Teaching and Learning Online

New Models of Learning for a Connected World, Volume 2

Brian Sutton, Anthony Basiel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136277009
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Teaching and Learning Online, Volume 2, provides practical advice from academics, researchers, practitioners and designers who are currently engaged in defining, creating and delivering the increasingly important world of online learning. This powerful guide avoids trends in technology, instead focusing on the articulation and development of the learning theories that underpin the use of technology.

Topics covered include:

• Theory that informs practice – emerging models and understanding from academia;
• Research – new understandings of learning, collaborative sense-making, and learning preferences;
• The Practitioner view – real examples from around the world of ground-breaking developments in online learning that are transforming education, adult learning and corporate training;
• Guidance for designers and producers – pedagogical advice and skills for a range of people who may have had little exposure to the body of knowledge surrounding learning design;
• Looking to the future – what to expect in the next 5 to 10 years and how to prepare to take full advantage of the opportunities that an increasingly connected society will provide for learner-managed learning.

The second volume of this bestselling guide addresses key gaps in the available literature including the inequality of access to technologically enabled learning and cutting-edge design issues and pedagogies that will take us into the next decade of eLearning and future Web 3.0+ approaches.

Part 1

Contextual Positioning

It is now over a decade since the first volume of this book, and it is timely to start with a reminder of the thinking that provided the initial impetus. In the first chapter, Layne and Ice look in detail at two theoretical frameworks that underpin much of the thinking in this book, namely the Teaching Learning Paradigm (TLP), which was proposed by Coomey and Stephenson in the first volume, and the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework. They provide a comparison of the two frameworks and a review of current thinking and in so doing develop a unified representational model that incorporates the best of both frameworks. Cairns and Alshahrani also provide a reminder of the “paradigm grid for online learning” in the second chapter and then move on to discuss how pedagogy may be affected by any of a wide range of technological developments being embraced by the education sector. The ideas explored in these two chapters set up the discussion that will be picked up and expanded in many of the ensuing chapters.

1

Merging the Best of Both Worlds: Introducing the CoI-TLP Model

MELISSA LAYNE AND PHIL ICE

American Public University System, USA

Editors' Introduction

The authors provide a detailed review of the elements, categories and indicators associated with two of the dominant frameworks for online learning, namely the Teaching Learning Paradigm (TLP) and the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework. They contend that whilst on the surface the models appear dissimilar, significant insight can be gained by combining the two models to provide a more holistic model, specifically with regard to the intersections of teaching, social and cognitive presences and the appropriate balance of these presences as we progress from instructor-led to learner-managed learning.

Introduction

Acquiring information has always been a prefacing factor towards acquiring knowledge. However, supporting the transformation of information to knowledge are teaching and learning frameworks guiding educators that enable them to lead students towards academic success. Depending upon the physical or virtual space used to accommodate teaching and learning, consideration of the attributes and affordances these spaces offer narrows the framework options from which to build and execute learning processes. In online learning spaces, there exist few, but very robust, models that aid in the implementation of online learning, yet many of these models contain duplicity in terms of constructs or variants.

Albeit far from a wicked problem requiring immediate attention in the field of online learning, the authors of this chapter aim to provide efficiency through the use of a holistic online learning model by (a) aligning the constructs from two widely used online learning frameworks, the Teaching Learning Paradigm and the Community of Inquiry framework, and (b) merging the constructs from both frameworks to form an integrated process model. The rationale for this focus is to eliminate redundancy and extraneous information, extract information from the best of both worlds, and combine the information into a unified process model.

Both frameworks boast increasing numbers of citations and have gained respect among learning theorists and practitioners alike. To begin the chapter, we will introduce the first of the two frameworks, the CoI. The CoI is a collaborative, constructivist, process model that explains the interactions within online learning environments through three distinct but interrelated presences: teaching, social and cognitive presence. Teaching presence is defined as the design, facilitation and direction of cognitive and social processes for the realisation of personally meaningful, and educationally worthwhile, learning outcomes.

Social presence refers to the ability of learners to project themselves socially and emotionally, “as real people,” in an online environment, as well as the degree to which they feel socially and emotionally connected with others in that environment. Cognitive presence is described as the extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse.

The second framework, the TLP, comprises four major characteristics of online learning considered to be essential to good practice. These characteristics include dialogue, involvement, support and control (DISC). The TLP places a focus on the importance of structuring the learning activity and designing the materials in order to promote dialogue, secure active involvement of the learner, provide personal or other support and feedback, and enable the learner to exercise the degree of control expected.

This chapter explores how both models can be utilized in a cohesive, holistic fashion, allowing for the integration of and transition between the main elements of the CoI and TLP — CoI presences and the teaching learning quadrants. The chapter is outlined as follows:

•Presenting seminal and current research for both frameworks and their associated elements supporting the propositions put forward in this chapter

•Explaining the process used to merge the frameworks' elements, categories and indicators

•Introducing and describing the unified representational model

•Concluding the chapter with suggestions for further exploration and application

Community of Inquiry Framework

Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) initially developed the CoI framework to explain how features of written language used in computer conferencing activities could promote critical/higher-order thinking. The authors contend that higher-order learning experiences are best conducted as a community of inquiry composed of teachers and learners requiring both the demonstration of critical thinking and the engagement of “real” persons to be successful. The framework assumes that effective online learning is a function of the interaction of three elements: teaching presence, social presence and cognitive presence (see Figure 1). In this section, we describe each of these three elements and their associated categories and indicators with supporting seminal and recent literature.

One misconception we, as educators, often make in online learning is that social interactions among teachers and students serve as a catalyst for the development of a learning experience. Often overlooked, however, are the vital roles and responsibilities of the instructor to create a learning space that supports and sustains the students' ability to explore and integrate learning experiences leading to reflection and resolution. According to Kanuka and Anderson (1998), this misconception has been shown in online discourses among educators, whereby much of the exchanges result in lower-level critical thinking. Similarly, this diminishing opportunity for higher-level thinking is represented in the literature in academic settings as well, whereby an emphasis is placed upon the number of online interactions over the quality of interactions (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer 2001; Meyer 2003; Pawan, Paulus, Yalcin, & Chang, 2003). The CoI framework is predicated upon the assumption that the sequential integration of quality teaching, social and cognitive elements builds upon one another to spark higher-level thinking (Garrison & Anderson 2003; Rovai, 2002).

Teaching Presence

Teaching presence is described by Garrison and colleagues (2000) as the design, facilitation and direction of cognitive social processes as precursors to attaining rich, meaningful learning. Specifically, the authors assert that teaching presence is comprised of three categories: (a) instructional design and organisation; (b) direct instruction; and (c) facilitating discourse.

Instructional design and organisation Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, & Archer (2001) describe the design and organisation aspect of teaching presence as the planning and design of the structure, process, interaction and evaluation aspects of the online course. Further research on teaching presence has evidenced the instructor's role as manifesting in various ways. For example, in their study on teaching presence, Garrison and Cleveland-Innes (2005) validated the importance of the instructional design and organisation of the course as significant contributors to teaching presence. Conversely, in their study examining the instructional design of a graduate-level course in literature, Anagnostopoulos, Basmadjian, and McCrory (2005) determined that the students found the navigational characteristics to be so well-designed and straightforward that the need for the instructor's presence decreased over the duration of the course.

Direct instructionAnderson and Colleagues (2001) contextualized direct instruction as the instructor provision of intellectual and scholarly leadership in part through the sharing of their subject matter knowledge with the students. They also contend that a subject matter expert and not merely a facilitator must play this role because of the need for diagnosing comments for accurate understanding, injecting sources of information and directing discussions ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part 1 Contextual Positioning
• Part 2 Theory that Informs Practice
• Part 3 Researchers
• Part 4 Practitioners
• Part 5 Transition
• Part 6 Designers and Producers
• Notes on Contributors
• Index