Category: Resolution

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301 course Critical Inquiry Learning Activities Reflections Resolution showcase

Building on OTL courses

As I complete my initial pass through the OTL 101, 201, and 301 courses, I record the following summary observations and plans. These represent only a first pass through the material and closely correspond to specific questions posed at the end of the last course.

most important lessons from the course

The concentration of the curriculum upon design in course delivery demonstrates for me that there is a crucial connection between the design and my role as a course facilitator. Commitments in the course readings toward blended delivery were obvious–and serve as a reminder that continuous-intake delivery of courses is not an optimal learning environment for most subject areas–but the lessons learned have applicability across a wide range of delivery modes.

Another principle learned in the course set is that my role is chiefly to encourage concentration on the work and understanding of the curriculum, but within a context of safe and frequent communication. There is no substitute for the presence of a facilitator when students are working towards completion of their course as individuals. Of course, this principle has been more poignantly demonstrated in its lack herein–OTL 101, 201, and 301 completely lack a facilitator presence at a time when faculty being trained could use it.

Change of thinking from completing the course

In the past, I have had a practice of staying out of students’ way when teaching in a course. Some students seem to resent too much “hovering” on the part of instructors (perhaps in the same way that service personnel can be intrusive when interrupting meals in restaurants to ask if clientele are finding “Everything okay?”).

One thing I will try to make more obvious in future is my own presence in the course, but not in a way that is obtrusive to students who are taking online courses because they are “good independent learners” and who want to demonstrate that they do not need “help to get through the course.” In short, I want to be there for those who need me without being in the way for those who don’t.

In the LMS I am most familiar with, it would be nice if forum discussions could show post authors how many times their posts had been viewed by others. At present, the only way to show authors their post has been read is by replying, but it is sometimes too intrusive for instructors to reply to every post: It would be good for me to be able to see that others have read my messages without necessarily having to have them reply. Visibility of post-views, of tacit response to messages, would be a helpful way to show presence without intruding into (mostly peer) discussions.

platform (WordPress) influence on interaction with the content, other people, and learning

I like the WordPress environment, given its openness and (relative) simplicity. I think it would be a very good option for synchronous course support (and it is not deficient at all for asynchronous support–although tracking when blog posts have been viewed by others would probably be a good enhancement). However, I think it would be very good for WordPress to have some tools for social markup of readings by users such that others could choose to see or ignore such commenting (sort of a mashup of WordPress and Diigo, if that were possible).

However, it would be a mistake to believe that WordPress can deliver personal presence into asynchronous courses where facilitators are absent. The platform is fine for its intended purpose, but it doesn’t provide a sufficient guarantee of success in and of itself.

most effective learning strategies

I think that the most profitable aspect of this course was encouraging me to write (blog) regularly and often. I have long felt as though more writing in university contexts would be better evidence of learning and exploration, but this series of courses has nurtured my own desire to write. Since I teach primarily in humanities, I cannot speak for the benefits of writing in STEM disciplines directly, but I have come to believe quite strongly in the value of writing across the humanities.

This video is the first of a four-part discussion of how writing takes centre-stage in the development of journalism skills that go far beyond writing itself.

two or three ideas to implement

Although I am completing the three courses in this training program as a requisite to continued work with TRU-OL, I believe the value of skills learned will lead to changed practice across all my teaching. Since our default delivery of university education is planned to be remote for the current (fall 2020) semester as a response to the Covid-19 crisis, thinking of  learning as a remote process with asynchronicity as a default feature, my role in courses throughout all my teaching will have elements that are central when teaching an online course for TRU-OL. With this in mind, the courses have helped me to think of the current year’s instruction in the following (very different) ways.

  1. First of all, I need to revisit the syllabi/outlines for all my courses to make sure that course objectives align with assignments and assessments completely.
  2. In addition, I need to “pare down” assignments that needlessly overlap or provide redundant evidence of competency–leading to potential for overwork in students.
  3. Finally, I need to provide more formative work to help student gain skills and confidence in their abilities and understanding of the more complex summative assignments.
Plans for future learning

I would like to review Teaching In Blended Learning Environments and E-Learning in the 21st Century as stand-alone sources to reflect upon their place and value outside the OTL courses. The use and value of a source is different when it is being studied in the context of a course that needs to be completed versus a reading that needs to be applied to practice in the days ahead. I hope to blog more about these sources in the coming days and particularly with a view to the valuable ideas marginalized or hidden by the current course curriculum. (This does not mean that I disparage OTL courses in any way, it is only that McLuhan’s observation (medium = message) is endlessly productive for modifying our thinking and views of our reading and reflection. Learning is a never-ending process. We need to be both careful and humble in using the expression “I have learned . . .” and “I know . . .”

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301 course Critical Inquiry Resolution

Self-coding Exercise

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!

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201 course Critical Inquiry Learning Activities Reflections Resolution

OTL201 Encouraging Student Engagement, post 5

This course has provided the stimulus to think through how my own behaviour can help students engage the course material better. In the past, I have thought of such things as media as helps for students unable (or unwilling) to take the time to read the textbook carefully, but I am now closer to an understanding of the inclusion of media as a way to personalize the course curriculum and to model approach-ability and engagement myself.

Along with this new understanding, I have come to see the production of media as less formal (as well as less lengthy!) contact with students. In the coming year, I hope to produce a short video each week of my regular semester courses. I will aim to connect the video content to curriculum content, along the lines of reinforcing how the week’s material pursues one or more of the learning objectives of the course. My goal will be to help students see these connections more clearly, as well as to present my own engagement and interest in the lessons.

In addition to the strategy above, I also want to learn how to ask forum questions in Moodle that promote greater interaction among students. As I teach critical thinking, I often find students very willing to complete the book exercises, but without true engagement with issues and controversies that they are involved with and presented in everyday life and social contexts. Since a critical component of my critical thinking course is the application of careful thinking skills to everyday situations, I want to post forum items that students find easy to respond to and easy to engage others with.

For the past two decades, I have found forum discussions in philosophy courses superior to in-class discussions, since the forum mode allows students time to think carefully while in-class discussions encourage students to think more quickly than carefully. I have abundant evidence that the quality of online asynchronous discussion is much deeper and more detailed than similar synchronous discussions in face-to-face situations. My goal in this regard will be to achieve a situation at least six times during a semester when forum discussions stimulate some measure of interest on the part of students. This would be roughly one such discussion for every two weeks of the course.

I hope to revisit these two goals for my own engagement in the critical thinking course (as well as analogues for any other courses I am contracted to teach in) at the end of the 2020-2021 academic year to reflect on and revise, as well as to extend further.

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201 course Critical Inquiry Learning Activities post 4 Resolution Triggering Event

Critical Thinking Introduction, post 4

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201 course Critical Inquiry Exploration Learning Activities post 3 Resolution

The Aim of Student Interaction

Reading further in the same resource referenced in another post, I noticed the report that the actual nature of the activity seems to be less important than the “meaningful communication” between learners and instructors (M. Dixson, p. 8). Combining this insight with earlier discussions about empowering students to have input into the methods and standards by which they are assessed in the course, I would like to consider an activity early in an online course where students select learning objectives and consider activities, reporting on their understanding of how the activities will accomplish the objectives, as well as how they see themselves being able to provide evidence of minimal, adequate, superior, and excellent achievement in any assignment that will be assessed. The work of earlier students will remain on record for later students to build upon (and earlier students will also be able to review the work of later students, if they are still engaged in the course).

This should also provide a certain amount of self-assessment and reflection upon the work done in the course, rather than a dynamic where the student does the work and the teacher is the sole judge. There may even be the opportunity for group reflection upon individual work done over time.

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201 course Critical Inquiry post 2 Resolution

Remodeling effective CoI interaction

the talking heads model of communication transfer
Popular conception of communication

According to a popular model of communication, information transfer is accomplished by means of a message that reflects ideation on the part of a speaker/writer and interpretation on the part of at least one hearer/reader.

I reject the common model of communication and instead conceive human behaviour more in the way understood by the linguists Kenneth and Evelyn Pike. In interaction with phenomenological ideas articulated by Edmund Husserl and developed by Paul Ricoeur, I understand fundamental entities in human groups to be about community (the people and relevant objects perceived to be included), communication (any behaviour that is socially relevant, including talking and writing), and communion (aka belonging, or us, the experience of members of the community as they are together). These relevant aspects of any group emerge from key processes: hospitality (where the community provides a place and support for newcomers and members), charity (where the actions of all participants are taken in the best possible communicative light), and compassion (where the experience of an “other” is taken to be one’s own).

The model that results from these basic events and participants is quite messy and better explains the frequency of miscommunication and negotiation of understanding that are common in everyday social life.

Now, as I reflect upon the video I included in the first post for this course and upon the readings for this lesson (otl201, lesson 1), I am encouraged that I achieved a balance of professional informality that I believe students would find helpful. In order to increase my social presence in this video, I would aim for similar informality, but I would include overt references to the course being taught (in this case, I am preparing to help students in CMNS 3211, so I would overtly refer to the course in the video). I would also select an object that is directly relevant to the course. Finally, my closing would directly invite students to respond and create a video discussion around an item of interest in the course. In CMNS 3211, the central item being considered is social media and the formation of digital communities, so the consideration of how we create community together in the online course is both practically and theoretically relevant. Our interactions have relevance as we develop community, but also as practical demonstrations of the success of our efforts and their measurability.

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101 course Critical Inquiry Reflections Resolution Triggering Event

Reflecting on the 101 course for instructors

self-isolation
Collaborative Reflection

As a course designer who is training to be a course facilitator for TRU-OL, this first course, concerned as it has been with design elements has been stimulating and frustrating.

I find it exciting to consider how courses can be designed to focus on the needs of learners, so that students don’t waste time in activities that are unproductive in terms of the goals and assessments that pertain to the course at hand.

However, the course I am about to teach for TRUOL has already been designed. Learning objectives may or may not be aligned with the activities and assessments that I will need to encourage students to complete. And I have no control over this. The optimist in me believes that the course that has been designed has attended to this value, but the realist in me knows that some designers have constructed courses along very different lines from the constructivist-collectivist model of learning. To anticipate establishing a community of inquiry (COI) in a course and to find that students are expected to complete the course individually and with little interaction and/or collaboration would be disappointing at the least.

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101 course Critical Inquiry post 3 Resolution showcase

otl101, post 3

In today’s post, I wish to explore the alignment of course objectives with course activities and assessments, so as to promote more thorough skill development in the critical thinking introduction that I teach each year. The course objectives are stated as follows in the course outline:

More specifically, by the end of the course, students will:

  • come to understand the structures of clear thought and argument;
  • increase their discernment of reasonable argumentation;
  • be able to identify several common errors in reasoning;
  • acquire tools to clarify their own thought and communication, including, but not limited to, the use of basic deductive reasoning; and
  • appreciate the relevance of careful thinking and expression for leaders in society.

At the beginning of the course, students need to build skills at identifying patterns of sound and unsound reasoning. Characteristically, they begin with simple situations and progress through the course into increasing complexity and sophistication. The textbook used in the course,

David R. Morrow & Anthony Weston. 2015. A Workbook for Arguments: A Complete Course in Critical Thinking (Second Edition),

provides careful consideration of first, simpler, and then more complex arguments as students gain expertise and confidence. The book is structured upon consideration of 45 rules that can be applied when people assess the relative strength and clarity of argumentation.

The first of these rules invites students to identify premises and conclusions of arguments. At the very beginning of the course, students search for overt words such as “therefore” or “so” to signal a conclusion, or “if,” “since,” or “because” to mark a premise. They also may be tempted to believe that premises must precede conclusions. As a result, they apply lower-level cognitive skills that sometimes work and sometimes don’t. Gradually, they are presented with arguments that use no signal words or order conclusions and premises in surprising ways to increase their ability to see relations between unmarked and disordered statements and correctly identify premises and conclusions, as well as statements that provide (relevant and irrelevant) background information concerning the situation.

Since the exercises in the book are presented as a set of puzzles, students are generally engaged and motivated to use more than lower-level reasoning skills even in the early days.

Additionally, students are challenged to compare arguments that are neither universally strong/good or completely weak/bad, but scalar, having relative strength or weakness and being quite or only somewhat persuasive of their conclusions. Not only are the standards scalar (as opposed to polar), but each rule application tends to provide a new dimension of evaluation, such that the consideration of an argument’s value or strength is a multi-dimensional field, rather than a simple line connecting strong at one end and weak at the other.

Class activities consider a range of exercises from the book (which provides solutions for about half of the items, and course evaluations are largely done on students’ work on exercises in the book for which solutions are not provided. As the course proceeds, various exercises that have been evaluated for credit in the course are also critiqued in group sessions, to give students further practice at improving their skills.

Extended arguments from current events and opinions expressed concerning the events are also included in the course to give students practice in subject areas they are interested in.

In all these ways, there is an application of the course learning objectives to both the class activities and assessments to bring the course into alignment. One key way I believe this can be further reinforced during the course would be periodic review of the course outline’s learning objectives, so that students are reminded how and why they are gaining skills in the areas they are.

 

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101 course Critical Inquiry Resolution showcase

Hello, otl101 post 1

This is Day One of online training to facilitate in the TRU Open Learning world. This is a good chance for me to see how the online environment intimidates those whose roles are less empowered among the learning community. For example, learners who must excel to succeed at whatever project they hope to complete may face uncertainty both as to whether we are doing the process correctly and what cost will attend if we fail. Also, learners who are less familiar with expectations of learning in the 21st century, the bulk of whose training has been face-to-face and has used older technology, may face lack of clarity and a fog of possibilities without any clear direction or a map to guide us. Finally, those of us used to being in “the driver’s seat” regarding course operation may be be unable to relinquish control over our learning, particularly when we cannot see those who are “actually” driving. All in all, the feelings are puzzling, unfamiliar, and uncomfortable. We forge ahead . . . ?