Common Feedback for Lesson 1 Discussion

(Same message posted to the course twitter announcement area)

(Same message posted to the discussion area)

You should receive your Lesson 1 discussion grade and feedback in E-mail.  I hope you find them useful.  Here are more of my reflections to share with you to help you to enhance your learning experiences.

 

What we did right:

·      Diagram: I am very pleased to see many of us took one-step further to change ourselves by drawing a diagram. It is not an easy task to draw this diagram because to draw it, it requires us to have comprehensive understanding on the relationships and relations between both entities.  I hope it has been a positive learning experience for you.

·      KEY Discussion Questions: Most of us responded to the key discussions very thorough and comprehensive.

·      Cite Relevant Literature: Great to see many of you cite research-based literature to support your arguments to the key discussion questions.  Continue your outstanding logical reasoning participations.

·      Two Posting Periods: Most of us followed two posting periods to share our thoughts and responded to both KEY questions within the 1 posting period. Please continue following this posting method for all our lesson discussions, unless specified.

o   1^st posting period: Focus on responding to key discussion questions thoroughly.

o   2^nd posting period: Engage in learner-learner interaction by reading/responding to others' postings.

 

Instructional Design

Why is it important to learn instructional design for online learning?  Some of us may or may not have chance to teach or to design online learning instructions. Learning about online learning instructional designs is to help us to know how wide human learning can be.  Online technologies are considered to have the potential to extend human learning.  By knowing how far online technologies may extend human learning helps us to teach and design in online or non-online learning environments.  Even though, we may not have the chance to teach or to design online instructions, it is almost impossible that we do not integrate online technology to support our non-online instructions.

 

Learner interaction

·      Online multimedia generally is in more linear format which learning psychologists do consider it is less effective than non-linear format. On the other wide, we see many online learners may learn better with multimedia content due to their multi-sensory learning preferences. As online instructors or instructional designs, how should we face this challenging? What do you think about Khan Academy? Will it replace classroom teachers?  If not, what we should make our online multimedia content more effective?

·      Online technologies and learning interaction.  We must remember online technologies or social media are not inherently social (Siemen & Cormier, 2009) or interactive. Online technologies are social and interactive only when an individual perceive its use to interact with others.  For teachers, they are social and interactive only when we apply interactive online instructional strategies to design effective online learning activities to engage our online learners.

 

Here are a few questions to help you to challenge your understanding in online learning.

·      Within all six types of interactions, what interactions are more critical to online learning?

·      Technology is critical to online learning.  Why is technology not included in the six types of online interaction?  Shouldn't learner-interface/technology interaction be critical?

·      If online technology shouldn't be seen as replicating FTF instructions, what role should online learning play in human learning?

 

Here are few strategies to help you to participate in our lesson discussions:

·      Reply: When we reply to a specific person's posting, we can greet with "Chih, Your question is very interesting….." In this way, we know who is talking to whom. We do not need a greeting if we respond to the discussion questions and/or to the entire class.

·      Post early: Post your thoughts early so your good ideas won't be taken, particularly responding to the original discussion question in 1^st posting period.

In our lesson discussion feedback, we provide both individual qualitative and quantitative feedback to help you to support your learning.  The quantitative feedback is based on your individualized personal learning analytic data.  The purpose is to help you to understand your lesson discussion performance throughout the class by comparing yourself, to classmates, the whole class, and previous classes.  Learning analytic is an emerging instructional technology to support us to build our PLEs. I hope you will find them useful to your learning.  Extracting these individualized data isn't easy in BBLearn system. I will do my best to provide you with individualized data to help you to organize your PLE.  Quantity doesn't represent our learning performance.  So we have qualitative feedback to help us to improve our lesson discussion performance.

 

I think we have many quality postings although our average postings were below the historical average. We do focus on the quality of the discussion not just quantity.  Without a certain level of quantity, the quality could be limited. I hope we will have both positive quality and quantity discussions in upcoming discussions.