Tag: Post 2

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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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201 course Critical Inquiry Exploration Learning Activities

Social Matters Forum otl201

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.

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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 showcase Triggering Event

On Cognitive Presence, post 2

In the article read for this section of the course, I have been encouraged to consider the notion of critical thinking as a social process, whether synchronous or asynchronous. The article attempted to construct a heuristic to diagnose the presence or absence of processes in a community based upon the use of key terms or phrases that are indicators of ongoing community processes reflected in the text transcripts of interactions. Although I believe the attempt at coding discussions for the processes indicated was misguided and the progress made in assessing and categorizing phases present in the course was too uncertain, I consider the conceptual framework of the learning process to be a useful one. I like both the challenge to imagine critical thinking as less an individual project and more a community one and the handing over of judgement to a collective, rather than a hierarchical and imposed power move. I also enjoyed considering the construction of meaning as a by-product of cognitive presence. While it might be possible to view the construction of meaning as an individual’s response to a situation, it is more subtle to notice how ‘meanings’ are negotiated in a community, with individual reactions being suppressed and again supported by reactions from others in the social context. For example, consider a joke told in a community of speakers. Hypothetically suppose that one person in the audience is offended by the joke, while another is significantly amused. It might be possible to take the joke as having two meanings in that context. However, notice that it is also possible for the ‘meanings’ to be negotiated in further interaction, resulting in the mitigation of both offense and amusement, as the two audience members reflect upon each other’s reaction. Also note that the two reactions may not resolve each other, but may provoke greater offense/amusement on the part of each person. That is, we need not necessarily assume that all social interaction will necessarily resolve into similarity, but make further distance interlocutors. I am not here saying that the individual reactions are irrelevant, but I do claim that the further interactions are relevant to the overall process of the construction of meaning in a social context.