Category: Intergration

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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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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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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

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Reflections

What are 2-3 of the most important ideas that you have studied during this course?

The ideas that stand out are:

  • The continued need to give higher level feedback in an online setting. I can anticipate that it would be easiest to give level one type feedback, as it would be the easiest to give in a text based form. It it important to give feedback that encourages the learner to reach higher than their current level.
  • The approach of aligning the assessments to the outcomes. If you are aiming for more than surface level understanding, then it is best to align the outcomes so they reflect that.

What are 2-3 questions that you have as a result of this course? Identify ways that you can begin to answer those questions.

  • How willing are learners to engage in Socratic based questioning when taking an online, self-paced course?
  • How does the asynchronous nature of online, self-paced courses influence the feedback process?

I intend to answer these questions by engaging the students I will have in Socratic type questions. I will reflect on the students responses and any evaluations I receive. I will also ask my fellow open learning faculty their experiences when giving feedback.

Identify 2-3 specific goals that you would like to achieve in light of what you have learned about cognitive presence, approaches to learning, and feedback;

  • I will evaluate if my open learning courses intend outcomes are matched by their actual evaluations and assessments within the next 6 months.
  • I will explore different ways to give feedback other than text in an online setting over the next 2 months.
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Feedback – Please sir, can I have some more?

Are there any gaps between your practice of offering feedback to students and what Hattie recommends:

Oh I have no doubt there are some gaps. I imagine the largest gaps surface when trying to achieve the following two concepts:

1) Students from Socratic cultures “preferred more direct feedback particularly related to effort…and preferred more individual focused self-related feedback” (Sutton, Hornsey, Douglas, 2011, p. 8)

2) “The hypothesis is that it is optimal to provide
appropriate feedback at or one level above where the student is currently functioning” (Sutton, Hornsey, Douglas, 2011, p. 7)

I identified with these largely due to the idea trying to achieve them at the same time in my current teaching context. For one, I am usually teaching in a setting where the students vastly out number me and where time is limited. This makes it difficult for me to consistently individualize feedback on an on-going basis. Secondly, it is difficult for me to identify areas in need of feedback for each student. Generally speaking, my interactions with students are usually in the context of adding new content, information, or tasks. This often means there is little time for me to assess each students performance before moving on to something new. I could assess at a group level yes, but as explored but Sutton, Hornsey, and Douglas (2011), that has its own drawback.

In what ways can you improve the effectiveness of the feedback that you provide for your students?

I can attempt to improve my feedback effectiveness by continuing to incorporate the third feedback level of self-regulation.  namely phrasing feedback in a way that encourages student self-reflect and self-discovery.

In my experiences working with students during their clinical practicum, I have had multiple opportunities to work with students during different levels of mastery. Through these experiences I can relate to the feedback levels described by Sutton, Hornsey, and Douglas (2011). The feedback level of self-regulation was always the ultimate goal, as it aligned with the ultimate goal of  creating independent and reflective professionals. My ability to do this previously was supported by the reality that I worked with a low number of students and had a good amount of one to one contact. In moving to an online space this reality will change. I anticipate I will need to utilize more text based Socratic questioning to probe and identify where the student current is, rather than me provide the easier, but not as effective, level one feedback of task or product (Sutton, Hornsey, Douglas, 2011).

Hattie, J. (2011). Feedback in schools. In R. Sutton, M. J. Hornsey, & K. M. Douglas (Eds.), Feedback: The communication of praise, criticism, and advice. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Retrieved fromhttp://visiblelearningplus.com/sites/default/files/Feedback%20article.pdf