Self Coding

I have gone through and coded each of my posts as falling into each of the categories of cognitive inquiry: triggering event, exploration, integration, and resolution. I definitely found that fewer posts fell into the resolution phase. Lots of posts made it through to the integration phase. However, the integration posts did make it through to resolution and made me think how to get through to that final phase.

I don’t know I would do anything differently in terms of the phases. It makes sense that at the beginning of the course when new principles are being introduced or strategies are discussed that we as learners will be in the triggering or exploration phases and then move to integration later in the course and resolution closer to the end.

I already work to ask open ended questions to get my students to move through the phases and try to get them to integrate their thinking and move to a resolution with me just guiding. However, even putting more thought into changing my intro to the course may trigger something or get students to explore something they wouldn’t otherwise and you can’t get through all the phases unless you start at the beginning and get students to start thinking.

I do think that having a platform like WordPress helps with both reflecting on your own learning and the learning of others.

Post 6: Reflection

The time has come to reflect on this course and finish my blog.

I generally enjoyed the focus on teaching practice and bringing everything together from all three courses. The most important lessons I learned were around facilitation principles, many of which I already applied but would like to improve on.

Overall, the course has made me think more critically about the course I teach and all of my possible interactions with students. Some specific strategies that I found effective include:

  • examining blog posts comments and how to encourage discussion
  • examining wording in feedback; and
  • all they way at the beginning to how I introduce myself to my students at the outset.

I was already familiar with WordPress and find it an effective platform for blogs and so it didn’t really influence my interaction with the content.

One strategy I’m going to work on incorporating in addition to the specific strategies above is more of a general focus on the thinking about how my interactions with students move them through all the stages of critical inquiry. I’d also like to work on some of the facilitation principles perhaps starting with improving the introduction I do at the beginning of my course.

 

Interview: OTL 301 Post 4

Below is a summary of my conversation with a colleague who also teaches continuous entry courses at TRU.

Q1. What types of courses do you teach?

Ecology and more specifically Animal Behaviour and Evolution

Q2. What types of assignments do you find encourage either interaction with you or between students, for example, on a blog?

  • the assignments that result in the most interaction with me are ones when they are doing longer writing assignments like literature reviews or projects and we encourage students to get in contact to work out aspects of their project.

Q3: What are some digital tools in your courses that encourage students to use critical thinking?

  • A series of blog posts about big questions in evolution is the main one that sticks out for me and results in critical thinking

Q4: What are some of the considerations you think are important in designing an online course?

  • Ensuring academic integrity
  • Making students move beyond the textboook and explore the primary literature

Q5: What are some questions that your interviewee has struggled with:

  • I haven’t really had many questions that I’ve struggled with, though students will ask questions about material they are meant to review on their own which can be frustrating and challenging to word answers to.

I mainly learned that I have some similar experiences to my colleague in terms of digital tools that promote critical thinking and the assignments that promote interaction within the course. Interestingly, I have not had the same struggle with questions as my colleague and do not find my students ask me questions about course content they are meant to review on their own. I like the idea of a blog around big questions on a topic as that seems like a great way to encourage interaction and perhaps keep conversations going as students continuously join the course.

OTL 301: Intended Learning Outcomes

This post is all about intended learning outcomes and associated learning activities that follow the design principles from the community of inquiry model.

The following are 2 intended learning outcomes for a course on ecosystem ecology, my area of expertise:

  • Understand and evaluate how published scientific research articles contribute to broader ecological theory
  • Observe and describe how plant communities change at different temporal and spatial scales and formulate questions about the potential ecological processes at work

The following learning activities are aligned with the above learning outcomes:

  • This learning activity would fall within the chapter on ecological succession,  a key topic in ecosystem ecology courses. I would include a tutorial on succession in the online module and if available links to videos / online tools to visualize succession that I know are likely freely available on some research websites. Then I would assign one of the early research papers on ecological succession coming out of the regenerating forests of North America in the late part of the last century. Around this time, the theory on succession was being challenged and the research at that time led to changes in the theory that is taught in textbooks today. This presents an excellent opportunity for students to realize this learning outcome. Specifically, the learning activity would involve answering 4-5 questions on the research paper with a focus on open ended questions requiring thought and analysis. While this learning activity is focused on the first learning outcome, it will start the students on the path of the second learning outcome as well.

The outcomes and activity described above are inline with the design principles. Principle 1 being considered in the technological contingencies because all requirements should be met with basic technological knowledge and needs. As well, the feedback in these types of assignments stimulates both social and cognitive presence and provides for that connection with the instructor. Principle 2 has been considered as the outcomes are not focusing on covering a large area of knowledge, but quite the opposite – critical thinking about one specific area that could then be applied to numerous other topics in ecology.

OTL 301: Current Practice

In my first post for this course I described a teaching practice related to interacting with students at the beginning of the field research portion of the course. Reading the information on ‘teaching presence’ has not really changed my view of my teaching practice. I think my example is inline with the discussions on teaching practice and in particular the category on ‘facilitating discourse’. Further, my example clearly showed how cognitive and social presence were integrated. As I noted in my first post, I think that improvement is always possible and in addition to the tools we have learned about in this course, practicing and reflecting on each situation and how to improve for next time are critical.

OTL 301 Getting Started

Thinking about effective teaching practice reminds me of interacting with students when they are starting to plan their independent research project, which is part of their course. Students inevitably start to feel overwhelmed by the range of options of what they could study and once they get passed that then they have to figure out how to study it. I can think of several specific and very similar emails that I have received from students at this stage of the course. They ask me several questions and they want to talk on the phone as their brains feel so overloaded that they feel the need to talk it through.

My approach is to re-read any of their initial blog posts about their study site and read through their list of questions and try to read between the lines. I think about my own series of questions like what do they seem to be interested in, what did they say in their blog posts that maybe they are forgetting about in their confusion. Then, before setting up a phone conversation I send them back a series of questions that will make them think through things a little more and maybe remind them of some simple concepts to keep in mind that they have forgotten in their confusion.

I do inevitably talk to the students on the phone and I find the most helpful thing I do by that time is to reassure them that they are on the right path with their thinking and provide more of the technical advice / where to find resources related to their study. This is because by asking those deep questions instead of simply answering their questions, I have gotten the students to rethink the issue and start to come up with solutions on their own before we even talk.

I think it is a fairly well proven tactic for multiple situations that asking open ended questions is a good way to work through a problem/issue with someone. The key ingredient to this though is asking the right questions. Each time I go through a situation like the one above, I ask myself at the end if I asked the right questions and why or why not. I think it is a bit of an art and a science and you can only improve by continual practice.

Learning Portfolio: Online Interactions

Ensuring appropriate online interactions is something I already do, but I am a strong believer in ongoing improvement. And…writing is an area I can always improve in. There are lots of resources out there on wording criticism and it is more than focusing on ideas vs. people. If I am going to get my course blog flowing with comments, I had better be sure my own wording is a perfect model of what I want my students’ to look like!

Learning Portfolio: Encourage Blog Use

This learning strategy is all about ways to encourage use of the course blog. I comment often and try to stimulate interest. Students are required to comment as part of their blog mark, but I find this often happens at the end of the course as task that has to be done to complete the course. I would like it if student’s looked at other blog posts more. In particular, the blogs are all about their independent research project and it can be hard to develop your own project as an undergraduate student and here is this blog with lots of other great posts!

I think the main way for me to encourage blog use is in my direct interactions with individual students. I often have emails back and forth when it comes to the research project aspect of the course and this is my ‘in’ to encourage looking at the blog. I am familiar with most of the student’s research topics and so I can even point them toward specific student’s posts that might be of interest. Having more students reading different students posts along with my comments that try to stimulate discussions, perhaps I will be able to get some group discussions going.

 

OLTC 201 Integration

In general, this course focused more on topics related to asynchronous learning and the concepts of social presence and specific instructor strategies were the two concepts that most caught my thoughts related to improving engagement and retention. I think it is easy to rationalize implementing additional facilitation strategies and I think improving student engagement is a continuous goal for most online and in person instructors.

My first goal is to implement at least 2 of the learning portfolio strategies that I have identified within the next 6 months. This should be straightforward as my posts include the necessary information required to implement them.

My next goal is to research and find and read or listen to 2 additional useful resources on asynchronous learning in the next 8 months. I’m giving myself a bit longer with this goal as I have to have time to meet my goals from the last course. The reasoning for this goal and links to my remaining questions on engagement is that while this course focused on some aspects of asynchronous learning, I feel there is more to learn. In addition, this course talked about the group identity being more of a focus of the definition of social presence and I still don’t have many examples of effective strategies to achieve that in an asynchronous environment.