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Week 2: Overview, Readings and Resources

Site: SCoPE - BCcampus Learning + Teaching
Group: Facilitating Learning Online - APR2015-OER
Book: Week 2: Overview, Readings and Resources
Printed by: Guest user
Date: Thursday, 21 November 2024, 12:37 PM

Description

Week 2: Overview, Readings and Resources

Table of contents

Overview

In the past, teaching took place primarily in face-to-face environments and teachers taught a relatively homogenous group of individuals. The learner audience that well-known educational researcher, Malcolm Knowles studied to develop his “andragogical” perspective on what adult learners need and want from teachers was much less diverse than you are likely to encounter as you explore teaching and facilitating online. Many factors contribute to this increasing diversity and there are various perspectives on how best to respond. Although the general principles of adult learning are still helpful to consider, the rapid advances in knowledge, technological affordances and the spread of online learning environments and learning options has changed the nature of our consideration of how best to support our learners online.

Your adult learners may have similar desires: courses that are challenging, collaborative, and flexible to accommodate their different work/life situations and learning preferences. They are likely to appreciate knowing why and how they are to learn (and be evaluated) and like to engage in learning activities that are relevant, applicable, and meaningful. But you will need to be increasingly flexible in your approach to facilitating learning; you’ll need to balance the possibilities of the technologies available for online learning and the beliefs, expectations, and abilities of your student audience.

When you teach online, you may have to adapt your teaching strategies and the way you develop learning activities, to accommodate the impact of the change in learning environment and the ways in which you can monitor, interact and adapt your practice with each new group of learners. You will need to think about how your beliefs about teaching might affect how you approach online teaching and learning.

In this module, you'll explore some ideas that may help you respond to the rapid changes in technological possibilities, the diverse expectations and needs of your online learners, and your own beliefs, knowledge and skills as an online facilitator.

The least important thing this week is becoming an expert on any learning theory, technology or teaching strategy. The most important thing is understanding the main IDEAS, and being able to USE them to inform your thinking and problem-solving when you are deciding how to facilitate a course, workshop or learning activity online.

In Week 2 you will notice that there is only ONE mini-session: Adult Learners Online.

The FLO facilitators will facilitate this first mini-session as a demonstration of the process. The idea is to let you see one approach to the steps described in the Workshop Handbook on how to facilitate a mini-session. We’ll open up the Facilitators planning forum so you can follow the process. (Note: you’ll find a planning forum in each week’s mini-session section but these are set to only be visible to team facilitators.)

We’ll “think out loud” and communicate and plan as transparently as we can.

 

Mini-session - Introduction

You’ll be asked to explore the differences between face-to-face and online learning environments from the potential perspectives of adults of various ages, cultural backgrounds, economic circumstances and personal and educational backgrounds. Online learning environments also present different opportunities and challenges for learners (and new facilitators!)

This mini-session is intended to encourage you to consider the “affordances” of online learning; and to think of what learners need to learn effectively in online environments. For this first mini-session, you are challenged to try a new online tool - not the traditional online discussion forum.

Goals of this mini-session

Explore the opportunities and challenges of online learning as they relate to the diverse needs of adult learners. Or, put differently:

  • What supports do learners need in online learning environments?
  • What opportunities exist online that can be used to make learning more effective or interesting for adults online?
  • What challenges exist about online that might affect your learners?

Tasks for participants

  • List / map / compile / collaboratively write, a short summary of the benefits and challenges that online learning offers to adult learners. Your facilitators will post detailed instructions at the beginning of the week.
  • Provide constructive feedback (in the Feedback forum) when the session is complete.

Tasks for facilitators

  • Lead the participants through this process (without a discussion forum?) within the time allowed (Mon-Fri).
  • Remind participants to provide feedback at end of the session
  • Complete the FLIF (final reflective survey)

Facilitating Learning Online

Although the development of new, research-based theories to guide our teaching and facilitation online seems slow, the field is increasingly complex and diverse (as are the learners!). We can learn a great deal from experienced professionals, and students, who have been in the forefront of the evolving online environments, technologies and approaches to teaching and learning, The readings this week focus on the online environment and proposed theories or ideas of how to teach, facilitate or moderate online learning. If you’re unfamiliar with traditional learning theories, ideas around learning styles or preferences,we’ve provided some references you can follow up in the future.

For this week, the focus is on:

  • Teaching Perspectives Online and
  • Blended Learning

We want you to think about how you teach and why. What values and assumptions and experiences do you bring to the experience of teaching online? We've provided a link to one instrument that might help you reflect and some readings about quality teaching online.

Reflect on what you know about the way adults learn and then, to consider how diverse individuals might learn in an online environment. Much of the research on adult learning principles is derived from face-to-face education in traditional settings. We ask you to broaden your consideration of learner diversity and the potential affordances of our increasingly networked world with the easy access to powerful technological tools for learning. We’ll introduce the topic of facilitating in a blended learning environment. Increasingly, educators are looking for ways to be more flexible while still providing high quality learning experiences - in face-to-face and online environments.

Teaching Perspectives

As you move to teaching online, it is useful to reflect on what the beliefs and values are that guide your current teaching practice. Teaching online may mean that you simply need to adapt to different possibilities and tools and a broader, more diverse audience. The move may also require adjustments to your beliefs about what can be learned online, and may require you to change or adapt some of your approaches to teaching.

A useful tool to help you think about your teaching is the Teaching Practices Inventory, developed by Daniel D. Pratt and John B. Collins. Based on 20 years of research and observations, the survey will identify where you are located across a 5 teaching orientation framework. The profile that you receive could be used to develop a personal statement of teaching philosophy.

The rapid changes in knowledge and the increasing access to information, experts, tools, and unique learning experiences available in our networked world change the ways that you can teach when you move into the online world. Take time to read the ideas presented in some of the more recent publications as they describe some of the ways you might adapt your teaching perspectives and approaches to meet the needs of your online learners.

Online and Adult Learning

Seminal research among adult learning theorists (e.g., Knowles, 1973; Merriam and Caffarella, 1999; Merriam, 1993) revealed that:

  • adults continue to learn after completing their formal education
  • adults learn differently than children
  • adults learn in purposeful, self-directed ways

Malcolm Knowles was a big name in adult education. He argued that adults...

  • need to know why they need to learn something
  • need to learn experientially
  • approach learning as problem-solving
  • learn best when the topic is of immediate value

Although Knowles' research (and others who contributed to ideas about adult learning) caused a paradigm shift in the way courses were designed and how teachers taught, the world of higher education has become increasingly complex.

Due to many changes in society, teachers needs to be sensitive to the learning needs of an increasingly diverse audience; adult learners come from different cultures, are at various stages in their educational path, experience different demands from personal circumstances and work demands, and have far greater access to educational choices due to the development of an increasingly connected world with ubiquitous access and mobile devices.

The array of learning technologies, the pace of change in different academic fields, the possibilities introduced by educational technologies, and a renewed emphasis on experiential, inquiry, project-based and mastery learning approaches, makes the task of teaching adults effectively online one that requires all the creativity and skills that teachers can apply.

We hope that you'll share what you know and have experienced about teaching adults, and explore new ideas around improving your practice in the online environment.

How do we meet the needs of adult learners online?

Certain strategies and approaches seem to work well, including providing choice and inviting adult learners to leverage their experience, using coaching, dialogical models, and team-based learning reinforce a facilitative rather than directive approach to instruction. And meeting adult learners where they are, with active (experiential), relevant, applicable learning experiences will go far to support engagement and ultimately learning.

Learning Theories - a Primer

We've provided some resources you can use to refresh your memory of beliefs about how people learn and to allow you to look up specific learning theories if you choose.

Here is an overview of the big ones: behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism. "Connectivism", a theory articulated by George Siemens and Stephen Downes in 2005,  is increasingly discussed these days in the "networked" and "information" age, where subject knowledge is changing rapidly and learners have unprecedented access and connectivity due to digital networks.

What do you know/believe about learning? Like many, you probably have an eclectic view that draws from more than one theory.

QuestionsBehaviourismCognitivismConstructivismConnectivism
How does learning occur? Black box - observable behaviour main focus Structured, computational Social, meaning created by each learner (personal) Distributed within a network, social, technologically enhanced, recognizing and interpreting patterns
What factors influence learning? Nature of reward, punishment, stimuli Existing schema, previous experiences Engagement, participation, social, cultural Diversity of network
What is the role of the memory Memory is hardwiring of repeated experiences - where reward and punishment are most influential Encoding, storage, retrieval Prior knowledge remixed to current context Adaptive patterns, representative of current state, existing in networks
How does transfer occur? Stimulus, response Duplicating knowledge constructs of "knower" Socialization Connecting to (adding nodes)
What types of learning are best explained by this theory? Task-based learning Reasoning, clear objectives, problem solving Social, vague ("ill defined") Complex learning, rapid changing core, diverse knowledge sources

Read and View

Teaching perspectives

Teaching in a Connected World

Online Learning Theories

Learning Theories - REVIEW

Note: These resources are intended to refresh your memory of specific learning theories or to visualize the different beliefs about how people learn. Dig in according to your own interests. 

Learning Styles - REVIEW

Insights from Experienced Faculty: Facilitation

coffee cup

This resource contains 5 very short video clips (3 on this page, 2 on the next) from faculty who either are or could be your professional colleagues.

Sit down and take a relaxing 10 minutes to hear a few of their thoughts. Keep their insights in mind as you work through this week's activities.


Doug Hamilton (1:02)

Jen Walinga (1:18)

Alicia Wilkes (1:28)

Insights from Experienced Faculty: Instructor Presence

Alicia Wilkes (1:20)

Doug Hamilton (1:28)