have 2 evaluation/feedback areas. One is the generic resource right in Moodle. I tried to write my own questions, but when I "viewed" the forum, my questions were replaced with the generic questions. So, I created a document with my own questions and I am having students download the document into a word processor, add their answers and then post to a forum.
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o there will likely never be online courses at Mildred Elley.
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Can you teach it elsewhere? As we have learned in this class, online learning is up and coming. It might be worth looking into.
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Failures maybe because the facilitators did not "know" and "do" what "you" know...convince him to try your course as an experiment...because this is the future of education...This summer I taught one online course and had a student from China, several from the west coast, and only two within driving distance in a class of 20!
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ETAP 680 (research seminar).
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quality with the traditional classroom in the public eye?
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I think you're probably right, but I think it's turning a corner. At a time when institutions are scrambling for money, online learning costs them very little. They pay an instructor and that's about it. We don't need a classroom or any campus resources other than student access to the library for research if they need it.
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prettying up
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One thought I had, as I look forward to getting a PhD, is that theories come from practice which means that theories about online learning come from individuals creating courses, teaching courses, and collecting feedback from courses over and over and then after all of that work is finished, turning right around and working at analyzing the data, and attempting to answer research questions. In order to have credible research, the questions must be relevant, the measures must be valid and thorough, and the analyses of results must be comprehensive.
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Reflective Writing: I have to admit, at the beginning of the course I thought the blogging activities were just busy work. I viewed the assignments as busy work, and treated my entries as such. As time ticked on, I started getting into the blogs and realizing that it was my personal space in which I could reflect on my work on my course and my learning throughout the week/module. So much of life and learning in school is sort of thrown at you, and if you don’t take the time to intentionally deconstruct the events and make sense of them, then you’ll never grow and improve. I’d rather grow.
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If I don’t place intentional emphasis on something (like making it worth a portion of their grade) then I am sending a message that it’s not important.
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Achieving meaningful online learning through effective formative assessment - 0 views
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Strategies for motivating students / Engaging and motivating students / Facilitating / ... - 0 views
www.newcastle.edu.au/...strategies-for-motivating.html
education motivating strategies critical_thinking online teaching
shared by Lauren D on 29 Jun 12
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communicate with your students, right from the start, what will be required of them as an online learner
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encourage students to seek help when they don't understand something about how the course is facilitated or course content
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Guest presenters The advantage of the online learning means that guest presenters can be located anywhere throughout the world. This potentially increasing their availability, flexibility and quality.
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Blogs There are numerous ways to integrate blogs into an online course. For example, recording a learning experience over a period of time. Students can also review and compare other students' blogs and draw their own conclusions about particular topics.
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Non - computer based activities Just because an online course is online does not necessarily mean that all learning has to occur in front of the computer screen. Activities can be developed that require students to engage in the physical environment.
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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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how do you engage online learners? - YouTube - 0 views
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The Technology Source Archives - Seven Principles of Effective Teaching: A Practical Le... - 0 views
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Establish policies describing the types of communication that should take place over different channels.
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Only at the end of all presentations did the instructor provide an overall reaction to the cases and specifically comment about issues the class identified or failed to identify. In this way, students learned from one another as well as from the instructor.
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Information feedback provides information or evaluation, such as an answer to a question, or an assignment grade and comments.
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We found that instructors gave prompt information feedback at the beginning of the semester, but as the semester progressed and instructors became busier, the frequency of responses decreased, and the response time increased.
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nstructors can still give prompt feedback on discussion assignments by responding to the class as a whole instead of to each individual student. In this way, instructors can address patterns and trends in the discussion without being overwhelmed by the amount of feedback to be given.
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egularly-distributed deadlines encourage students to spend time on tasks and help students with busy schedules avoid procrastination. They also provide a context for regular contact with the instructor and peers.
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Communicating high expectations for student performance is essential. One way for instructors to do this is to give challenging assignments.
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Another way to communicate high expectations is to provide examples or models for students to follow, along with comments explaining why the examples are goo