In this course, I have been reading articles and books presenting best practices used in online teaching. While the materials have been primarily focused upon online or blended synchronous teaching, I am preparing to teach a continuous-intake course that will minimize possibilities for a real-time, community of inquiry (CoI). This is ironic, given the overt CoI biases of the authors of both the texts and the courses (OTL 1o1, 201, and 301). Now that I have a considerable body of reflective writing done on this blog, I have undertaken to code posts according to four processes of inquiry: triggering event, exploration, integration, and resolution. After coding the blog posts, I have some observations to make concerning my learning process.
Did you engage in each of the phases of the critical inquiry process?
Yes, I did engage in each of the learning phases in the three courses. However, the integration phase was missing from OTL 201. As I reflect upon this fact, I recall that it was about that time I began to miss interaction with an instructor in the course. I believe that a responsible person monitoring my progress in the course would have intervened, not to “rescue” me, but to stimulate my inquiry in the direction of integration. The course materials were about student engagement, and I was needing some interaction in order to provide a stimulus for integration of the information with my current practice in the course. Now that I think about it, I believe I should have engaged my PLN (personal learning network), colleagues who know and have worked with me in online and blended education and who have a great deal to say about student engagement.
Were you able to resolve any problems or dilemmas?
I think that my insights written above will help me to turn to my PLN more quickly in future, so that I can establish a social presence for what otherwise would be a dry and individual desert of learning.
What might you do differently in a future course?
In consideration that students in an online course–whether synchronous and face-to-face (blended, for example), synchronous online, or remote and asynchronous–are going to lose contact with others and have a tendency to “drop out.” I would like to plan for more proactive stimulation to engage students more positively at the outset and during the course, rather than as a corrective or remedial process.
How might you engage with your students to ensure that they are working through the entire inquiry process?
I believe that students need to understand a great deal more about the learning process. At present, it is mysterious and intimidating, it doesn’t feel natural, particularly for students who already feel marginalized by aspects of higher education. Although a major part of this discussion might be categorized as “decolonization” of learning, I believe it goes far beyond the divide between settler and indigenous ways of thinking; it is connected to the very privileged view of learning held by many entitled people in higher-learning institutions.
Do you think that working through this course in an open platform like WordPress helps to encourage reflective learning?
I think that learning in the open could, in fact, shut reflective learning down. It is hard to write in the open and be vulnerable to the sorts of notions and plans that might allow colleagues and students to review what I have written and to hold me accountable for views expressed here that they might not see manifest in my classes or online teaching. To have opinions is one thing, but to hold oneself accountable to those expressed opinions is rather like sticking to a diet: easy to think, hard to live.
I recently was able to make some progress in the matter of my diet by realising that I had to redefine my relationship to food radically. I think perhaps that a similar redefinition needs to take place regarding my relationship to learning. My own experience redefining my relationship to food has been incredibly painful (I have a great debt to the Muslim concept of Ramadan just past in this regard), and I suspect that any real progress in making me a better facilitator of learning will be even more painful. I can’t say I look forward to it–yet another occasion for humility!