XLS Commons
Posted on April 18, 2008
Filed Under Instructional Design | Leave a Comment
This post is a response to the question Keith posed at the end of his “Diligence” post.
Diligence can play out in an online course in myriad ways. The example I’d like to examine here is reflection – a practice used by many of us. Donald Schon (1987) proposed the concept of “reflective practitioner” to validate professional practice as a form of knowledge. A reflective practitioner engages in reflection in-action and reflection on-action.
We reflect in-action whenever we recognize a student’s confusion, incomplete understanding, or frustration at a given moment in the learning experience and intuitively adjust our thinking, behavior and action to accommodate the student’s need(s). It’s our tacit knowledge, based on knowing from experience, that’s at work here.
I recall my surprise at being inundated with emails shortly after my students began working on an online case study assignment. They were seeking reassurance that they were “on the right track,” and it dawned on me that they needed to discuss their initial findings with one another in order to construct meaning from this case study. I immediately sent everyone an email encouraging them to use the social learning tools available in our course site (discussion board and chat rooms) to further develop their ideas and initial responses to the case.
Examples of your own instances of reflecting in-action have probably run through your head while reading this post. The point is, this type of reflection is a spontaneous response, void of conscious thought and based on our knowing from experience. Schon (1987) states “. . . it involves making new sense of surprises, turning thought back on itself to think in new ways about phenomena and about how we think about those phenomena. And examples lie in ordinary conversation, making things, fixing things, riding bicycles . . .”
Reflection on-action happens after the fact –while reviewing contributions made to an online discussion, with the realization that students didn’t meet our expectations on a class project, when archiving course materials for later use, etc. It involves not only thinking about what did and didn’t work, but about the purposes and principles that undergird our judgments and actions. I’ve spent a fair amount of time critically examining the extent to which my discussion prompts facilitated a deeper level of discussion and creating new iterations of the rubric I used to grade students’ conversations in the discussion forums. Reflection on-action as a professional practice is, as Gawande states, “central to performance and fiendishly hard.”
This latter type of reflection, in order to be effective (i.e.: prompt changes in instructional practices), requires diligence. Reflection on-action can be superficial and ineffective — the “less than comprehensive application of the practice” that you described — if always done alone and while juggling many other responsibilities. This I understand. Sometimes I simply scribbled on a hard-copy of my syllabus, noting changes I wanted to make to the course, and hoped that I would remember to look for the document when the next semester rolled around!
I’m not suggesting that all forms of solitary reflection are weak; we’ve all had instances when, given a chunk of time with no distractions, we made instructional decisions based on student feedback and other course data that resulted in improved practices and increased student learning. But collaboration usually strengthens the process of reflecting on-action; additional perspectives offer new insights and encourage a deeper level of reflection.
A collaborative approach to reflection on-action can involve both students and colleagues. Using CATs to regularly elicit feedback from students can promote reflection and inform instructional decision-making. I’ve found variations of the “One Minute Email” to be very useful. I also like the Plus/Delta Feedback Tool, which is a bit harder to use in online classes, but is doable! Engaging in professional dialogue with departmental colleagues, conducting an action research project with like-discipline colleagues, or participating in a self-study group to investigate a particular online teaching strategy can foster deep reflection and inform practice.
Creating an environment that supports collaborative, focused reflection about online teaching and learning – a “community of practice,” if you will — is a goal of UMOnline’s. How can we facilitate this in a way that meets your needs? What instructional practices are you most interested in examining with a small group of colleagues? How can we grow our own examples and models of “best practices” in online teaching and learning? I hope you’ll join the conversation here.
Mary Engstrom
Posted on April 2, 2008
Filed Under Guest Columns, Operational Efficiency | Leave a Comment
From time to time, we will have contributions from guest columnists. The following is by Samantha Hines, the Distance Education Coordinator and Social Sciences Librarian at the Mansfield library. [Keith]
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Reserve readings have been available for ages in libraries. These allow you to share readings with your students that are spontaneous, relevant to the course, and timely. The library maintains access to these materials, regulates how long each user can have them, and makes sure they are returned on time and in good condition. Over time reserves have grown to incorporate recordings of lectures, relevant media content, and other objects useful for instruction (one library where I’ve worked had an entire human skeleton on reserve!). And with the growth of the Internet and digital technologies, access to reserve materials is no longer restricted to the library building. In fact, with Blackboard access and a scanner, professors can post their own readings and materials directly into their course shells, bypassing the library altogether but preserving access to materials.
A key consideration with all of this, however, is copyright. There is no particular copyright protections or permissions for reserve collections. Access to reserves is primarily supported via fair use, and materials available online are covered by fair use and the TEACH Act. If the materials you are placing on reserve or posting online for your course are not spontaneous and timely (i.e., the same set of articles and book chapters every semester), that would be seen as a violation of fair use and a good indication that you may need to develop acoursepack through the UM bookstore. For a checklist of fair use guidelines, see http://www.copyright.iupui.edu/checklist.htm. For guidance regarding coursepacks, see http://web.umtbookstore.com/umtbookstore/coursepacks.htm. Copyright also affects the use of media, especially in the distant classroom. Copyright laws more stringently protect media. While the library has the capability to digitize and post audio and small portions of video material in our reserve system and provides equipment that allows you to do the same, the rules regulating the use of this content in online teaching are much more restrictive. Feature films you may show in your face to face classroom, for example, are essentially forbidden from digitization and inclusion in online courses. However, I and the other librarians can help you find other alternatives to these resources–there are often equivalents available freely online.
At UM, the onus is on the instructor of a course to ensure the materials used in teaching both face to face and online classes meet copyright law, but you don’t have to determine it alone. I am glad to help determine if and how much of particular materials can be used in your teaching (although I am required to point out that I am not a lawyer, and my advice should not be construed as legal advice). There are several online tools and guides that can be used in the determination, such as the fair use checklist mentioned above, the University’s copyright guide (http://libguides.lib.umt.edu/content.php?pid=3857), and the library’s reserves guidelines (http://www.lib.umt.edu/gen/copyright.htm).
Please feel free to contact me with your copyright and/or reserve questions and concerns at samantha.hines@umontana.edu or 243-4558.
