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This chapter presents a theoretical model of online learning, the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, which is grounded in John Dewey's progressive understanding of education. The CoI framework is a process model of online learning which views the

The author discusses the theory behind online discussions, as well as the potential value of - and problems associated with - online discussions. Some excerpts: "The argument I offer here is that saying an online discussion is a worse version of an IRL discussion is like saying an apple is a worse version of an orange. Disappointment with online discussions because they are not like IRL discussion is like being disappointed with an apple because it is a bad orange." ... "In an IRL discussion, students look, speak, and listen with multiple objects. In online discussion, like during a lecture, students sit and stare at a single object as well: but it is a computer rather than a person speaking. The lecturer is the computer. This lecturer is a screen with a keyboard and includes a complex series of frames within which the student types sentences in varying sequences. By this I am not only talking about video lectures which students watch, but rather more perceptually. In a lecture, the lecturer is the sole object of attention. There is only one object of attention: bracketing the complex material engaged with in the screen, it remains true that students exclusively engage with the screen when learning online. Students in online courses stare at a computer when learning online the same way they would stare at a lecturer speaking, focusing their attention on a single object. At a lecture, it's a person. Online, it's the computer."... "In any case, online discussions are still discussions. It would be a mistake to say all we do during online discussion is stare intensely at a computer. Most of the discussions in my online courses occur asynchronously on discussion boards. On these written discussion boards, for example, we read and write responsively. The whole situation of online discussion is therefore more akin, in this respect, to written correspondence."

From the conclusion: "Participating well in online discussions might be more like writing a good letter or having a good phone conversation, as opposed to a good spoken kind comment in an IRL discussion. We should not expect online discussions to be anything at all like IRL discussions. They are categorically different. In other words, being disappointed with online discussions because they are not like IRL discussions is like being disappointed with apples because they are not oranges." "In planning online courses, generating online assignments, and creating materials for online teaching, it is important to remember that online discussions require students to focus intense attention on a machine, and therefore compels them to cathect and introject that machine. Independently of the fluidity of your module and software, students transfer meanings onto their machines during the learning process rather than a person. While the introjection of machines is an interesting opportunity for further educational research, as an instructor, plan for student participation with this in mind: they are interacting with a machine and not people. An online discussion is more like a computer's lecture than an IRL discussion, no matter how interactive."

I thought you might be interested in Shulman's research, in that he has worked a good bit with students in programs like ours (nursing and theology), which are both professional and academic. He is wrestling, in this essay, with the categories of engagement and commitment in processes of learning.

"This research study provides new insight into how teachers use social networking sites, such as Twitter, as professional learning networks." Article was published in The Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT).

This website shows the work of a group of educators of theatre who, through years of experience, have come up with more than 15 assessment models that can be used in the professional theatre education. Models are templates or transportable models. I found particularly helpful that they compare "traditional" assessment of teaching King Lear ("a multiple-choice test on the play at the end of the ten weeks") with "performance" assessment of KL (including " informal check-ins, observations, academic prompts, mini-quizzes and something called a performance task at the end of the course"). Student anxiety rises with the amount of overseeing and work, but "clear exercises with rubrics" help. Bottom line: smaller, more clearly focused assessment rounds help student prepare better for the final performance. Hmm... Website has assessment models and results, case analysis, reports for audiences, and lots of ideas. Some a bit calculated, but good food for thought. Comment from the website: "The result of using TEAM's Assessment Models is a more accurate picture of student learning. For example, a more accurate picture of student learning might include a student who does not just know Shakespeare, but knows how King Lear ends and has an opinion about an alternative ending for that play based on what he or she learned in class."

My department spent a lot of time this year thinking about assessment in a process driven by accreditation. We came up with some fairly broad learning outcomes and not much in the way of detailed assessment. So I am very impressed by this webpage from the Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology in Ohio. Their departmental webpage includes very detailed assessment information that may be useful for everyone to keep in mind, but probably does not do much to attract students. In our own discussions we sometimes ran into confusion between providing information for current students about what we would be assessing and departmental advertizing-- two very different things.

While this paper set out to discover what activities and/or interaction channels might be expected to lead to more highly engaged student s, what it found was a bit different. After first creating a scale to measure online student engagement, and then surveying 186 students from six campuses in the Midwest, the results indicate that there is no particular activity that will automatically help students to be more engaged in online classes. However, the results also suggest that multiple communication channels may be related to higher engagement and that student-student and instructor-student communication are clearly strongly correlated with higher student engagement with the course, in general. Thus, advice for online instructors is still to use active learning but to be sure to incorporate meaningful and multiple ways of interacting with students and encouraging/requiring students to interact with each other.

Includes a map of modules and 9 key changes made when using a heutagogical approach to prepare new teachers for the self-determined lifelong learning essential for the real 21st century world.

A couple of comments here: I apologize if the link doesn't open right away. I got the article through PubMed at WHSLibrary. The article presents an interesting approach to the use of Bloom's taxonomy for grading discussion boards integrating collaborative learning process and higher-order thinking. It also does a good job discussing how to evaluate a rubric.,

High school students talk about what teachers do and don't do to engage them in learning.

Lot's of interesting charts and worksheets on creating assessment tools. Worth taking a look.

In this article the author describes the design and development of an online learning resource: 'Video Guide to Audacity.'

This is great. I use Audacity in my Sound Design courses as one of the many design platform options.

This is a special report that features 12 articles from "Online Classroom" that offers some insight into how to assess online learning at the course, program, and institutional levels.

Online classes can be mechanical in nature and feel distant for students, which typically results in low student engagement and retention in the class, or it can be an environment that stimulates an interest in learning and promotes meaningful interactions.

"The NMC Horizon Report > 2015 Higher Education Edition is a collaborative effort between the NMC and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI).....designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in education."