OLTD 503- Online Communication
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Jan/Feb 2017
Evidence of Learning: Building Community Blog Post
Learning Outcomes Demonstrated:
- Engage in building learning communities and communities of practice
- Share engagement strategies and tips
- Understand how to build rapport and manage groups
- Critically assess and evaluate resources for best practice in online learning
- Engage in building learning communities and communities of practice
- Share engagement strategies and tips
- Understand how to build rapport and manage groups
- Critically assess and evaluate resources for best practice in online learning
Reflection to Support Evidence:
Authenticity is huge for me. I am not particularly motivated by “points” (though I did feel a change in myself when I first learned that my work for OLTD would be graded). For myself, I want learning to connect, to reach deep, and to challenge me in ways that are practical and relate to my practice. So far in OLTD this has been true of almost all learning activities, though in the thick of things I might be frustrated and not make the connections until reflecting upon my learning later.
As a result of this personal preference, I have sculpted my courses to allow lots of individual freedom in how learning is presented and what topics students explore. I am motivated and intrigued by the possibilities of using the Community of Inquiry model in my asynchronous courses as I feel it can be a
very authentic way to engage learners and create valuable learning experiences. It can be difficult to create the social presence necessary to engage learners, and this post represents and explores some of the ways I have done it so far. Obviously, I need to continue working on proper online ways to do
this, as my attempts chronicled here are face-to-face. However, I still feel strongly that building and creating classroom culture is a valuable use of my time, even when the classroom is largely digital. The beauty of OLTD 503 was that it helped me to realize all the great things I’m already putting into place in my classroom, while exposing me to a number of other applications and techniques that I can immediately put into use in my class. This “immediacy” is something to COI theorists note is very important for meaningful construction of knowledge, and I’m certainly noticing it in my own experience here.
One final connection I made is between what this blog post represents regarding my participation in the online community of 503. Once you build trust in the social interactions, a learner may start to participate without being prompted. Many of us rely on external motivators to engage our students (points), but here, I was internally motivated to share my successes with others, and to receive feedback. It goes against my somewhat introverted nature, but I felt totally comfortable in posting and sharing. This is the kind of participation and interaction that I also started to see in my classroom after we started putting lots of effort into building community. The “learning” that students share doesn’t always fit with the prescribed outcomes for a particular course, but I think that one of the most valuable things we can do as teachers is to build relationships, so I always value these types of contributions
As a result of this personal preference, I have sculpted my courses to allow lots of individual freedom in how learning is presented and what topics students explore. I am motivated and intrigued by the possibilities of using the Community of Inquiry model in my asynchronous courses as I feel it can be a
very authentic way to engage learners and create valuable learning experiences. It can be difficult to create the social presence necessary to engage learners, and this post represents and explores some of the ways I have done it so far. Obviously, I need to continue working on proper online ways to do
this, as my attempts chronicled here are face-to-face. However, I still feel strongly that building and creating classroom culture is a valuable use of my time, even when the classroom is largely digital. The beauty of OLTD 503 was that it helped me to realize all the great things I’m already putting into place in my classroom, while exposing me to a number of other applications and techniques that I can immediately put into use in my class. This “immediacy” is something to COI theorists note is very important for meaningful construction of knowledge, and I’m certainly noticing it in my own experience here.
One final connection I made is between what this blog post represents regarding my participation in the online community of 503. Once you build trust in the social interactions, a learner may start to participate without being prompted. Many of us rely on external motivators to engage our students (points), but here, I was internally motivated to share my successes with others, and to receive feedback. It goes against my somewhat introverted nature, but I felt totally comfortable in posting and sharing. This is the kind of participation and interaction that I also started to see in my classroom after we started putting lots of effort into building community. The “learning” that students share doesn’t always fit with the prescribed outcomes for a particular course, but I think that one of the most valuable things we can do as teachers is to build relationships, so I always value these types of contributions
Evidence of Learning: Final Assignment (Haiku Deck Course Reflection)
Learning Outcomes Demonstrated:
- Become familiar with common terms, definitions and elements related to online environments
- Demonstrate basic competency with design and implementation within a variety of online learning environments and tools
- Undertake engagement with environments through online facilitation for effective learning
- Engage in building learning communities and communities of practice
- Consider responsibility, accountability and civility in online environments
- Understand how to build rapport and manage groups
- Critically assess and evaluate resources for best practice in online learning
- Examine current research around best practices and emerging practices
- Become familiar with common terms, definitions and elements related to online environments
- Demonstrate basic competency with design and implementation within a variety of online learning environments and tools
- Undertake engagement with environments through online facilitation for effective learning
- Engage in building learning communities and communities of practice
- Consider responsibility, accountability and civility in online environments
- Understand how to build rapport and manage groups
- Critically assess and evaluate resources for best practice in online learning
- Examine current research around best practices and emerging practices
OLTD 503 - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires
Reflection to Support Learning:
The text of my evidence is a reflection that demonstrates my engagement in the course, my connections to and critical understanding of current research and readings, and an explanation of my philosophy of education and how it has been expanded and will transform my teaching practice to make it better and more enriching for both my students and myself.
I have long been a Social Constructivist, and building strong relationships in the classroom was a huge motivator for why I chose to become a teacher. When I started university, I was a Pre-Med student, and though I was successful in my courses, I started to notice something that made me unhappy. The
goal of the teaching style in many of the Pre-Med requirements seemed to be to “weed” out unsuitable candidates, rather than to engage learners and create successful experiences. The learning community was toxic to me, and caused me to have an epiphany about the meaning of education, and what I could do to change problems that I felt were holding students back.
Fast forward fifteen years, and I’m no longer teaching in a traditional classroom, but in a virtual online class. After a decade of classroom teaching, I was a little unsatisfied with my limited ability to create social presence and build community, though I didn’t know the names for these problems until I started learning in 503. I had worked at building face to face community in my virtual classroom through different means (see Reflection #1), but it wasn’t until this course that I started to have some solid ideas of how to begin increasing immediacy and social presence in my course design.
Another major transformation for me has been through continued study of the Community of Inquiry framework, which appears central to me in the development of rich online learning experiences. I have been struggling with the idea of how to increase collaborative learning in an asynchronous
classroom, but now I have seen examples of different programs and products (explained in my project) that can start to make a change in how my students are learning. I want to move away from purely text, and work towards more engagement using products such as Google Apps, which allow asynchronous but still collaborative learning. I also want to use wikis in my courses, especially for curating a class collection of resources.
I also really appreciate having observed the successful community building that occurred in 503, both from different methods of interaction that increased “presence”, such as flip-grid, Zoom synchronous sessions, virtual resumes, etc, but also from watching a cohort work towards a group goal each week.
We had the chance to observe so many different teaching and learning styles that at times it felt a little disjointed and overwhelming, but in retrospect, it was a rich and varied learning environment. Furthermore, we started to finally overcome what Garrison and Anderson (2003) call a “pathological politeness” and start engaging in more critical thinking without worrying about potential hurt feelings. This is not to say that we started being uncivil, but it did represent a change in the comfort level and type of engagement we demonstrated. All in all, this reflective assignment really cemented the learning that occurred for me in 503, and brought the “circle to a close.” Without this reflective exercise, I doubt that my understandings would be as clear, or that my ideas for how to take them forward into my practice would be as obvious.
I have long been a Social Constructivist, and building strong relationships in the classroom was a huge motivator for why I chose to become a teacher. When I started university, I was a Pre-Med student, and though I was successful in my courses, I started to notice something that made me unhappy. The
goal of the teaching style in many of the Pre-Med requirements seemed to be to “weed” out unsuitable candidates, rather than to engage learners and create successful experiences. The learning community was toxic to me, and caused me to have an epiphany about the meaning of education, and what I could do to change problems that I felt were holding students back.
Fast forward fifteen years, and I’m no longer teaching in a traditional classroom, but in a virtual online class. After a decade of classroom teaching, I was a little unsatisfied with my limited ability to create social presence and build community, though I didn’t know the names for these problems until I started learning in 503. I had worked at building face to face community in my virtual classroom through different means (see Reflection #1), but it wasn’t until this course that I started to have some solid ideas of how to begin increasing immediacy and social presence in my course design.
Another major transformation for me has been through continued study of the Community of Inquiry framework, which appears central to me in the development of rich online learning experiences. I have been struggling with the idea of how to increase collaborative learning in an asynchronous
classroom, but now I have seen examples of different programs and products (explained in my project) that can start to make a change in how my students are learning. I want to move away from purely text, and work towards more engagement using products such as Google Apps, which allow asynchronous but still collaborative learning. I also want to use wikis in my courses, especially for curating a class collection of resources.
I also really appreciate having observed the successful community building that occurred in 503, both from different methods of interaction that increased “presence”, such as flip-grid, Zoom synchronous sessions, virtual resumes, etc, but also from watching a cohort work towards a group goal each week.
We had the chance to observe so many different teaching and learning styles that at times it felt a little disjointed and overwhelming, but in retrospect, it was a rich and varied learning environment. Furthermore, we started to finally overcome what Garrison and Anderson (2003) call a “pathological politeness” and start engaging in more critical thinking without worrying about potential hurt feelings. This is not to say that we started being uncivil, but it did represent a change in the comfort level and type of engagement we demonstrated. All in all, this reflective assignment really cemented the learning that occurred for me in 503, and brought the “circle to a close.” Without this reflective exercise, I doubt that my understandings would be as clear, or that my ideas for how to take them forward into my practice would be as obvious.
Photo Credit: David Flam tinyurl.com/jujklsz