The Teaching Students Online course was eye opening, fun, and challenging for me. Throughout the semester, we worked on designing an online class that we could use professionally. I chose to turn one of Michigan State University’s Train the Trainer sessions into a course that is offered fully online. Throughout the design process, I used California State University’s Rubric for Online Instruction. This rubric offers a framework for addressing what a quality online course looks like and was a very effective reference as I designed and created my online course, Creating a Training Video for Professional Development. The “community of inquiry” model for online learning environments developed by Garrison, Anderson & Archer (2000) is based on the concept of three distinct “presences”: cognitive, social, and teaching. This model supports the design of highly active learning environments in the online setting which is dependent on educators and students sharing ideas, information, and opinions. Through trial and error, I learned that it is important that students understand, and are provided with, experiences in navigating and recognizing constantly shifting and evolving information.
Online collaborative learning (OCL), a theory proposed by Linda Harasim focuses on providing a learning environment that fosters collaboration and knowledge building, and is a new theory of learning that focuses on collaborative learning, knowledge building, and Internet use as a means to reshape formal, non-formal, and informal education for the Knowledge Age” (Harasim, 2012, p. 81). In OCL, there exist three phases of knowledge construction through discourse in a group:
Idea generating: the brainstorming phase, where divergent thoughts are gathered
Idea organizing: the phase where ideas are compared, analyzed, and categorized through discussion and argument
Intellectual convergence: the phase where intellectual synthesis and consensus occurs, including agreeing to disagree, usually through an assignment, essay, or other joint piece of work
I referenced this theory to encourage collaborative problem solving where I play the role as the facilitator, as well as learning community member.
Throughout the design of my online course, I made sure that I incorporated several different technologies into the environment as major resources for teaching and learning. As a reference, Chickering’s seven principles for good practice helped me encourage communication between students, their peers, and myself (1996) . Some of the tools that I used were Zoom teleconferencing, discussion boards, and Google Docs to help develop a collaborative and social environment that is not competitive or isolated. These tools were used to encourage students to share their own ideas and respond to peer’s ideas to increase involvement in learning, improve thinking and deepen understanding.
Creating this course did not come without pitfalls, though. After reviewing my course, the instructor informed me that I may have incorporated a team project that was not necessary. After going back to the course and looking at it from a student’s perspective, I agree with her feedback, and going forward, I plan to revise this and try to design another activity that doesn’t double up on unnecessary work. I may still incorporate a group project to help foster the collaborative learning environment that I envision and merge it with the final class project. It’s going to require going back to the drawing board, but if there is one thing I have learned throughout my master’s program, is that failure fosters learning and will only help me grow as an educator. As I stated, the Teaching Online Students course has been fun and challenging, and has helped me grow even more as an educator/training professional. I would definitely recommend it to other training professionals.
References:
Anderson, T., Rourke, L., Garrison, D.R, and Archer, W. (2001). Assessing social presence in
asynchronous text-based computer conferencing. Journal of Asynchronous Learning
Networks, 5(2) Retrieved from:
Chickering, A.W. & Ehrmann, S.C. (1996). Implementing the seven principles: Technology as lever. AAHE Bulletin, (October), 3-6. [PDF].
Harasim, L. (2012). Learning theory and online technologies. New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis
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