John R. Savery,
Ph.D.
Associate
Professor,
College of
Education,
The University
of Akron
Abstract:
Teaching a
graduate course on Strategies for Online Teaching has provided an opportunity
to practice action research with experienced classroom teachers. The goal of
the course is to prepare teachers to become effective online instructors based
on the assumption that some form of online teaching will become part of their
future careers. The recursive nature of the course – thinking about being
an online instructor while engaging in an online course as a student –
has allowed all participants to reflect on the critical success factors and
implementation challenges of this learning environment. This instructional
approach appears to avoid the pitfalls of the goal-driven (but narrow) project
focus while maintaining the strengths of an inquiry approach in the development
of self-regulatory learning behaviors and the ability to be a reflective
practitioner. The action learning approach promotes the integration of thinking
and doing, improves transfer and the integration of instructional theory with
instructional practice.
Purpose/Context
Designing and
implementing effective online instruction combines knowledge of the
instructional design process, theories of learning, and skills with message
design and the online learning environment. The purpose of this paper is to
describe the instructional approach used to create an authentic learning
environment that affords students the opportunity to experience and reflect
upon the complexities, interactions and challenges of creating effective
instructional materials for online delivery. While the initial planning,
organizing, and managing of this multi-faceted approach is time-consuming, it is
a cumulative process that becomes easier with each iteration.
The context for
this paper is a graduate course in an Instructional Technology (IT) masters
degree program. The majority of students in the program are teachers working in
a K-12 educational setting taking one or two courses per semester. The first
semester (Fall 2002) the course was taught in a hybrid fashion with
face-to-face meetings at the beginning, middle and end of the course. The
syllabus provided the usual information concerning course objectives,
assignments, due dates and other expectations. Students purchased a textbook with the key content in the
domain organized by chapters while supplemental readings were provided within
the WebCT course management system. The integrative or generative activity
(Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1992) was a project that
provided students working in teams or individually with an opportunity to apply
the strategies for online teaching to the practical task of developing and
delivering instruction in an online learning environment. The final product was
a WebCT course site that detailed the intended audience, intended learning
outcomes, the instructional strategies being employed and the instructional
materials.
Given that most
students in the class were practicing teachers, they tended to focus on
designing instructional materials for content they were planning to teach or
had taught in previous years. Thus, the products were typically lessons or
units in a narrowly defined content domain for their elementary or high school
students. The assignment criteria stressed the ÔappropriateÕ use of online
instruction so the congruence between audience and content and intended
outcomes was closely monitored. Mastering the intricacies of the WebCT in the
role of designer was a challenge for some students, but this skill deficit was
addressed through online instructional resources.
The general
framework for the course design was based on several years of research on the
design of learning environments that foster the development of student
ownership for learning (Honebein, Duffy, & Fishman, 1993; Savery &
Duffy, 1995; Savery, 1996; Savery, 1998; Wilson, 1996). The specifics with respect to learner
centered instruction were based on research summarized by McCombs (1993), the
observations of Resnick (1987) related to authentic learning experiences, the
concept of situated cognition (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989), the
concepts and strategies related to cognitive apprenticeship (Collins, Brown,
& Newman, 1989), the concepts associated with legitimate peripheral
participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991), and the over-arching guidance of
cognitive flexibility theory (Spiro, Feltovich, Jacobson, & Coulson, 1992).
The decision to approach online teaching and learning as a problem to focus
student learning was drawn from the extensive literature on the effectiveness
of problem-based learning (PBL) as an instructional strategy (Barrows, 1992;
Boud & Feletti 1997) – particularly in a content domain such as the
design of instruction which is essentially a problem-solving enterprise
(Jonassen, 2003). The decision to use projects as the focus of learner activity
was grounded in research on collaborative learning Kagan (1992), Johnson and
Johnson (1975, 1990) and research on strategies for effective use of projects
derived from Blumenfeld, Soloway, Marx, Krajcik, Guzdial, and Palinscar,
(1991), and Cohen (1994). Similarly, the need for students to construct their
knowledge in a social context that supports meaning-making was based on
research by Tharp and Gallimore, (1990) and Wertsch (1991).
Engaging
learners in an online course requires careful attention to a host of details.
This paper will describe the strategies developed and implemented to create the
online learning community that is fundamental to the success of this
instructional approach and the utilization over three years of new technologies
to enhance the learning environment. As noted by NCATE most teachers will teach
in the way in which they were taught. Thus, it was particularly
important that the instructor model best practices in online teaching if there
was hope to influence the practice of these teachers in the online classroom.
This modeling was accomplished through the transparent application of specific
strategies as identified in the BE VOCAL article (Savery, 2005) so that
students could see their implementation and comment on both their application
and utility. Students were challenged to self-assess their readiness to be
online students and to identify the characteristics that contributed to learner
success in this instructional environment. They were further challenged to
design an environment for their students that provided the necessary
instructional and social scaffolding to ensure learner success.
The use of
communication tools within WebCT was extensive – as it should be with any
online environment. The instructor sent broadcast emails and private emails to
students as part of class management. Chat sessions were used where
appropriate. The online threaded discussion forums were use extensively. Each
week (for the first half of the course) students were assigned two articles or
chapters on certain aspects of online teaching and learning to read and discuss.
A team of students was assigned to facilitate the discussion for each article.
The team members were assigned defined roles such as moderator (cognitive
focus), yenta (social/participation focus), summarizer (mid-discussion and
final summary) and researcher (extend discussion by providing relevant research
links). Assigning students to these four roles (per article) ensured at least
eight students each week would be actively engaged and provide peer pressure on
their classmates. Depending on the level of student engagement and the
development of the learning community an individual would be assigned the role
of ÔgoadÕ. The title for this role changed (devilÕs advocate, blood-letter,
quality control officer) and was determined by the class but the purpose was
consistent – someone with permission to challenge others, question
comments, and promote higher-order thinking in the discussions.
Collaborative
teams were created and assigned the task of creating a website that was an Ode
to a Color. This task was moderate in difficulty and conducted completely
online using the tools provided by the WebCT course management system to share
materials and develop their designs and products. The purpose of the task was
to learn how to collaborate online and the site judged best by the class
received a reward (chocolate is a great motivator) at the mid-course
face-to-face meeting.
In Fall 2005
student volunteers installed Skype on their computers and as a class we
explored the utility of voice communication as a component of online teaching.
The use of this technology will be expanded in the next offering – again
with awareness of how it could be used by students when they do their own
online teaching.
Data sources
include mid-course evaluations by students, standard end of course evaluations,
comments by students in surveys and within the WebCT discussion forums, and
samples of completed projects. Student designed learning environments were
evaluated by peers using a rubric as well as the instructor.
This action
learning approach has evolved through application with seven sections of
graduate students (N= 110) over three years. Student course evaluations have
been consistently high and comments have reflected the appreciation by the students
for the learning experience. Students in the role of Researcher have
contributed many excellent resources to the shared webliography for the course.
Many students use the learning environment created in the course as a component
of their electronic portfolio to demonstrate their competency in this area. As
the number of online courses within the masters degree program increases this
course has become important as a preparation for success in online learning.
The research on
teaching and learning is practically unanimous in support of active learning
– however, strategies for putting this approach into practice vary
widely. The procedures described in this paper (and in the BE VOCAL article
cited) are intended to address several practical aspects of the design and
management of an online instructional environment that promotes active
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