Month: March 2022

Through this week’s readings, the new thing I came across is Bonk & Zhang’s R2D2 model. It can be a thorough guide to design a successful virtual community. The four components of this model that are Reading, Reflecting, Displaying, and Doing are based on several learning activities and strategies. “If instructional designers involved in distance learning initiatives as well as online instructors take these four types of learning and learning activities into account when designing and delivering online and other forms of distance learning courses, they should experience higher success rates with diverse students” (Bonk & Zhang, 2006).

While going through this model, I was thinking of Bloom’s taxonomy as well. Different models provide different hierarchical structures to promote learning. I found this model quite interesting and easy to grab. I could also relate it to our present classes as throughout this graduate program, I have observed all four types of learning techniques well incorporated in the designing of both our online and in-person classes. Bonk & Zhang have provided a detailed list of learning activities for each type with several supporting tools and styles. For me all of them are interesting but following the question prompts, my favorite will be online discussions (group discussions and presentations), collaborative group paper writing, and interactive visuals with online chat.  

Online discussions (group discussions and presentations)  

Online discussions and presentations are always helpful in building an effective learning environment. The technology/tools/resources that support online discussion and presentations are Chat, Instant Messenger, bulletin boards/forums, Yahoo groups, and listservs. I prefer online discussions because of the teacher and peer collaboration, responses and feedback that can help peers develop an interactive session and communicate with each other regarding the topic concerned. Through these discussions they can also help each other understand various difficult concepts and support each other in several diverse ways. Chats, Instant Messengers, bulletin boards and forums give a platform to students where they can respond promptly, ask questions to each other, feel free to talk about their confusions and get instant solutions. I remember the small activity we did in class on Padlet. Padlet is one of the forums that is easy to create and can bring many people together at one time. It is one of the best discussion boards where students can come together and discuss a topic, raise questions, provide solutions, share ideas, give feedback, acknowledge others’ efforts, and suggest possibilities while staying connected with peers and teachers.  

Collaborative Group Paper Writing 

Collaborative group paper writing is second of my preferred learning activities. The supporting tools or resources Bonk& Zhang provide for this activity are SharePoint, Groove, and Word etc. All of us have gone through this activity many times. Even our group discussions and in class activities are an apt example in this regard. Google Doc is always helpful in drafting students’ planned data. Through this platform, students can work on the same document together while staying in their comfortable couches or zones. They can draft, edit, review, revise, and proofread the material together. The facility of sharing is tremendously helpful which is used by peers and teachers to provide their feedback and comments on that paper. Being a magnificent support for group paper writing, I find SharePoint and Google Docs extremely easy to use. 

Interactive Visuals with Online Chat 

Personally speaking, I am a visual learner and I always learn better when I have audio/visual support. I believe that most of the students learn better through visuals and here in my graduate program, I was lucky to have teachers who used this activity most frequently in the classrooms. www.learningbydoing.com mentioned by Bonk&Zhang can be an additional source of interactive visuals for students like many others. I have not experienced it yet, but I can well imagine its benefits. PowerPoint slides are common examples which speed up the learning process when online chat is added to these slides. Online chat with these visuals clarifies the ideas which are difficult to understand apparently. Visuals with chat have a long-lasting effect on students’ memory. Through this type of presentation, students can retain information for a longer period, they can understand the concepts faster as compared to the simple texts and can self-reflect.  

Importance of Motivation 

Bonk&Khoo (2014) have given importance to four theoretical perspectives regarding motivation. They are behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, and sociocultural theory. I remember my Fall semester last year. We came across all these perspectives in detail with Dr. Bradshaw and we had remarkably interesting discussions about them. I think all of them are important for motivation and community growth, but behaviorism and cognitivism play a pivotal role in increasing motivation in students. It is especially important to keep the behavioral aspect in mind while designing a learning environment. If we can understand students’ behavior, we can plan strategies and activities accordingly to facilitate and motivate them. Cognitivism is another perspective that is crucially important to consider. Learners’ cognitive abilities should be valued and focused. Strategies and models should be used that can polish students’ cognitive abilities. R2D2 and Bloom’s Taxonomy are good examples in this regard. According to me, both behaviorism and cognitivism are intricately connected to SDT and without them, it cannot be well implemented. SDT gives independence to students and increases their intrinsic motivation to learn effectively and without behaviorism and cognitivism, SDT seems to be failing.  

References 

Bonk, C. J., & Khoo, E. (2014). Online motivation from four perspectives. Adding some TEC- VARIETY: 100+ activities for motivating and retaining learners online (pp. 31-43). OpenWorldBook. 

Bonk, C. J., & Zhang, K. (2006). Introducing the R2D2 model: Online learning for the diverse learners of this world. Distance education, 27(2), 249-264. 

This week’s content helped me dive deep into CoI framework and learn how computer conferencing plays a vital role in building a CoI framework. Computer-mediated communication has become a need for all learning communities in all parts of the world. A proper and planned computer conferencing leads towards the achievement of goals for an online learning community. CoI framework provides a platform to learners and experts where they can come together, interact with each other, share their ideas, reflect outcomes, and build a mutual relationship by helping each other. Major participants of this community are teachers and students. According to Lipman (1991), the characteristics of a CoI include questions, reasons, connections, deliberation, challenges, and development of problem-solving techniques. The CoI framework has been divided into three components. They are cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence.  

Cognitive presence is related to the learners’ ability to delve into a meaningful conversation, derive constructive meaning out of a learning environment, enquire about ideas where they feel confused and to reflect on what they have learned. Learners go deep into understanding a scenario, raise questions, generate practical solutions, engage with each other in solving problems. The focus of cognitive presence is to construct meaning through conversation or communication. “Cognitive presence is a vital element in critical thinking, a process and outcome that is frequently presented as the ostensible goal of all higher education” (Garrison et al, 2000). There are several examples of cognitive presence in online communities. For example, students leading a discussion, students working as teams, peer reviewing in students, and students creating or finding relevant material to post in class discussions. 

Social presence is the second key component of CoI framework. Participants must feel they belong to a certain community, and this is what social presence means. People from diverse backgrounds should have equal social presence. The community should be providing a secure environment for the participants where they can share their opinions and listen to each other with mutual respect and honor. Equity, tolerance, and respect are the key ingredients to promote an effective learning environment with strong social presence and respectful discourses. Even disagreements and conflicts should occur in a respectful way. The power of listening patiently is especially important and one should not be judgmental for an effective learning community. Examples of social presence are open communication, group cohesion, self-selection of group members, self-projection, and expression without any reluctance and fear (keeping mutual respect in view). 

The third and major component is Teaching presence. Teacher has a lot of responsibilities including the designing of learning environment, choosing suitable instruction methods, incorporating productive activities, using effective tools for instruction, maintaining a routine to influence the learning outcome in a better way. Teacher should be able to ensure the cognitive and social presence in the learning environment through proper planning and strategies. Examples of teacher presence are developing the critical thinking of students by engaging them in various discussions, task management and problem-solving activities. Question prompts can be designed according to the topic which students may answer on a discussion forum both individually and in groups. Peer responses are effective to create a discussion forum. Clear introduction of the course content, organization of material, a review from another expert, prompt responses to students, providing feedback and facilitating students at various steps of learning can be extremely fruitful for a community.  

CoI framework is developed if all three components of CoI are established successfully. Without cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence, CoI cannot work smoothly. CoI framework is a theoretical framework and a social constructivist model that is based on collaborative constructive presence of the participants and without all three components, an effective learning environment is hard to imagine.  

The Community of Inquiry framework is important because it facilitates the participants with an educational experience that emerges out of the intersection of cognitive, social, and teaching presence. Teachers play a vital role in blending cognitive and social presence while designing an online community. Their skills to choose suitable materials and set learning goals, ability to facilitate students with direct or explicit instruction, and timely feedback or presence can build a productive online learning community. The implications of building a virtual learning community include a memorable impact on students’ educational experience with suitable educational programs. It also provides an enjoyable and interesting learning experience to students where they apply what they have learned, retain knowledge, reflect ideas, and build mutual relationships. 

I have some ideas for my final project and the strategies to enhance my virtual learning community are manifold. I shall try to make sure that all three components of CoI are incorporated in my design. The instructor’s presence will be crucial where they can facilitate the participants. Setting learning goals and objectives, making announcements, management of the data sources, promoting ice-breaking activities for introductions of participants, urging learners to ask questions, igniting synchronous and asynchronous discussions, supporting peer learning, conducting online journaling, responding promptly, creating an environment where participants can take part in open discussions, share their ideas/emotions, respect each other’s opinions, and producing constructive feedback will be the main strategies. I shall try to make the best use of technology and hope to learn from the participants myself.  

References: 

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (1999). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The internet and higher education, 2(2-3), 87-105. 

Lipman, M. (1991). Thinking in education. Cambridge. The reflective model of educational practice. NY, 7-25. 

Motivation and Self Determination Theory

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation play a vital role in people’s lives. People get encouraged to do something when they are motivated. Deci and Ryan have highlighted both forms of motivation quite well, but more focus is placed on extrinsic motivation as they have elaborated its various kinds in detail and major portion of the article covers the details about extrinsic motivation.  

Intrinsic motivation is a behavior that is molded by internal rewards. Intrinsic motivation is defined as the doing of an activity for its inherent satisfactions rather than for some separable consequence (Ryan and Deci, 2000). This motivation arises from within and has a satisfying effect. In other words, when someone finds pleasure and satisfaction in doing something without any external reward, it shows their intrinsic motivation. For example, if we read something for our aesthetic pleasure, we feel internally motivated to read that text without any external pressure or tension. Likewise, our hobbies like playing games, writing our personal diaries, painting, and cooking our favorite dishes can be good examples of intrinsic motivation. For hobbies, we do not think of any reward, we own them because they please us. On the other hand, extrinsic motivation is a reward-based behavior. Extrinsic motivation is a construct that pertains whenever an activity is done in order to attain some separable outcome (Ryan and Deci, 2000).

It is a form of Operant Conditioning in which reward and punishment are used to modify behaviors, approaches and to decrease or increase the tendency to do or not to do anything. For example, in extrinsic motivation, people are motivated through praise, money, fame and several other external factors. Doing a job to get a salary at the end of the month is a common example of extrinsic motivation. Sometimes, we offer candies and snacks to children, or promise to take them for a tour to their favorite places if they perform well in their studies. Any kind of praise, acknowledgement and different gestures of support can also be examples of external motivation. It is not a compulsion that the reward or acknowledgement will always be in a tangible form. For example, some kind words, appreciation, praise, and fame.

Ryan and Deci (2000) have described four different forms of external motivation. They are external regulation, introjection, identification, and integration. External Regulation is a behavior that is controlled by external factors. For example, telling our kids that they will be rewarded if they get good grades. They will study intentionally as they want to, but their studying will be affected by the rewards that they will expect from us. Introjection is an internal pressure that is the result of ego, tensions, guilt, peer support, and other kinds. People perform due to different obligations not due to internal pleasure. Identification is a good side of external motivation. People take actions keeping goodwill. For example, if a person consciously joins an organization to polish their skill, it is their self-selected goal. They get motivated to work for that organization. They take that decision intentionally, but they still have an external motivation factor. Integration is the best type of motivation. This type of motivation helps people self-reflect, understand the reasons, see if the reason matches their needs, and after analyzing a situation completely, they act. Although it is their conscious decision but the person following integrated regulation experiences several options and external factors that influence them.  
 

According to my personal experience, both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation have their distinct roles in joining different communities. It depends on our needs and preferences which community we are going to join. The decision we take is based on the type of motivation that guided us to take that decision. I can give my own example. I join different cooking communities because cooking gives me pleasure and these communities develop my interest and motivation level to learn more about different recipes, organization methods, different kitchen hacks and much more. The involvement of external motivation can be vividly seen in educational communities like Canvas and Moodle. We join these communities to stay updated about our weekly assignments, different scholarship programs, upcoming tasks, peer interactions, grades, and much more. Likewise, we join communities like Linked In to improve our links for various job opportunities, to expand our businesses, to develop contacts, to advertise our products and much more. These external factors keep us motivated to join various communities. 

SDT is an approach to human motivation and personality that uses traditional empirical methods while employing an organismic metatheory that highlights the importance of humans’ evolved inner resources for personality development and behavioral self-regulation (Ryan, Kuhl, & Deci, 1997). According to self-determination theory, people are motivated to change by three psychological needs. They are competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Competence is about the proficiency of people to perform a task. The mastery to perform a task shows their competence. People can control the outcomes and this control helps them gain mastery over the task. Autonomy makes people independent. For example, when students rely on their abilities and help themselves, they experience autonomy. Autonomy also leads them to regulate themselves. Through autonomy, they get more creative, productive, and self-dependent. Finally, relatedness brings people feel accepted and a sense of belonging develops in them. It is especially important in classrooms and various learning communities to develop relatedness in the learners so that they may feel relaxed and wanted in a specific environment. Relatedness can be developed through social connections, care, concern, and respect for each other.  

References

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 54-67. doi:10.1006/ceps.1999.1020

Ryan, R. M., Kuhl, J., & Deci, E. L. (1997). Nature and autonomy: An organizational view of social and neurobiological aspects of self-regulation in behavior and development. Development and psychopathology, 9(4), 701-728.

Q.1 What are the salient characteristics of an expert’s knowledge structure? How is an expert’s memory, thinking, reasoning, and problem solving, etc. different from those of a novice. Why? Can you share an example about a situation when an expert differs from a novice in a specific task or situation? 

This week’s readings are a familiar set of information for me. I went through these chapters when I was in New York. There are evident differences between the approaches of experts and novices. For me, the experience and long-term association with a job make people experts. Experts have great ability to represent knowledge. The main characteristic that makes experts different from the novices is that experts can very effectively reduce cognitive load and can use computational methods successfully. Experts can recollect the information in such a way that it can be productively used while performing certain tasks. The more experience the experts gain, the more expert they become in chunking the information.  

Experts can handle complexity very well. They can make chunks of larger information, divide that information into several steps, form a unified routine that helps them in handling complexity and to solve different problems. During this entire process of solving problems, their responses are quick, and they can easily do more. Experts usually rely on their pre-existing knowledge, the context in which the data is presented, experience, knowledge, and expectations. The example of playing chess is famous to find out the differences between experts and novices. Knowledge structure plays a crucial role in the performance of an expert by which experts can recall many patterns by briefly looking at the chess board. On the other hand, novices cannot do that. The ability of experts to store and recall information makes them perform better in playing chess.  

Experts can successfully filter the relevant information. They contain an overall picture in their minds and can discriminate between relevant and irrelevant information. Experts are good at the ability to selectively filter relevant information. While a novice makes sense of the information, the expert will jump to the critical information within a short duration of time. So, they can perform quickly and efficiently.  

Experts have tremendous problem-solving skills. They can form the representation of a problem immediately. “Experts’ ability to reason and solve problems depend on well-organized knowledge that affects what they notice and how they represent problems” (Bransford et al., 2000). This representation helps them find solutions to that problem easily. They can find meaningful patterns and features of a given knowledge. They exercise better techniques and meta-skills. These meta-skills in experts make them different from novices because they can monitor, adjust, and analyze one’s thinking, learning, and knowledge during problem solving.  

Q.2 What is knowledge transfer? How does knowledge transfer occur? Why is transfer important? Can you share an example of learning transfer? How can design a learning environment with the intention of facilitating learning transfer? 

Knowledge transfer is a way of sharing or disseminating knowledge. “Transfer is always a function of relationships between what is learned and what is tested” (Bransford et al., 2000). Through knowledge transfer, we can solve various problems. Through this transfer, several solutions can be shared with one another that can help others to solve different issues. Knowledge transfer usually occurs through discussions with peers, professional trainings, Instructions, apprenticeship, seminars, workshops, social gatherings and much more. Knowledge transfer is extremely important for innovation, development, engagement, alignment, quick thinking, fast communication, clear constraints, direct feedback, internal improvements and to produce experts in society. The transfer of learning or knowledge is an aid to solve a problem and apply the steps to a different but related problem. Through this approach, knowledge is shared amongst the maximum number of people and they learners become effective members of society. The best example of transfer learning can be the knowledge gained while learning to ride a tricycle and apply that knowledge to ride a bicycle or a motor bike.  

Q.3 What have you learned from these two chapters? What are the implications each chapter offers to help you design effective and impactful virtual learning communities or any type of learning communities (including face-to-face and hybrid)? 

The implications from this week’s chapters suggest that designing effective learning environments is the need of the hour. It is crucial to design these learning environments keeping in view the following approaches in mind.  

1. These communities should be learner-centered, knowledge-centered, assessment-centered (including feedback and revision), and community-centered.  

2. There should be training sessions for the novices and the beginners 

3. These communities should be designed keeping in view the mindsets of people 

4. Proper strategy is the key to success. The designing of these communities should be strategic.  

5. Virtual communities should be technologically advanced.  

6. They should be flexible, but members should be kept accountable. 

7. The design of the communities should be open for experimentation and exploration.  

8. The authentic and relevant presence of experts is much needed.  

9. The data in these communities should be used to keep getting better and deliver more.  

10. The goal of the communities should be the promotion of learning.  

References 

Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (2000). How people learn (Vol. 11). Washington, DC: National academy press.