There’s no doubt that the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated a surge in innovative technology-based teaching in higher education. Online learning has become an essential feature of higher education and a new landscape has come into existence where physical and virtual environments are blended to support learning. Whether teaching in person, online, or through blended learning, the key priorities remain the same: student engagement and the learning experience.   The Community of Inquiry (CoI) theoretical framework is one of the most widely used frameworks for building communities online. It is a helpful model for describing, explaining, and improving online education and a practical way of helping students learn through active participation. The CoI framework highlights three core elements: cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence. These presences are interdependent and guide online instructors to consider how they are developing a community that supports learning through students’ interactions with content and assignments, their instructor, and each other.

For an overview of the CoI framework, watch this short video created by Online Learning Programs Director Kristin Palmer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHLD662ExEA 

Source: Cleveland-Innes, Gauvreau, Richardson, Mishra, & Ostashewski (2019).

 

When creating a virtual learning environment (VLE) the aim should be to facilitate communication and interaction between students, their peers, and their tutors beyond the boundaries of the classroom.  Discussion forums are one such platform that we often use to engage in collaborative learning through online debates. This allows students the opportunity to engage in discussions as flexibility is central to overcoming time and location limitations.

Video recording apps such as Panopto, Kaltura, Screencast-O-Matic, and Opencast are effective tools to deliver asynchronous lectures. Students can easily navigate the content of the video using the content and video-captioning tools.

Mentimeter, Padlet, Poll Everywhere, and Vevox are a few student response systems (SRS) which are polling systems in which students can use their own devices, be it a mobile phone, tablet, or laptop, to respond to a tutor’s questions. Students’ responses are collated anonymously in real-time and displayed on the screen.

Web-conferencing software and webinar learning tools, such as Zoom, Blackboard Collaborate Ultra, and Microsoft Teams are effective tools to support learning online, replicating students’ interactions and experience in the classroom with features like screen-sharing, voting polls, whiteboards, and breakout rooms. 

With these tools, the advancement of education will indeed move forward.

References

Cleveland-Innes, M., Gauvreau, S., Richardson, G., Mishra, S., & Ostashewski, N. (2019). Technology-enabled learning and the benefits and challenges of using the Community of Inquiry theoretical framework. International Journal of E-Learning & Distance Education, 34(1). http://www.ijede.ca/index.php/jde/article/view/1108/1733

Miral Gibson. Roehampton University. 8 Jan 2021. Tech tools to help enhance online and blended learning. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/tech-tools-help-enhance-online-and-blended-learning

 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Photo By: Creator: bowdenimages | Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto. Copyright: Mark Bowden The challenge of multigenerational diversity and the Nursing Educator in the 21st-century learning environment Over the years, the number of nurse educators has dwindled. Without quality educators, the nursing profession will not survive the shortage crises that it is now facing. There are large numbers of nurses who wish to pursue higher education are denied as there is a decreasing acceptance rate at the master’s level in part to its highly selective requirements for admission. These challenges result in there, not being enough newer nurse educators who are able to fill the gap of the current nurse educator population that is aging and retiring. For those nursing educators that remain, they face a wide array of challenges in the educational environment. The face of nursing is becoming more dynamic and more diverse, nurse educators must therefore adapt to this change. O...
Read more

Who am I

Image
  I am a highly  motivated and clinically competent professional with over 24 years in the Nursing profession . I have experience in the hospital environment, rural nursing, and public health nursing. I am presently working in the Nursing Continuing Education Unit as I am passionate about the advancement and education of Nurses . As an educator, I have had some experience with the use of technology. Mostly with creating PowerPoint presentations for training sessions and the use of videos for teaching sessions. More recently due to the COVID-19  pandemic, I have had to learn how to utilize video conference technology such as Zoom and Webex, as it has become easier to hold high-quality virtual meetings and presentations while reducing the spread of the disease.  As the Bahamas is comprised of many islands and keys, these platforms make communication and training between nurses in different geographical locations simple, easy, and efficient. Although I am able to pe...
Read more