Collaborative Open Webcasting Community
Time to put a little fun into online learning–with good reason: ‘Emotional arousal helps the brain learn’. Medina, Brain Rules (2008). Joni Dunlap leads the IDLive team in considering how to incorporate fun into the fabric of a course to provide a more stimulating learning experience.
Having recently discussed the need to avoid cognitive overload in online courses, we take a step back to consider whether or not cognitive overload is actually an issue. As Arlene Walker-Andrews, Associate Provost and Psychology Professor at the University of Montana, points out: “I do not believe that attention and cognitive capacities are limited. In my view, attention shouldn’t be considered a finite resource, rather it should be characterized as “attending,” which suggests flexible, skilled action. Recent theories about attention suggest that although not all stimuli are analyzed, nonattended stimuli are not all filtered out and their impact on learning and memory will vary depending on relevance and/or personal experience.” Great stuff!
Join Arlene and the ID team this week to listen to what this means for individualizing the learning experience and tailoring instructional strategies to the cognitive abilities of learners.
Arlene’s Notes for the Discussion
Chat Transcipt: Jun 11, 2010 10:05:22 AM – IDL 21: COGNITIVE OVERLOAD ‘REVISITED’
John Graves, the lead faculty in the Master of Science in Science Education program at Montana State University, Bozeman, spends 30 minutes sharing over a decade of expertise in the design and delivery of online courses. John touches on a number of key considerations in terms of engaging learners in the early stages of an online course:
This week is the final part in a series exploring the Community of Inquiry Framework. Jennifer Maddrell leads us in an exploration of the practical dimensions of establishing teaching presence in online courses.
According to Garrison (2009), Social presence is “the ability of participants to identify with the community (e.g., course of study), communicate purposefully in a trusting environment, and develop inter-personal relationships by way of projecting their individual personalities.”
Defining, creating and maintaining social presence in online courses is the focus of this week’s show and is part of a three-part series that considers the Community of Inquiry framework.
This week, we were joined by Maggi Savin Baden, professor of Higher Education Research at Coventry University in the UK. She has been investigating problem based learning for a number of years and is currently pursuing research into applications within Second Life.
Topics include:
This week, Jennifer Maddrell discusses the focus for her dissertation work: the Community of Inquiry framework: http://communitiesofinquiry.com/. Her primary research question focusses on whether there is a relationship between learner’s perceptions of "community" and actual learning outcomes as identified by grades, papers, tests, etc. The discussion took a very practical turn as we sought to identify particular strategies that may be used by instructors to develop community within online courses.
This week Cammy Bean interviewed Robert Squires about how he became involved in Instructional Design as well as current design projects.
Texts mentioned in the discussion:
Mark Pegrum: From Blogs to Bombs
Brinck, Gergle and Wood: Designing Websites that Work: Usability for the Web
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Chat:
This week we spoke with Mary Engstrom, Associate Director of Extended Learning Services, about plans for a revised program for supporting faculty developing online courses at The University of Montana. The proposed plan is available at: http://instructionaldesigning.org/content/draft-faculty-development-process. Please feel free to comment.
Due to a few technical difficulties, we didn’t get too far into the Bridget Arend article, http://www.thejeo.com/Archives/Volume6Number1/Arendpaper.pdf. However, Mary gives a nice overview of the key points, and we have tabled the ‘discussion on discussions’ for an upcoming session. Some good notes included in the chat transcript a little later on.
Show 0 of Instructional Design Live. The co-presenters introduce themsleves and discuss their non-prescriptive ideas about what Instructional Design means. Further commentary available at: http://learningvisions.blogspot.com/2010/01/recap-of-instructional-design-live.html
Further discussion at http://www.instructionaldesigning.org
