Posts

Posted on

Post 6

  • What are the most important lessons you gathered from the course?
     

    • I enjoyed the section constructing alignment between assessments and learning outcomes. I found it a good foundation to have in approaching course/assignment design, and have already used it in my own teaching.
    • I took value from the engage section, specifically in how it discussed creating a group identify is likely more successful in building engagement compared to building social connections.
    • I enjoyed the experience of working with wordpress. I didn’t stress the limits of what was possible with it, but the chance to do so with this course helped me gain more confidence in considering using web pages as a delivery or assignment modality.
  • How has your thinking changed as a result of completing the course?
    • It is interesting to consider the three main categories of think, engage, and teach as core components. The course used different language and terms to describe concepts that I have encountered in different forms, but I appreciated the online focus of the content.  I wouldn’t say my overall thinking has changed, but it has become more refined. Going over the SOLO taxonomy and exploring the different verbs and levels of understanding helped me be a little more specific.  Reviewing explicit examples of different levels of engagement and how certain terms can reflect different aims enables me to be a little bit more reflective when reading students communication. And seeing the seven  principles gives me a solid structure to work from when approaching design and restructuring.
  • In what ways did the platform (WordPress) influence your interaction with the content and other people and what you learned?
    • I appreciated how easy it was to embed different forms of content into a single post and have it all work. Videos, audio, images, and image editing seemed relatively easy. I didn’t dive overly deep into wordpresses options but I could definitely see some uses for it with some courses.

In addition to reflecting on your work, please include 2-3 ideas that you would like to implement in your own practice and how you might go about doing so.

  • I currently am part of a field school group that annually travels to another country to support local heath care professionals. I am considering seeing if wordpress would be an effective medium for students to submit work on. Because of its flexibility in allowing images, videos, etc., I could see it being an effective way for students to complete assignments in flexible ways.
  • My fellow OLFM and myself have desires to re-design the OL course we are involved in. The course can be described as information heavy, as it covers a lot of detail. The current course has little to no learning activities outside of end of module quizzes to help students build confidence in the material. I would like to change that to help make this self-paced course a little more engaging.

Cael

Posted on
  • Did you engage in each of the phases of the critical inquiry process?

Looks like it. I had trouble coding for the resolution phase, so maybe there could be more in that phase compared to now?

  • Were you able to resolve any problems or dilemmas?

I was able to come to greater clarity on some issues or thoughts I was having. I don’t know if I solved and problems or dilemmas.

  • What might you do differently in a future course?

I don’t know how to answer this question to be honest; I guess it would depend on the future course?

I found myself becoming more disengaged in this course the longer I was in it. I think one part of that was due to the dates at which I was seeing other participants posts come up on my sites ‘feed’. Most posts I saw showed dates in 2018, which made me think that although the course espoused that what I was posting would be open for the whole wide world to see, I was likely posting to an audience of one. From a different angle, this may just be my lack of imagination, as even if something was posted last year I could be the audience for it.

  • How might you engage with your students to ensure that they are working through the entire inquiry process?

I continue to be a believer that showing effective teaching means showing an active presence. When it comes to ensuring students working through the entire inquiry process, this means that I initiate interactions as I see students work through activities. For example, the current course I am an open learning faculty member in has a ‘classic’ structure, in that it has midterms and finals. I have set up an auto-update feature to notify me when students complete these assignments. If they complete them I will initiate contact to encourage dialogue on their end about the assessment. If they have not completed the assignment in a ‘reasonable’ amount of time (given the course time frames), I will initiate contact to inquire how they are doing.

  • Do you think that working through this course in an open platform like WordPress helps to encourage reflective learning?

I do think the platform offers good opportunities for reflective learning. One of the primary reasons I think this is because of the flexibility it offers to students. Compared to other LMS like Moodle, I could imagine some students embracing the creative presentation options. I also believe that compared to LMS like Moodle, it is easier for someone to track their work on WordPress.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say a more open platform like WordPress is always going to be better than a more closed LMS though. The ability of content to live outside of the confines of a LMS is nice, but it is highly likely that only those directly involved with a given course would ever see the content. I have nothing to back this claim up, and would be happy to be proved wrong.

Cael

Posted on

Aligned Learning Outcome

The learning outcomes will be applied to students taking a course on Introductory pharmacology.

Learning Outcome #1: Each student will construct a drug plan they would recommend to the health care team to treat someone suffering from severe sepsis. Each student must:

  • Include at least 3 drugs categories they would recommend.
  • Identify a possible drug from each drug category they recommend
  • Rationalize why they have recommended these drug categories
  • Relate the drug categories to the sepsis disease process.

Learning Activity : In a group of 3-4 students. each student selects one of the follow body components

  • Systemic blood vessels
  • Cardiac function
  • Intravascular blood volume
  • Immune system

After selecting one of the above body components, each student is to post how they anticipate they would be affected in someone suffering from severe sepsis. At this point in time, it is expected that students will use general descriptions when identifying possible changes. Students are not expected to go into explicit detail. For example, it is not expected that if discussing the immune system, that students identify specific immune cells that may be affected.

Learning Outcome #2:  Each student will correctly identify the category a drug belongs to when given a drug, or vice-versa. All drugs and drug categories tested will taken from the drug list located on moodle.

Learning Activity 1: Each student will have access to an online matching game that includes each drug and drug category. Students will be able to attempt the matching game as many times as they like. Their overall scores and total time will tracked as to allow them to compare each attempt. The drugs questioned will be randomized from the overall list.

Cael

Posted on

A quick reflection

How has your view of the effective practice changed now that you have read more about teaching presence?

It has changed in becoming more refined. The effective practice incorporated a number of the principles, more so in the first four.

In what ways did the effective practice that you identified show the characteristics of teaching presence?

Assuming the instructor planned to do these videos in advance (at least the idea of doing them, not necessarily the content), it shows design appreciation for open communication and reflection. By creating these videos the instructor modeled open communication and reflection, and also used them as vehicles to encourage questions for students as they went through the material. These videos also helped establish community and inquiry. It helped set a tone for the week, helped provide guidance to groups, and gave talking points for students to work around.

How could the idea of teaching presence have made the experience even more effective than it was?

Maybe the instructor could have structured in opportunities for students do also post videos? Hard to say at the time. There was  ‘looseness’ to the videos that I appreciated, and taking steps to make them more structured may have lessened the impact on me. That being said, it is likely other students did not have the same appreciation I had.

Cael

Posted on

Think of a time…

The effective practice I encountered in regards to online learning occurred during one the the online courses I was enrolled in as part of my masters program. Specifically, the online faculty member did a weekly summary of their thoughts on the upcoming readings. They video recorded it in a comfortable and informal type setting. For example they filmed one week outside on the beach. They also were free flowing with their thoughts, rather than being prepped and exact with their language.

  • Why was this an effective practice for you?

I appreciated the consistent and free flowing interaction this provided me as a learner with the teacher, even though I wasn’t interacting directly. I appreciated hearing the instructors perspective, as I found myself getting a little fatigued of only interacting with fellow classmates on material. Additionally, it was a very clear message to me as the student that the instructor was actively involved in the course. The videos weren’t made last year for a different class; they were made the Sunday before the new week hit. I found it to be a good model of behavior.

  • What are some of the key ingredients that underlie the experience you had?

It was a personalized activity, in the sense that the instructor made the video in the ‘moment’ for our group of students. In previous online experiences it felt as if the instructor at times wasn’t needed at all. The readings were already planned, the assignments were already planned, and the modules and weekly instructions were already made. Unless I had a question, I could likely get through the course with minimal to no instructor interaction.

  • If you could do it over again, what would you change to improve your experience?

Being this experience was a positive one, nothing immediately comes to mind as far as improving it. I could extrapolate it to other course I involved in, and generalize to say that I always appreciate it when the instructor makes a visible effort to connect with me as a student. May not always have to be a weekly video.

Cael Field

Posted on

Post 5

  • What are the 2-3 most important concepts that have impacted your thoughts on student engagement and retention during this course?

One concept I found helpful was the idea that it may be more effective to try and help students connect to the course of study/topic, more so than trying to help students make personal connections. I like the idea of helping students connect to the ‘we’ more so than the ‘I’. I can relate it ideas of how to create a movement, such as make meaningful stories, connect people to the cause, create a shared purpose, show members real world impacts. This is not to say creating personal connections is not important, but no the most critical aspect.

I also appreciated the different classifications of of social presence, specifically that I could gleam students responses to get a sense of the levels of interactions. I do not see myself comparing every sentence a student writes to the category examples, but I can see the knowledge that there are different categories helping to better interpret what is being said in discussions.

Lastly I appreciated the various principles associated with multimedia creation. I found that I connected with many of the examples given, I believe that I am already incorporating them to some degree in my materials. I had very positive student feedback around how I organized my presentations and the ease of going through them. Seeing this principles helped reinforces these habits even more.

  • Discuss your rationale for implementing 1 or 2 course facilitation strategies to increase student retention and engagement.

This is a little trickier. I am only involved in teaching one online course, and all of the content has already been created. That being said, I do want to follow through with creating and posting an online introduction video. One reason for this was reflecting on the lesson indicating that students felt the course was more personal. I want to help make the courses I am involved in more personal. I remember being involved in an online course and the instructor did weekly or bi-weekly videos. They were often filmed with him sitting on a beach somewhere, talking about some of the material we were engaging with that week and how he thought about it. I remember really appreciating that, and want to do something similar.

 

  • Identify 2-3 specific goals that you would like to achieve in light of what you have learned about social presence and creating effective educational media;
    • make sure that your goals are SMART,
    • identify strategies you intend to use in order to meet your goals.

I want to meet with my co-OLFM by the end of the summer 2019 and discuss ways to incorporate more engaging video content into the course

I want to meet with my co-OLFM by the end of the summer 2019 and discuss was to add non-text material to the current only-text material

– I can reference content learned through these courses as why I want to do these things
– I can reference past times where my co-OLFM as indicated they have thought about making changes

 

Posted on

Create an online repository for students to ask autonomous (or not) questions

  • Idea being to create a repository of questions asked about course content from current students, so future students can see and learn from them as well
  • I could respond to some questions by video or other non-text based ways (drawing out a concept)
  • Questions could be grouped to modules to help organize
  • Could be implemented as some type of wiki, to allow others to add to it if they have ways of answering.