Facilitating Meaningful Learning
Palloff and Pratt’s book, Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace, maintains that a learning community is the defining hallmark of the successful distributed/distance education effort. Using the computer for significant course interaction can be an experience different from teaching a face-to-face course. This section guide will provide information on the following issues:
- How can instructors create interactive learning environments?
- How can instructors become successful interaction facilitators?
- What interaction tools are available for distributed/distance education?
- What interactive teaching methods could be implemented in a course?
Cultivating Supportive Online Environments
Featuring: Giulia Forsythe (Brock), Patrick Lyons (Carleton), Steve Joordens (Toronto), Shawn Graham (Carleton).
Characteristics of Effective Teaching in Any Setting
How do you engage and facilitate learning with students? One report, titled Students’ Perceptions of Effective Teaching in Higher Education, examined student feedback on what makes an effective and engaging college instructor in traditional classroom, hybrid, and online modalities. They list nine characteristics held consistently valuable across the spectrum, which is provided below in the sequence specifically relating to an eLearning context (Delaney, Johnson, Johnson, & Treslan, p. 6, 2010):
- Respectful
- Responsive
- Knowledgeable
- Approachable
- Communicative
- Organized
- Engaging
- Professional
- Humorous
Good, quality teaching, regardless of the time, place, format, or modality, enhances the student experience. Some of these characteristics are certainly easier, if not simply more familiar, in a physical classroom; but given experience, practice, and sometimes patience, they are just as attainable in the cyber classroom. Moreover, these characteristics align closely with the course design rubric created by QualityMatters (QM). Whereas the QM tool addresses the content, instructional strategies and approaches, as well as resources that comprise a well designed course, these nine characteristics relate back to the ‘human side’ of teaching.
The Centre for Pedagogical Innovation (CPI) offers support for tailoring instructional methods to technology-enhanced distance and blended courses.
The Importance of Interaction
Interaction is important for quality learning. It may be defined as direct communication, with the telecommunication infrastructure (interactive video, computer, telephone, fax, or other technology tools) acting as the mediating tool. The emphasis is on communication and not technology (which is the tool for communication). There are many types of interaction. There is interaction with instructional content, among peers, or between instructor and students. Most importantly, it needs to have a purpose. This implies that a learning environment has been created and interaction strategies can be guided to support learning outcomes. Interaction can be particularly supportive of:
- Higher-order learning skills (i.e., analysis, synthesis, or evaluation)
- Collaboration and cooperation skills
- The sharing of new ideas
- Creative thinking
- Equalizing mutual acceptance
Engaging Online Students
Featuring: Franco Taverna (Toronto), James M. Skidmore (Waterloo), Patrick Lyons (Carleton), Tracy Penny-Light (Waterloo), Shawn Graham (Carleton), Maureen Connolly (Brock ), Anne Trepanier (Carleton).
The Role of the Instructor
Effective interaction must have adequate instructor preparation. Keep the following essential points in mind as you structure your online classroom.