Reflection #3

There are several ways in which this course impacted my conceptions of the role of a facilitator of online learning. Looking back, I think my preconceptions framed the role of the facilitators as those who works by themselves, in relative isolation. I think this preconception comes from my experience as a teacher in high school and college settings where much of the planning is done individually. But it is clear to me that given the technical and managerial complexity of facilitating online learning instructors need to work collaboratively with other. Online instructors need to work within their organization/institution to gain to the resources and support that they need. Given the nature of online learning the technical requirements of facilitating an online experience often require a fairly high level of support. For example, at my own institution we recently transitioned from Blackboard to Moodle as the primary course management system. For all instructors this required close consultation with personnel from the technology services department. New training modules needed to be developed and many instructors needed to have access to individual consultations and debugging/ problem solving as they developed competence in the new course management system. Online instructors required even more support from technology services since their courses rely so heavily on technological components. In general it seems that online instructors need to work closely with support personnel in their organization to have necessary support and resources in technical areas that might be outside of their area of expertise.

Another preconception that was altered in this course has to do with the significance of developing community and teaming strategies. I had envisioned online learning has taken place primarily in individual interactions between students and the instructor. That is, most of the learning experiences in online environments that I had envisioned involved students completing work as a "independent study" and receiving feedback from the instructor but not necessarily engaging in much interaction with other students in the course. Several readings and class discussions have made me more aware of the significant role that the instructor has in building community and ways of developing ongoing and meaningful interaction among the students. In fact, the conduct of this course that relied heavily on student exchanges in the discussion board demonstrated how community can be built around student exchanges with each other. That can be important as students build knowledge and learn to become more attuned to each other's contributions. I think that as students become more familiar with each other and trust develops they become better able to challenge each other's ideas and help each other think in analytically deeper ways. I have also noticed that dynamic happening more and more in this course and expect that it will continue in future courses. In general, it seems to me a significant aspect of online learning involves the collaborative generation of knowledge that occurs when the facilitator designs many opportunities for students to collaborate and develop a healthy learning community.

Reflection #2 Facilitating E-Learning

In preparing my colleagues to teach an online professional development course I would be sure to focus on the various teacher roles in a virtual environment that can include four categories: pedagogical, social, managerial, and technical (Berge, 1995). I think these four roles are critical for instructors to be able to grasp the variety of functions that they will need to perform. These roles include effectively facilitating discussions, promoting social interaction and effective collaboration among participants, organizing and managing the logistics of discussions, and technically managing tools and the environment so that learning occurs in an efficient way. By focusing on these roles it will help instructors adopt a framework that will enable them to be flexible in their teaching and embody effective teaching practices. These practices involve setting clear expectations for learners, being able to facilitate high levels of critical discussion, and effectively diagnosing student understandings.

Another topic that I would emphasize include strategies for enhancing the instructor’s social presence. I would want to convey the abundant research that indicates that teaching presence is a significant predictor of students’ perceived learning, satisfaction, and sense of community. Social presence is essential to creating effective online environments and encompasses many strategies that the teacher does to create a community of inquiry. By teaching the rational for and strategies to enhance social presence, all participants within the online learning environment stand to benefit and their engagement and depth of learning will likely be enhanced.

Finally I would want to address various tools that can be used to promote synchronous and asynchronous forms of communication. Most successful online learning experiences incorporate a variety of learning strategies that enable learners to connect in live time through synchronous interactions and connect asynchronously through tools such as blogs and discussion boards. I would emphasize e various tools that can be easily learned and implemented that would help instructors use effectively both synchronous and asynchronous strategies. For example, many web 2.0 tools such as Voicethread enable multimedia forms of interaction but are not overly complex for instructors or students to learn. By incorporating a variety of asynchronous and synchronous tools instructors would have a larger repertoire of strategies they could employ depending on their particular learning goals and the needs of their students. Attending to this variety of tools would help prevent instructors from over-reliance on a limited number of their favorite strategies. While it would be impossible to cover every available instructional tool, focusing on some of the best current asynchronous and synchronous technologies will help provide instructors a framework to be able to make the best choices given their particular instructional contexts.

Reflection #1- Facilitating E-Learning

One aspect that I have been surprised by so far in this course is the extent and depth of planning that is needed to facilitate effective online learning experiences. I think the instructor notes assignments in particular has made me more aware of the detailed step-by-step instructions that are frequently needed for instructors who are new to online teaching. So far my experiences in facilitating online learning have involved just myself as the instructor. So, many of the steps involved in planning and delivery have been intuitively obvious to me and I haven't necessarily needed to detail them in a written step-by-step fashion. But now I see that to be able to train and support other instructors who may be asked to facilitate the same online teaching models it’s necessary to provide for them explicit directions for each step in the process. In my own work setting this process will be useful as we develop more online courses and will need to train and support new faculty members who might themselves be new to online teaching; they will need closely scaffolded support and an explicit structure to help them effectively facilitate in an online environment.

There are many facilitation strategies that are applicable to both face-to-face and online learning. In both contexts learners need to develop increasing levels of self-sufficiency and control over their own learning. There has been a lot of focus on in research on effective teaching on the instructor’s role as a facilitator for learners and on creating experiences where students can discover important insights for themselves. I think that is a critical point that applies to all models of teaching online or face-to-face. In that sense it is important to create prompts and questions that motivate learners and engage them in a process of inquiry. While it is frequently the case that instructors need to deliver content to students, particularly at the beginning of an experience, it is always important for learners to be self-directed and seek to answer their own questions. In an online environment the depth and richness of sources available on the internet make it possible to provide learners with infinite resources to help them engage in inquiry and discovery. No longer is content delivery strictly provided within traditional "lecture" modes where the instructor is presumed to have all the knowledge and then delivers that knowledge to students. Now it seems online methods make it possible for students to find their own authoritative sources and make their own decisions about what sources are useful and necessary given the particular question or project in which they are engaged. In that sense instructors may use more of their time with learners to help facilitate high-level discussions about content and operate more as a facilitator during their time with students. I believe therefore that online learning models provide greater opportunities for instructors to create self-sufficient learners who are truly engaged.

Reflection #3

The readings, discussions, and activities in this course have prompted me to think more deeply about the ways online communities function and the characteristics of high (and low) performing teams. One aspect that has informed my thinking particularly is the importance of online communities offering various types of resources and ways of interacting among participants. That is, flexibility both in content, structure, and delivery seems an important prerequisite to be able to involve and engage as many individuals as possible. It appears that the most successful online learning networks are those that offer various resources that are focused in different ways depending on the needs of the users. For example, we see many online sites now devoted to teacher development. The most popular and creative of these seem to be those that both offer teachers resources such as materials and lesson plans but also provide social networks for teachers to be able to discuss and collaborate. That multifaceted functioning involving both the dissemination of resources and the collaborative opportunities within Web 2.0 are common characteristics seen in other types of sites as well. Some individuals may be drawn to a learning community because they want to feel part of a learning network where they can share ideas and get to know other people. That is a crucial benefit to online collaboration and one that is made possible as the technologies allow for more interactive ways of functioning in online spaces. However it is also the case that individuals need specific forms of professional development that may involve access to resources, websites, books, articles, and other materials. So, many participate in online learning communities because they seek these resources with or without interacting substantially with others. In general, I think that flexibility and multifaceted approaches to learning are important characteristics that define the most successful learning communities.

Another point that I have thought about considerably in the last few weeks has to do with understanding the various strengths and talents of each individual and what they bring to the community. That is to say it is important to get to know your team members because individuals play different roles whether intentionally or not when working in a group setting. Some particular strengths and abilities may not be recognizable to the full team until they have a chance to construct a project together and need to discover what each individual can best offer. I discovered this early in the course with my own team when we need to design a logo and found that Donna had a background in graphic design, and I had had some experience developing “Wordles” to represent ideas. We were able to combine our abilities to create a logo that we felt best represented what our team stood for and how we wanted to interact with each other. I think this was an instructive experience for thinking about teaming in general. We all have different skills and abilities; working in ways that strategically takes advantage of each team member’s talents, both individually and collectively, can lead to final products and a deepened learning experience for all participants. This is an important point when thinking about online teaching and learning because of the heavy reliance on teamwork and group projects that we frequently see in online courses and online learning experiences.

Reflection #2

It is excellent timing to construct this reflection as I am this very semester experimenting with teaching a fully online course for the first time. It's clear that the exposure to various learning theories has informed the choices that I make in my online instruction and my understanding of the rationale for my instruction and assessment, especially in an online environment. Especially useful has been the attention to learning theories particularly behaviorism and constructivism, and the various approaches that these theories suggest for online education.
In general, I think it's important to have a theoretical foundation for all instructional and assessment choices. I think this is especially true in online education which is a burgeoning field. The temptation for many instructors I'm sure is to employ the latest technological tool without fully interrogating the suitability and purposes for that tool. I found the readings on learning theories in this course especially instructive in this regard. For example the readings and ensuing discussions on behaviorism and constructivism have helped shape my sense of the choices that are available for online instructors to have variety in their classes and to make the best choices given a particular goal. For example while it may be easy to disparage behaviorist approaches to teaching, especially in light of compelling critiques from constructivist and cognitive advocates, it's also true that there are many occasions where behaviorist approaches are necessary and appropriate. For example, it seems that to learn certain online skills it is necessary to teach these skills in a step-by-step, linear fashion the way behaviorist approaches would stress. I don't think that all skills can be learned in the context of creating complex projects. There are certain rudimentary elements, even for adult learners, that need to be addressed in a linear and organized way. I discovered this in my own course where I needed to include components on some basic technology skills such as using a microphone. Because online experiences often involve using new tools it may be necessary , depending on the situation, to focus on those skills independent of the more complex applications for which they will later be used.
I'm also finding that there are constructivist foundations to online education that are critical to building a robust collaborative environment. The advancement of videoconferencing software has really made possible fully engaged discussions even with the relatively large number of people. The class that I held just tonight with a group of 10 students all of whom were connected via audio and video was just as collaborative and productive as it would have been in person. I felt that students were highly responsive to each other and were listening and engaged at the same level that they would if they were sitting in the same classroom. That is very exciting to me because I feel that finally the technology allows for constructivist ways of teaching in an online environment. Before many of these technologies were available it was possible only to present information and to assume a very didactic role toward students and the content. What I am finding is that I am able to use online technological tools in ways that are consonant with my theoretical approaches to teaching. These approaches include many constructivist elements that draw on the importance of reflection, learning community, and student self- reflection. It is important to be able to have a productive discussion in an online space where the technology doesn't get in the way or distract but rather promotes and enhances the interaction. Finally, I feel that I am able to navigate the technology as a way towards this goal. There are clearly many technical challenges to doing this effectively however. For example when I used a videoconferencing platform to hold a class discussion I quickly discovered that I needed to mute everyone's microphone when they wished to speak. Otherwise there was a lot of static and feedback on the line that was very distracting. But once I got used to quickly muting and then activating participants’ microphones the discussion flowed without too many perceptible interruptions. I feel that online technology has now improved to a point where constructivist approaches can be used effectively and instructors do not needs to compromise their style of teaching in order to use the technology. In general I am finding this process , both in this course and opportunities that I have to now teaching online environments, are very exciting. I've been especially intrigued by ways of thinking theoretically about the choices that are available in online education and the way that theories can help guide instructors in the choices that they make.

Chris Anderson TED Talk: How YouTube is Driving Innovation