Day: June 20, 2009

What could Trinh do?

Trinh is an associate professor in museum studies at a comprehensive university. She has delivered an innovative introductory online course on museumology; in fact, students enrolled at universities in New Zealand, South Africa, and Finland all take her course. The course is delivered via Vista, features a range of multimedia educational artifacts, and guest lectures delivered via live streaming. Although participating in some of these activities is challenging for students in other time zones, they understand these are required activities and full participation is a condition of enrollment.

Trinh’s committed to delivering learner-centred courses, whether taught F2F, online or blended. But this course – and its over 150 student enrollments – is challenging for her to manage. Email in particular can be onerous: on some mornings she finds dozens of messages. Some of these come to her university email address; others to her Vista email. She even gets student questions as comments to her blog!

Were this a F2F course, she would set up office hours – but that’s not an office in an online course, is it? What could Trinh do?

Trinh presents her course using Vista, so she has available the tools to create a comprehensive site that students will be able to use across several time zones. I wonder if Trinh has set up an area on her Vista course site where students can observe all relevant course information. For starters, her students would benefit from knowing on weekly basis what the required readings were, the activities, and the due dates for these assignments. Providing students with a course map may prevent some of these emails that she gets quite frequently. Anderson (2003) states that it’s extremely important that online teachers foster trust and safety within the learning community. I may be off on this, however, if students feel that Trinh is having difficulty managing the course (students appear confused, ie: posting messages in several areas for her) then they may not be as motivated to fully participate in all the activities that she has scheduled for them.

With respect to Trinh’s lessons being synchronously delivered through live streaming, having them archived would support students who are unable to view them live due to differing time zones. Trinh could attach discussion forums like in 565a to different modules, and to her live lectures so students could asynchronously discuss and reflect on the content presented. Trinh could also develop her lectures using audio/video, archive them, and then have them time released in different modules for students. This would allow all students to view the content at their own time and pace. Trinh could also synchronously use Wimba to demonstrate/teach students, then archive the presentation for asynchronous viewing. Students living in different time zones would benefit by having wiki’s in place for collaborative learning sessions. Students could build their knowledge by accessing the work at their own pace, and a time of their choosing.

It may be wise for Trinh to utilize her teaching assistants (if she has them) to support her and the students enrolled in the course. She could divide her students equally among the different assistants and they could communicate with the T.A.’s on a wide array of topics. To help support student communication within the course, Trinh could specify in the course map what a teaching assistant should be contacted for, and what she should be contacted for. Perhaps with this distinction, students would be able to navigate the course more efficiently.

To further streamline the communication between Trinh and her students, she could post her virtual office hours on the course outline. She could utilize the ‘popup’ announcement feature through Vista to alert her students when there is a change to these hours. This feature could also be used for any emergent information that she wants students to know when they next login.

Having student moderators lead discussion groups can help increase student participation and motivation throughout the course (Rourke & Anderson, 2002). The side effect is that students receive a richer experience with respect to their learning. Also, students helping students would be advantageous to Trinh in that she may receive fewer inquiries for information due to increased student involvement. This in no way diminishes Trinh’s role within her course, it just adds another support and resource for her students.

Anderson, T. (2008). Teaching in an Online Learning Context. In: Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Athabasca University. Accessed online 3 March 2009 http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/14_Anderson_2008_Anderson-DeliveryQualitySupport.pdf

Rourke, L., & Anderson, T. (2002). Using peer teams to lead online discussions. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, Retrieved August 27, 2007, from http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/2002/1/

Theory of Online Learning

Keeping in mind your own experiences as a teacher and as a student, consider what Anderson means when he describes the attributes of learning in terms of being learner-, knowledge-, assessment- and community-centred. To what extent have you experienced on-line or mixed-mode courses that achieved this kind of learning environment? How might you use the learning technologies tools you have at your disposal to help you to create meaningful interactions?

Learner-Centred

As this is my fifth MET course through UBC I have had some experience as a learner participating within an online environment. With respect to the environment being learner-centred, I have always enjoyed the beginning of each MET course where students discuss themselves with respect to their educational background and relevant experience. This activity seems so trivial, yet I find it very interesting how much I enjoy responding to it. Equally enjoyable is reading the entries of other students. This welcome page I believe has the ability to set the tone for the course if it’s completed with some diligence. Each MET course that I have taken has been structured with synchronous and asynchronous modes of communication that have given me the ability to explore my own learning within an environment that has been collegial and informative.

Knowledge-Centred

Each course that I have taken including ETEC 565 has been extremely helpful in getting me to think about what I am doing, and why I am doing it. The provisions for reflective thinking have been quite extensive within the MET environment. As someone who has used technology for many years I find my MET experience to be fruitful in that I am able to apply some of my knowledge creation to my professional practice as a classroom teacher. An interesting side effect that I’ve experienced while engaged with the MET program is that I keep coming back to previous assignments/projects from other courses and revisit my work. It almost appears that I am trying to link my previous experiences with the ones that I am presently building. Some days I have more success than others mind you.

Assessment-Centred

I remember an activity in a MET course that I took last year where I was asked to peer evaluate all my group members (4 of them) on their achievement as it related to a specific activity. I have to admit that I felt a little uncomfortable at first glance. It wasn’t until I began to think about my task that I discovered that my reflections on their progress, actually helped me understand more about what I had learned in that activity. In my estimation it is the extensive amount of formative evaluation inherent within MET courses that guide students to optimally develop, and transform their knowledge.

Community-Centred

As Wilson (1997) stated, learners within online communities have a sense of expectation of learning. I have always come to each MET course with an excitement and expectation that my efforts will mutually blend with the input of my colleagues to further illuminate my understanding of each topic at hand. This may sound a little ‘corny’, but my expectation that I will learn from others, propels my own thoughts and actions to contribute to the learning environment in the hope that I will be able to construct new knowledge.

How might you use the learning technologies tools you have at your disposal to help you to create meaningful interactions?

Within my classroom I have always carried out personal online inventories and given students activities that informed me of their prior learning and knowledge. I have utilized web sites that analyzed a student’s response to questions that determined which multiple intelligence(s) they aligned closer to. My students have been engaged with using web-based applications that helped them understand the composition and structure of an electrical circuit. The web afforded students with the opportunity to further develop their understanding by having them use a collaborative draw program asynchronously to share in the sketching of an accurate diagram of a circuit. Students utilized the districts communication tool to collaborate and communicate both synchronously and asynchronously, to further enhance their understanding of electrical circuits. Students also used the communication package to upload their assessment of their performance based on district performance standards. Students receive a more complete educational experience when they have an activity that is Learner-, Knowledge-, Assessment-, and Community-Centred in its composition.

References

Wilson, B. (1997). Thoughts on theory in educational technology. Educational Technology, 37(1), 22-26.

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