Design for online and blended learning

Tracing from the three topics covered, topic four is now calling upon another attention focusing on designing an online and blended learning course. Focusing on key approaches for designing that course, one of the important components to consider is how an online and blended learning approach will address emotional determinants for learning. Emotions under this context comprise hope, pride, anger, shame, boredom and hopelessness. All these are significantly related to academic achievement, student motivation, learning strategies, self regulations and value appraisal (Pekrun et al., 2010).

This was one of a very interesting session during the discussion in our group because everyone was asked to share his/her emotions relating to our online course.  Personally during the beginning of the course I was very frighten if I could effectively manage to attend this course. On the way I found myself having joyful course with a very interesting network with group members across the world sharing their brilliant experience. This is the point when I turned the gear and concentrated much with a lot of hopes and self determination to the course.

Emotional engagement in the online learning   

Emotional engagement is a student’s involvement in and enthusiasm for online learning. When students are emotionally engaged, they want to participate in school, and they enjoy that participation more. There are strategies that can be used for increasing students’ engagement in online contexts such as increasing positive emotions and decreasing negative emotions of students; increasing intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, and self-regulation; improving cognition; and increasing higher order thinking.

Pentaraki and Burkholder, (2018) pointed out the following emotional strategies and techniques to employ for online and blended learning.

• The use of anticipated or self-referential feedback 
• The effect of culture on emotions
• Creating courses with high task value 
• Cognitive strategies 
• Behavioral strategies 
• Collecting and analyzing students’ engagement data

Instructional Design Standards for Better E-learning

In designing blended and online course we need to consider for major components namely; course purpose, objectives, course content, methods to be employed and learner who is a main stake holder of that particular course. Therefore, Chatia, B.,(2018) pointed out the following standards which are essentials for an effective blended and online course:

Instructional design standards (Chatia,2018)

• Identifying  the purpose of the course
• Framing Instructional objectives
• Aligning content with objectives
• Deciding on strategies to facilitate learning
• Providing practice with feedback
• Engaging interactivity
• Learning assessment

This topic being supplemented with three other topics covered earlier paved my way towards the designing and effective implementation of an online course for my students which I think will significantly add me with potential pedagogical approaches.  

References

Chetia, B. (2018) Instructional Design Standards for Better E-learning. Available at: https://blog.commlabindia.com/ (Accessed: 22 May 2019).

Pentaraki, A. and Burkholder, G. J. (2018) ‘Emerging Evidence Regarding the Roles of Emotional, Behavioural, and Cognitive Aspects of Student Engagement in the Online Classroom’, European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, pp. 1–21.

Learning in communities-networked collaborative learning

In psychology we believe that human being is a social being, meaning that need to interact with other people as struggle to find his/her well being. The same applies in academia especially in the environment with a computer mediated technologies accompanied with skilled people to exploit such resources to enable collaborative learning or learning communities. Therefore the concept of community learning reflects how human being depend from each other in a learning process, need interaction and collaboration with other others in a well networked environment and this is whap have been happen in my trip with this course.

To ensure effective community learning, the group involved should share common academic goals and attitudes and should have access to key infrastructures to enhance collaboration. During the course design it is very important to make sure that the course is not going to frustrate the learners but rather making it both inspirational and practical, connect people, organizations and systems that will be eager to learn and work across boundaries with a focus to a common agenda, metrics and deliverables.

Well established learning communities enable participants to share results and learn from each other, thereby improving their ability to achieve rapid yet significant progress. (Bennett, 2015)

Frustration in networked collaborative learning

It should be noted that sometimes community learning in a networked environment is not smooth; it is accompanied with some frustration among the community/learners.  There should be taken into consideration from the course development stage and make sure the online collaborative course to be designed have all the key features of interesting and exciting course to the learners/community instead of frustrating.

Sources of frustrations among students involved in online collaborative learning experiences

• Perception of an asymmetric collaboration among the teammates (most important) 
• Lack of shared goals among the team members
• Imbalance in the level of commitment
• Difficulties in communication 
• Lack of instructor’s support/orientation 
• Problems in reaching consensus (Capdeferro, N., & Romero, M., 2012).

Thus, reacting to the above challenges, learners should be supplied with learning environments that facilitate social interaction, collaboration, effective support in technology and should be provide with enough information about the online learning models in general in order to allow them to adjust their expectations, preferences and decision making concerning their enrollment in online learning

Emotion words listed by academic writers; word size is proportionate to frequency (n=1223).

Students’ satisfaction in online course

There are many determinants for an online course to be either enjoyable or frustrating to the learners. Some of these may include the following as stipulated by Bolliger, D.U. (2004):

·         Access to reliable technology and equipment. Students should have access to the reliable equipment and must be familiar with the technology used.  Students with limited online access are at a considerable disadvantage to learners who have unlimited access

·         Course management. Administrative support is instrumental for students pursuing online courses. Contact person and access to other resources such as course textbooks, libraries, technical support, and a toll-free number to reach the university are also important. Students without technical support may experience high levels of frustration in the online environment

·         Course website. Easy navigation of the course website is an important factor in the online environment. Learning should be meaningful, relevant, and interesting. Good course web sites present information in a logical order and their design must be attractive and consistent.

·         Communication. Under this context there are three types of interaction in online learning environment; learner-content, learner-instructor, and learner-learner. Instructors should facilitate all types of interactions in their distance learning courses when possible and appropriate. If such kind of commitment between different parties misses, learners are likely to experience feelings of isolation, and high levels of frustration and anxiety

·         Interactivity. Learning environments in which social interaction and collaboration is allowed and encouraged lead to positive learning outcomes. Collaborative learning tools can improve student satisfaction in the online learning environment.

The research model for blended e-learning systems learning satisfaction (Wu, Tennyson and Hsia, 2010)

Magnitude of student’s participation in networked learning communities

Therefore, it should be noted that leaning community has been marked as a key feature of the 21^st century in schools especially in higher learning institutions. Lichtenste and Watkins in (2005) pointed significant outcomes of student’s participation in learning communities such as higher retention rates, integration of academic and social experiences, higher intrinsic motivation, lower risk of academic withdrawal, increased cognitive skills and abilities, gains in multiple areas of skill and overall satisfaction with the college experience

References

Bennett, J. M. (2015) ‘Learning Communities’, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Intercultural Competence.

Bolliger, D.U. (2004). Key Factors for Determining Student Satisfaction in Online Courses. International Journal on E-Learning, 3(1), 61-67.  https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/2226/

Capdeferro, N., & Romero, M. (2012). Are online learners frustrated with collaborative learning experiences? The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 13(2), 26-44.

Lichtenstein, M. (2005). The importance of classroom environments in the assessment of learning community outcomes. Journal of College Student Development, 46(4), 341–356.

Watkins, C. (2005). Classrooms as learning communities: A review of research. London Review of Education, 3(1), 47–6

Wu, J. H., Tennyson, R. D. and Hsia, T. L. (2010) ‘A study of student satisfaction in a blended e-learning system environment’, Computers and Education. Elsevier Ltd, 55(1), pp. 155–164.

Lesson Learnt and Future Practice

Reflection on this topic marks the end of my ONL191 journey. In my reflection there are three key issues which I want to share with my readers; these will include lesson learnt from the course, challenges encountered and my comments for future practice.

Lesson learn from ONL191

It is a cause of no doubt that before starting this trip I had a minimal experience on the application of online networked learning environment and practices in academia. Along the way I was able to conquer a lot of skills, knowledge and wider attributes such as the effective deployment of various online collaborative tools such as Padlet, Zoom, Coggle, Prezi, Pictochart, Twilda, Socrative among others in learning and teaching.  But what do I mean by online collaboration tools?

“It is basically referred to web-based tools that allow students and teachers to perform various tasks, share and access the resources, discuss, perform online activities and many more” (Hargis and Wilcox, 2008).  

Thus, online collaboration tools deserve a special attention for e Learning professional.

Other lessons learnt include:

• Collaborative learning 
• How to access open education source 
• Use of new online collaboration tools 
• Effective engagement of students in a learning process 
• Effective design and implementation of online and blended course 
• Values of open course to the students, teachers and society at large and strategies for its implementation 
• Well coverage of topic one to five

Challenges encountered

The expedition for ONL191 was so interesting and joyful to large extent. It was characterized by worldwide participants with brilliant experience in the course and topics. However there were some impediments towards the succession of the course, these challenges can be summarized in few areas including: technical reliance, adaptability struggle, time management, self motivation among the participants and lack of attendance during some meetings due to competing responsibilities

Recommendation for future practice

Basing on the above challenges pointed out in relation to ONL191 learning voyage, there should be good strategies to undertake for its perfection. Therefore my good recommendations for the course future practice can be as follows:  

For the effective future practice the focus should be on proper setting of student’s needs and goals, clarity of the course design, effective technical support to the learners, comprehensive information to prospective learners, the learning platform should be user friendly, the course goals and objectives should be clearly communicated from the beginning of the course, effective monitoring of group activities and finally conducting a course completion survey.

On another side, prospective student/learner  should be concerned with good time management, clearly set the personal goals for the course, effective participation for all meeting sessions and collaborative assignments, be committed to the course with open mind set and build up a better rapport with each other during the group sessions.

Learn without Limit

References

Hargis, J. and Wilcox, S. M. (2008) ‘Ubiquitous, free, and efficient online collaboration tools for teaching and learning’, Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 9(4), pp. 9–17.