active, social, and engaging online learning strategies

Athabasca University, Faculty of Health Disciplines, Edmonton, Feb 2014

Active, Social, and Engaging Online Learning Strategies

George Veletsianos, PhD Canada Research Chair

Associate Professor School of Education and Technology

Active, Social, and Engaging Online Learning Strategies

Foundations

Be involved and organized

– Deadline calendar – Check-ins (e.g., 1-1 phone/skype chat) – Discussion flow (post by? Respond by?) – Ongoing participation – Clear expectations

Be involved and organized

Using a diverse array of activities…

– Discussions – Videos – Debates – Digital stories – Concept mapping – Professional communities – Case studies – Solving problems

Active, Social, and Engaging Online Learning Strategies

“We are all designers”

Create a list of adjectives describing ideal

learning experiences

www.tinyurl.com/audoc1

Our challenge/imperative

To design [online] learning experiences

and opportunities that are effective,

fulfilling, inspiring, meaningful, caring,

empowering, and democratic.

What are some activities/strategies that have

worked well for you and your students?

What are some of the challenges that you

faced? How did you solve them?

Active, Social, and Engaging Online Learning Strategies

A list of suggestions

Commencing… •  Introductions – What is your standard practice?

Commencing… •  One of my favorite activities: Superhero Students

“In this activity you are to create a drawing of yourself to share with the rest of the class. Your drawing should portray you as a superhero and include your superhero name. You don't need any artistic abilities for this task, as I won't be evaluating you on your drawing abilities. The goal is to use your creativity to create a representation of yourself so that we learn more about each other. You can use pen/pencils/crayons and paper, or a graphics program to do this.”

–  Adapted from Dunlap & Lowenthal: http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/CUOnline/FacultyResources/additionalResources/Handbook/cuonlinehandbook2011/Documents/chapter10.pdf

•  Mine looks like this.

•  Why?

Commencing…

A

B

C D

E

•  Introductions: Adjective Circle (Amazing Anna)

•  It’s easy to do this in a f2f class. How does it look like it in an online course?

Commencing… •  Variations •  Tell us about yourself using 7 adjectives •  Tell us about yourself using 7 nouns

•  As above, but also use photos •  As above, but use the 7 adjectives to

write a story.

Stories & digital storytelling •  Instructors telling stories •  Students creating stories – Single images, videos,

screencasts, comics

Stories & digital storytelling

Storybird

Stories & digital storytelling

Voicethread

Stories & digital storytelling

Weekly video updates: Social presence - Teaching presence

Empower (and listen to) your students

Discussions/debates driven by real-world data - Twitter

http://search.twitter.com

Discussions/debates driven by real-world data - Newspapers

Discussions/debates driven by real-world data – Comments

Discussions/debates driven by real-world data – Blogs posts

Think-Pair-Share:

Describe the use of an activity with your own content.

How would you improve this strategy?

Stories & digital storytelling

Video updates

Empowering students

Discussions driven by real-world data

Concept Mapping: Keeping up-to-date and connecting all the pieces

Concept Mapping: Keeping up-to-date and connecting all the pieces

Concept Mapping: Keeping up-to-date and connecting all the pieces

Video-related activities •  Content delivery (reusing video) –

Youtube, Vimeo, TED, Amazon, iTunes

Video-related activities •  ed.ted.com

Video-related activities

Video-related activities

•  Additional ideas – Record an elevator speech – Find, share, and comment –  Identify misconceptions in existing videos – Film and share roleplays

Introduce learners to professional communities - The case of Twitter

Introduce learners to professional communities - Others

– Professional listservs e.g., Tomorrow’s Professor

– Blogging communities – Social Networking Sites (e.g., LinkedIn

discussion groups, Facebook groups) – Ask students to attend a virtual

conference and do X (reflect/summarize/etc)

E-books, Open Books, Open Textbooks

•  Create worthwhile digital artifacts as a class (and make available to others) – E.g., E-books and online textbooks

E-books, Open Books, Open Textbooks

•  Work with your instructional designer to figure out the best platform for creating the e-book (Wiki? A dedicated website? A collection of Google documents?)

Audio

•  Using music, sharing music, creating class playlists…

http://www.rdio.com/ http://www.jango.com/

Think-Pair-Share:

Describe how you would use one of these in your own course.

How would you improve this strategy?

Concept Mapping

Vide-related & audio-related activities

Professional communities

E-books, open books, open textbooks

Image attribution •  Teacher writing on blackboard

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Teacher-writing-on-blackboard564.jpg

Unless otherwise noted by the original images, content is provided under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/).