Category: Reflections

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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 Exploration Reflections

Training in the absence of active presence by a teacher

Classroom without instructor
Teaching Presence?

It is ironic that we are reading about how active presence of a teacher is a key element to CoI (community of inquiry), since this otl301 course and its precursors, otl101 and otl201 have notably lacked any real-time presence by monitors. There has been no feedback from instructors or designers of the training and little peer interaction, little in the way of what might be called community, in fact. We have been asked to consider several questions:

How has your view of the effective practice changed now that you have read more about teaching presence?

I think I have become more aware of how students feel when they enroll in a course and then feel left-to-dry by the curriculum and assignments sans human presence in the course. Reading about teaching presence has helped me to identify this lack in the current training agenda for online instructors at TRU-OL.

In what ways did the effective practice that you identified show the characteristics of teaching presence?

In my previous post, I reported a course where students collaborated to cover three times the amount of material on the subject of philosophy of language that they would have been able to cover by individual effort. I reported on the dynamics of class meetings and how students were entrusted with tasks whether others were dependent upon them to understand readings and to negotiate an understanding of various views of language and the basic questions considered by philosophers of language while they were formulating their own views in this regard.

My own knowledge of the field provided a certain amount of guidance and moderation when it was obvious that authors held divergent opinions and views. I could pull out quotes that I had collected, along with commentary I had provided in my own study. I could also guide students toward relevant sections of larger works that an initial reading might not be able to see as directly relevant to philosophy of language.

During the study groups sessions and the authorial review sessions, I floated between groups who were free to call on me to ‘referee’ disputes and provide suggestions for more focused study.

During the presentations, I moderated to make sure ideas were presented and questioned in a respectful manner, even when students of other authors had considered stances that were vastly different from the ones being presented.

How could the idea of teaching presence have made the experience even more effective than it was?

If I were to teach that course now, I would consider meetings with groups between class sessions to monitor individual study more closely, particularly with the more junior scholars. What I was effectively doing was teaching undergraduates (and graduates) in the style more like that of a graduate (or even post-graduate) seminar. Scholars with less experience can do this sort of study in groups, but they need more careful coaching and mentoring, given the distractions of undergraduate life.

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301 course Critical Inquiry Integration Learning Activities post 1 Reflections showcase

Peer Study and Learning

The paradox of education
Adapted from a concept of Paul Feyerabend

Although I currently teach mostly “lower-division” university courses, I have directed programs in university education, advising undergraduates pursuing a major or minor and directing a graduate program. I have also been involved in the design and implementation of multiple graduate programs generally in the humanities and specifically in theoretical linguistics. In this context during the early 2000s, I taught a capstone course that primarily served a linguistics program. In the course, taught every spring, I taught primarily graduating 4th-year linguistics majors with a few philosophy majors. About a third of the class was graduate students in applied linguistics. During the course introduction in the first week’s (three-hour) class, I presented how to quickly discern an author’s main point and key supporting ideas in an academic article. This was a “hands-on” session that gave students practice at key skills in study they would use during the remainder of the course. Selecting and quoting or paraphrasing these key ideas was modelled, along with proper citation expectations.

Also during this introductory class, students would form into study groups of four or five students per group. They would be presented with a list of some 40 authors that would be read during the course. Each student was expected to read work written by an author each week during the course with 1/3 of the authors from the list read by each student during the course. During the first week of the course, students in each study group would pick an author from their choice of three for each week of the course. For example, at the second weekly class, students would have read Frege, Whorf, or Quine concerning their view of what language is. At the third class meeting, students would have read Austin, Searle, or Grice concerning the nature of human communication. By the fourth week, authors were Kuhn, Pepper, and Devlin and the topic was the nature of scientific progress. Obviously, in groups of four or five there would be multiple readers of the same author, but their would also be a significant part of each study group that would not have read the author, so readers of Frege or Grice would have to explain to the others in their study group what key ideas each author had provided to answer the week’s main question.

Course topics were aligned with authors, such that each of four authors had written significant text on the subject matter to be discussed at that week’s class. Groups were told they needed to insure all authors for each week had been studied by at least one member of their group. Each week, I would have students meet initially in their groups to review the work of each of the authors for that week (first hour). Then, I would have the readers of each author meet together in a sort of mega-group to discuss the author they had all read (second hour). Groups during this hour were generally between ten and fifteen students per group. Their task as they met together was to decide key material and create a presentation for the whole class to help us all understand the contribution of that author to our overall considerations of the nature of language and communication. Since we were meeting within the same room, discussions created a happy bedlam during that second hour. The third hour was devoted to presentations from each “team” who had read the same author during the week. Each team had 10 minutes to present to the whole class, so choices had to be made quickly during the second hour of what to include and what to leave alone.

During the course, students would consolidate ideas about the nature of understanding, language, science, meaning, communication, translation, identity, and so on, picking and choosing concepts and principles that would allow them to build a research essay reflecting their own emerging understanding of the nature of these topics and their inter-relationship.

Why was this an effective practice?

One reason this practice was so effective was that each student had their group depending upon them. If work was neglected between class meetings, the group was let down. Also, each student had something to bring that no one else could provide. They were allowed to bring their unique contribution to their study group and see how it aligned (or contrasted) with the work of other authors.

Then, too, the groups where everyone had read the same authors provided a means for each student to check their understanding with peers who had also read the same author. Different understandings could be compared and readings reviewed for accuracy and coverage.

Finally, the group presentation to the whole class increased all our knowledge concerning the authors and the topic for the week. I came away from each class meeting aware of some new perspective on each author that I had not noticed before.

What are some of the key ingredients?

I believe a key element of this approach to learning was the trust placed in students to do the assigned work each week. It was obviously a key component of the class composition that these were more experienced students who were highly motivated and capable of processing difficult readings well.

Without exception, students did not trust themselves (or each other) to do reliable and competent work, but over the weeks they came to respect each other’s capabilities and talents for both study and presentation.

what changes would improve the experience?

I have used this approach in more basic areas of study (for example, in a beginning linguistics course on grammatical analysis), but I would like to extend the method across more academic disciplines. I would also like to apply it in classes where students are less experienced and less motivated to find simpler work for students to collaborate on. If I could find a way to make this approach productive earlier in students’ academic careers, I believe it would lead to much more independent study skills, as well as demonstrating the benefits to be gained by the formation of study groups early on in a student’s program.

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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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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.