Month: April 2021

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Critical Inquiry exploration Integration OTL301 Post 2

Teaching Presence

  1. How has your view of the effective practice changed now that you have read more about teaching presence?

I can see that the design and organization can really make a difference when it comes to teaching presence. There can be a disconnect if the person designing the course is not the same person who is facilitating it. Ideas that seem good on paper (or that worked in a f2f course) sometimes do not translate well to online instruction. It is important for anyone facilitating to have the ability to make changes ‘on the fly’ to design where necessary.

  1. In what ways did the effective practice that you identified show the characteristics of teaching presence?

The effective practice that I identified is absolutely facilitating discourse. My prof asking me questions to come to a conclusion on my own was to stimulate individual learning (Anderson et al., 2001). This prof was also very present in our forums, adding comments to move discussion along.

  1. How could the idea of teaching presence have made the experience even more effective than it was?

I am not sure there is anything that could have made the experience more effective. Not just for my conversations about my paper, but in general. I have no idea if my prof designed the course, but it was well designed; the assessments were very much aligned with the content and the objectives. As mentioned, each of the other elements of teaching presence were demonstrated by the prof.

Reference

Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, & Archer (2001). Assessing teaching presence in a computer conferencing context. Journal of the Asynchronous Learning Network 5: 1-17.

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Critical Inquiry OTL301 Resolution

Effective Practices

I took an online class a couple of semesters ago and I was really struggling with a final paper topic. Or not so much the topic as how to make it work within the course subject. The prof offered to chat over the phone with anyone in this dilemma, so I booked a time. We chatted, but I got off the call still feeling like I had no idea what I was going to write. Struggled for another few days, then booked another time with the prof. And got off the phone again without too much direction. I didn’t feel as though I had gotten much direction from the calls, but at the same time, they didn’t feel like I had wasted my time. I have had calls with other profs that weren’t helpful, but this was different. And I think it was because a) the prof took the time to talk and would have for more calls if I had requested it and b) she was never dismissive of my idea. Sure, she didn’t give a ton of direction, but she asked me questions that made me realize what I *wasn’t* going to do with this paper. She didn’t just tell me why I shouldn’t do what I was planning, but she helped me get on the right track nonetheless.

The keys/effective practices were that the prof was very engaged and available, she didn’t tell me what to do or what not to do, and I felt very ‘heard’. I don’t think I would change anything about this experience.

Intro: Hi! I’m Kirsten, my pronouns are she/her. I have been a lab facilitator for over 10 years at a Lower Mainland college and I am very happy to be expanding my teaching experience to TRO OL.

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Learning Activities Portfolio OTL201 post 6

Learning Activities Portal–Updated

Link to my portal

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Critical Inquiry exploration Integration Learning Activities Portfolio Triggering Event

Assessing critically

In my previous post, I noted that it is so important that students think critically. However, when I look at some of the assessments that the course has, and the auto marked answers on the quizzes, we don’t allow for critical thinking, only verbatim answers. There is obviously a disconnect here. I think that there needs to be some leeway if answers make sense to the questions posed. After all, what better way for students to disengage if the assessment doesn’t match the teaching and learning!

There are, of course, many topics in which there is a correct or incorrect answer (drug calculations for instance). However, we spend much time on topics such as communication and positive attitude, and these are topics in which critical thinking are just as important. I will try and create some formative assessment activities in which I can post a ‘model’ answer key and with student’s permission, I can post each of their answers as well. This way students get to be a part of the process as well as have the opportunity to express their ideas in a safe, non-graded environment.

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Critical Inquiry exploration Integration Learning Activities Portfolio Triggering Event

Critical thinking

In veterinary medicine, it is important that students memorize normal values so that if their patient displays and abnormal value, they can flag it for the veterinarian. Students should also recognize if a drug dose that they have calculated is reasonable for the patient in front of them. However, that doesn’t always happen. How do we teach them to think critically about the data they collect?

Now, some might say that what I am describing is not critical thinking; perhaps that is just semantics. Regardless of what we call it, we all need our students to evaluate the information coming at them to decide if it makes sense.

This article has some good ideas for activities to get students to think critically. I think I can use the brain teaser activity (especially given it has a bit of a veterinary focus) for students to realize that they need to judge the information (a cats heart rate of 80 for instance) against what they know to be true (that normal is between 110 and 220). Simply writing down the information in the record without assessing it to be abnormal could spell disaster for the poor kitty.

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Critical Inquiry exploration Integration OTL201 post 5 Resolution

Integration

  • What are the 2-3 most important concepts that have impacted your thoughts on student engagement and retention during this course?

Social presence is the concept that has impacted me most. I have always understood engagement to be important, especially in an online course, but I have realized there are more ways for me to enhance this in my course. The other concept is recognizing that the way in which a student gets to a learning outcome can be flexible. Obviously there are assignments and quizzes that must be submitted, but the way in which they are submitted can be of their choosing.

  • Discuss your rationale for implementing 1 or 2 course facilitation strategies to increase student retention and engagement.

I will be doing a video introduction of myself going forward. Text in a forum is so impersonal–I realized that my students didn’t know what I looked like until 3/4 the way through the semester. Presenting my authentic self through a video will give my students permission to do the same, not just in their intro, but in their coursework.

  • 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

As mentioned, a video introduction. But I also want to encourage more interaction between students within the course/forums. I will be introducing an article or some other current event relevant to the course each week, not for credit, just to be able to relate some course concepts to the real world.

I will also be creating a “forum post guidelines” to ensure that all students feel safe in stating their ideas and opinions, but don’t worry that they (as opposed to their ideas) will be criticized.

  • Think about some questions you still have with respect to student engagement and retention. Post these questions and also a strategy for finding the answers.

How do I ensure that students are getting what they need to be successful? It can be difficult to get students to feel comfortable asking questions when they don’t understand. I will do some research to see if there are effective strategies for this. Do I have to assume that students will take responsibility for their own learning?

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Critical Inquiry Integration OTL201 post 4 Resolution

Effective Media

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Critical Inquiry exploration OTL201 post 3 Triggering Event

Learning Activities Portfolio

Link to my portfolio

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Critical Inquiry exploration Learning Activities Portfolio Triggering Event

Online conferencing

I did not take advantage of Big Blue Button this semester and I think that was a ‘missing’ in my course. The course I taught came on scene quite late and there was not a lot of time to be able to investigate all the different LMS abilities. I am not as familiar with Moodle as I am with others and unfortunately did not have the ability to look into how to do any sort of video conferencing with students.

In the future, I am going to take advantage of the Strategy 5 from Cuthbertson and Falcone’s (2014, as mentioned here) Best Practices for Building Community: Students love of mobile technologies. I think this will go a long way towards having students be more accountable to one another in their online discussions.

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Critical Inquiry Integration Learning Activities Portfolio Resolution

Enhancing discussion forums

I have a discussion assignment in my course in which students must discuss an ethical dilemma and come to a consensus on how they would handle it. One of the strategies that we use, noted in this article, was that these types of discussions should utilize real-world scenarios. This allows students to begin to synthesize what they are learning into a safe environment, before they must put it to real use.

I found that there was not enough conversation that occurred in this semester for this assignment to be really impactful for the students. I think that the wording of some of the scenarios was not clear enough and there was not enough time for students to work their way through the coursework required to really delve into the topic. For this reason, I extended the due date by a week. I will also be assigning some pre-work, as noted in the above article, to hopefully jump start the discussion.