Online-learning have garnered great attention over the past few years and it has been accelerated to new heights during 2020’s virus pandemic. I am well versed with online learning as I have taken many courses via Thompson Rivers University and Athabasca University. The delivery of these courses have been smooth and effective as I believe their online courses have been made available to students for a long period of time, and the respective courses were diligently improved gradually with help of student feedbacks. It is also interesting to note that I also took part in the early stages of online learning during high school in 2008 and at the time; is was more commonly called distance-education. The delivery of these courses was a combination of online materials, exams and mandatory bi-weekly sessions with course instructors. Granted, the senior high school courses that I had taken was not a popular choice at the time as most students had preferred in-person classes rather than the online-delivery alternatives.
The readings from Week 3 provided valuable insight into the Col Framework and they are as follows: Social Presence, Teaching Presence, and Cognitive Presence. The author of Chapter 2’s readings Cathy Barnes, outlines the importance of humanizing online teaching and learning. Her article compliments Chapter 1’s discussion surround teaching online as instructional change.
The Col (Community of Inquiry) Framework depicts interrelated theories by Vygotsky, Dewy and others. The highlights of cognitive, instructor and social presence allows for the formation of a community. Dewy asserts that interaction is vital for students to adapt and learn from their surroundings; whereas Vygotsky’s social constructivist’s theory contend that knowledge is co-constructed within a community. The theory of constructivism establishes the importance for instructors to adapt their teaching styles to interpersonal and increased hands-on-approach (Brau, 2020). An online class community must be able closely relate to the in-person class counterparts.
The Community of Inquiry characterizes instructor presence as an important key component “for creating community and affecting learning outcomes” (Barnes, 2017). The aforementioned component is dominant with its inclusion of cognitive and social presence; because the instructor presence promotes social presence and heighten the sustainability of cognitive presence. Cathy Barnes also asserts this in a study carried-out by Shea and Bidjerano (2009). The Study discovered a high correlation (70%) between instructors’ ability to effectively cultivate teaching and social presences and students’ cognitive presence.
In the realm of pushing boundaries of educational delivery online, the importance of the presence of instructors should be considered highly important. While educational materials can be made available on any chosen platforms, it remains crucial for instructors to effectively communicate with students in their respective courses. In a traditional format of in-person classes, most students are accustomed to social interactions and one-on-one attention from instructors & TAs. This social interaction or presence can be closely replicated via myriad of ways. One option in particular is holding live-webinars online, as this calls for student’s attendance in courses and as well to help jump-start participation. In conjunction to live-webinars, the utilization of ZOOM meetings between student and instructors can help to resolve course material related questions. Furthermore, the practice of classes online and meetings help to anchor a combination of social, teaching, and cognitive presence.
A personal experience with the Moodle learning-platform via Thompson Rivers is as follows. The math course was well presented and structured in the Moodle platform. I was provided with easy access to the outline of the course, submission of required assignments, and as well, take part in quizzes and examinations. However a shortfall of this course was the lack of instructor’s presence. For example, all communications were carried out via email, which lead to uncertainty when the expected-responses will be received between all parties. In one particular instance, I messaged my instructor with a math question, and I was provided with a YouTube video with that depicted a robotic explanation of the math theory. My personal insight with online learning is that online class deliveries should closely mimic the experiences that of in-person classes, and the social presence of instructors should be prevalent.
References
Brau, B. (2020). Constructivism. In R. Kimmons & scaskurlu (Eds.), The Students’ Guide to Learning Design and Research. EdTech Books. https://edtechbooks.org/studentguide/constructivism
Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2), 87-105.
Kilgore, Whitney (2020). Humanizing Online Teaching and Learning: Stories from the Participants of the #HumanMOOC.
Great blog post Andrew! I agree that face-to-face instruction can be replicated in a variety of ways in an online setting. I’m happy to see that we both recognized the potential technologies such as Zoom have in creating spaces where students and instructors are able to foster a community by implementing social, teaching, and cognitive presence. I’ve had my fair share of difficult professors as well and I find that even if I am able to rely on other classmates in those circumstances it’s more reassuring when a professor is able to vocalize that I am heading down the right path. So I wholeheartedly agree that instructor presence is crucial in mitigating student anxiety and stress. This was a very informative post and I enjoyed reading about your past experiences with the Moodle learning platform as well as with the online courses offered within your high school! I’m looking forward to reading more of your posts!
Very insightful discussion! Instructors, as the core of any class, plays a critical role of helping, teaching, and directing students. I do miss the time back when we can all sit in a classroom, where we can interact with the professors and interact with our peers; and the professor would lead us to go from one question to the next. To me that’s what teaching and learning mean to me. Although we may not be able to go back to normal in the forseeable future, there are tools that can help to replicate that experience. For the instructors, it will a bit of learning curve for them, but as long as they understand the importance of their presence in the students’ learning process, I believe they can overcome these obstacles and continue to teach in high standards.