My question to Marty Cleveland-Innes on the padlet wasn’t answered. Therefore, I take the opportunity to use the question as a starting point for this reflection for topic 4. The question rose in my mind during reading the course literature for this topic. After experiencing about 10 months of digital distance teaching, synchronous didactic interaction had already started to become the new normal teaching situation. I asked;
“In these times of pandemic, I find it to be necessary to reconsider a synchronous online meeting in for example Zoom, as what was former known as a physical face-to-face learning moment. Do you think that, when reading literature from before 2020, it is possible to regard blended learning as being a blend of the two most used remote teaching situations; asynchronous online teaching and synchronous online face-to-face teaching?”
I thought that the synchronous online teaching context gave me as a teacher the a dynamically pedagogical possibility that I strive for. The dynamics between the face to face, synchronous online learning and the asynchronous online learning started to appear as useful for blended learning. Designing education for a pandemic and post-pandemic world, the synchronous, digital lesson and laboratory work might be reconsidered as examples of face to face learning.
I would like to link the dynamic between blends of different learning contexts, to the dynamics between the three dimensions that shape the framework for community of inquiry.
Vaughan et. Al (2013)
Focusing the educational experience, taking in to consideration the overlapping areas of the three key elements of the community of inquiry framework. It proposes a possible way of reaching goals such as students engaging in education because of a producer view on creating knowledge.
Engagement and taking responsibility for ones’ learning process is something that has interested me ever since I was a new student at the university. Even more when I began teaching in higher education, and further increasingly when starting to design new courses.
As a student; where did I get my drive and motivation to take responsibility for my own learning? I remember it so clearly. It was when a teacher drew attention to the question of being a producer of knowledge rather than a consumer.
As a teacher; carrying the memory of my own experience as a student with me in my new role. Trying different ways of assessing and laboratory exercises, closely integrated with seminars. Striving for students to notice this aim, most of the time without actually talking to them about it.
As a course designer; thinking a lot of how to build in the producer of knowledge perspective in the course. How to facilitate engagement and bringing attention to the very origins of engagement by implementing the producer view. But also widening the way to think about this perspective with consideration to collaborative aspects and blended learning.
Vaughan et. Al (2013) Lifts up the notion of teaching presence as an element in the blended classroom as, together with the virtual community and communication, being drivers that demands for all participants to be actively involved. Engaging, interacting and contributing to the learning environment. Considering the producer perspective on learning the element of teaching presence instead of teacher presence is intriguing, further considering the collaborative quality of the element of social presence and the cognitive presence with openness to different views; the community of inquiry framework is an interesting concept to explore.
Vaughan et. Al (2013) propose that critical thinking can be mastered by learners if they commit to and engage in a community of inquiry. A community of inquiry demands a producer view on learning since it requires exploring, creativity and curiosity. Critical thinking, regarded as the core of higher education, also need these aspects to develop. It does not appear out of thin air when entering the university. If the aim is a full educational experience, a “fusion of critical and creative cognitive processing known as higher-order thinking” that is the community of inquiry, might be a possible way. (Lipman, 1991, p. 204)
References
Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Edmonton: AU Press
