Intellectual interaction
Of all the attributes of effective online courses, the one that struck me the most was the attribute of intellectual interaction. As a designer of online courses for business management, leadership, and spiritual development, this for me is perhaps the most difficult to achieve. Anyone can create online content and have students access that content just by clicking, but transforming that material into a structural integrity format that is also learner centered and elicits intellectual interaction is a very difficult combination. Achieving some level of intellectual interaction with the material is not all that hard, especially if own the content for the course you are converting into the online environment. What I seen as a challenge is the ability find the optimal way to elicit intellectual interaction throughout each of the modules, lessons, and topics. If this is difficult to do when you all in the content that is to be transformed, I see it much more difficult to work with a faculty member that has never developed an online course and believes they are fundamentally the same. The nuances of learner centered learning and intellectual interaction are much more difficult to communicate to a faculty member that is just learning the online environment. In helping a major institution convert their classroom courses to an online environment, my biggest challenge is to reeducate faculty into understanding this transformation process. Most of these faculty members have never taught online yet have been offering these classes for a long time. Their assumption is that the selected platform for these courses will take care of those levels of details. As I continue with the other modules in this course, I become more aware of ways to convince them of the need to address the differences between face-to-face classroom sessions and the online environment.
Ron, I hear you...in the instructional design world, it is known as "cognitive engagement", and in the neuroscience world, it is referred to as "active retrieval". What is conspicuously absent in this course is there is no formative feedback, which has been shown to facilitate the transfer of learning.
Sarah,
Excellent way to show your point of view!!
Shelly Crider
I have had similar interactions with fellow colleagues. One way that I have found to discuss this with them is to show them evidence from my courses that the students perceive the course differently and that their performance is tied to the ability of the instructor to adapt the course to the learning environment. When students perform better in courses which utilize multimedia learning techniques, daily interaction from faculty, etc then this is undeniable proof that certain avenues work better than others. Particularly compelling are student accounts of their experiences in some online courses rather than others. If the student perceives a difference and learns differently then it really does not matter whether the instructor views them to be the same or not.
Regards
Sarah Whylly
Kevin,
There are some students who love Second Life. There are another group of students who do not understand the technology, but that does not mean we as instructors should not introduce it.
Shelly Crider
I'd like to see much more comprehensive interaction such as the use of Second Life, interactive simulations, and game-like experiences where getting things right earns points and achievements.
I understand that making this sort of instructional media requires far more resources than traditional media, but then so does any sort of elearning when compared to textbooks and the engagement level of students and their retention would be far higher.
Ron,
Excellent post. We do want our classes to be pleasing and easy to wonder around in, but we do want intellectual interaction! We can have true "chats" on our own time. Chats that include lol, c u soon, ect!!
Shelly Crider
