Teaching online and learning online is a new to many individuals and new to the realm of education. For years learning has come from face-to-face interaction. The with the advent of a mailing system distant learning emerged when ponies carried letters to and from sender and receiver. Much of learning has come from books and only now are we thinking about how to write for the web rather than print.
In week six's discussion we investigated what kind of instructional approaches we should use for our EdWeb. People once again gravitated towards online discussions, how to motivate learners to get involved with learning, using images to transform information.
Sheri Trapp-Cordova posted a suggestion to use a map instead of text bullet points to emphasize "the importance of history in the forming the border culture of El Paso, maybe I could create a map of the area and visually show the border moving over time in relation to El Paso. This format might make it easier for learners to recall, or absorb the ideas of a changing border and what happens when one culture/nation is absorbed into another nation."
One topic I have really found fascinating is how Flash can enhance learning. Make things that happened long ago to be able to be relived, like the border between Mexico and the U.S. (even writing this blog allows be to revist discussions that took place a month ago, even now I am making new insights and connections, this is not possible with f2f instruction, even for the best note taker).
My best contribution was in my posting of an article. Here's the link. It is a study from Harvard University's School of Business regarding how to cultivate communities of practice to manage knowledge.
Although I didn't have the chance to comment on the article in my post, I hope that other's found it valuable. I hope to use some of the principles in my EdWeb and f2f training. One analogy I enjoy is creating a community of practice to function much like a park. In a park there's places to have open-space to large gatherings, closed-space to have a bench nested near flowers to intimate conversations, secluded space for reflection.
I think instructional learning technologies can allow us as the designer to create a website, much like a park space, so our learners can come into a space where their learning needs are met on many levels: places for vibrate discussion, places for reflection, places for self-paced learning, places where the images, much like scenery, can do the same as a thousand words
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Online Teaching Techniques
In week five we discussed different online teaching strategies. The discussion surrounded how were going to engaged our audience using methods from Benders book. Some people were interested in how they were going to team teach the Web Conference together: have some people monitor certain activities? Or take a more collabrative approach and manage the discussions and activities together?
One topic that I gravated towards was chats. Specifically, how could chats be both reflective (to move learners up Bloom's cognitive objectives) at the same time not so overwhelming that people would have a difficult time keeping a focused conversation going all the while other people are trying to do the same thing but with another topic. Basically, too make people can spoil a learning opportunity just as too may cooks can spoil a receipt, if too much is added things can get confusing.
Bender devoted an entire section to synchronous learning, which was my Web Conference topic. I was inspired by the concept of using chats to display best practices in onlince teaching and so that learners could join conversation with others who were also interested in the same topic, thus to avoid side-bar conversations. My post was regarding that this might not be possible. Chad wondered if it could be? Dave Young said we could do it in Moodle but it might be challenging. I took this back to my team and we thought it was best to not use Moodle but keep everything within Breeze, since this is where we were going to present the synchronous event.
With this in mind, my team delivered a synchronous event in Breeze in which we had break-out discussions. This was easily accomplished with some planning. We introduced different types of synchronous tools and how they could be used using a PPT and VoIP. Then we build pods that displayed questions about the tools. We asked the participants to vote on the topic they'd like to join to make sure the number balanced out per discussion. Then we opened up the pods and have people chat for about 10 minutes. It was a great interactive experience and fun to faciliatate.
I enjoyed week's five topic discussion. I am not sure we would have had such a great interactive Web Conference if it wasn't for the threaded discussion of week five.
One topic that I gravated towards was chats. Specifically, how could chats be both reflective (to move learners up Bloom's cognitive objectives) at the same time not so overwhelming that people would have a difficult time keeping a focused conversation going all the while other people are trying to do the same thing but with another topic. Basically, too make people can spoil a learning opportunity just as too may cooks can spoil a receipt, if too much is added things can get confusing.
Bender devoted an entire section to synchronous learning, which was my Web Conference topic. I was inspired by the concept of using chats to display best practices in onlince teaching and so that learners could join conversation with others who were also interested in the same topic, thus to avoid side-bar conversations. My post was regarding that this might not be possible. Chad wondered if it could be? Dave Young said we could do it in Moodle but it might be challenging. I took this back to my team and we thought it was best to not use Moodle but keep everything within Breeze, since this is where we were going to present the synchronous event.
With this in mind, my team delivered a synchronous event in Breeze in which we had break-out discussions. This was easily accomplished with some planning. We introduced different types of synchronous tools and how they could be used using a PPT and VoIP. Then we build pods that displayed questions about the tools. We asked the participants to vote on the topic they'd like to join to make sure the number balanced out per discussion. Then we opened up the pods and have people chat for about 10 minutes. It was a great interactive experience and fun to faciliatate.
I enjoyed week's five topic discussion. I am not sure we would have had such a great interactive Web Conference if it wasn't for the threaded discussion of week five.
Formative Evaluation
What's a formative evaluation? Basically, when a instructional project is still in the design stage you seek out key individuals to provide you feedback on your design ideas. "Formative" refers to the beginning, like formative years of childhood. In designing a instructional product, the formative evaluator can can include people such as the subject matter experts or others knowledgeable about the topic, but most importantly, they should also include people who are going to be your target audience. That way, you are comparing carrots to carrots and not apples to oranges, like SMEs to a general learner.
In designing educational websites, formative evaluations take on a different form, no pun intended. To get week four's topic going, Dave Young asked us what was 'pining around in our heads' about our EdWeb. Many people reverted to their navigation. I guess I was a little behind the curve because I was more worried about how I was going to my project out to my intended audience, how was I going to sell my project to an organization so they thought it was going to benefit them.
My best contribution was "After listening to Dr. Tessmer's interview, I thought how much our EdWeb's are like a living document that under goes intensive editing. I wrote an honor's thesis in college, but the web project has many more considerations: navigability, writing for web readers, releasing to hundreds of learners at one time. One needs to pay strict attention to detail, understand web-authoring tools, and now solicit people for formative evaluations!"
Dave liked the idea of a living document, "Lots of great insights in what you wrote, Kerry! I particularly like the phrase "living document." Questions are going to crop up constantly that will need to be answered and if your approach is to be nimble and use formative evaluation effectively to answer those questions, you'll do well."
I learned much from the formative evaluation process. Life knowing which people to solicit and getting people to actually get hands-on practice before building the website.
Looking back at that conversation, I think this blog posting is like a summative evaluation of my formative evaluation.
In designing educational websites, formative evaluations take on a different form, no pun intended. To get week four's topic going, Dave Young asked us what was 'pining around in our heads' about our EdWeb. Many people reverted to their navigation. I guess I was a little behind the curve because I was more worried about how I was going to my project out to my intended audience, how was I going to sell my project to an organization so they thought it was going to benefit them.
My best contribution was "After listening to Dr. Tessmer's interview, I thought how much our EdWeb's are like a living document that under goes intensive editing. I wrote an honor's thesis in college, but the web project has many more considerations: navigability, writing for web readers, releasing to hundreds of learners at one time. One needs to pay strict attention to detail, understand web-authoring tools, and now solicit people for formative evaluations!"
Dave liked the idea of a living document, "Lots of great insights in what you wrote, Kerry! I particularly like the phrase "living document." Questions are going to crop up constantly that will need to be answered and if your approach is to be nimble and use formative evaluation effectively to answer those questions, you'll do well."
I learned much from the formative evaluation process. Life knowing which people to solicit and getting people to actually get hands-on practice before building the website.
Looking back at that conversation, I think this blog posting is like a summative evaluation of my formative evaluation.
Facilitating Online Discussions
Timing, Motivation, Organization, Focus, Patience, Silence...what makes or breaks when it comes to facilitation online?
There was lots of interactive discussion in week's three threaded discussion on the topic of facilitating online discussions. In fact, there were a total of 43 posting! Any novice online participant might feel daunted to join the discussion as if they were being asking to scale a 14,000 foot mountain when out on their first trek. Basically, how can we arouse vibrant discussion that creates a collaborative student-to-student interaction? And, how do we react when there is no response to the discussion?
There were many great suggestions. Dave Beatie suggested to use Keller's ARCS model to stir motivation--ACRS.
" I decided to watch this thread play out because the variety of ideas being generated were very interesting! Lack of response is definitely something that can drive you crazy as a facilitator. The "wait time" strategy is important and tough to master in an online environment because of the lack of clues about why there is silence."
My best contribution regarded having a topics agenda. Know what questions to ask and when you are going to ask them. Provide the participants with a time-line for responding to the question to keep them motivated to be involved and to also know when it's time to move on to the next topic. I didn't post this in the discussion, but I also think it is important to let the learners have the option to post in older discussion knowing that the other participants might not check the posting but you as a facilitator will respond.
I offered up some facilitation tips:
"'Asking Questions That Stimulate Discussion
Asking questions in an online discussion is a bit different than in a face-to-face environment. In a face-to-face seminar the facilitator can immediately adjust his or her questioning strategies if the audience doesn’t respond to the first question asked. In an asynchronous conference, the discussion can fizzle quickly if the right question isn’t asked at the beginning. Here are some tips on asking questions to stimulate online discussion early:
Link to the PDF: http://files.myweb.med.ucalgary.ca/files/132/files/unprotected/FacilitatorGuideSept03.pdf
Richard Stewart added that "asking the student to complete the question" is also a great way to stimulate responses.
Online facilitation is both a science and a mixture of natural human interaction. The magic is how to use what works in natural dialog in online collaboration.
There was lots of interactive discussion in week's three threaded discussion on the topic of facilitating online discussions. In fact, there were a total of 43 posting! Any novice online participant might feel daunted to join the discussion as if they were being asking to scale a 14,000 foot mountain when out on their first trek. Basically, how can we arouse vibrant discussion that creates a collaborative student-to-student interaction? And, how do we react when there is no response to the discussion?
There were many great suggestions. Dave Beatie suggested to use Keller's ARCS model to stir motivation--ACRS.
- Attention. Gain their attention!
- Relevance. What's in it for me? Let them know the answer to that question
- Confidence. Being able to put newly learned knowledge into action
- Satisfaction. Feeling fulfilled and reward from the learning experience.
" I decided to watch this thread play out because the variety of ideas being generated were very interesting! Lack of response is definitely something that can drive you crazy as a facilitator. The "wait time" strategy is important and tough to master in an online environment because of the lack of clues about why there is silence."
My best contribution regarded having a topics agenda. Know what questions to ask and when you are going to ask them. Provide the participants with a time-line for responding to the question to keep them motivated to be involved and to also know when it's time to move on to the next topic. I didn't post this in the discussion, but I also think it is important to let the learners have the option to post in older discussion knowing that the other participants might not check the posting but you as a facilitator will respond.
I offered up some facilitation tips:
"'Asking Questions That Stimulate Discussion
Asking questions in an online discussion is a bit different than in a face-to-face environment. In a face-to-face seminar the facilitator can immediately adjust his or her questioning strategies if the audience doesn’t respond to the first question asked. In an asynchronous conference, the discussion can fizzle quickly if the right question isn’t asked at the beginning. Here are some tips on asking questions to stimulate online discussion early:
- Clarify the outcome objectives for the discussion.The first question(s) should immediately start participants thinking about the important issues in the topic.
- Limit the number of questions that are asked at the beginning of a discussion to one or at most two. Participants will lose interest if they are expected to respond to too many issues in one discussion. If there are more than two aspects of the topic that need to be explored to meet the outcome objective for the discussion, give participants permission to respond only to one, or at most two, of the questions you have posed. Even better, ask questions later in the discussion that introduce different aspects of the topic that need to be considered.
- Ask open-ended questions to which there can be more than one “correct” response
- Ask for participant opinions on a controversial aspect of the topic or invite participants to describe their experience relevant to the topic.
- Avoid asking questions that can be answered directly from the readings or which can be answered completely by one keen respondent."
Link to the PDF: http://files.myweb.med.ucalgary.ca/files/132/files/unprotected/FacilitatorGuideSept03.pdf
Richard Stewart added that "asking the student to complete the question" is also a great way to stimulate responses.
Online facilitation is both a science and a mixture of natural human interaction. The magic is how to use what works in natural dialog in online collaboration.
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