Module 4: Responses

I responded to the following blog posts in Module 4:

AJ Johnson:
http://anethajaye.blogspot.com/2011/10/engaging-learners-with-new-strategies.html?showComment=1319871718074#c9029862266435071684

Laura Lee
http://lauralee1123.blogspot.com/2011/10/strategies-tools-for-engaging-learners.html

Engaging Learners with Strategies & Tools

As we learned from Siemen’s (2008) curatorial teacher metaphor, the teacher arranges the learning environment to display content for autonomous exploration by the learner (p. 17). The teacher can post content in the form of documents, digital media, links to websites, blogs, wikis and social bookmarking sites. One of my favorite tools to share content is Diigo. This site can be used as a research tool and a knowledge-sharing community. It has functions that allow tagging, highlighting, annotations, and creation of groups and communities. A new site that I have recently discovered has great potential for administering formative assessments and providing immediate feedback to students. Utilizing Socrative, a student response system, instructors can gauge their students’ understanding of the content and increase participation.

Durrington, Berryhill, and Swafford (2006) emphasized the critical role that communication plays in an effective online learning environment. The instructor must provide clear expectations, a positive classroom climate, timely feedback, strategic topic choices and skillful questioning in order to promote student engagement. There are a multitude of communication tools that an instructor can build into a course. My favorite communication tool has been Skype. I utilize the chat and videoconference features regularly. The ability to have a group conference is a great feature to promote synchronous opportunities for small group work in an online class.

Durrington et al. (2006) highlighted the importance of collaboration in an online environment by suggesting a course include small group work, establishment of conversation spaces and project-based learning. There are many exciting tools available for collaboration in this context. These tools are great because they can be used synchronously or asynchronously. For example, there are many sites that allow for the sharing and creation of a product in a collaborative way. Google Docs allows the creation and modification of a document between a group of people. Work on a jointly created mind map can take place in Mind42. One can share documents with people on sites such as Let’s Crate and Minus. Collaboration on multimedia projects is possible on You Tube and Voice Thread.

The availability of so many free tools enables any online instructor to provide what Simonson (2000) describes as a learning opportunity for online learners that is equitable to a face-to-face learning environment, affording them virtual opportunities to communicate, collaborate and interact with content.

References

Durrington, V. A., Berryhill, A., & Swafford, J. (2006). Strategies for enhancing student interactivity in an online environment. College Teaching, 54(1), 190−193.

Siemens, G. (2008, January). Learning and knowing in networks: Changing roles for educators and designers. ITForum.

Simonson, M. (2000). Making decisions: The use of electronic technology in online classes. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 84, 29–34.

Feedback on Storyboards

I gave feedback on the storyboards of the following classmates:

Laura Lee

http://lauralee1123.blogspot.com/2011/10/module-3-storyboard.html

Anetha Johnson

http://anethajaye.blogspot.com/2011/10/storyboard-of-video-presentation.html

Pam Owens

http://educ-technology.blogspot.com/2011/10/story-board.html#comments

Val Mitchell-Stevens

http://mitchellstevensv.blogspot.com/2011/10/storyboard-math-video-game-to-enhance.html

Module 3: Assessment in an Online Learning Environment

We have seen an enormous shift from an individualistic-focused participation that regurgitates information through rote memorization to a group-centered participatory model that focuses upon the collective construction of knowledge (Siemens, 2008). Siemens emphasizes that our society has focused for so long on the accomplishments of individuals that the new paradigm of collaborative work seen in distance learning today is particularly difficult for many learners. How can we assess learners in this type of collaborative environment?

I think that it is important to note that assessment can be used for different reasons. Summative assessments are used to quantify student learning into scores and grades for evaluation purposes. Formative assessments are what Siemens (2008) described as “a teaching-based opportunity to give feedback” which is used to guide the instructor’s next instructional steps

Siemens suggests using several options that provide a balanced approach to assessment in a fair and equitable way. Using peer-to-peer assessment gives learners the opportunity to extend and reinforce their own learning by analyzing and responding to the work of others. Student participation in open communities such as discussion boards allows the instructor to observe how the learner interprets the information and constructs knowledge based upon the instructional activities and feedback from the community. The instructor may also analyze the data that is available through web analytics; tracking hours in class, the number of posts, and number of interactions with peers to detect any patterns or deficiencies in participation. It is important to note that the level of and quality of student engagement in an online discussion board is positively correlated with student learning, especially when students know it is part of the assessment (Swan, 2004, p. 2).

The role of the instructor in an online class is to facilitate discussions, interactions with course content and between classmates, and guide the learners toward constructing knowledge together. However, even more critical is the instructor’s need to “stay abreast of developments in the group and to act decisively and quickly when necessary” (Palloff & Pratt, 2007, p. 65). It is the responsibility of the instructor to facilitate activities that make participants “feel comfortable with, and trusting of, the online environment early in the process” (Hurst & Thomas, 2008). If this environment is not present for learners, they will disengage. When learners experience a lack of trust or a lack of connectedness they tend to withdraw from participation in the class. It is up to the learning community to attempt to build connections to encourage the disenfranchised learner to become part of the group through private messages or questions posted on the discussion board.

References

Hurst, D., & Thomas, J. (2008). Developing team skills and accomplishing team projects online. In T. Anderson (Ed.), The theory and practice of online learning (2nd ed., pp. 441–472). Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press.

Laureate Education, Inc. (2008). Principles of Distance Education. Baltimore: Author.

Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2007). Building online learning communities: Effective strategies for the virtual classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Swan, K. (2004). Relationships between interactions and learning in online environments. The Sloan Consortium.

Module 3: Storyboard

Please click on this link to see my Storyboard for Module 3:

Learner Engagement in Distance Learning

Module 2 Responses

I responded to the following blogs during Module 2:

Valerie Mitchell-Stevens
http://mitchellstevensv.blogspot.com/2011/09/global-diversity.html

AJ Johnson
http://anethajaye.blogspot.com/2011/09/elements-of-distance-education.html?showComment=1317455986718#c4724104631138090981