Category: Critical Inquiry

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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

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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

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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

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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

 

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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.
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Introductory Video

  • a link to the source of the activity;

Instructor Strategies

https://wave.video/blog/how-to-nail-your-introductory-video-script/

  • Aim to support my goals of creating a more personalized/authentic course experience. Put a face to my name in hopes that it may make it easier to students to ask questions when they have them.
  • Contact OL for options into a webcam
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Enhancing Social Presence

Create a new post and

Describe the ways in which your introductory post should have enhanced social presence in a course that you teach

Identify at least one improvement that you might make in light of what you know about social presence since completing your first post, and

  • I am considering creating video introductions to accompany the text based ones I already make. My hope is that using the audio/visual makes the introduction sound more authentic and engaging. Depending on some factors, such as number of students, I may be able to make a unique video for each student.
  • I may dedicate too much of my introductory communication to the format of the course. Instead, maybe I can dedicate more of the content towards trying to connect the student to the content.
  • I could take steps to make the introductory post a little bit lighter. At this point in time it my introductory post does not use that many words. To be honest though, I write it with an assumption that the student I am sending it to will likely not respond. This may lead me to trying to get all of what I want to say out in that initial contact, which in turn may mean the student does not feel they have to respond.Describe how your thinking about social presence has changed since your first post.

     

  • I don’t believe my thinking about social presence has changed too much since my first post. Looking at my first post it shows signs of intent to build social presence, such as:
    • Use of humor (whether it is funny or not is up for debate of course 😉 )
    • Used symbols/emoticons to try and convey emotion
    • Participated in self-disclosure
  • While not significantly changing, my thinking on social presence is becoming more refined.

Cael