Online Teaching and Learning

Category: Integration (page 1 of 1)

May 8, 2021 / 0 Comments

TRU – TEACH OTL 301 POST 4

I’ve had long conversations with various colleagues this pandemic year about online teaching.

One of my primary questions for more experienced faculty has been how they promote community and connection in the class. I had colleagues tell me to put together a Student Cafe online forum for students to socialize, a Course Q&A for students to ask each other questions about the course, and a Wellness Check forum to periodically ask how students are doing. I’ve found, however, that students prefer to connect over their own social media, using discord or even Instagram. My colleagues and I have typically encouraged this social contact outside of the classroom as a way of creating community cohesion. Within the class itself, I have sometimes found that students enjoy posting funny gifs to the wellness forum rather than a serious post which at least allows students to feel as if they are going through the course together.

I have also asked colleagues how they create back and forth around class content. Some have told me that they put together an online forum where they ask students to periodically post either 1) 2-3 major takeaways from the unit; 2) 1-2 confusions from the unit. This allows the instructor to then address and clarify these issues within the forum for the benefit of all the students working their way through the course. This also helps to create a sense of belonging to a community of inquiry, especially when students comment on each other’s posts and help one another come to conclusions about course content.

Finally, colleagues have told me that students come into these courses with varying degrees of experience with online learning. Having a forum where we can discuss and establish course norms is helpful to make sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to online learning. Since each course is designed differently, we need to also help the students navigate through the course design.

May 8, 2021 / 0 Comments

TRU – Teach OTL 301 Post 3

Learning Objectives:

Define neoliberalism in the context of the construction of a self-governing neoliberal subject

Discuss how the concept of neoliberalism impacts feminist thinking about choice and agency

Learning Activities:

Read Eva Chen’s article

In your small discussion groups: 1) define the concept of a self-governing neoliberal subject; 2) discuss how this concept impacts feminist thinking about choice and agency; 3) discuss how contemporary debates about whether women can “have it all” relate to this discussion.

Write a personal reflection where you: 1) summarize the major points raised by your group; 2) discuss how you are personally implicated within neoliberal ideas about freedom and choice.

February 11, 2021 / 0 Comments

TRU Teach – OTL301 Post 2

The effective practice that I identified in my last blog post shows the characteristics of teaching presence through facilitating student-to-student discourse. I am very invested in learning how to be a better facilitator for students, as I feel this is one of the hardest tasks for me as a teacher. The reading laid out the idea that development occurs with cognitive conflict or when students encounter an idea that challenges their assumptions or preconceptions. This is of course true, but it is not always evident to me when this is happening in my classes as my students often do not disagree with one another. I find that these conversations instead happen after class or in my office hours. Sometimes I have students come to me troubled by a statement another student has made in class because it has forced them to confront an issue they had never reflected upon before. My challenge is how to have students feel comfortable adding this to the discussion so that we can address these conflicts during the space of the classroom in order to have everyone benefit.

My view on the effective practice I identified would help with this challenge, but I think could be further modified. Perhaps I could first have students take 3-4 minutes to write down a personal response and then discuss this response in their small group discussions. When they come back as a whole class I could ask them whether their perspective had shifted between their personal self-reflections and the small group discussion. This might allow us to address assumptions student bring into the classroom while allowing them not to feel personally under attack.

 

 

 

November 25, 2020 / 0 Comments

TRU Engage – otl 201 Learning Activities Portfolio – Activity 3

Another forum I could develop would be a toolkit for online learning. I’ve noticed that students who do not have experience with online learning can experience particular challenges (this has been particularly true with students who had to abruptly transition during the pandemic!). One way I could help increase social presence is to create a forum for us all to share strategies for online learning. Here’s a possibility:

Toolkit for Online Learning

Here’s a forum for us to share tips and strategies for online learning. Let’s start a discussion! What challenges have you experienced with online learning? What strategies have worked for you in the past? What resources (blogs, articles) have you found helpful for issues such as time management? Let’s help one another to successfully complete this course.

November 25, 2020 / 0 Comments

TRU Engage – otl 201 Learning Activities Portfolio – Activity 2

As I think about how to create social presence in my classes, one thing I’m considering is to create a forum for events/blogs/articles/etc related to the class. Since I’m unable to modify the course content, this would be a way for me to help my students develop a sense of shared purpose. Here’s an example:

Welcome to the Current Events Forum! Here’s the place for all of us to post events, newspaper articles, blog posts, or YouTube videos related to our course. This could be content related to issues such as Indigenous legal systems, police brutality or  incarceration in Canada. Let’s start a discussion! How do these current events relate to and extend the conversations we’re already having in our class?

November 25, 2020 / 0 Comments

TRU Engage otl 201 Learning Activities Portfolio – Activity 1

Activity 1 – Introduction Post

Students can enter my TRU classes at any point in the year, so unfortunately this makes it difficult to engage them as a community. However, I’m thinking that creating a forum for introduction posts — where I’ve posted one as well — would be a good way for me to attempt some community for the small number of students in these classes. Here’s a possibility:

Welcome to the course! The Moodle class discussion forum is one of the community spaces we will be building in this class. If you have not yet done so, please upload a profile picture for your Moodle account and indicate your pronouns.

Then, for your first ever post:

1. Introduce yourself and, if you like, post another photo of yourself

2.  Say why you signed up for this class and/or what social justice means to you

3. Tell us something about the land where you currently live or post a photo

4. Tell us something that has recently made you laugh

OR … do none of the above and instead write your own creative post to introduce yourself!

July 28, 2020 / 0 Comments

Post 5 – Integration

I appreciated the opportunity to think about how to give feedback in Post 4. Although I have taken teacher training before, I have never been asked to break down what feedback actually is! This post helped me relate my own experiences, often negative, with feedback and to reflect on how to improve this experience for my own students.

Here are the major ideas that I have taken from the training so far:

  • Learning happens through communication by relating information
  • Focus on lining up learning activities, assessments, and learning outcomes
  • Focus on “activating” students vs. the transmission of information
  • Focus on task-related feedback that allows students to bridge the gap between performance and goals

Questions that I have:

  • Within what is often a highly competitive environment oriented towards grades, how can I help students feel comfortable making mistakes in order to truly engage with class material? I am not sure there is an easy answer here, but I think focusing on the progress taken towards measurable goals instead of right or wrong answers will help.
  • How can I learn to better tailor feedback to different students with different needs in order to bridge the gap between performance and goals? I think this may come from having as much sustained engagement as possible with students in order to learn their individual needs.

Goals in my own teaching:

  • To cover all three of Hattie’s questions (Where am I going? How am I going? Where to next?) when I deliver feedback
  • To remove self-directed feedback to focus instead on task-related feedback
July 28, 2020 / 0 Comments

Post 4 – Feedback

As an undergraduate student I remember my own feelings of dread when my professor handed back assignments. Over the years I have tried – not without difficulty – to replace this dread with curiosity. Curiosity in response to feedback allows for growth. There’s a sense of exercising choice and creativity in deciding what pathways to take moving forward. This is in sharp contrast to feedback that exacerbates self-judgment or comparison with peers.

I would like to create an environment for my students to allow them to feel curious about feedback. I appreciate how Hattie breaks down feedback into three questions for teachers to consider: Where am I going? (creating manageable goals) How am I going? (the steps/process to get there) Where to next? (actions to be taken to move through these steps). Reflecting on these questions I’ve realized that I often only cover one or two of these questions. This list helps me consider how to give well-rounded feedback that covers all of them.

There are two issues that especially stood out for me in this reading:

  • Providing feedback oriented towards the task, not the self. Hattie points out that couching critique in positive self-directed feedback actually lower the engagement of students. In the future I will attempt to work only with task-oriented feedback.
  • Providing an environment in which students can take the risk of being wrong. This is not easy to do. In the classroom, I think this can be especially difficult in terms of feedback from peers. For written comments, focusing on how students can move along a pathway towards a learning goal may be helpful. Still, I hope this question will be covered further in this training.
July 21, 2020 / 0 Comments

Post 3 – Constructive Alignment

I appreciated the focus in these readings and videos on the active knowledge construction of students, or what students do. I also appreciated the statement that learning occurs by associating new with old information or building new information onto older information. In other words, learning is relational.

I am currently teaching A Cultural History of Crime and Justice. The learning outcomes include:

  • Apply the notion of legal culture(s) to reflect on and then articulate a range of possible factors influencing popular conceptions of the criminal justice system and its place in historic British North America and contemporary Canada;
  • Describe the English origins of the post-Conquest British North American criminal justice system with an emphasis on the 19th to 21st centuries;
  • Examine and explain the evolution of British North American adaptations of English criminal law institutions centered on definitions of reformation of crime, policing, and punishment;
  • Examine and describe First Nations laws within a broader context of legal pluralism in British North America and Canada;
  • Examine the jurisdictional challenges created by the British North America Act (1867) and explain how its division of power affected the administration of criminal justice and punishment/reformation;
  • Examine and explain how constructed identities of class, gender, and ethnicity have shaped the application of criminal sanctions and punishment;
  • Distinguish between internal legal history and external legal history and demonstrate the advantages and shortcomings of each approach;
  • Examine the nature of historical mindednessand how it shapes the distinctive approach and mentalité of those who adhere to its principles in practicing the historical enquiry.

There is a mix of low-level and high-level learning outcomes, although the latter is emphasized. Because this is a history course students need to be able to describe and explain the basic historical context. This is the ground on which they can then apply and examine larger concepts relating to crime and justice in different historical periods.

Students are assessed through three types of assignments:

  • Four block summaries that compare and contrast readings across lessons
  • One secondary article analysis
  • One primary document analysis

The learning outcomes align with assessments. With the block summaries, students concisely summarize the arguments of scholars and then analyze the readings in relation to one another. The secondary article analysis asks students to extend what they have learned by writing block summaries through an in-depth analysis of two scholarly readings. The primary document analysis then asks students to further extend their analysis by now examining themes relating to crime and justice within a particular historical context.

The learning outcomes and assessments ask students to relate readings, concepts or time periods to one another, and so they are already at the relational or extended abstract levels of the SOLO taxonomy.