Innovations in Online Learning » Social Learning

The Power of Peer Critique!

sonja thomson — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 14:55:14 +0000

Throughout the Digital Art and Design course, students are asked to publicly share their art design work via the use of blogs. Peers use discussion threads to critique their peer’s art designs while the instructor monitors to ensure that communication is respectful, relevant, and useful. Peer critique is an interactive, formative and dynamic process that inspires enhanced performance in an authentic setting.

For peer feedback to be an effective instructional strategy, the instructor should supply clear deadlines, a rubric/guidelines, a sample critique, and course credit or incentives for peer reviewers. If peer feedback and critique are embedded throughout the course, it is not viewed as an activity but as a necessary step in the process of creating quality work.

Peer feedback allows for gaining insight from multiple perspectives, while the public posting allows for self reflection; Students see the differences in their quality of work, which in turns helps them calibrate superior performance in the class and model top performance.

Using Technology to Foster Authentic Learning

Lisa Rapple — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 17:55:29 +0000

In the Communications for Professionals course, a professional, collaborative online environment is created to challenge students to tap into their existing knowledge and experiences, and incorporate newly learned skills when presenting themselves in a professional venue. It is intended to build self-confidence and professionalism into their communications.

This activity is designed to encourage participatory learning. The course instructor is charged with channeling the students interests and aptitudes into a more professional focus. By molding online and collaborative abilities and interests into academic pursuits, an authentic learning environment is created. While focusing on discipline-specific learning goals, the instructor scaffolds the learners through a series of activities that increase in complexity, thus shepherding the development of higher-order thinking skills.

Scaffolding activities: A series of role-play introductions to specific work environments, where each work environment is introduced by a first -and report from current employees and business owners (via video).

Collaborative social environment: A course blog was created specifically for the course, while also being open to the academic community. By placing the students in a collaborative social environment like a blog and scaffolding the activities, the students can role-play authentic learning activities.

It’s Easier to Learn What You Already Know: Using Facebook in Class Discussions

david wolf — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 18:39:07 +0000

Social media poses an interesting challenge to online educators. As educators, it is imperative that we understand the potential uses and implications of including social media in our pedagogy, but oftentimes, our own students know more than we do about what’s out there, what’s working, how, and why. Our task, then, has become two-fold: Harness the positive and collaborative aspects of social media in online learning while still effectively teaching and preparing our students for life outside the virtual classroom.

In Dr. John Beckham’s section of the Diversity in the Workplace course, we are piloting the use of Facebook in student discussions. Using their course email, students are asked to “friend” other students taking the course. Providing a live stream in the course via Facebook (below) allows students to communicate with each other while also seamlessly participating in class discussions. Their discussion posts are also sent to their Facebook wall, which effectively acts as an electronic portfolio of their discussion posts.

Integrating the Facebook live stream with course discussion offers several unexpected advantages. Because of its popularity, most students are familiar with the Facebook interface. Students can readily and easily harness the powerful interactivity of the Facebook platform and effortlessly create a virtual e-portfolio of their own discussion participation throughout the course. Another benefit is the mobile accessibility of Facebook accounts, which make it easy for students to access their own profile, and thus, the activity taking place in the course discussions, via their cell phones and/or other mobile devices.

Teaching Foreign Language Online

lisa snyder — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:50:16 +0000

Developing new and innovative ways to teach foreign language, CDL is incorporating VoiceThread into various courses, including Spanish for the World of Business. VoiceThread is a digital medium for housing, displaying and distributing nearly any type of media (images, documents and videos). VoiceThread allows students taking the Spanish course to collect media files, display them, and comment on them in 5 different ways - by using a microphone, a telephone, using written text, an audio file, or recording a video with a web cam. Students can create and share their media with anyone, anywhere.

Additionally, VoiceThread hosts group conversations, allowing students to practice their Spanish by sharing their thoughts on their media collections – in this case, their most loved and most hated foods.

Students taking this course also use VoiceThread to market a product of their choice, in Spanish. The product can be food, computer software, services, a store, etc. Students write their own advertisement and present it to the class, while the instructor and other students will record and share their own comments, in Spanish.