Unit 3 Blog

 

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 Online Discussions                       

After reading all the advice on how to engage students in discussion, I had a couple of thoughts. The first is that I wished we had all this information during a time when it was most needed. It may have been out there, but to look for something you have to know what you are looking for. There was no time to plan or even think of what we needed. We were evacuated from our classrooms with no warning. We were scuttled from our classrooms with no time to think of what we should take home. There was no time to prepare for the crisis that lay ahead with the fear that learning would come to a halt.

The second thought I had was that some of the suggestions for initiating discussion online are similar to what I practice in my classroom. Wish I had thought of having my students do research and then initiated a discussion online, like I do in my classroom. I agree with Ng (2020) that you can't expect students to fully engage in a discussion without first having students prepare to discuss that topic. The objective is to have students analyze what they are being asked to read as part of the research so that they can offer a different perspective and apply what they have learned to the discussion (Ferlazzo, 2020). To increase the number of students participating in the discussion the addition of a forum would allow all students to respond to the question or scenario and then respond to other student's responses (Ferlazzo, 2020).

For these reasons, I feel that there should be asynchronous and synchronous online teaching. Teaching a concept would be done synchronously, and then the independent part of the learning would be done asynchronously. The synchronous part of online learning for k-12 is needed as younger students do not have the same level of self regulation to stay the course when devoid of human integration. This was quite evident during the pandemic.

I do believe that online without a human social interaction dismisses. We are human and so designed psychologically to need human interaction. How much we need depends on our age, prior experiences with learning and technology, as well as our cultural norms. 

For example, there were only two classes in my entire 3 years here at TCSPP and no classes in my master's program at Concordia Utah that had me work with my colleagues via Zoom. Nevertheless, those two projects in which I worked with my peers through Zoom was enough social interaction to carry me for the first year. In my second year, I had a couple of one on one Zoom Meetings to assist me with understanding a statistic assignment and a couple meeting with my chair and also with the IRB. Those have been rather recent. There was a very long time where I had no face-to-face contact with instructors. I have yet to have any more social interactions with my colleagues. Not having those makes me feel very much as if I am completing one of those old through the mail courses. Being able to have an academic discussion face-to-face makes you feel connected.

For all the reasons stated above, I would add a discussion forum in which students will be given time to research (Ng, 2020), and through analysis of the assigned readings, provide a different perspective (Ferlazzo, 2020). Once students have answered the prompt in a forum, and students have had time to review at least 3 other students' responses, the discussion would continue online synchronously where I would facilitate the discussion to keep it going (Ng, 2020)

References

Ferlazzo, L. (2020). Effective strategies for using online student-discussion boards. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-effective-strategies-for-using-online-student-discussion-boards/2020/10

Ng, J. (2020). 4 tips for productive online discussions. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/article/4-tips-productive-online-discussions

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reading all the FffffffFadvice on how to eFngageI believe that online learning requires both - synchronous learning to guide students through the learning and then a time to do independent work (asynchronous leaning). students in discussion, I had a couple of thoughts. The first is that I wished we had all this information during a time when it was most needed. It may have been out there, but to look for something you have to know what you are looking for. 

The second thought I had was that some of the suggestions for initiating discussion I practice in my classroom. Wish I had thought of having my students do research and then initiated a discussion online, like I do in my classroom. 

I do believe that online without a human social interaction dismisses. We are human and so designed psychologically to need human interaction. How much we need depends on our age, prior experiences with learning and technology, as well as our cultural norms. 

There were only two classes in my entire 3 years here at TCSPP and no classes in my master's program at Concordia Utah that had me work with my colleagues via Zoom. Those two projects in which I worked with my peers through Zoom was enough social interaction to carry me for the first year. In my second year, I had a couple of one on one Zoom Meetings to assist me with understanding a statistic assignment. However, I have yet to have any more social interactions with my colleagues. Not having those makes me feel very much as if I am completing one of those old through the mail courses.