Category: Triggering Event

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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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Hello world part 2!

‘They’ want me to show my face eh? And my voice!? AND be creative!!?

Well lets see…

If you want to hear my voice (and see a slightly younger version of myself), I cordially invite you to check out part 1 of a small series of videos I made at:

My face has or voice hasn’t changed too much I would say, but you can be the judge of that:

Although some days, the sun just comes on out!

As far as something important, these two cuties are a more recent addition:

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A SOLO approach to Pulmonary Function

The course I will examine as an example is that of Pulmonary Function Testing. This is a mandatory course within the Respiratory Therapy program. It was also taught be me last year between September and November, 2018.

What are the intended learning outcomes of the course?

– Understand the importance of quality control (QC) in pulmonary function (PF) testing and apply QC on PF equipment in the lab

– Analyze and interpret PF test results as obstructive vs restrictive

– Understand the purpose and significance of the various PF tests and how these tests aid in the diagnosis of lung diseases

– Safely, and according to ATS criteria, perform the following pulmonary function tests: test 1,2,3,4 ,etc (edited for this post)

Do the learning outcomes reflect high-level cognitive skills or low-level skills (pay attention to the verbs)?

– Analyze, apply, and interpret reflect higher-level cognitive skills. Perform reflects lower-level. Understand is more difficult to easily categorize, as I would argue it is vague and could be interpreted different ways. Robert may interpret it as memorizing or describing, where as Susan may perceive it as explaining or reflecting. If I had to decide I would categorize understand as a lower-level skill.

How is student learning assessed in the course (essays, quizzes, journals, machine-gradable tests, portfolios)?

– Examinations (multiple choice and short descriptive answers)

In what ways are the intended learning outcomes and the assessments aligned or not?

– Alignment would very much depend on the type of questions being asked. If the majority of questions only challenged lower-level skills then there would be mis-alignment. For example if the teacher wanted students to apply but asked questions where one could easily answer if one memorized the key points.

Identify 2-3 items or assessments that are worded in such a way that they limit students to a unistructural or multistructural response at best and re-write them so that they require a relational response at worst and include the results in your post.

– I would focus on the understand learning outcomes and try to add greater clarity. For example:

Compare and contrast between high and low levels of quality control (QC) in pulmonary function (PF) testing, and apply QC on PF equipment in the lab.

Justify the purpose of various PF tests and apply each in the diagnosing of particular lung diseases.

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My presence on cognitive presence

  • What do I know now that I did not know prior to starting the course

I didn’t know the percentage distribution of post according to the practical inquiry model. As measured by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2004), trigger phase having 8%, exploration phase having 42%, integration having 13%, and resolution having 4% is interesting.

  • What gaps or discrepancies do I notice between your ideas in post 1 and what I have learned in lesson 1?

Oh I get it;trying to make me reflect on my past to help me move to higher order thinking are ya! Nice try.

One discrepancy would be my response that engaging content was the most important aspect of online learning. It appears Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2004) placed more emphasis on the teacher and the processes they use to support students to critically engage with the content.

  • What questions would you like to explore on the topic of cognitive presence?

What processes do more successful online learning teachers take to encourage students to critical think and engage with content.

  • Provide and example of how you have seen effective cognitive presence modeled in online learning.

In one online course I appreciated when the teacher went beyond the general introductory step and directly responded to one of my posts. Seeing the teacher take time to comment to a level where it showed they actually read was appreciated. It made me more likely to put effort into future posts; if they cared than I would respond in kind.

Cael Field

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2001). Critical thinking, cognitive presence, and computer conferencing in distance education. American Journal of Distance Education, 15, 7-23. doi:10.1080/08923640109527071