Online you get to know your students' minds not just their faces...

This weeks' questions for discussion articulated my own concerns with regard to online learning. "Social constructivists view the classroom as a community whose task is to develop knowledge...  where knowledge is socially constructed and distributed among co-participants". (Ormrod, Schunk, Gredler, p.19)

 The question arises: can online learning environment be as efficient as a traditional one? After I did some reading on online learning and reflected on my own experience as both an online English instructor and a student of an online course the answer I produced was emphatic YES! 

First, I'd like to share some interesting information provided by Nicholas C. Burbules a Professor at the University of Illinois. In his chapter Navigating the Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Pedagogy N.C. Burbules establishes four factors that are vital to creation of a successful online environment: interest, involvement, imagination, and interactivity.

Interest: "Problem solving, pacing, and alternative paths of investigation can all help promote interest. Good teaching and project design can elicit interest even with material that is not immediately interesting or of concern to students. Interesting subject matter is engaging and puzzling at a level that poses an attractive challenge to the learner. Too difficult and the student loses interest out of frustration; too simple and it loses its quality as a challenge". This resonates with Vygotskiy's Zone of Proximal Development and warns us against setting inadequate goals.

Involvement: "Learners are involved with things that matter to them". N.C. Burbules suggests that instructors instead of trying to make the subject matter important through extrinsic rewards, or sometimes through the threat of adverse consequences should use Dewey’s advice "to start where students are already motivated and eager to learn, and link our purposes to that engine". This presumption in my opinion is of key importance to construction of meaning as no knowledge or experience would be internalized if it is of no value to a learner.

Engaging: How do I engage the learner’s imagination with this problem? Burbules' examples include "simulations, models, case studies, or narratives that construct a plausible version of reality and allow room for the participant to interpolate or extrapolate new content as they work to make sense of it." Those practices are employed to create social context for learning.

Interactivity: to facilitate interactions between students and the learning situation instructors should make use of "team projects, multiple channels of communication, opportunities for open deliberation and for private, personal reflection on course activities". Thus, the constructivist principle of social interaction with knowledgeable members of society is realized.

Finally, as an online instructor I can say that I managed to realize  Interest, involvement and imagination but I still struggle with creating an opportunity for my students to interact with one another as I work in individual programs of "face-to-face" instruction via Skype video conference. However, as I plan to start an online English school I intend to create a learning community where students would be able to interact in a meaningful and productive way through the use of team projects and multiple channels of communication.

Besides, as a student of a given online classroom I would like to note that a vital component of "social presence" seems to be lacking in our learning community. I have no problems with social presence of Dr.Paige (he has an instructor's profile with a PICTURE besides talking to me through my gradebook and discussion board). But I struggle to perceive my fellow students as real people. I think that would be solved by a profile each of us could create with an avatar picture that displayed under each comment of a certain student. Also, I would like to have an opportunity to interact with my peers through multiple channels while engaged in team projects. I often feel alienated and communication with higher degree of social presence would certainly solve this problem for me and those with similar issues. 

N.C. Burbules' practice shows that social presence can be and should be achieved in an online classroom. A good example of team work in Burbules' online classroom (as a means of social presence establishment) is White Papers on Technology Issues for Educators.

References:

Nicholas C. Burbules, "Navigating the advantages and disadvantages of online pedagogy." Learning, Culture, and Community: Multiple Perspectives and Practices in Online Education, Caroline Haythornthwaite and Michelle M. Kazmer, eds. 

Computers ≥ Brain?

Dichotomy of human brain and artificial intelligence is both a popular Sci-Fi topic and a serious subject for research. I remember watching Matrix sequel and thinking “50 more years and we may as well end up there, sitting like stupid eggs in a basket and dreaming life. Machines will rule the world.” It seems though that human mind is much more complex than any machine invented so far.

Hans Moravec in his article When will computer hardware match the human brain? compares processing and memory capacity of the artificial intellect and the human brain. Based on technological trends of the last century he predicts that computers that match general intellectual performance of the human brain will be available and cheap in the 2020s. For now home computer’s intelligence matches a spider’s one, and Deep Blue Chess machine has as many MIPS (million instructions per second) as a mouse.

However, the point of this week’s material was that computers are unable of “emotional thought” which plays a crucial role in human processing and encoding of the information. The importance of imagery and emotions in cognitive processes are stressed in the article We Feel, Therefore We Learn: The Relevance of Affective and Social Neuroscience to Education by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and Antonio Damasio. When it comes to learning many teachers fail to recognize that humans are social and emotional creatures and the contributors present the evidence of emotion playing a crucial role in many cognitive processes. Further in the article it runs as “hidden emotional processes underlie our apparently rational realworld decision making and learning”. As a conclusion, the contributors express their hope that better understanding of neurobiological underpinning of cognition will provide a basis for innovation in the design of learning environments.

Personally, I enjoy technology to the fullest. And I don’t believe in Terminator-like possibilities. Machines are ever destined to remain tools, with higher MIPS than me probably, but never as creative, adaptable and resourceful. 

References: Moravec, Hans (1998). "When will computer hardware match the human brain?". Journal of Evolution and Technology 1.

Immordino-Yang, M.H., & Damasio, A.R. (2007). We feel, therefore we learn: The relevance of affective and social neuroscience to education. Mind, Brain and Education, 1(1), 3-10

Mind Boggling? Not really.

I'd like to devote my first posting to Brooklynn A. Welden - an Assistant Professor of Diplomacy and Gender Studies at the International University of Humanities and Social Sciences, San Jose, Costa Rica. I met her when I was considering Walden as an international student. She is my colleague at an online English school and she was guiding my steps through the admission process. Actually writing this blog has a lot to do with her being such an inspiration. Well, today strangely enough I've got an email from her with a quote that best describes my feelings about this course so far "If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called Research."- A. Einstein.

To go through many things I didn't understand and among them technology the least worrying I did a lot of contemplation and here I will try to sum it all up.

I tried to provide a 3 dimensional outlook on what learning is: theoretical, practical and spiritual.

Thus, all learning theories of the week were summed up in a concise and logical manner in Meredith's Musings blog created by a previous student of this course at Walden. It provided many good examples on how I can improve on organizing, reflecting and mind-mapping information. Besides, it is an excellent stop on route to further immersion into the program.

Another blog I had to explore is the blog that would give some practical ground to exemplify what I need to use in my classroom as an online instructor and that also enables me to see how I can extend my instruction over cyber time and space. Teacher Reboot Camp felt as if written by me a while since today. I have been thinking about starting a language community where all of my students would be able to share their experience and learn through interaction with one another. It seems to be a corner stone of the course presented. Are you with me Dr. Paige?

The last blog and my pet lamb is the Talent Code not exactly an educational resource but more of a psychological coaching program which I ran into translating a self help book for Dr. Joe Vitale. As the author of the Talent's Code Daniel Coyle puts it “great talents are a product of the following combination: deep practice, ignition, and master coaching.” I found his amusing 3 Deadly Habits: How NOT to Develop Your Talent resonating with some of the learning theory we dwelled on this week.

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM “In order to develop your talent slowly, you should regard your talent as your own private creation, and your challenges as private challenges that only you can solve. Don’t look elsewhere for guidance; certainly not to other performers.”

BEHAVIORISM: “In order to develop your talent slowly, you should never, ever review your performance. You should regard errors as unfortunate, unavoidable events, and do your best to immediately hide their existence or, even better, erase them from your memory.

And COGNITIVE THEORY: In order to develop your talent slowly, you should approach each practice and performance as if you’ve never, ever done it before. You should be casual. You should avoid any repetition of actions, thoughts, or patterns of any kind, and instead make every day completely different.

I think many instructors can find it helpful to have a look at Coyle’s EXPLORE YOUR TALENTS section which stands proudly in my teaching kit. I use it to identify a learning bug of a student I’ve got this time 