IMPORTANT-READ: Lesson 2 Instructor’s Notes: Strengthen Lesson Discussions

Q: How will we do differently on the lesson discussions in ETC655?

A:  For the initial postings to answer key questions, we should remain the same with high quality postings that address the questions comprehensively with logic and robust justification. Most of you did well in ETC645. You may notice if you do not post well thought out initial postings, likely you will be asked to justified your arguments.

In the 2^nd posting period (Friday-Sunday), I want us to do something differently. This idea is based ETC645 students' feedback. It is called learner-driven instructional design when the course design is based on students' design ideas.

Within two postings in 2^nd posting period,

• Ask the whole class one good question that extends and deepens one of four original key question. By doing this, you should read all students' initial postings to the selected key question, digest them, and post your question.
• When posting your question, add "Follow-Up" to the "Subject" field. EX: "L2-KEY-1-Connectivism-Follow-Up: Your subject" So we know this is a follow-up question that you ask the class.
• Ask high quality questions so it will attract more classmates to respond to it. Be sure you facilitate the question you post.
• Post your question early in the 2^nd posting period so it will get more responses. If posting the question on Sunday, classmates may not see it and it becomes an orphan thread.
• Can I ask more than one question? Yes. Just be sure you're asking high quality questions to engage classmates in deep and critical thinking.
• Apply your other posting(s) in the second period to respond to others' and/or instructor's follow-up questions. More responses are always highly encouraged.

Why do we integrate such design?

• Apply learner-driven instructional design to strengthen your critical thinking skill.
• Engage in one-to-many interaction and many-to-many interaction which are different from what we did in ETC645, most are one-to-one interactions.
• Deepen your critical thinking skills, particularly reach "Resolution" stage, see below for Inquiry Learning Model for more information.

 

Q: What can I do differently to improve my learning for lesson discussions from ETC645 to ETC655?

A: If you are in ETC645, you are aware of our expectations for lesson discussion and moderation.  In ETC655, I would like to see you advance yourselves to deepen and strengthen your lesson discussion.

• Apply Inquiry Learning Model (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) to improve the quality of your posting and critical thinking skills.

• Apply Advanced Interaction Strategy to enhance your interaction.

• We will continue applying Data-Informed learning to support your interactivity by providing you with personalized Social Network Analysis (SNA) results after each lesson discussion. We will share more additional interactivity roles you play with you.

Respond to the questions based by others

·         Don't forget to respond to the questions raised by the classmates, the moderators, and me, if any? How do we know someone reply to my posting?

o   Click "People"

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o   Click your name

o   View "Count" column to see any of your postings have replies.

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·         Additionally, you can subscribe a specific threaded discussion by clicking:

o  

·         Frequently, we expressed our opinions but we did not elaborate and justify our arguments thoroughly. Be sure to justify any opinion and argument that we share.  If you have any literature to support your argument, it would be the best.  Remember, we are master students.  We should have knowledge and skills to apply theory, research, and literature to support our argument. Simply expressing "I like and dislike certain things" doesn't demonstrate our knowledge and understanding on the course content.

Overwhelmed by Nabble's Discussion Interfaces?

You may notice that Nabble has different discussion interfaces.  What are the differences?  Do you know?

In fact, we will discuss later in our class:  Examine how the discussion thread works.  Learner-Interface interaction.

Do you think discussion boards are threaded only?  Rethink it!  Many social media use non-threaded interface, blogs, Twitter, Facebook etc.  Did you notice there is a feature provided by Nabble? Did you click it to see what they are?  Give it a try. 

Threaded? Flat-structured interface?  How they work?  Do you use threaded perspective to read flat-structured interface or vice versa? How do they impact human learning?  Let's keep these observations and examinations for later discussions.  Remember it is beyond I like or dislike it.  Apply your professional knowledge to examine it to understand how discussion interface impact human learning.

Learner-Learner Interaction Strategy

From the previous course discussions, we engage in learner-learner interaction by interacting and asking others questions.  Asking "Good" questions represents how much we understand learning content. In fact, asking good questions is more challenging than responding to questions.  Besides to have thorough understanding on the learning content, you can apply Bloom's Taxonomy to improve your learner-learner interaction strategy.

Here is a good resource for your references. Bloom Taxonomy Questions.

http://www.bloomstaxonomy.org/Blooms%20Taxonomy%20questions.pdf