What suggestions do you have (activities) for development of eLearning in your own teaching or context?
As I reflected on the Topic 4, I think I would consider to use some technological tools for developing the community of inquiry in my own course. Cleveland-Innes, M. & Wilton, D. (2018) suggest that the purposeful inquiry is a way to form a certain community. In my current online course, I build up a discussion forum each week for students to raise question. But I often students are rarely used this space to interact with teachers or peers. After this course learning, I think one of the problems maybe the discussion forum is too broad. Students do not feel engaging or they do not know how to engage in the discussion.
I am considering to redevelop this forum with more specific questions. For example, the responsible teacher propose one to two questions in the discuss to spark students’ learning. We could also use the space for case study or case discussion. I am even thinking to revise the syllabus and include the very week’s discussion as part of the assessment. The discussion forum could also link to reading club, that student form temporal community that concentrate on the course literature. These two suggestions both focus on connecting and forming a community within the course students by using the the purposeful inquiry that closely related to the course content.
What are your thoughts about using technology to enhance learning/teaching in your own context?
I would be more sensitive about students’ digital literacy in the leaning motivation. Although most of current students are digital residents, but I would never assume that they are residents in the online environment. for those students who are older than their peer, I guess the need for technical support would be even important. Most of the technical gap can be resolved or expect to resolve in my own course since we are not the course for developing students’ digital literacy. But from the teacher or course directer perspectives, I think it is very important to consider what kind of technology I would like to use in the course. I will ask myself, it is the technology I plan to use necessary? How this technology contribute the students’ learning in this course? I used to be the person, that would like very much in introducing fancy tools to my students. Now I reconsider my motivation of introducing new tools, to catch students’ attention, to enhance students’ interest in this course. But did students focus on the content of the course or the new tool? Did they try the new tool because it is fun? But did they think how the new tool serve the learning. More importantly, now i consider whether the fancy tools frustrate some student if they DON’T find them easy to use or they DON’T find them useful to their learning! The consideration of these questions would not encourage me from introducing new tools to my course, but rather make a reasonable adapter to new technology. Maybe also include the role for gate keeper for my students for choosing tools that are suitable for their learning (at least in my course).
