I have a post category of learning activities on this blog. My updated version of the learning activities posts I have made so far can be accessed by following this link. Hopefully, this filtered view of posts on this blog will display the five posts that I have made showing learning activities during this course.
My aim in attending to learning activities has been to choose activities I do not have as much experience with as some others discussed in the readings for otl201, while also focusing upon activities that directly contribute to the learning objectives of a course. In this present case, I am concentrating upon activities that will increase student engagement in online courses, since that is a learning objective of otl201.
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.
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.
While reading an article reporting on different strategies for increasing student engagement in online courses, I had the notion to create a survey of live topics in my critical thinking course. In this activity, students would be presented with an array of topics and issues in the topic area. By their response they would identify:
How settled their own view on the issue is;
How aware they are of other views that could be taken; and
The level of acceptance they have for other views.
Such a survey might then provide a list of suitable issues that could be explored in virtual debates, where students could present reasonable arguments for others to consider and assess for strengths and weaknesses.
I have long encouraged my students to use Moodle as a social engagement area. To that end, I have a social matters forum in each course site. I require students to write a short introduction (2-3 sentences they don’t mind others knowing) and I give a long list of possible topics, so that students need not include information they are uncomfortable sharing.
The section of otl201 devoted to instructor strategies mentioned this as a strategy to increase social presence in the course.
The introduction (and a response to someone else’s intro) are the only posts I require, but I often alert students to social events that are happening on campus and around town, so they can see the forum’s purpose as an outside-class activity. Often students take up the practice of notifying others. However, more often, they choose to use a group created in Facebook for that purpose. This gives them more flexibility of who they choose to include (most often excluding the instructor–ouch!–but also including those within their comfortable social circles. It will be interesting to see how such practices might adapt/evolve in the context of continuous-intake courses where many participants may be the only ones at their particular point in the course being taken.
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.
Okay. So I’m going to introduce myself. My name is Randy Radney –that wasn’t an echo that you heard– Randy was not the name my mother gave me, but it’s the one that people usually call me, except in the British context where people tend to refer to me simply as Radney. I sign my email messages as “radney” So if you want to call me, radney, that’s fine. If I’m a teacher in a class and you’re a student, and you prefer to call me “Coach,” that’s fine as well. My title is officially “Doctor,” as in Dr. Radney, but I don’t really like you to use that. If you’d rather avoid it, that’s fine with me. “Coach” is a fine way of addressing me. There are probably also unprintable ways of addressing me that I’d prefer that you avoided as well. I need to let you know something that’s very important to me. There’s a lot of things that are much more important than this, but this is close-to-hand, so I’m just going to show you on camera this little fellow here is called a Yeti. And I was introduced to a Yeti a number of years ago when I asked somebody what I might be able to do, what I might be able to use in a classroom that would allow sound to be picked up from every direction equivalently, and the helpful person at Staples directed me to look at a Yeti Blue. This is the particular model that I’m looking at, and I have used it for a number of years in class when I have class discussions that need to be recorded so that some people can listen to them later, I like using that. So it’s a bit important to me. It’s been useful to me and I like it. There’s a lot more to get to know about me. And you’ll be able to, probably by reading documents that I write, things that are available, and by participating in a class either with me as a fellow student or with me as an instructor in various courses that I teach here at Thompson Rivers University. Thank you very much. Bye bye for now.
