Sylvia Riessner

As we have only two weeks to plan, develop and test an online learning activity, I'm opening up a new topic thread to get us started on the first steps of the practical aspects of this seminar.

Alice pointed out that we need to ask some further questions as we explore ways to develop engaging online learning activities: Who? What? When?

From the teacher/instructor perspective:

"Who (are the Learners)?
What (Actual Techniques linked to real learning objectives)?
When (Timing within the learning/teaching framework)?"

and more importantly, from the learner/student perspective:

“What is in this for Me?”

I've compiled a simple LinoIt bulletin board of questions to help us collect and discuss useful questions - if you'd like to add your questions (this will be a shared resource so you can use it afterwards if you find it has value), let me know and I'll give you access to contribute.

Plan Your Online Learning Activity   http://linoit.com/users/Sylvia18/canvases/PlanYourOLA

Please review the questions and use the ones you find useful to begin to develop your online learning activity (or repurpose an OLA you want to improve).  I'm going to blog about how I apply these questions in the development of a new OLA. You're welcome to do the same and share your planning with us or you may want to share "nuggets" from your planning back to this forum topic thread?

So, to reiterate, 

1.  Review the collection of planning questions in the Linoit bulletin board. Share any additional questions (or thoughts about the questions that are there?)

2.  Begin to plan your online learning activity - share with us the highlights (nuggets?) of your planning or any challenges you encounter as you try to answer the questions for your project.

Make sense? 

Please join me in our first LIVE (synchronous, online) Blackboard webinar (webmeeting?) session tomorrow,

• Wednesday, August 5th from 11:00 am to 12:00 noon PDT (see your time zone)  
  Remember to have a headset with a microphone (a webcam would be great too so we can meet "face2face" but it's optional) Try to join a little ahead of the scheduled time so you can complete the audio setup wizard (instructions on the first slide when you enter the room)

• To get to the room:  http://urls.bccampus.ca/scopeevents

Note:  If you run into trouble, I'll be monitoring the chat window in Collaborate. If you can't connect, email me sylviar@northwestel.net (I'll keep that open too).

Exploring Options, Selecting Approaches

During the LIVE session, I'd like to spend some time talking about engaging students AND how to get started on your online learning activity plan / build project. My proposed agenda:

• Introductions and sharing your objectives / intentions for the seminar
• Addressing any questions / confusions
• Quick recap of the reason we're using the Bonk and Khoo book "TEC-Variety" to frame our seminar work (see "A Starting Point: Framing Our Approach".)
• Discuss questions embedded in Linoit bulletin board shown in:  First Steps: Planning Your OLA  We can talk about some of the practical questions about how we can best share our developing plans to gather feedback from experienced online facilitators.
• Review the connections I presented in the topic thread:  Finding OLA Ideas & Resources - between the motivational elements in the 10 Principles, the additional Padagogy Wheel resource.  I'll ask you for suggestions as to the best way to share additional ideas for learning activities and/or tools/apps that might be useful (using the 10 principles to organize our growing collection? and where?)

If you can't make the synchronous session, we will record it and post it as soon as possible.

If there are questions you'd like us to consider, please post them to this forum before 10:50 am tomorrow!

Cheers

SylviaR

Framing Our Approach to Creating Engaging Online Learning Activities

I thought it might be useful to spend some time thinking and talking about what we believe motivates online learners.

I've read Daniel Pink's book Drive and watched his TED Talk (I've included the link in the Resources page - found in the current seminar tab.)  And I've read various journal articles over the years and textbook chapters on motivation. But I found these approaches too broad to be helpful for the focused approach Sylvia Currie and I talked about when we were throwing ideas around for this two week seminar.

SylviaC suggested taking a look at Elaine Khoo and Curtis Bonk's book Adding Some TEC-Variety,  which begins with a brief review of learning theory, philosophical perspectives about how people learn, and then focuses on what the research says about motivation and engagement in online learning.

I'm suggesting we start off from Chapter 3: Online Motivation From Four Perspectives. 

Do you agree with the 10 principles Bonk and Khoo developed based on their review of ideas about motivation and learning?

I encourage you to share any alternative viewpoints about motivation and engagement that you find useful.

Bonk, C.J. & Khoo, E. (2014).Online Motivation From Four Perspectives. In Adding Some TEC-VARIETY: 100+ Activities for Motivating and Retaining Learners Online. (pp.31-43) Retrieved from http://tec-variety.com/TEC-Variety_ch3.pdf.  You can download the complete book as a pdf; please consider purchasing the book if you find it valuable.

Chapter 3 presents the philosophical perspectives on learning and research on motivation that were used to develop the 10 principles that they suggest should be used to guide online learning activity design. These 10 principles are used to organize over 100 ideas for online learning activities.

An illustrated interpretation of Chapter 3 by me ;-)

To see how the principles relate to online learning activities -  find Table 1.1: 100+ Activities for TEC-Variety in the book.

Great job on the facilitation this week. As we're winding down the week's activities, I'd ask you to reflect on your experiences and think about any specific areas you might like feedback about?

I've set up a starting thread in the Feedback forum (on the Welcome and Ongoing Activities tab). If you let me know any specific feedback you would benefit from receiving, I can add it to my introductory post.

You can also simply reply to my initial post and describe what specific feedback you might find most helpful.

Cheers

SylviaR

Please share your feedback with the mini-session facilitators for the Team in Trouble activity. You are not limited to sharing your specific comments or helpful suggestions with text; if you're feeling creative, you could explore sharing with some form of multimedia?

David and Dwayne, your facilitators for this week, would appreciate some specific comments and suggestions on the following aspects of the activity and their facilitation (I would assume they would list their points below)