Engaging Learners with New Strategies and Tools:
It is a fact that students in
a traditional face to face learning setting have numerous opportunities to
interact with their instructor and classmates. Being able to create similar if
not the same opportunities for collaboration in an online course is one of the
biggest challenges of teaching in a virtual classroom. There are plenty asynchronous
and synchronous learning tools such as threaded discussions boards, web
conferencing and educational blogs that play an important role in humanizing online
courses by simulating the face to face classroom experience where students exchange information and build learning communities
between themselves and instructors. Blogs and discussion boards provide great opportunities
for interaction in online courses. Blog posts are usually longer than
discussion board prompts and can include multimedia. Discussion
boards differ from blog entries because they focus on the feedback to an
initial prompt. Discussion boards have typically short introductions and the
prompts tend to be more specific. In addition, discussion boards can have a
broader range of questions more than just comments. Effective communication
between students and instructors is one of the most successful instructional
strategies in the online learning setting “A strategy that encourages more in
depth participation is to ask students questions directly related to their
postings. Instructors can phrase questions in such a way that all students are
encouraged to respond, not just the student who posted the original comment.
For example, focus on one point that a student makes and build on it, or offer
a contrasting viewpoint. Then challenge students to do further research and
share what they find. When instructors respond to students’ postings in these
ways, it demonstrates that student comments are valued and encourages them to
participate” (Durrington, Berryhill & Swafford, 2006). Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) is
a groupware that supports collaborative activities and their coordination. Software
products such as email, calendaring, text chat, wiki, slide-share and
bookmarking belong to this category. A Wiki standing alone or as Media Wiki
might
include the following groupware: workflow management, blogs, image and file
galleries, chat, calendaring and surveys. Wikis facilitate collaboration among
community members of a learning community who are small groups of students
focused on the educational site content. Visitors are encouraged to edit
content posted by other users' contributions and to create new pages to improve
the educational content of the site. Effective online course design and delivery
of content is extremely necessary to achieve good student learning outcomes and
satisfaction. In an online learning environment different strategies need to be
used while designing content. Students’ motivation, learning styles, structured
instruction, instructional strategies, online lectures and presentations need
to be carefully addressed. The introduction of using discussion as a means of
promoting classroom dialog is an important part of the online course design. In
an online environment, students need plenty of guidance. Explicit instructions
must guide the studying and learning process.
Formative feedback can be used to assess teaching, student learning and course
design. Moodle is a free and very popular course management system that allows
instructors to design a course for thousands or only a few students and gives
access to creating forums, wikis, databases, etc. Blackboard Learn is used by
many institutes of higher learning institutions as a source of online classroom
management. Successful online instruction merely depends on learning
experiences appropriately designed and facilitated by knowledgeable educators.
References:
Anderson, T. (Ed.). (2008). The theory and practice
of online learning. (2nd ed.). Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press.
Durrington, V. A., Berryhill, A., & Swafford, J.
(2006). Strategies for enhancing student interactivity in an online
environment. College Teaching, 54(1), 190−193
Siemens, G. (2008, January). Learning and knowing in
networks: Changing roles for educators and designers. ITForum.
Your post is very detailed. I agree with you that it is important for online learning to be facilitated by knowledgeable educators. I am of the opinion that educators should acquire adequate skills in any technological tool that is required to facilitate online courses. The content management system such as Moodle and Blackboard have various tools for learning experiences, but it is not well managed, learners are bound to find it ineffective during collaboration, communication and access to sufficient content.
ReplyDeleteGreat point! Blackboard has many learning tools , but they could be ineffective during collaboration, communication and access to content.
ReplyDelete