Daily Archives: October 18, 2017

The Community of Inquiry Framework in Practice

I’m attending the ICDE World Conference on Online Learning 2017 in Toronto, Canada and blogging the sessions I’m attending.

This collection of sessions are about the Community of Inquiry model.

Social Presence in Two Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

by Matthew Stranach, University of Calgary

He used the case study methodology. He looked at courses as a whole. The courses aligned with the xMOOC format (proprietary learning software, behaviorist / cognitivist approaches to teaching and learning).

Participants self-reported via the COI instrument.

Key findings included: social presence was in both courses; personal interest was why people participated in the MOOCs – they weren’t really there for academic or professional reasons; similar levels of teaching and cognitive presence in the courses; but social presence was the last experienced. Participants didn’t generally view themselves as part of a learning community. Social presence did help participants further individual learning goals.

These findings are consistent with the COI literature. Social presence played a supporting role to cognitive presence.

Comment that synchronous elements and social media are areas that can contribute to the MOOC format.

The Importance of Teacher Presence in Creating an Invitational Educational Environment

Presenter(s): Margaret Edwards and Beth Perry – both from Athabasca University

She’s been using the COI model since 1999 in online programs she works with at Athabasca.

This research is around characteristics of exemplary online educators, and they’ve looked at it online 10 years ago, again, as well as in face to face classes previous to the 1990s.

Methodology: students wrote narratives regarding teachers that they considered exemplary.

Exemplary online educators:

  • Encourage interaction
  • Establish social presence
  • Cultivate a sense of community in educational environments
  • Ensure teacher presence – teacher intentionally instead of teaching

Specific ways teacher presence was created:

  • students know there is an engaged, enthusiastic, interested, credible instructor
  • participating in the discussion, addressing issues, answering questions, triggering debate, providing leadership
  • presence of humor (not a comic, but a sense of light-heartedness)
    • invitational language – you are invited to share your thoughts; vs. you are required to write two posts
  • presence of humanity
    • authenticity of the teacher; that you’re not perfect; that there’s a humanness to you; telling stories, being real when you answer, leave the ums and the ahs in your audio/video
  • presence of expertise
    • not a “look at me the expert”, but instead seeing the knowledge and experience that we have as educators as a gift we can give to students

Instructional designers think a lot about learning strategies …. but, as the teacher, you are an instructional strategy!

My favorite quote of the student comments she shared at the end:

Good online teachers play ball. When you are on an online student you toss the ball and you hope there is someone out there who will catch the ball and toss it back. My best teachers return the toss and make me jump to catch it.

TEL MOOC Participant Response to the Community of Inquiry Theoretical Framework

Presenter(s): Martha Cleveland-Innes, Sarah Gauvreau
Co-Author(s): Nathaniel Ostashewski (Athabasca University), Sanjaya Mishra (Commonwealth of Learning), Gloria Richardson (Confederation College)

Technology Enabled Learning MOOC

This MOOC was an iMOOC – a course based on inquiry learning, as defined by the community of inquiry. Athabasca was testing this format.

The course covered TEL frameworks, integrating technology, OER, creating TEL lessons, review and summary, and participants created an OER resource.

The report today is about the participant response to it.

The design and organization needed the right blend of direct instruction and facilitation – which is part of the teaching presence definition.

The videos were recorded in studios; the videos were less than 5 minutes; they focused on the material and the learning process. It was more than a lecture of the material.

They offered two types of facilitation:

  • The inspirer – a video offered at the beginning of each week that inspired them to work with each other; and summarized each week with another video; they were the inspirer and motivator; they occasionally posted
  • One facilitator for each of the 500 students; they were troubleshooting; they reminded the students of what the other students were doing; for the COI model, students need to learn from each other; the facilitators job was to smooth the learning and connect participants to each other

Results of the study, looking at participant response to COI in the TEL MOOC, included the positive benefits of the COI model.

Fostering Social Presence on Virtual Learning Teams at Royal Roads University

Presenter(s): Elizabeth Childs; Author(s): Jennifer Stone (Royal Roads University)

Jennifer did the research and Elizabeth is reporting on it. This was action research; some items have been incorporated into the university practice from her research.

The majority of their Masters programs are online or blended with short intensives on campus.

She looked at faculty, students, adjuncts, staff, representatives from the teaching and learning group; across three specific Masters programs.

The total n was 45, which was small but fit the institution well.

Mixed method approach; interrater reliability; interviews etc.

Study findings and themes:

  • Understanding of social presence: 100% found the value of social presence; 93% foudn it ciritcal to the level of connection
  • Roles and responsibilities: 86% believed that it was the role of the instructor to initiate and maintain social presence
  • Intentional learning design: Clearly communicated rubrics, assessments, virtual team assignment design
  • Technology and virtual space: Limitations within the LMS for cultivating what the expectation was for social presence

There were 60 different understandings of what social presence was. Whose job is it to ensure the social presence? Where do the roles and responsibilities fall? Whose job is it to ensure that social presence is designed into the course? Is the current technology enabling us to embrace fully the social presence we want?

Her recommendations were to:

  • Determine an operational definition of social presence and decide to what extent the programs wish to prioritize it
  • Consider professional development for instructors on how to develop and role model social presence
  • Incorporate course design that supports the intentional development of social presence and interpersonal relationship building
  • Consider the efficacy of the current learning management systems and how they support the development of social presence

Based on this action research, the institution is updating their learning and teaching model to incorporate social presence. What an awesome result to a student’s research!

Discussion

After the presentations, then discussion! And sharing of resources:

People really want to talk to real people – humanity, expertise, authenticity.

Interesting that some students don’t want learning community. The presenters commented that students are at different stages in their life, different levels of agency. They may need the engagement, and someone are just wanting to get in and get out to get the required work done.

Cognitive engagement can look like social presence, but it’s on the academic side. The important thing is to offer multiple opportunities for students to have choice. The concept of choice came up also in giving students places for social presence, with and without marks.

How to Get Published in a Peer Reviewed Journal

I’m attending the ICDE World Conference on Online Learning 2017 in Toronto, Canada and blogging the sessions I’m attending.

Presenters:

  • Diane Conrad, co-editor of IRRODL
  • Lesley Diack,Aberdeen, Scotland, Research in Learning Technology, Journal of the Association of Learning Technologists; she’s one of five editors, it used to be ALT-J
  • Tannis Morgan, Justice Institute of British Columbia, serves on multiple editorial boards
  • Lucy Gray, editor for Open Learning
  • Jill Buban, Online Learning Consortium, Online Learning Journal, formerly Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks

Stories of Rejection

  • The politics of rejections. Knowing the audience.
  • Sometimes seen articles they’ve rejected appear in other journals.
  • What about when there are two good reviews and one bad review. Sometimes the reviewer is wanting a different article – their perspective.
    • Tip: responses from the author regarding the reviewers that are very well thought out – these can make a major difference. There might be something in the reviews that’s out to lunch. As an author you need to respond and give a rationale for why you use this or not.

What prepared you for the role of an editor?

  • The experience of being an author, a student
  • The desire to support authors who are new to writing in the area
  • Part of the role of a reviewer is to give good feedback to help them; same situation as supporting students
  • Working on a new journal with others, shaping a journal
  • Doing a lot of peer reviews
  • Started a class newspaper in grade four
  • I enjoy helping people learn to write; and I enjoy reading what other people have written, reviewing puts you on the front line of the research
  • My supervisor told me to review so that my writing would improve
  • It’s good for me as a professor to be an editor
  • Writing in journalism and news

Is this cheap labor?

Provocative question from the moderator to a panel of women.

  • There isn’t a stipend for editorial work at one journal; at another there is
  • It’s voluntary, time consuming
  • Some element of prestige
  • It’s service
  • It’s relaxing work for me
  • In one situation the assistant editor got a stipend and the editors did not

What’s the most difficult decisions you’ve had to make as an editor

  • When reviewers don’t agree
  • Sometimes the judgment call is suitability to the journal – that’s easy; but then other decisions are more difficult
  • Further discussion of reviewers… IRRDOL rates reviewers on the quality of the review
  • Some of the journals represented are trying hard to publish from countries who have had less of a voice
  • One option is to have three reviewers required for each article
  • Challenges with articles written by non-native speakers, providing editing or recommending the author get additional editing assistance

The process of publishing: How should an author choose a journal?

  • Look at the topics in the journal, seeing how your article fits in the journal
  • Authors do throw articles blindly out; they haven’t researched the journal
  • Journals have information that outlines the scope, interests
  • Look at the masthead and see who is on the editorial board – that shapes the concern of the journal
  • Authors can write a letter to ask whether the article fits in the journal
  • It saves a huge amount of time to ask about the article ahead of time; otherwise you’re wasting time in the review process
  • Review the archives of the journal to get a flavor of the topics
  • Rolling publications means that your journal can get published faster; as they are reviewed they can be posted
  • Open journals are a great way to get your work out there
  • Look at how many issues a year they publish
  • From the audience: Contact North has a searchable directory of journals regarding online learning
  • Don’t submit to more than one journal at a time!!

What are you looking for when you receive an article?

  • First the article goes through a plagiarism service. Shouldn’t be 50-60% or more of a previous article
  • Checking to see if it’s a fit
  • Good methodology / sound research
  • Missing the description of the population
  • There is nothing new
  • Does it matter?
  • Abstracts are often very bad – it should say certain things – the journal websites tell about it
  • Be clear about what you’re writing – what is the article about, what type of article are you writing
  • Follow the journal guidance on the website
  • Different journals care about different things – ignoring the past history of online learning
  • Results and conclusions often don’t match the data

Great advice and discussion on the publication process and issues for online learning.

The Future of Learning Management Systems – Development, Innovation and Change

I’m attending the ICDE World Conference on Online Learning 2017 in Toronto, Canada and blogging the sessions I’m attending.

Phil Hill presenting. His slides are online here:

 

Phil commenting on the hype of MOOCs, the hype of higher ed going away entirely, the lack of business models for educational technology start ups. He recommends healthy skepticism on new trends such as adaptive learning.

Phil suggests that ed tech people have been children happily playing in the corner, but now the children are loose in the house. Funny metaphor – interesting how twice this morning I’ve heard that ed tech people just talk to each other (playing in the corner).

Online Students Survey by LearningHouse – good to understand student views of online learning.

Students want their own pace, but also instantaneous feedback. – PPIC, Successful Online Courses in California’s Community Colleges report

A problem-based learning method used in Habitable Worlds, a science course for non-science majors by Arizona State University – an example of the new direction of online learning that we need to consider. Focused on the big concepts, not the details. It’s multidisciplinary too – physics, sociology, etc. Students said, it was the best course I’ve ever taken. This course was built on Piazza – a wiki based discussion space.

Phil’s question – how can the LMS support this kind of course. This course was not in an LMS, because the standard LMS could not support what they wanted to do.

Some areas to consider: competency-based, gamification, adaptative, personalized learning. These are areas where people are trying to innovate in LMSes.

Having an LMS is like having a minivan – you’re not proud of it, but you have it. You buy it because you need it – it solves a particular job. A metaphor goes a long way to explaining a point!

A course management system is a better description – how do you take a course and how do you manage it? Learners are a list of people inside the course. They aren’t really “learning” management systems. The LMS isn’t really thinking about the learner outside the course or across the courses.

Phil has a slide with both LMSes and free consumer tools (i.e. blogger, wordpress, ning, pinterest, etc.). Interesting that we have both – faculty want these in the LMS or we expect the LMS to be easy to use like the cool tools. 

Some info on LMSes: Moodle has the largest installed base; Canvas is currently the fastest growing and the dominant for new implementation. Interesting comments that the competency based attempts aren’t very successful, not enough market. 

Cloud hosting or externally hosting is a huge new trend. A big issue – LMS going down on exam week or the first week of school. That is partly what’s driving the move to the cloud – to be able to scale up resources as needed. Security concerns also drive hosting decisions.

In North America, it appears that open source LMSes – Moodle and Sakai – installed base peaked about 2013, and is going down. Also that open source for open source’s sake is no longer such an issue.

Phil talks about the tension – what should be in the LMS vs. “cool tools” but then should those be inside the LMS? Initiatlly LMSes were a walled garden: forum, assignments, announcements, syllabus, etc. Nothing in or out. Over time though, there are consumer tools faculty and students want to use – blogging, social networking as two examples. Initial reaction by the LMSes was to give you a terrible version of it inside the garden. Lots of laughs from the audience. Feature bloat. Too many tools crowded in that were poor imitations of the outside. The new trend is LTI integration – we don’t have to have all activity. The LMS provides the basics, and hooks in other tools via LTI to connect to other items.

Now we think, the LMS is central; but it should enable me to use third party tools, but without being too confusing for students or too many logins!

Other tools coming to integrate are XAPI and Caliper – so in the future – we should have interoperability standards where we toss out the imitation tools from the LMS, and integrate easily with third party applications. Most competency based systems though are sticking with the walled garden idea.

Phil thinks that Canvas is pushing the competition – to reduce feature bloat and get a cleaner design.

Corporate learning is doing better with integrating tools; in the education market the integration of tools is more basic and somewhat clunky. The education market could learn from corporate learning.

Re mobile: The LMSes are moving their slowly. Offline access and responsive design for mobile are two major areas they are working on. It’s just slow.

Re learning and data analytics – the movement is more towards – we want the data, but we aren’t as interested in your graphs and learning analytics. Given our work in Intelliboard, I see this. What the data means depends on course and institution policies – and it’s better for the institution to be building up the meaning around the data.

Great session to get an update on what’s happening with LMSes. The evidence seems clear that LMSes are not dead nor dying.