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Describe the ways in which your introductory post should have enhanced social presence in a course that you teach,

Identify at least one improvement that you might make in light of what you know about social presence since completing your first post, and

Describe how your thinking about social presence has changed since your first post.

Understanding social interaction as a key constitutive element of learning brings urgency to the task of ‘humanizing’ one’s self as an instructor. Through humor, vulnerability, etc., students benefit from a process of meaning making that allows learning to become deeply rooted and dialogic – part of one’s identity.

Moving forward, I see the need to make additional efforts, especially when welcoming new students to a course (but also throughout), to cultivate a socially safe environment rooted in humanistic expressions of connection and communication.

 

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Okay – here I am, looking moody and contemplative:)

Some things you should know about me:

1. I’m a newbie gardener. Big city girl moves to small island and tries her hand (sometimes with success and at other times failing miserably) at veggie farming. Check it out:

 

2. One of my favourite poems: the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Elliot. Here I recite a taster…

 

3. I have two children. Here is one. She’s proud of her piano skills, and is showing off by filming herself turbo-speed – haha!

 

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Take a look back through your previous posts and apply the ‘Showcase’ category to your best work. Write a few words about why you think that post or those posts stand out. What are 2-3 of the most important ideas that you have studied during this course?

One of the most important realizations I encountered through this journey pertains to the need, as advocated by Hattie in Lesson 3, to offer a clear sense of where students stand as individuals in relation to the learning objctives of a particular course. This contextualization of the learning process is, it seems, easier said than done in courses that are less technical, and more creative/artistic. I am thinking about ways in which to clearly define steps to be taken towards complex learning objectives, such as when the aim is to ‘develop strong narrative skills in business communication writing’, or to ‘understand and practice the fundaments of making strong arguments’. The development of contextual pathways for students leading towards the achievement of these learning objectives is complex and, it seems, fundamentally creative.

What are 2-3 questions that you have as a result of this course? Identify ways that you can begin to answer those questions.

What types of social environments might be constructed through my online teaching? What tools, technologies and frameworks might be most conducive to the achievement of such environments? How might my presence as an instructor be manifest in such a way as to encourage an idea-rich learning environment? How might feedback be constructed in such a way as to provide a ‘road map’ for students towards successful outcomes?

To begin answering these questions, I would like to try out various approaches to teaching such that I can better tap into latent possibilities within the e-learning platform. I am curious about the inclusion of video as a way to enhance connectivity, and to add new dimensionality to the learning environment. I am also interested in trying out forms of feedback that allow students to see their work in relation to the core learning objectives.

Identify 2-3 specific goals that you would like to achieve in light of what you have learned about cognitive presence, approaches to learning, and feedback.

Goal: to create at least one video piece as part of my upcoming CMNS 2171 course that enables students to reflect on the ideas presented in the course.

Goal 2: to develop ‘summary statements’ (or maps) in my feedback on assignments that relate student work to core learning objectives.

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Questions 1 and 2: ‘Are there any gaps between your practice of offering feedback tos students and what Hattie recommends?’… and ‘In what ways can you improve the effectiveness of the feedback…”

A key lesson I took from Hattie’s piece relates to the importance of contextualizing feedback. By relating feedback to a student’s current and past relationship to course learning goals/objectives, and by outlining clear steps required by the student in order to close the gap between his/her/their current state of knowledge, understanding and/or action and that required within the course, a pathway is articulated by which a student’s success can be achieved. By focusing on this principle, I believe my feedback to students will gain contextual relevance.

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Learning Objectives & Intention

I selected a syllabus for a similar interpersonal communication course to the one I will be teaching through TRU – this one through Bellevue College. The course I chose is called ‘Interpersonal Communication.’ The learning outcomes include low-level objectives, such as: ‘define the process of communication’, ‘describe the specific qualities found in interpersonal relationships’; ‘explain the relationship between perception, self-concept, and communication’; ‘describe the characteristics of a competent communicator and the methods of improving language, nonverbal communication, and listening skills’. Assessment occurs through quizzes, a paper, participation and communication assessment.

Within the syllabus, it was interesting to note the weight (approximately 40% of the full grade) accorded to participation and communication assessment – pieces that evaluate the ‘practice’ of communication. This weight contrasts, it seems, with the course objectives, which are centred around information retention.
Given the opportunity to revise the syllabus, I would include high-level learning objectives, such as: ‘practice a range of communication forms’, ‘develop an understanding of the power and potential of particular forms within particular contexts’; and ‘develop knowledge and skills that enable an effective reading of communication contexts, and the formulation of effective responses’. A revised assessment matrix would place increased emphasis on the practice of communication, through the inclusion of performance-based responses to particular communications challenges. In an online learning context, this might occur through video submissions and/or written pieces in which students analyze and assess a particular communication challenge and present various possible responses and their potential associate outcomes.

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What I now know that I didn’t previously:

I am struck by the difficulty researchers/analysts face in trying to ‘quantify’ participant learning journeys (and their successful completion of learning goals) within online environments. Researchers Garrison, Anderson and Archer, in their piece ‘Critical Thinking, Cognitive Presence, and Computer Conferencing in Distance Education’, attempt to conduct content analysis of particuar online learning texts; their work breaks apart the texts into coded elements which are then categorized and counted. I found this methodology probelmatic. The process, as I understand it, anonymizes and ‘fragments’ student interaction, such that it becomes part of a sea of anonymous data. What would be more interesting, it seems, is to track individual student text-based interactions with the course over time, to see how they shift and change, and to look at these change narratives in juxtaposition against the change narratives of others in the course. Still, though, in doing such work, an element of interpretation is needed… the researcher must at the same time take on the roles of scientist and storyteller.

Gaps/discrepancies:
I look forward to building meaning-making opportunities into the learning journey, recognizing these as tied into social landscapes.

Questions:
I love the notion of a ‘triggering event’, and identify (as a learner) with the feeling of being knocked off-centre / invited to come to terms with new and emerging paradigms. As a teacher, the question I pose to myself is – what are some of the best ways to cause this triggering to occur – to incite participants into a real and sustained mindset of critical thinking and self-reflection.

Examples of cognitive presence:
At one time I was a tutor-marker for an online Communications Course called ‘Documentary Communications’. One of the course aims was to enable students to uncover power dynamics at-play in major multi-national corporations by researching their financial statements, board connections, staff composition, etc. When students began to realize the extent to which these companies (like Amazon, Google, Disney, etc.) were interconnected, and to which power was centralized within them, they encountered an opportunity to undertake a ‘triggering event’, and to then integrate their new knowledge into an emerging framework of understanding. Some students were ready to engage with shift this while otherse were not; in any case, it was an interesting challenge to try and enable it.

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Hello! My name is Sharon Karsten. I’m thrilled to be part of the TRU Open Learning community, and excited to teach CMNS 2171: Interpersonal Communication.

Okay… my favourite vacation spot. While I travel a bit for conferences and meetings, I’m not a big vacationer. I live in what I consider to be one of the greatest spots on earth – Denman Island. It’s a small but radical place, a 10-minute ferry ride off Vancouver Island. I love it here because I can try out ideas around sustainability. Here I’m learning to grow food, live in community, etc.

One of the last books I read… okay well it’s not exactly a novel… ‘Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements’ by John D.H. Downing. True to its title, this book presents radical ideas around media and democratization – unpacking histories of media use within resistance movements. Although the book was written a while ago (2001), its ideas appear as super-relevant in an age where journalists are coming under sustained attack.

What have I learned about online teaching/learning?… I guess I consider myself a student of online learning pedagogies. The question I keep asking is – how can we come closer to an engaged experience? You know the feeling – when a group is sitting together, mulling over an idea from a bunch of different angles, and then suddenly the light is turned on, and everyone leaves the room changed. How can we best integrate the tools of dynamic interaction, video and audio to enable people to authentically interact with one another, and with ideas, over time and space, leading to better learning outcomes?

I look forward to continuing this exploration with TRU Open Learning.