OTL 101 – Post 5

Note to our regular Science Anywhere readers: This post is another assignment for the TRU Online Teaching and Learning (OTL) courses I need to complete.  If you are interested in these OTL courses go to TRUBox. They are free.

Post 5 Begins Here –

This activity asks me the following:

1) Take a look back through your previous posts and apply the ‘Showcase’ category to your best work.  Write a few words about why you think that post or those posts stand out.

Answer:  I’ve chosen Post #2 as my best. I think I expressed my thoughts and questions most clearly in that post.

2) What are 2-3 of the most important ideas that you have studied during this course?

Answer:

• The Community of Inquiry (CoI) idea was interesting. It seems to me that any learning situation, discussion, or even just a conversation where the participants are trying to discover new knowledge about a matter could be considered a CoI as long as there are 2 or more participants. By making observations, posing questions and theories to one another, and testing the answers the participants should be able to arrive at a more thorough understanding of the situation or body of knowledge at hand. This is not unlike science itself.
• Cognitive Presence was, in a way, stating things that are obvious upon reflection. A student must be present (in some sense) and cognizant to learn any course material. The practical inquiry model gives the theoretical steps required to implement cognitive presence in a learning situation. However the information in the course was kept at a very theoretical level, and exactly how these ideas are supposed to be implemented in an actual on-line learning situation is left for the OLFM to discover.
• Feedback is one of our most powerful tools for affecting student understanding and progress. It is also the method by which we maintain our communication with a student. Using it effectively will allow us to support the CoI for a course and guide the Cognitive presence process.

3) What are 2-3 questions that you have as a result of this course? Identify ways that you can begin to answer those questions.

Answer:

• Question 1: Exactly how is the Cognitive Presence concept using the Practical Inquiry model implemented in continuous entry on-line courses? What software or on-line constructs will allow implementation of these theoretical ideas? I’ll be watching in the subsequent OTL course materials for answers to this question and will also be paying attention to the features built into the course management system that will support cognitive presence.
• Question 2: After reading the theory about the levels of cognitive function, I’m interested to see how the learning outcomes and assessment questions for the courses I’ll be teaching will be written to address the deeper levels of cognitive skill. When I can view my courses I’ll look for this.

4) Identify 2-3 specific goals that you would like to achieve in light of what you have learned about cognitive presence, approaches to learning, and feedback;

>  make sure that your goals are SMART.

>  identify strategies you intend to use in order to meet your goals.

Answer:

• Question 1 above defines my first goal.  I’m interested to see practical application of the Cognitive Presence concept using the Practical Inquiry Model (CP&PIM) in the courses I’ll be teaching. I understand that I’ll have a couple weeks to peruse a course before students are actually placed in it. When I receive access to my courses, I’ll analyze the course structure with CP&PIM in mind. That should give me an idea how CP&PIM is implemented in TRU on-line courses and will also allow me to plan how I can best support that implementation.
• My second goal relates to my question 2 above. I want to know how the deeper levels of cognitive function are addressed in the courses I’ll be teaching. During the two week perusal period I’ll read the learning outcomes and sample the assessment questions so I can determine this. this will indicate how I can best support deeper learning in my courses.
• My third goal is more open ended and cannot be accomplished until I have students to work with. Over my 30+ years of teaching I have used feedback to students extensively. Unlike in the past, I’ll be keeping Hattie’s definitions for the various levels of feedback in mind while writing feedback for my students.

— Ron Evans (October 2015)

OTL 101 – Post 4

Note to our regular Science Anywhere readers: This post is another assignment for the TRU Online Teaching and Learning (OTL) courses I need to complete.  If you are interested in these OTL courses go to TRUBox. They are free.

Post 4 Begins Here –

This activity asks me the following:

1) Are there any gaps between your practice of offering feedback to students and what Hattie recommends?

Answer:

1. When I wrote the Space Science and Astronomy (SSA) on-line lab science courses that I taught for North Island College (NIC), I put automated feedback into the on-line quiz questions so students would receive automatic feedback as soon as they submitted their quiz. Often this feedback included references to where the student could find more information on the topic of the question. This would have been ‘Task Level’ feedback that was always immediate, concise, directed toward the specific task of the question, and only received after the question had been attempted. Most of this feedback was disconfirmative, but I occasionally had feedback returned with a correct answer to reinforce the concept the question asked about or provide additional information.
2. If the question asked the student to do a calculation and they got it wrong, I would either give them the solution in the automated feedback and or direct them to the place where I covered this type of calculation in the course. (The SSA courses covered a number of concepts that required the student to perform a calculation although these were kept to a minimum.)  This would have been a combination ‘task level’ and ‘process level’ feedback because in addition to giving them the information they needed to solve the problem it also gave them the process I intended them to use to solve that kind of problem.
3. When I graded lab reports the feedback was written individually for each student. This was very time consuming and as a result I spent most of my time grading lab reports for those courses. This would have been a combination of ‘task level’, ‘process level’, and ‘self-regulation level’ feedback as it included comments on how the lab exercise should have been performed, the self-consistency of the lab report, and in some cases even how the student might more clearly express them self in English.
4. In all my feedback I was careful not to criticize the student personally and to phrase things in ways that would hopefully reduce the student’s stress so that they could deal with the course subject and not an emotional response to my feedback. There were a few cases where this proved difficult, but I think that even in most of those instances I was able get the student to deal with the course material and not emotions. These efforts would probably have fit into the process and self-regulation levels of feedback defined by Hattie.
5. When grading lab reports I always tried to find something positive to say to students even if the report was abysmal. In general, I would also commend students on work well done. This was done to build the student’s moral, self-confidence, and often to overcome their math anxiety.  This kind of feedback would probably be classified as the ‘self-level’ of feedback, but since the praise was for specific work it would also carry components of ‘task level’ feedback. My thought was that if I could lower the student’s anxiety level, they would be able to focus on and perform the tasks I was asking of them to the best of their ability. I know myself, that I don’t think as clearly when I’m anxious as I do when I’m relaxed, so I don’t entirely agree with Hattie on avoiding the ‘self-level’ of feedback. I do agree that ‘self-level’ feedback should be used carefully and related to specific tasks or it would become over used and hollow.
6. I think my feedback was generally in line with what Hattie recommends at least in my intent, but I’m sure there were gaps. For instance, the vast majority of my feedback was at the ‘task level’.  While I think I unintentionally did some ‘self-regulation level’ of feedback, I’m sure I could have done this kind of feedback more often and intentionally. The same would go for ‘process level’ feedback.

2) In what ways can you improve the effectiveness of the feedback that you provide for your students?

Answer:

1. When I was teaching the SSA courses for NIC, I was not aware of the Hattie’s definitions for the various levels of feedback and so did not think of it in those terms. While I’m sure most of my feedback was in line with Hattie’s ideas, I’m also sure my feedback methods could be improved. Thinking about it, I suspect my feedback mostly lacked the ‘self-regulation’ level, was only occasionally at the processes level, and was mostly at the task level. In the future I’ll need to keep Hattie’s feedback definitions in mind and try to frame my feedback so that it is more balanced between the various feedback levels as needed.
2. In the courses I’ll be delivering for TRU, I will probably not be asked to compose the quizzes so it will be the people writing those course who will have to incorporate the automated feedback in the on-line quizzes and assignments. By its nature, automated feedback will be very much at the ‘task level’. I’m not sure how it could be made more sensitive to the individual student’s cultural because this feedback needs to be incorporated into the automated activities before we know who our students will be. However, if it is kept as culturally neutral as possible and focuses on the task at hand it, should still be quite effective.  I, as the OLFM for these courses, will need to monitor student responses to various questions and if necessary intervene to make sure the student understands the automated feedback that is given.
3. By their nature, on-line courses (and particularly continuous entry courses) make it difficult to take advantage of the power of peers feedback mentioned by Hattie. This is not impossible in the on-line environment and the section on cognitive presence hinted at some possible ways this could be incorporated using a Community of Inquiry approach. However, from a practical point of view, the specifics of how this will be accomplished are still not clear to me.  This means that, as the OLFM for the astronomy courses, I’ll have to watch for opportunities to nurture this kind of a feedback process.

— Ron Evans (October 2015)

OTL 101 – Post 3

Note to our regular Science Anywhere readers: This post is another assignment for the TRU Online Teaching and Learning (OTL) courses I need to complete.  If you are interested in these OTL courses go to TRUBox. They are free.

If you are interested in the astrobiology course or another course, go to Coursera and check out the courses they offer there.  If you don’t care about getting credit they are free, but if you want credit then they want some money.  This astrobiology course is an introductory course so it is fairly basic but contains some interesting information.

Post 3 Begins Here –

This activity asks me the following:

Using either one of your own courses or an open course on the internet (Coursera, EdX or another source, preferably in your subject area), create a blog post in which you discuss the following:

Note –  Since the courses I’ll be teaching for TRU are not ready and I have not seen them yet, I can’t use the intended learning outcomes for those courses. However, I’m currently auditing a Coursera course: “Astrobiology and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life”. It’s fairly basic and not exactly in my field (physics, astrodynamics, astronomy), but its close and for me it is related to writing science fiction, particularly if you want your alien characters to be plausible. So I’ll use the first Week of that course for this post.

1) What are the intended learning outcomes of the course? Do the learning outcomes reflect high-level cognitive skills or low-level skills (pay attention to the verbs)?

Answer:  The learning outcomes are not explicitly mentioned in this course, but there are several things that are mentioned that I believe are the intended learning outcomes of the course.  These are found in the third video (not where I would have placed them):

“What we’ll learn:

1. Basic concepts that underpin the study of astrobiology
2. Some history of life on Earth
3. How we search for life beyond Earth
4. The future of human life beyond Earth
5. Some social implications of astrobiology
6. Difference between science and sensationalism.”

Since the only verb used here is “learn”, these are not expressed in a way that makes it clear what level of cognitive skills the course authors were intending.  However, I’d say the first 2 are most likely looking at low level cognitive skills and the kinds of questions asked in the first couple assessments indicates this to be the case.  I think all of these learning outcomes could develop higher level cognitive skills if they were re-written.  I have only just started this course, so it is difficult to say what level of cognitive skills the course will attempt to achieve in the later sections.

2) How is student learning assessed in the course (essays, quizzes, journals, machine-gradable tests, portfolios)?

Answer:  Assessment appears to be entirely by on-line machine marked multiple choice quizzes. There are single answer and multiple answer questions. No questions have asked me to apply the knowledge being given so far.

3) In what ways are the intended learning outcomes and the assessments aligned or not?

Answer:  So far the course has only addressed the first 2 learning outcomes and there were no questions that required higher cognitive functions, so I would say up to this point the assessments are aligned with the learning outcomes as they’re written.

4) Identify 2-3 items or assessments that are worded in such a way that they limit students to a unistructural or multistructural response at best and re-write them so that they require a relational response at worst and include the results in your post.

Answer: Item 1: Looking at the first learning outcome, “We’ll learn the basic concepts that underpin the study of astrobiology”, if you wanted this to require higher cognitive skills then this could be re-stated something like, “The student will be able to apply the basic concepts of astrobiology to unique situations that might be found on distant planets.” Then a possible assessment question could give the student a planetary scenario and ask the student to apply the basic concepts of astrobiology to determine if life was plausible on that planet.  This would assess the student’s ‘relational’ understanding. To test the highest cognitive level, ‘extended abstract’, the student could be asked to hypothesize what form life might take on that planet. However, this may require a form of assessment other than simple machine gradable multiple choice questions.

Item 2: During one of the assessments there was a question that asked about the base pairs of DNA (A, T, G, C) and the student had to choose the choice that effectively said “A always links to T and visa versa, and G always links to C and visa versa.” This is what was given in the video, so it only required memorization to answer this question.  Hence, this question tests the student’s surface understanding.

To test the student’s deeper understanding, this question could be re-written to read something like:

1. Given one side of a DNA strand contains the base pair sequence T-A-T-C-G-A, what base pair sequence would the complimentary strand of DNA have?
   1. A-G-C-T-A-T
   2. G-C-G-A-T-C
   3. A-T-A-G-C-T
   4. T-A-T-C-G-A

Then the student would have to apply the knowledge that A links to T and G links to C to discover the correct complimentary sequence. (It’s answer 3 by the way. 😉 )

— Ron Evans (September 2015)

OTL 101: Post 2

Note to our regular Science Anywhere readers: This post is another assignment for the TRU Online Teaching and Learning (OTL) courses I need to complete.  If you are interested in these OTL courses go to TRUBox. They are free.

Post 2 Begins Here –

This activity asks me to answer a ‘couple of questions’ about Cognitive Presence.  I’ve chosen the following three questions:

1) What do you know now that you did not know prior to starting the course?

Answer:  The term “Cognitive Presence” is new to me.  More precisely this usage of these terms is new to me since we all know that a student must be present (in some sense) and cognizant to learn any course material.  Hence, I’m trying to work through how this concept, as expressed in this course, can be applied during the delivery of an on-line course.  The OTL 101 course material is highly theoretical and never mentions a particular implementation method other than the generic “computer conferencing”.  This implies to me that we might achieve “cognitive presence” in an online learning environment by employing an OLFM* moderated forum (or similar online construct) where students will be expected to collaboratively explore course content in an effort to gain a working knowledge of the information and skills presented in the course.  Given the ubiquity of mobile technology this ‘forum’ should be mobile friendly while still allowing desktop interaction.

2) What gaps or discrepancies do you notice between what your Wordle showed in Post 1 and what you have learned so far in Lesson 1?

Answer:  In my first post for this course I expressed the idea that communication with the student was of ultimate importance. I see no discrepancy between that idea and the cognitive presence concept, but cognitive presence using the practical inquiry model of implementation indicates that the communication should be more nuanced on the part of the OLFM to provide ‘trigger events’ and guide the ‘exploration’, ‘integration’, and ‘resolution’ activities.  It also indicates that much of the communication should be public (within the online class) among students and not simply between the OLFM and the student.

3) What questions would you like to explore on the topic of cognitive presence?

Answer:  It is not yet clear to me how the cognitive presence concept using the practical inquiry model of implementation will work in a first year continuous entry online science course, but perhaps an implementation strategy will be suggested in future sections of these OTL courses.  This is something I’ll be watching for and thinking about.

Note – The diagrams and tables do not show in the article: Critical Thinking, Cognitive Presence, and Computer Conferencing in Distance Education.

— Ron Evans (September 2015)

*OLFM = On-Line Faculty Member

OTL 101: Post 1

Note to our regular Science Anywhere readers: As a condition of my employment with TRU I have to complete 3 mini courses relating to online education. What follows is my answers to the first assignment. It is not the “more interesting post” I promised last week. 😉

If you are interested in these Online Teaching and Learning courses go to: http://elearning.trubox.ca

Post 1 Begins Here –

This activity asks:

Please create a new post on your own blog and introduce yourself. Your introduction should be an image created at wordle.net using text gathered from the following online searches and pasted into Wordle:

Answer:  (Note – I was unable to get Wordle working in a reasonable amount of time, so I’ve chosen to answer these questions in the WordPress editor.  I hope that’s OK.)

I retired from North Island College just over a year ago and have been trying my hand at writing science fiction since. There are some significant differences between writing courses and writing fiction so it is a bit of a learning curve for me. With my partner, Gina Bennett, I have finished one novel to the beta stage and hope to have it ready to self-publish in the not too distant future. Beyond that we have ideas for other stories, some of which I’m working on as time permits. I recently accepted an open Learning position with TRU supporting their astronomy courses.

1) description of your favourite vacation spot.

Answer:  We don’t have a preferred vacation spot, but BC offers quite a few. We mostly visit our kids and other relatives on holidays. This year we spent 5 days learning about the community of Hope because we are seriously considering moving there when Gina retires in the next year or so.

2) synopsis of the last novel that you read.

Answer:  Here are a couple sentences from the Wikipedia entry for “The Martian”: The Martian is the first published novel by American author Andy Weir. … the story follows an American astronaut, Mark Watney, as he becomes stranded alone on Mars and must improvise in order to survive. …

If you are interested in the entire Wikipedia entry go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_%28Weir_novel%29

I liked this novel because the science was kept rigorously real and it was simply a good story.

3) your answers to the following questions in 2-3 sentences:

a) What is the most important characteristic of high quality online learning environments and why it is important?

Answer:  The most important characteristic of an online learning environment (indeed any learning environment) is communications. Students must be connected with early and responded to promptly throughout the course. Without good, prompt communications student will flounder, lose interest, and not complete.

b) What is one thing that you have learned about teaching online (or face-to-face if you haven’t taught online) in the last year and how has it impacted your practice?

Answer:  I didn’t teach during the last year, but from my experience of many years teaching on line, I’ll reiterate my answer above. Communications with students is paramount. When I was teaching SSA 100 and 101 for North Island College, I contacted the students when they entered my course and I responded to them quickly.

c) What questions do you have about online teaching and learning?

Answer:  At the moment I have no particular questions, but I’m sure, as we proceed, I will have questions that I will ask as they occur to me.

— Ron Evans (August 2015)