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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.
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.
For my course, I have a student introduction forum. I ask them each to introduce themselves, where they live and one interesting thing about themselves (or unusual pet that they have). I find it allows the students to build some community early on in the course to rely on as they go through the coursework. I also introduce myself to give the students the opportunity to get to know who I am.
This was only done in text format the first time I taught the course. However, I uploaded a video of myself providing general feedback on an assignment that students have to complete that involves them taking video of themselves. It was well-received and I think I will offer the opportunity for students to do video introductions if they choose to increase the connection.
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Social Presence
- describe the ways in which your introductory post could have enhanced social presence in a course that you teach
I used interpersonal and open communication by introducing my pronouns, giving others permission to do so, and doing a territory acknowledgement.
- identify at least one improvement that you might make in light of what you know about social presence since completing your first post
If I were trying to enhance social presence in a course with my intro, I might have said something like “I am looking forward to working my way through the course with you.”
- describe how your thinking about social presence has changed since your first post.
Not much changed for me–I try to utilize the ideas introduced from Garrison without realizing that there were names for them 🙂
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Introduction
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Integration
Create a new post and discuss the following:
- Take a look back through your previous posts and apply the ‘Showcase’ category to your best work.
I applied the showcase category to my cognitive presence post. I think that I understand this from a student perspective and so can apply that to my teaching.
- What are 2-3 of the most important ideas that you have studied during this course?
Constructive alignment is very important to ensure student success. There is nothing more frustrating as a student than to have to complete an assessment that seems to have no bearing on course outcomes.
Feedback is also very important, especially in an online environment. The ability to keep students engaged by providing clear and effective feedback encourages student success.
- Identify 2-3 specific goals that you would like to achieve in light of what you have learned about cognitive presence, approaches to learning, and feedback
I would like to review my course to ensure that there is good constructive alignment. I did not create/write the course and this was the first time I taught it. The course does not run again until next January, so I have some time to make that happen. I have already found a couple of places where the learning outcomes are indicated in the wrong module and where there is information missing for the students to be able to complete assignments.
There is one assignment where the students must participate in a discussion forum and I need to make sure that I am more present to be able to encourage more deep thinking about the topic. I also need to increase the time frame for the discussion to provide students the time to process replies to their posts.
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Feedback
- Are there any gaps between your practice of offering feedback to students and what Hattie recommends?
I think that I do a good job of “Where am I going” by having clear learning outcomes and by encouraging students to engage deeply with the material. With each assessment I can provide feedback to the student on “How am I going” and ensure that the feedback is specific to the goals of the assignment.
- In what ways can you improve the effectiveness of the feedback that you provide for your students?
It is challenging as students are not permitted to view their quizzes after they have written them, and this is a major portion of assessment. It is important to provide detailed feedback so that students understand where they have done well or poorly to be able to integrate the knowledge that they have gained.
- What are the intended learning outcomes of the course? Do the learning outcomes reflect high-level cognitive skills or low-level skills (pay attention to the verbs)?
Learning Outcomes
- Illustrate effective use of spoken and written descriptions and explanations of medical conditions, diagnoses and treatments.
- Articulate conditions, diagnoses and treatments to clients in “lay terms”.
- Accurately follow written and verbal instructions related to the care and treatment of patients.
- Record medical information accurately, concisely and succinctly.
- Discuss veterinary cases with other professionals using appropriate terms and terminology.
These learning outcomes reflect mostly higher level cognitive skills.
- How is student learning assessed in the course (essays, quizzes, journals, machine-gradable tests, portfolios)?
Learning is assessed with a combination of quizzes, assignments and a final exam.
- In what ways are the intended learning outcomes and the assessments aligned or not?
The assessments require learners to not only memorize terms, but be able to create terms using roots and combining forms. There is a combination of defining terms and creating terms based on a definition. Students must all be able to apply the knowledge to be able to administer treatments based on written and verbal orders as well as write such treatments into patient medical records. This requires an understanding, not simply rote memorization.
- Identify 2-3 items or assessments that are worded in such a way that they limit students to a unistructural or multistructural response at best and re-write them so that they require a relational response at worst and include the results in your post.
Record medical information accurately, concisely and succinctly. Could be changed to: Relate medical information accurately, concisely and succinctly.
Accurately follow written and verbal instructions related to the care and treatment of patients could be rewritten as: Accurately apply written and verbal instruction related to the care and treatment of patients.