The Basic Online and Offline Framework

When reading this week’s journals, I was struck by how much of online learning requires pretty much the same traditional educational methods at its core. Both require:

• student-teacher contact
• encouraging cooperation among students
• encouraging active learning
• giving prompt feedback
• emphasis on task time
• communicate (high) expectations
• respect diverse talents
• respect differing ways of learning

As a teacher, whether online or off, your goal is to design an effective program and material, have clear assessment and evaluation methods, and facilitate the course. The approaches to these concepts may differ when online compared to off but the core framework appears to remain relatively the same.

So, what does that mean for the online teacher? First it is important to use the appropriate pedagogical approach to the delivery method you have decided to use. Secondly, you need to facilitate participation dand provide validation of the student gained knowledge. Third, if appropriate, facilitate a virtual classroom or other online learning methods, promoting collaborative, active, reflective, authentic, and constructive forms of learning. Again, for the most part a seasoned educator would say this framework is very similar to that of a traditional classroom.

Struggles and Problems in Online Learning

I have taken a handful of online courses over the years and I have seen some be extremely successful and other, not so much. Ní Shé et. al. (2019) stresses the point that achieving a social presence right from the beginning of an online course is important and will ensure student presence throughout the course. This is something I have personally seen go wrong in an online course I participated in. I felt lost and less invested because I had little to no interaction with the instructor and superficial interaction with other students. There was no sense of community and limited my investment in the course. This could be said about any form of education, but I feel it goes doubly so for an online course.

I have taken online courses which required me to post a certain amount of times about a subject with a word count, etc. I am not sure how effective this was for students who had not bought in or were not engaged by the course. Most students appeared to parrot what others wrote and replies were often weak and were half-hearted agreements of what the original poster had said. I’m not sure this works very well (or maybe it’s just me).

Ní Shé et. al. (2019) further recommend that online educators post regularly (three times a week or more) and include feedback and support individual students posted offerings. This is a tall order for any instructor, and I am not sure how easy it would be to accomplish depending on the teachers work load. I agree that it is important, but I have never had a teacher/instructor do this.

When using exploratory learning in an online context, Dabbagh (2005) asserts that there is more student-generated learning via exploration and problem solving requiring limited guidance and instruction from the teacher. Through this method, students learn how to set, manage, and achieve their goals. A problem that can crop up with student generated learning is that less creative/less imaginative/more apathetic students not become engaged with the work and fall behind or even give up. Furthermore, some students can become overwhelmed with the freedom of choosing the direction of their learning and may become crippled with choice. It is important that the instructor communicate regularly and make themselves available with students to make sure this is avoided.

The Positive Online Experience

There are many online forums/websites/groups which encourage learning through sharing experiences and ideas and helping others through their projects and exploration of knowledge and ideas. Websites like www.instructables.com and www.thingiverse.com provide the average person with access to many ideas and projects (all user made) and allow others to comment and exchange ideas and critiques. This approach can be utilized in an online course setting or even as a resource to better facilitate learning by allowing students to ask questions, share their work, gain feedback, and make changes. I often use these kinds of websites with my shop classes when helping my students find project ideas and when trying to find answers to problems and questions they may run into. Students generally find them easy to explore and often can find the answers and ideas they were seeking.

The use of “educational worlds” can create an experience that could not otherwise be done in the real world or can be done for with less resources. Educational worlds can take the form of a virtual reality space where students can create avatars and interact with others and virtual objects. Being a shop teacher, I find myself more attracted to the real-life application of skills rather than virtual. There are subjects such as robotics and electronics that could lend themselves well to the virtual approach. Students could use virtual spaces to design and build robots and parts to see if they work like they think they should. I have even seen the use of games such as Minecraft used to teach electronic concepts such as binary and circuits, having students collaborate on large working electronics concepts such as a calculator or even a basic computing “machine”.

Another concept that I had never considered presented by Dabbagh (2005) is the use of role play in an online setting. The idea is that students would take on different situations and imagine themselves apart of them, making decisions as the situations change. This can take many forms and I like the idea of having the student imagine themselves as a contractor or an electrician and then going through what it takes to do those jobs. With guidance this could be a lot of fun and lead to a in depth understanding of the skills and knowledge of those positions and what it takes to be in that career and explore some of the lesser known things that those careers must take on. The roles could even be less realistic and more metaphorical in practice. This approach could be extremely entertaining and engaging for both students and teachers.

Readings:

• Conole, G., Dyke, M., Oliver, M., & Seale, J. (2004). Mapping pedagogy and tools for effective learning design. Computers & Education, 43(1–2), 17–33. via.hypothes.is/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2003.12.01 8
• Dabbagh, N. (2005). Pedagogical Models for E-Learning: A Theory-Based Design Framework. International Journal of Technology in Teaching and Learning, 1(1), 25–44. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.475 .4593&rep=rep1&type=pdf
• Conole, G. (2018). Learning Design and Open Education. International Journal of Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from https://www.ijoer.org/learning-design-andopen-education_doi-10-18278-ijoer-1-1-6/
• Shé Ní, C., Farrell, O., Brunton, J., Costello, E., Donlon, E., Trevaskis, S., & Eccles, S. (2019). Teaching online is different: Critical perspectives from the literature. Retrieved from Dublin City University website: http://doras.dcu.ie/23890/