For the past two weeks we talked about the issue (or challenge or opportunity) of designing an online or blended course, bearing in mind important factors to consider, especially social presence, cognitive presence and teaching presence. In addition, another topic has strongly influenced our discussions, emotions.

Emotions

The importance of emotions on teachers´ and learners´ side should not be underestimated. Much has been exchanged in our online meetings about that. At first, I did not consider that emotions are so central to me. However, I quickly realized that emotions in the teaching / learning process always play a role and must always be taken into account. Above all, teachers are asked to create a pleasant learning environment for all participants in the learning process. Our group members have contributed many examples from their own practice, making the complexity and meaning of an emotional relationship within a learning process very clear. Much of the things that was reported and discussed, I could understand well. Most of the cases that my colleagues reported, I knew similarly from my own teaching, however without paining so much attention to it. The meaning of emotions in teaching situations was once again made clear. This realsation is already a valuable outcome for me by ONL.

The Five Stage Model

The five stage model serves as a visualization or “scaffold” for structuring digital teaching activities. It offers teachers a framework for supporting participants in developing their digital skills. The subclassification into the different learning levels “access and motivation”, “online socialization”, “information exchange”, “knowledge construction” and “development” with the increasing interactivity of the participants from stage to stage was intensively discussed from different perspectives. The different professions, experiences and cultural backgrounds of each member of our team have done very well for this process.

Emotions are important, as it became clear now. The five-stage model makes it possible to consider this in the context of digital teaching. I did not think that we would discuss it so long and intensively in our team. I have always thought that emotions are a kind of “accessory” that is intuitively passed on by a teacher to a learner (so either you live emotions by you own way of teaching or not). But there seem to be several levels, especially in online courses, where you can explicitly create an environment etc., which will make it easier for a participant to become an integrated member of the “teaching / learning” team and thus promote interactivity. Additionally, the five stage model gives me a nice tool to plan online courses. I believe that this approach (the familiarization of the participants in the new, perhaps unfamiliar learning environment) brings a significant benefit => all participants are “picked up”, even inexperienced participants (technical or digital) are not disconnected. This also applies to teachers. It will be a more familiar handling to the digital media, which will improve the own teaching quality and the way to deal with the learners in the digital environment.

This is definitely true for me…

References

Cleveland-Innes, M. (2019). Emotion and learning – emotional presence in the Community of Inquiry framework (CoI)? Introductory video on the Padlet

Salmon, G (2013) The Five Stage Model. [Homepage] http://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model.html