{"id":32,"date":"2018-09-15T16:11:06","date_gmt":"2018-09-15T16:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/?p=32"},"modified":"2018-09-16T02:43:29","modified_gmt":"2018-09-16T02:43:29","slug":"2016-manifesto-on-online-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/2018\/09\/15\/2016-manifesto-on-online-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"2016 Manifesto on Online Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading this manifesto and the comments from others really challenged my thinking about online learning. I have spent a large part of my career teaching online, creating online courses, and attempting to stay ahead of online trends. However, I was frustrated with several things –<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I felt like there was never any “audience” for my hard work. To write a course, post, or comment meant that those words would just live there and carry little meaning as I never had anything coming back. Yes, there was one to one engagement – direct emailing with each student, as each one handed in assignments, but they were the only audience.<\/li>\n
  2. There was very little dialogue on assignments. Students would simply upload their assignment and it would be done. Even if I spent much time drafting comments back, there was never any other further movement. I was the only voice into their learning, and they often didn’t even read my comments, never mind respond to and engage in dialogue about their learning.<\/li>\n
  3. Building community was non-existent. Students were very reluctant to engage in online learning communities. They simply wanted to get their assignments completed and finish the course. The value for community was very low. However, I value community and relationship and this was very difficult to foster in the online environment.<\/li>\n
  4. It seemed the courses were very “flat” and in actuality, were paper based courses that were simply uploaded online. This was not the pedagogy I desired.\u00a0 I struggled with how to make them more dynamic and engage students to a higher level of thinking.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Through this manifesto, I can now see how my paradigm needed to shift. In response to my own challenges with online learning, I now see and embrace these principles of online learning –<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. The “audience” in online learning can be so very vast and wide – farther than the confines of a face to face classroom, or students enrolled in an online course. By using public platforms, students and teachers can access authentic audiences around the world. This is important to me – that students have authentic audiences for their work. It makes their assignments relevant, but also they take much more ownership and have more thoughtfulness in what they do. There is also the expectation that students are an audience to someone else – this is an important key in learning, too. That we can learn from others, consider different view points, provide feedback on other peoples learning. This is part of the process of learning as well.<\/li>\n
    2. The dialogue in learning online, when having a broader audience, becomes more evident and is therefore more rich.<\/li>\n
    3. If a course contains authentic audiences and rich dialogue, then I can see how community can begin to form. However, it seems to me that this would take time, as rather than engage in personal conversation, participants would have to intentionally read posts and comments, and become thoughtful writers, even if they don’t consider themselves writers. This could be time consuming. Yet, if students are committed to this, then they end up building community with people whom they would never have had the opportunity to learn alongside with.<\/li>\n
    4. Course creation and implementation would have to change in order to no longer be a paper based course available online. Expectations for course assignments and engagement would have to shift. Already for me, as I engage in this online orientation course, I can see how this is a very different experience than other courses I have taken or taught. It access a much deeper level of thought and responsibility.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Through using hypothes.is, I can see how all of these elements come together. Completing an assignment is no longer a singular, isolated activity. By being able to highlight, comment, read other peoples thoughts and respond to them, the learning activity becomes a community event, and the learning contains more depth for all. It seems like a simple tool that can be easily used with any assignment.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Reading this manifesto and the comments from others really challenged my thinking about online learning. I have spent a large part of my career teaching online, creating online courses, and attempting to stay ahead of online trends. However, I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":344,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2,1],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotating-u","category-digital-skills","category-twu-online","tag-twuonline","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/344"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions\/35"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}