Video Introduction

The task for this post was to create a video introduction or tutorial commentary that could be used for multiple courses. I think a video introduction is a great idea for an online learning course as it gives the students a chance to learn more about the course in a different sort of way and see their online instructor which they might otherwise be unable to do.  Below is my video, though I think I’d want a more professional video editor than myself if I was going to use this for my own courses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX6TCjX_hW0&t=9s

 

 

Learning Portfolio: Ongoing Interaction

One challenge with asynchronous learning is that with students learning at their own pace it can be a challenge to maintain ongoing social interaction, especially with students that go long periods between course activities. This strategy is about ways to improve ongoing social interaction. First, I will add to my welcome email how I will provide ongoing commentary throughout the course. A good way to do this would be to use the announcement forum on the course site. By letting student’s know this at the beginning, hopefully they will stay up on the announcements forum. I will then post regular announcements related to the course content. This could also be a good forum for posting the technical resources mentioned in the previous post.

Maintaining ongoing interaction poses an additional challenge because students don’t always use their university email accounts or check the announcements page on the course site. However, as noted above, by introducing early hopefully student’s will get this message before they are too far into the course and then follow the announcements.

Finally, this paper had some great tips for asynchronous learning: https://www.ideaedu.org/Portals/0/Uploads/Documents/IDEA%20Papers/IDEA%20Papers/PaperIDEA_64.pdf

 

Learning Portfolio: Technical Assistance and Resources

In this episode of Learning Portfolio: providing technical assistance and resources to students. My course is already designed and includes clear tutorials for assignments and marking guides available for students and therefore, it is a bit of a challenge to find new strategies to employ in my online teaching. I provide technical advice one on one to students, but find it a challenge to provide advice in a group setting when the learning asynchronous.

However, some of the information I provide one on one may be more generally useful. In particular, the students complete a final research project and while each project is different, they often employ similar sampling strategies. Therefore, the one on one technical advice I provide via email could be posted on the class forums. Each time I provide technical advice via email, especially if it contains links to resources, I will add to the class forums.

The following site gave me the idea: https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/teaching-resources/teaching-tips/alternatives-lecturing/discussions/collaborative-online-learning

 

Learning Portfolio Introductions

These series of posts are on strategies for online learning. The first is a combination of something I already do and a new one. I like sending welcome emails to students that introduce myself and give an overview of the course and some key things students will want to start by checking out. However, I see the value now to improve these welcome emails by including more details about myself and the areas of community and ecosystem ecology (the course I teach) that I have worked in.

This activity fits in easily with my teaching practice already and I only have to modify my current welcome email. As well, there is no need to spend a bunch of time learning this strategy, just write away and send!

Enhancing Social Presence

My first task in this post is to examine how my previous post should have enhanced social presence in my online course and how to improve upon that. A bio that shares information can help with social presence as it is a way to project your personality into the online environment and be seen as a ‘real person’, both of which were talked about as part of the definitions of social presence.

To improve on this post, I would include more of my background in ecology and some of the interesting projects I have worked on in the field that get me excited about my work. I think it is important to include the more personal aspects that I already have because it gets beyond the professional characteristics and as I mentioned, may help me seem more ‘real’. However, I have some professional interests and stories that could catch a student’s eye and combined with the personable aspects of the posts, may make them more likely to reach out to discuss topics of interest related to the course.

The concept of the three categories of social presence and group cohesion as the key goal has caught my eye. I do see this as a challenge and while there are some aspects of the course I teach that encourage this type of interaction, it is difficult to achieve. I look forward to considering this further in this course.

OTL201 Bio Post

Hi, I live in Kamloops, BC though I’m from the east coast and have lived in 4 Canadian provinces so far in my life. I love camping, running, skiing, and mountain biking. During COVID I’ve added one more that my two kids have been really into – skateboarding. The image depicts one of the things I’ve listed and one I haven’t.

I created an audio file to finish up this first attempt at a multi-media blog post but am unable to directly upload it into wordpress so I’ll have to finish it via text: I also like to read and learn new things and I’ve been working away at learning guitar and a new language over the past couple of years.

Post 5: Integration

It is time to say goodbye to the course OTL101 and reflect on what I have learned and to showcase one of my previous posts.

First, I have chosen to showcase my last post, #4 on feedback as I think feedback is important, which the article by Hattie also emphasized. As well, that post really got me thinking about ways that I could improve my feedback and feedback is one of the main ways I interact with students.

Important Ideas:

Related to my showcase post, one of the most important ideas explored during this course is that of feedback. Well many of the ideas in this course were interesting, I was also drawn to the ideas on alignment of learning outcomes and assessments.

Remaining Questions:

My remaining questions are not well defined, but there are several aspects of the feedback topic that I would like to dive deeper into and improve the feedback I give to students. There are numerous resources available on this topic that I can refer to and spend time analyzing how to incorporate aspects into my own work.

Goals:

One goal is to review additional resources on improving feedback and incorporate 2-3 new ideas into my practice over the next 6 months.

My second goal is to review additional resources on cognitive presence that give more examples of how this model is used in online learning environments and determine if there are aspects of this model I can apply over the next year.

Post 4: Feedback

Similar to the article by Hattie, I agree the feedback is a very important part in teaching and I was not surprised to see the evidence for it’s importance demonstrated in the article.

I believe there are some gaps between what Hattie recommends and my own practice and there is always room for improvement. Something I had already been thinking over during my initial months as an online instructor was the idea that I do not have a good sense of my students overall academic goals. Are they biology majors with an interest in the particular area of this course, are they exploring for possible topics of interest, need to take this course for some reason, or something else entirely. One of the three key questions in the article by Hattie is around understanding the student’s goals. I believe there are ways to improve in this area in an online environment and this article has gotten me to start thinking about possible solutions. One example would be that when students first enroll in the course I send a welcome email. I could add a question about the student’s interests and goals to that email and even if only some students respond, it would be a large increase in my understanding of their backgrounds and interests.

Another area that interested me in the article by Hattie was her emphasis on how peer feedback can be important and as instructors we should try to take advantage and may be missing out if we are not. There are some challenges here in an online environment and when not all students are moving through the course at the same time or pace; however, it is something to give more thought too.

Finally, the idea of feedback from the students struck me as particularly important. While I know there are student evaluations at the end of a course, if my feedback is not helping a particular student and I don’t find out until the end, then I have lost an opportunity to help that particular student. I have some students currently struggling and I am trying to provide effective feedback that will help them with the next assignments in the course, it would help to hear from them if my suggestions are helping before the end of course evaluations.

Learning Outcomes and Assessments

In order to examine the relationship to the learning outcomes and assessments I will use Community and Ecosystem Ecology as an example. There are many learning outcomes in this course and so I have only pasted a few below that illustrate how they are mostly associated with high level cognitive skills:

Sample Community And Ecosystem Ecology Learning Outcomes:

  • Evaluate how specific research studies contribute to larger ecological theory
  • Recognize the influences of ecological processes on different temporal and spatial scales
  • Integrate independent observations with existing ecology theory

  • Critically evaluate the peer-reviewed ecological literature and understand the process of peer review

Student learning is assessed in the course in a variety of ways including quizzes, paper question sets and a final research project for which the assessment is broken into numerous parts. The learning outcomes and assessments for this course are well aligned because the assessments require students to use high level cognitive skills. More than that, both the way the final project is broken down into numerous steps  and with tutorials for each step help guide the student to use high level cognitive skills.

The only aspect that limits students to a unistructural or multistructural responses are some of the quiz questions. However, I think it is important to point out that this is likely still appropriate as it ensures that students have some of the background knowledge required to complete the further assessments. In addition, despite being multiple choice some of the questions still require understanding and applying concepts in order to answer.

Below is an example of the difference between a question that might only elicit unistructural or multistructural responses and a question that would require more relational responses using the concept of succession, which is covered in one of the course quizes:

Unistructural / Multistructural Question: Which of the following disturbances is NOT usually a causal agent of primary succession? a) volcanic eruption b)  fire c) mudslide d) glaciation

Relational Question: A trajectory of secondary succession indicates how the eventual community is similar to the original community, or is significantly altered from its original condition. Which of the following factors is likely to have a strong effect on the trajectory of secondary succession following an irruption of a damaging insect? a) if the insect has an r- or K¬-selected life history b) if the insect is native or alien c) if the insect can overwinter as an adult or only in the egg stage d) if the insect is highly mobile or not.

Considering Cognitive Presence

The course has begun to explore the community of inquiry model in which cognitive presence is one of three overlapping concepts in the model. I was not previously aware of this model of learning and I suppose that is a learning in itself!

In Post 1, I considered student engagement to be important and wondered how to do so more effectively in an online environment. I see a lot of similarities between the idea of effective engagement and cognitive presence. In order to assess cognitive presence there must be engagement.

While I find the concept of cognitive presence interesting, I do find the term a bit confusing to use in practice as cognition itself is quite a broad concept and here this term is being used specific to critical thinking. The article “Critical Thinking, Cognitive Presence, and Computer Conferencing in Distance Education” by Garrison et al. introduces the model and mainly tests its use in online learning through courses with facilitated online discussions. I look forward to learning more about cognitive presence in other aspects of online learning. However, I can see the concept at work in my online course at TRU where a research project is required by the students and certainly requires critical thinking by the student guided by the online resources in the course and assistance from the instructor.