Explicitly expressing appreciation and agreement as well as complimenting and encouraging others are textual tools for communicating recognition and support. This aspect of social presence is particularly important in a text-based
This was an interesting point to be aware of: the interactions in replying to posts is a way to establish social presence.
CMC users with opportunities for exchange of personal information reduces their feelings of social isolation and allows them to form individualized perceptions of each other.
I can resonate with this concept of self-disclosure especially when self-isolation became society's norm due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Humor, specifically, has been identified as a contributive factor to social presence and subsequently to learning.
I still remember my 9th-grade biology teacher, who used humorous day-to-day situations to help the students learn the subject. That experience makes me believe that when the learning experience is joyful, it positively impacts content retention.
More specifically, they conclude that continual tutor presence, characterized by short messages acknowledging a student's contribution and followed by guidance, increases student activity.
This portion confirms my previous comment.
However, computer conferencing, with its distinct combination of attributes (i.e., asynchronous text-based communication), presents unique challenges to the development of effective teacher presence.
Teaching presence is vital for asynchronous learning. It could be done through regular emails encouraging students to engage in the discussions.
Consistent with this finding, computer-conferencing students were found to be less interactive.
The ability to turn off the cameras during a meeting could contribute to a lower level engagement.
associated with a purposeful and structured educational environment.
I agree that structure is an important component of the online learning experience. I found it difficult to engage in conversation with a group of students if the instructions were simply "share your thoughts" or "give your opinion". In those cases, there were some students who would engage, but the majority would not get involved in the discussion without being prompted.
where it is important that participants find the interaction in the group enjoyable and personally fulfilling so that they will remain in the cohort of learners for the duration of the program), then social presence is a direct contributor to the success of the educational experience.
Social presence is a challenging component especially if students opt to keep their cameras off. A text-based environment, where students post their comments on forums, is a great option to encourage off-line engagement.
Some classic beginnings facilitators use include establishing the focus by using a short video clip – perhaps from YouTube; stating the focus and encouraging exploration by asking people to work on some aspect of it in twos, threes or small groups; working with some of the participants beforehand so that they set the scene by making a short presentation; and summarizing where the group had got to in the previous session (if there was one).
This seems very practical and helpful for developing a facilitation guide.
The fundamental results of work—performance, experience, and learning—are interdependent. If individuals aren’t learning, their performance will decline over time; if their predominant experience of work is boredom or stress, both learning and performance will suffer.
This is amazingly obvious! But the triangle is a perfect reminder that performance goes down if people aren't learning.
Guided, or assisted, discovery learning is an approach in which the educator provides a level of guidance tailored so that the task is at a level of difficulty that fits the learner.
This is the key to good teaching, and essential to video game design. When something is too challenging, people give up. Challenges need to be right at the learners level to keep them interested and engaged. If I remember right, in video game design theory, people should fail about 80% of the time.
It is easy to forget how dramatically people’s Page 45 Share Cite Suggested Citation:"3 Types of Learning and the Developing Brain." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/24783. × Save Cancel perceptions and actions can be changed by experience because once they have changed, the individual no longer has access to the earlier perception.
Another description of "the curse of knowledge."
It is easy to be impatient with learners who have not yet instilled successful learning habits, such as listening attentively, creating outlines before writing, or periodically summarizing material that is read, and jump to the conclusion that they are not trying hard to learn. But these habits of learning take effort initially and only gain momentum over time. Once acquired, they can become second nature to the learner, freeing up attentional resources for other, more cognitively demanding aspects of a task.
This is key for thinking about coaching learning. It reminds me of Dan and Chip Heath's "The Curse of Knowledge" where it is all too easy for a teacher to forget what it feels like not to know something. (From Made to Stick)
predictable rewards actually reduce the durability of habits. That is, bad habits are often harder to extinguish when they are only intermittently rewarded, and the benefits of good habits may seem unclear when one takes the reward for granted. For example, if a child’s tantrums are occasionally rewarded by a parent who “caves in,” then the tantrum habit may resist extinction. The child learns that she might possibly be rewarded for a tantrum and so becomes more persistent. Similarly, though Martina may need to push herself to continue practicing nightly, on the night when she suddenly makes a breakthrough, the effort she put in will make the reward feel even sweeter.
This is counterintuitive but makes good sense.
Quite literally, it is neurobiologically impossible to think deeply about or remember information about which one has had no emotion because the healthy brain does not waste energy processing information that does not matter to the individual (Immordino-Yang, 2015).
Real learning only happens if people care about what they are learning. The question remains though, does the individual have to care, or does the surrounding culture and supporting network have to care?
More recent work has explored how ideas of what is desirable to learn may vary across cultures. For example, a study that compared parental expectations in the United States and Vanuatu suggested that whereas U.S. parents tend to consider deviation from a model as showing creativity, parents in Vanuatu tend to equate precise imitation with intelligence (Clegg et al., 2017).
This is fascinating and hugely important. It reminds me of a related book called Clash! : 8 Cultural Conflicts That Make Us Who We Are.
Integrating different cultural practices is a key learning challenge, and culture is a matter not only of what people learn but also how they learn.
Learning is not just about content, but about what the learners value.
Experts differ from novices in more than just their general abilities (i.e., memory or intelligence) and the use of general strategies. Experts have acquired extensive knowledge that affects what they notice and how they organize, represent, and interpret information in their environments, which in turn affects their abilities to remember, reason, and solve problems.
This reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink and Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow. Both argue that experts gain a meta-cognition that goes deeper than the intellect--because of their years of experience, expertise becomes like intuition that doesn't have to be consciously processed to make judgements.
over 80 percent of faculty with no online teaching or development experience believe that the learning outcomes for online are 'inferior' or 'somewhat inferior' to those for face-to-face instruction"
Will this number change drastically as a result of people's experiences due to Covid? Or were people forced into online teaching without being properly prepared resulting in their beliefs being reinforced?
learner-centered designs
As students graduate from K-12 programs that are learner-centred, they will demand the same from higher ed.
we should be asking a question first posed by Wilbur Schramm as long ago as 1977: What kinds of learning can different media best facilitate, and under what conditions? In terms of making decisions then about mode of delivery, we should be asking, not which is the best method overall, but: What are the most appropriate conditions for using face-to-face, blended or fully online learning respectively?
This is a core question for me. Not every form of knowledge can squeeze through the medium of the internet without losing quality.
But this means providing criteria and procedures for students that enable their learning – and also learning when they need to put their phones down and switch off. These are skills and knowledge that are essential for life in today’s society and it is irresponsible for the education system to ignore such needs.
This comment, about learning when to put down our phones is probably the harder part of the education process today.
we should be encouraging students to use their technological devices to find, analyse, evaluate and apply their knowledge. This means giving them engaging tasks in class time that require the use of their phones. Yes, they will probably use their device to text other students but then that can be also used for group work and social learning. In particular, mobile phones can be used to support the learning of higher level skills, such as problem solving and critical thinking.
The techno-optimism implicit in this book (and course) feels like a necessary posture for rethinking education in our modern world, but does anyone else feel like we are sacrificing the university's ability to resist external pressures (e.g., popes, wars, etc.) described in earlier chapters? Books like Cal Newport's Deep Work which encourages us to value the cultivation of deep attention, self-control, and the forsaking of distraction make me wish there was more techno-pessimism and intentional reflection on how the medium of technological tools actually may be leading us away from the cultivation of soft-skills.
most technologies, if skillfully employed, are sufficiently robust to meet a wide range of educational needs and achieve a wide variety of desirable outcomes.
Is this true? Are there examples of the opposite? Does this idea connect to the concept of gamification?
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.
Yes!
text-based communication provides time for reflection
In oral communication, people get uncomfortable quickly if there is silence and teachers need to be intentional about building it into the lesson techniques ... text-based communication does this for you.
much would remain to be learned with regard to moderating a computer conference in a manner that will facilitate the development of a meaningful and worthwhile educational experience.
Have these lessons been learned since this article was written?
consideration should be given to an initial face-to-face meeting where relationships and a comfort level can be established
Is Zoom sufficient for this purpose?
Early recorded music generally was played through speakers around which a crowd could gather, but the creation of the Walkman and headphones not only altered the relationship of the artist to the audience but also the audience members to themselves.
Again, when compared with the "virtualization" of education, the relationship between students also dramatically changes. Although we have the experience of intimacy through humour and self-disclousure, many people find that mediated relationship remains hollow.
Let’s first consider the wonder of music, which until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries could only be heard in a live setting with human artists. Once recording technology was invented, a new, virtualized form of music created an entirely different set of social practices around music and fundamentally changed the relationship of artist and audience. Listening to music was no longer the same kind of communal culture experience but instead became a commodity purchased by an individual to be used how he or she pleased.
If the "virtualization" of music led to a disconnect between artist and audience as well as its commodification, then won't the "virtualization" of education lead in the same direction? A disconnect between teacher and student, as well as an extreme commodification of education (e.g., see the recent development of "microlearning").
Therefore, discussion topics should last a week or two at the most so as to avoid the build-up of large numbers of postings on the same topic.
This speaks to my previous annotation about how discussion posts are less effective the older they get.
Social presence marks a qualitative difference between a collaborative community of inquiry and a simple process of downloading information. The difference is the quality of the message; in a true community of inquiry, the tone of the messages is questioning but engaging, expressive but responsive, skeptical but respectful, and challenging but supportive. In such a collaborative community of learners, social presence is enhanced. When social presence is combined with appropriate teaching presence, the result can be a high level of cognitive presence leading to fruitful critical inquiry.
In my experience of online learning so far, the discussions do have this quality. However, the asynchronous nature of discussion boards makes the conversation less appealing to participate in as it gets "colder". In other words, as I move onto new subjects, the older discussions grow less interesting because my focus is elsewhere. This remains true despite the fact that the conversation is getting deeper and should therefore be more interesting.
Put simply, what I have noticed so far is that unless you respond punctually to people's posts they are less likely to respond and to stay engaged, even though the subject matter gets more interesting as it gets deeper.
Is it reasonable to think that a text-based, asynchronous environment can be sufficient to support a quality educational transaction and experience?
I think the success of Facebook provides evidence that some level of emotional connection is possible. However, having just experienced two months of online church, I believe something important is lost when F2F experiences move online. Church online was a poor substitute for meeting in person, especially for my children!
For this reason, written communication may actually be preferable to oral communication when the objective is higher-order cognitive learning.
I don't know where this quote originated but I always tell my students: "Thoughts are disentangled when they flow through the lips and the fingertips." But the fingertips work best!