Collaborative Learning
This week's learning in OLC Instructional Design Course focused on collaborative learning. As as student I have not always like this idea as often time and led to one person doing more work than others in my mind. As one that is kinda take charge and desire to do a good job, I usually end up exuding more energy than others. (I write this with a large smile on my face) Despite this, reading Teaching in a Digital Age about Online Collaborative Learning (OCL), I see that with the guidance of instructors this model can have great benefits despite some limitations.
This material defined OCL and it's core principles as well as the Community of Inquiry Model (CoI) which focuses more on critical discourse and reflection.
I was quite intrigued by Harasim's pedagogy of group discussion which outlines that instructors role is to engage within the collaboration during three phases:
- Idea Generating
- Idea Organizing
- Intellectual Convergence
With a desire to apply insight gained. The faculty member provides a link to a community of knowledge to properly guide the collaboration as the team members generate, organize and synthesize their ideas to learn.
The reading outlined that one limitation to this model is "it does not scale easily, requiring highly knowledgeable and skilled instructors." I believe that this means not only are the instructors skilled in the subject matter at hand but on the ability to properly facilitate such collaboration to stimulate discussion and interaction between participants. Personality of the instructor would also play a huge role in how successful this can be.
Hmmm. More food for thought.
Watch for more Graceful Musing as #RaleneSpeaks
You raise a great point about the difficulty of scaling up collaborative learning models. In fact, I think one problem faced at many institutions is that most instructional design theories and models will not scale well given that even the best designed courses build by ID's still are going to be turned over to faculty who may or may not have training and experience on the implementation of these models. Our ARCS reading this week stresses how much the faculty need to explain the connections the materials have to students' current interests and future plans, and that motivation is critical to students actively engaging and deeper learning. Faculty increasingly are going to need to be trained in these theories and given professional development opportunities (including time releases to participate in them) for these to truly be implemented as designed. Thanks for leaving us with such important "food for thought" as we seek to look at implementing these strategies!
ReplyDeleteYou are so correct Jessica. I have found that my job is for train faculty in using the LMS as well as develop courses within the environment but the focus on training faculty in these type of theories lie in the hands of the academic department. Yes definitely more food for thought as to how to encourage administration and academic that there is a need for this type of professional development. After this weeks lessons, I shared information about OCL that would benefit faculty. Many responded with thanks as it was informative. This information needs to be more than informative but deployable in current courses.
DeleteThanks for responding. Look forward to hearing more from you.
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