Considering our class presentation, I realized the importance of creating interactions that are suited to a virtual environment. Many of the activities we incorporated were direct translations from a f2f (face to face) setting. While these may prove to be engaging in person, the limitations of a virtual classroom may render these techniques less effective. The use of breakout rooms (buzz groups) seemed to work very well, however the virtual gallery stroll (slide 13) felt a bit awkward to me.
In this activity we asked students to brainstorm and list words or phrases that would summarize the individual analyses. I feel that the biggest limitation to this activity was the on screen typing mechanism. It seemed awkward, difficult to use, and did not identify the speaker.
Another limitation to this was the difficulty to facilitate and elicit student responses. In a traditional classroom, I find it easier to engage students using nonverbal cues and taking the pulse of the class. In this virtual environment, I felt at a bit of a loss. It is impossible to read silence over a computer screen. In person, I can usually assess whether or not students are reflecting, lost, or indifferent. Silence is just silence online. That might be a good topic for a future post (assessing silence online).
However, listening to the classroom responses after the fact, they seemed to be engaged, it was not a failure. If I had to redesign this activity, I would perhaps create a bank of concepts for students to choose from and then categorize; maybe a drag and drop type activity. It seems to me that ease of use is of paramount importance in e-Learning.
I also found out that having students create learning outcomes on the spot was perhaps a too complicated task to accomplish in the given time allotment. If I were to redesign this activity, I would perhaps have a list of learning outcomes with some that are irrelevant or incorrect and have the students select the correct responses. I understand that this is not achieving the goal of higher order thinking, but perhaps such an activity could prepare the students for an offline assignment where they could display their internalization of the knowledge.
What online interactions have you found to be successful? I am intrigued by the concept of game based learning and came across this site:
http://web.me.com/jen.dewitt/BakedNotFried/Welcome. (Thanks Margaret!)
Ben, that's a very honest reflection on your first group presentation in the course. The drag-and-drop idea would work perfectly. I noticed that it only took a couple of answers to get the rest of the class involved. Maybe we could call each name and aske the person to participate. I think it is less akward than when the professor does that in a face-to-face situation.
ReplyDeleteI'm learning a lot from your experience, not just from the content of your presentation.
Thanks
Domingo
I totally agree with your assessments of the success of the Virtual Gallery Stroll and the Learning Outcome exercise. The online silence can be deafening! I like the idea of doing a relatively easy ID, drag & drop exercise and then have a more difficult homework assignment. It's also possible if you ran a class over several weeks, you could build up to more difficult online work towards the end as the students realize what they must do and are prepared.
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