Online Teaching and Learning

I have not yet “taught” an OL course so I cannot use my own experience and provide examples of activities I use for enhancing social presence. I guess the blog posts in these courses are helping me to start enhancing my social presence!  My  Learning Activities Portfolio can be found at this location….

http://desinclair.trubox.ca/category/learning-activities-portfolio/

My introductory post was taken from my corporate CV I send to clients and is written in the third person, a typical style used for such documents in the consulting world.  For the open learning environment I could enhance my social presence by altering the wording to first person and creating more interpersonal communication.

I often use humour when teaching and did include, what I hoped was a slight humourous touch, with my ending comment “Nothing like fresh powder on a blue sky day!” Although directed as part of the assignment, I did hope it would provide a connection with the people reading the post.

I have actively resisted being an active participant in/on social media particularly in the past few years, and this is my first foray into blogs.   This course is helping me understand that carefully crafted and curated social presence is another tool to be used in effective teaching and communication.

• The post I feel was my best work was Post #3.  To me this one applied directly to work I’ve been doing and allowed me to directly apply the concepts learned in the lesson.

• Two important ideas I studied during the course were:
  • the feedback methods and importance of choosing an appropriate feedback method for different students.
  • I have found the practical inquiry model, that although new to me, is a similar process to what I already  use in my professional career.  I find it particularly interesting as it is something I can work to improve in most facets of my professional career.
• Two questions I have as a result of this course:
  • What does it really look like to proactively manage the feedback processes?
  • How do I implement the concepts I’ve learned while teaching a canned OL course where there is little flexibility to alter the course?

• Two goals:
  • Apply the different feedback skills directly to both the TRU OL course as well as other, non-TRU courses I teach over the next 12 months.
  • Apply the SOLO taxonomy model to the non-TRU courses I teach over the next 12 months and see how I can improve the course delivery.

1. The article has illuminated that I do indeed have gaps in providing effective feedback consistently.  To date I’ve probably focused more on the fourth level of feedback, but with moments of using the other 3 levels.
2. I’ve learned from experience that feedback is most effective when I’ve been able to help answer the 3 feedback questions: Where am I going? How am I going? and Where to next?  I will be paying much more attention to these 3 questions when I provide feedback as well as the 4 feedback levels.  The nature of the course I’m teaching requires student use critical thinking skills and higher levels of understanding to be successful in the assessments and I believe the “processes” level of feedback may be most effective no will focus on that to start.

1. The course has identified 3 main learning outcomes, all 3 require a combination of low and high level cognitive skills,   The outcomes require students to use higher level skills to “apply basic facts”, synthesize information to “demonstrate an understanding” and “determine the type of culture/ desired” as well as “critically evaluate practices”.  Low level skills are required to identify applicable safety legislation as well as “apply basic facts.”
2. In this course student learning is assessed using a combination of assignments (5), unit quizzes (6) and a final exam.
3. The assessments are well aligned and include case studies, application of the topics and material to a student’s choice of a real-world situation and how it applies to them directly.  Each assessment is aligned to one or more of the 3 course learning outcomes.
4. The first assignment was reviewed and it is structured in a progression of the SOLO taxonomy.  The first instruction in the first assignment is to list 10 weaknesses described in the case study (unistructural).  The second instruction requires the student to describe the findings (multistructural) and then compare them to learnings from the module (relational).  The last step in the assignment requires the student to create (extended abstract) recommendations to improve the findings in the case study based on their learnings.

The 4 phase practical inquiry model is new to me, but interestingly, as a safety professional, I see and use phases similar to those identified in the model to resolve safety issues and improve  workplace safety through the incident investigation process. In the safety world, the triggering event (phase 1) is an incident or identification of a hazard. Phase 2 is an analysis of the event(s) and causes leading up to the incident and involves determination of the contributing factors and root causes.  Once root causes are determined, the third phase is determination of recommendations suitable to prevent recurrence, which, like the model presented,  is often a difficult process to be meaningful.  The final phase in the model is resolution of the dilemma, which in the incident investigation process is resolution of the issue by implementing the recommendations from phase 3.

Future exploration topics include working through the online course and learning more about the different phases in the model and seeing how they transfer to the discipline I’m already familiar with.