Category: Integration

Categories
Integration Resolution Uncategorized

Your current practice

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

My view of effective practice now that I have read through the courses content, can be added too with some pretty simple yet effective tools that ensure student engagement right from the beginning of the course. By focusing on highlighting and showing my history and understanding of the course content and objectives, this can give the students a sense of why they are in the course and help with engagement and curiosity with the course content.

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

While other measures such as a good course outline, teacher presence, appropriate activities, etc,  are important, helping students to see the common cause/objectives that we share can help them relate not only to me but to the course content in a more authentic and engaged way.

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

By continuing to highlight that sense of community within the learning cohort and helping to facilitate the learners who are coming into the course from multiple different perspectives, to unite around a common community goal.

Categories
Exploration Integration Uncategorized

Teaching – Getting Started

This final course of the series will take you through an examination and application of teaching presence in a community of inquiry.

To begin, think about an example of an effective practice you have experienced with regard to online learning, either as a learner or a facilitator.

As a facilitator, one experience that I had with a class was in regards to checking in with them after a midterm exam. I wanted to get a sense to how the class was doing personally, as opposed to making that assessment based off of the midterm results solely. I set up a class Jamboard where students could all go into a shared whiteboard and add in their word or words to describe their current position in the course and how they are feeling at this point in the term. This class collaboration resulted in 26 students sharing with their peers, and then everyone reviewing the completed whiteboard at the end of the activity.

From what I saw, and from the feedback I received from the students, this was a very effective practice not only for myself but also for them. For me, it helped me get a truer measure of where the class was at as a whole, instead of just using the midterm results as a guide. For the students, it helped for them to see that they were not alone in how they were feeling, esp. for the ones that were struggling or continued to struggle.

Some of the key ingredients that underlie this experience in my opinion is having curiosity to ask the question, having a sense of trust to be able to share your experience, and then having some group reflection on the results.

What I would do to improve this experience in the future would be to have all of the students submit their responses privately to me as well, so that I could engage in some more meaningful one on one conversations with any students that identified themselves as needing more support overall in the course, instead of addressing the support more as a global class offering.

Categories
Integration Uncategorized

Integration

Olt201 Post 5 Integration

  • What are the 2-3 most important concepts that have impacted your thoughts on student engagement and retention during this course?

Exploring the different models of learning that have been presented and the differences between them in terms of social presence. Specifically the differences between traditional vs online teaching is concerned. The categories of peer/peer, teacher/self and student/self and the interactions between these 3 groups or ‘objects’ from a teaching point of view and how the instructor can facilitated social interactions to support learning.

  • Discuss your rationale for implementing 1 or 2 course facilitation strategies to increase student retention and engagement.

In the courses that I teach, the students are from all over Canada in different time zones, leading very busy lives where they are balancing work requirements (there are in a practicum setting), home life and school. And strategies that I can implement that help with course content facilitation and student engagement are so very important, as they navigate the balance of all of their responsibilities.

  • Identify 2-3 specific goals that you would like to achieve in light of what you have learned about social presence and creating effective educational media;
    • make sure that your goals areSMART,
    • identify strategies you intend to use in order to meet your goals.

A goal would be to align all of my future correspondence to the SMART principles, as well as focus on highlighting initially the objectives that have brought everyone into the learning group/class to begin with, instead of the solely focusing on building relationships within the cohort.

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Integration Uncategorized

Integration

What are 2-3 of the most important ideas that you have studied during this course?

1) Effective feedback, vs some of the potentially ineffective feedback that I have been providing, really stood out for me. Practicing the use of constructive feedback is the next thing I would like to explore, while modelling that constructive feedback is safe amongst fellow learners, along with providing ways that the student can improve in receiving and providing constructive feedback while reviewing the goals.

2) Teaching presence is also something that had me reflecting on the ideas learned in this course in terms of how to help support the students to transition into subsequent learning phases.

What are 2-3 questions that you have as a result of this course? Identify ways that you can begin to answer those questions.

1) I still have more curiosity of student engagement in a course, and other ways that an instructor can be focusing on this for them in their courses, depend on their level of investment in the course content. The ability to meet them where they are at, and to hopeful spark more engagement esp. if they are just in it for the grades, etc, could be a starting place.

2) The other concept that I would actually like to explore more too are the assessments and how to know specifically which ones might be more compatible with the specific learning objectives. Perhaps some more research on this or reaching out to an advisor might be the next best step here.

Identify 2-3 specific goals that you would like to achieve in light of what you have learned about cognitive presence, approaches to learning, and feedback.

1) more alignment of assessments with specific learning objectives

2) facilitating more student engagement with students and the course content, no matter what their investment in the course content is

3) facilitating more constructive feedback from everyone within the learning cohort

Categories
Integration Uncategorized

Constructive Alignment

What are the intended learning outcomes of the course? Do the learning outcomes reflect high-level cognitive skills or low-level skills (pay attention to the verbs)?

The course I chose in the area of my experience, Veterinary Medicine, offered more low level skills in their learning outcomes. In their outcomes, the use of the following verbs was emphasized, such as: name, state, list, identify – implying to me that lower level skills are being asked of the students here.

How is student learning assessed in the course (essays, quizzes, journals, machine-gradable tests, portfolios)?

Main assessments are made through check sheet assignment submissions, other written assignments, quizzes, exams as well as video demonstrations.

In what ways are the intended learning outcomes and the assessments aligned or not?

The discrepancy I see here is that most of the outcomes as well as assessments involve low level skills, except when it comes to their video demonstrations. Those in my opinion involve more high level cognitive skills (the ability to apply their learned skills into a physical performance of the skills, often times with unpredictable variables involved which requires them to trouble shoot and adapt quite quicky in a real time scenario). Their learning outcomes however do not allow for any higher level thinking in order to properly prepare for these video demonstrations, often times resulting in the the objectives of these submissions not being met.

Identify 2-3 items or assessments that are worded in such a way that they limit students to a unistructural or multistructural response at best and re-write them so that they require a relational response at worst and include the results in your post.

1) List and describe the steps in a complete dental prophylaxis.

-Develop a system that allows for the descriptin of the steps included in a complete dental prophylaxis.

2) State the deciduous and adult dental formulas for the dog and cat.

-Create a handout that shows the deciduous and adult dental formulas for dog and cat