Teaching Presence vs. Teacher Presence in Online Teaching

Distance Education, Online Teaching Practices, Reflective Teaching, VLE, VLEs 0 comments

The Creation of Adam, Salt Cathedral, Zipaquirá, Colombia. Photo by Jonathan Acuña

Teaching Presence vs. Teacher Presence in Online Teaching

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Sunday, May 21, 2017

Post 314

“Teachers of online courses still need to maintain an environment conducive to learning and provide instruction that meets the needs of students from a wide range of backgrounds and levels of experience” (Pawan, Wiechart, Warren, & Park, 2016). But how is this “environment” leading to learning maintained in an online setting and also, how can one cater for all these “backgrounds and levels of experience” that are brought by all course participants to the a virtual learning environment (VLE)? No doubt, part of the answer to all this questioning can be found through one’s teaching and teacher presence when delivering a course.

Learning in a virtual environment or in a brick-and-mortar classroom, as it has always happened, continues to be acquired in social contexts where a teaching figure is present along with at least a learner, and this teaching character is meant to be present to signal the learner path to acquire knowledge. This teaching professional is present by means of an instructor’s teaching presence and by his/her teacher presence as well. Though a learner may be detached from society –somehow-, knowledge is created for social consumption; information is about and/or linked to human beings making their learning socially-bound and then consumed (by humans) and consequently taught by this teaching figure. All this leads to understand that teachers are needed for the imperative of social interactions “conducive to learning” that “provide instruction” regardless of the kind of expertise held by learners. And in an online environment, though an instructor is not synchronously available for students at all times, the transference of knowledge happens because an instructional design of tasks (readings, reflections, videos, slideshows, and so on) has been executed to help learners assimilate information in a VLE bearing in mind the importance of learning in social contexts designed by the instructor or instructional designer.

Teaching in an online context can be circumscribed to two educational constructs that can help us differentiate teachers’ roles in virtual learning environments: the former is teaching presence, and the latter is teacher presence. So let’s explore what these two constructs really mean in terms of their individual connotations and how they cannot be considered synonyms when dealing with online education.

What can be understood by teaching presence?

Based on Pawan, Wiechart, Warren, & Park (2016), teaching presence includes what Rodgers & Raider-Roth (2006) labed as a) connection to self, b) connection to students, and c) connection to subject matter and pedagogical knowledge. To have a better comprehension of what it is really meant by each of these presence elements, let’s review the following chart where each of these constructs is briefly explained.

Rodgers & Raider-Roth’s (2006) Teaching Construct	Pawan, Wiechart, Warren, & Park’s (2016) labels	Prof. Jonathan Acuña’s insight into the these constructs
Connection to Self	Authentic Self-Projection	Teaching as a projection of instructors themselves as both individual human beings detached from their career and as professionals within a given area of expertise they hold due to their jobs, which is part of their credentials for being course instructors
Connection to Students	Psychological Connection	Learning taking place as part of one’s relationship to others (learners) along with one’s ability to assume the viewpoint of these others (students) and see how the learning process takes place to provide guidance or assistance for knowledge construction in the minds of trainees
Pedagogical Knowledge	The Feedback Loop	Teachers’ understanding of the process of knowing the subject matter due to their expertise used to gain insight into students’ thinking and assimilation of new content to help them monitor and potentiate their own autonomous learning, develop skills to deal with course content and job responsibilities, and consolidate competences to be used in their daily professional (or even personal) life
**Teaching Presence, Designed by Prof. Jonathan Acuña based on Pawan, Wiechart, Warren, & Park (2016)**

On the other hand, after having reviewed the chart, teacher presence does not necessarily account for any of the above aspects but instruction alone. And as it has been seen, teaching presence is vital for an online virtual setting, as well for F2F classroom interactions, but teacher presence cannot be equated with teaching presence, and it cannot account for any deeper reflection on the content being studied. It is one’s teaching presence that helps us move learners into deeper reflective stages of assimilation and usage of content; our presence as teachers in terms of instructors is not going to help them move into deeper considerations of what they are learning and their ulterior application in their jobs.

Moving into Deeper Reflection

Do we want our learners to just be in an exploration mode while dealing with content in a VLE? Without proper teaching presence, students in an online environment do not necessarily feel motivated to go deeper into the exploration of the subject-matter being stated. Based on Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2001, also quoted by Pawan, Wiechart, Warren, & Park, 2016), “often students will be more comfortable remaining in a continuous exploration mode; therefore, teaching presence is essential in moving the process to more advanced stages of critical thinking and cognitive development.” If an instructor is just there exercising his/her teacher presence (instruction), it does not necessarily mean that learners will go deeper into topics, theories, and ideas after being introduced to them by an instructor; they need to be pushed by other means to take the quantum leap into the “real” integration and resolution associated with the subject-matter covered in class (or in a course). To conclude, teacher presence is not enough to activitate learners’ cognitive interaction with new content to do into deeper critical and proactive thinking of new content.

Teaching Presence	Practical Inquiry Model Stage Description
Triggering	Instructor’s design of activity introduces a new topic / concept / idea to be considered by participants for later application in course tasks. This usually comes with a supply of bibliography to be read, analyzed, and understood by course learners.
Explanation	Participants cognitively interact with content in a series of tasks such as forum discussions and debates where the sharing of ideas and collaboration to build their knowledge are implied. Learners are meant to participate in discussions seeing the pros and cons of using these new data.
Integration	Through the collaborative process, participants incorporate the new concepts along with ideas shared by peers in innovative ways to make meaningful use of new knowledge. The generation of new ideas can trigger new, positive, and proactive used of new information in their areas of expertise.
Resolution	Participants are asked to get proactive in the use of their new knowledge by incorporating it into their daily working life. As part of their deeper critical and cognitive reflections with content, learners see the potential uses of new data in their current working processes to improve them.
**Teaching Presence, Designed by Prof. Jonathan Acuña based on Pawan, Wiechart, Warren, & Park (2016)**

As conceived by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2001, also quoted by Pawan, Wiechart, Warren, & Park, 2016), a way to deal with this surface exploration of topics is by means of their Practical Inquiry Model (PIM). PIM components, as shown in the table above, are a necessity in online education where, for instance, the instructional design includes parcipation in forums to move participants to deeper critical, and cognitive reflections on what is being studied. A mere teacher presence, which –as stated above- accounts only for instruction, does not push learners into a real reflection on course content to integrate it into their way of working and to proactively use it to (re)solve problems they can face at work or just to simply improve the existant processes.

Some Concluding Remarks

“The concept of presence in teaching has not often been taught in teacher education programs (Liston, 1995), largely because it is difficult to define and concretely demonstrate” (Pawan, Wiechart, Warren, & Park, 2016). Though elusive as it seems to be, teaching and teacher presence are constructs that must be clearly defined to help virtual instructors to better deal with students in online learning settings. What Rodgers & Raider-Roth (2006) defined as teaching presence, which includes connection to self, connection to students, and connection to subject matter and pedagogical knowledge, is an imperative in the search for more deeper and critical participation of students in online education. Its ulterior assocation with Garrsion, Anderson, & Archer’s (2001) PIM is an excellent element that can be used to spice up any instructional design model that can be used to create learning tasks for students in virtual learning environments. Finally, making room to find the difference between teaching and teacher presence is another must in the pedagogical implications of one’s presences in online education. Instruction, or teacher presence, is not enough to trigger student critical and cognitive reflections on the subject-matter but how those reflections can be used for proactive uses of content in their areas of expertise at work.

References

Garrsion, D., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2001). Critical Thinking, Cognitive Presence, and Computre Referencing in Distance Education. American Journal of Distance Education 15(1), 7-25.

Pawan, F., Wiechart, K., Warren, A., & Park, J. (2016). Pedagogy & Practice for Online English Language Teacher Education. Alexandria, VA: TESOL Press.

Rodgers, C., & Raider-Roth, M. (2006). Presence in Teaching. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 265-287.

Sunday, May 21, 2017

Some Reflections of Leadership Styles

Higher Education, WAS, Working Adult Student 4 comments

View of Bogotá, Colombia from Mount Monserrate. Photo by Jonathan Acuña

Some Reflections of Leadership Styles

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Saturday, May 6, 2017

Post 313

When I look back into my former training and studies on working adult students (WASs) in higher education, a stream of ideas start to clutter into my mind coming from many different angles and Andragogical approaches. And to try to give them some shape as a black-and-white document or, at least, as some memoranda to keep track of my thoughts, I need to go back to these questions provided by my former online instructors and course instructional designers to trigger some good reflection on leadership styles and what using them in a course imply.

Questions to Reflect on WASs

· What concept or strategy do you think is more useful in your professional practice in higher education? Choose at least one and explain briefly.

· What recommendation would you give to your academic institution in order to complement virtual classroom work with WASs?

· What are you expectations for teaching and learning strategies as a newly-acquired piece of information for your teaching?

When asked, “What concept or strategy do you think is more useful in your professional practice?,” several thoughts and emotions pop up in my mind as possible responses to the question, or –better stated- multiple answers show their presence. As a seasoned online instructor working with WASs and as a mortar-and-brick college teaching professional dealing with traditional students and WASs within the same classrooms, I am quite certain now that teacher leadership styles and types are necessary in the F2F and virtual classroom for the sake of learning. Working adult students do have a very well defined college entry profile, and understanding what they are and aspire as part of their academic life, one can find the right combination of leadership types to acknowledge their presence and needs to continue studying, and also to help them achieve their personal goals at their current jobs with the aid of course content pertaining their working fields. Leadership styles are not a luxury but a real necessity in one’s teaching settings.

To see the types of leadership most common seen in education with WASs, go to “What kind of Leader Am I?”

In addition to leadership styles, our roles as teachers, as well as the students’ role in the 21^st Century knowledge society, are important to be considered, whether one is teaching in a virtual or F2F setting. WASs are bound to find themselves dealing with new learning environments that were not present at the time they started their majors, which were interrupted for many a different reason. Transitioning to this new model of learning such a hybrid or blended one, where their autonomy can help them boost their desire for learning and achieve professional goals, is not meant to be easy for all of them due to the new challenges that unfold before them. Consequently, it is necessary to help WASs move out of their old-fashioned way of studying and learning to new ways in which current technology (smartphones, tablets, laptops, and so on), an LMS such as Moodle or Blackboard (or any other existing one), and virtual environments can help them work and study according to their tight schedules, expectations, and even their family life responsibilities. Our teaching roles must be carefully utilized with WASs in this 21^st Century knowledge society to really help them become deep and autonomous learners.

When asked by my former trainers about the recommendations I would give my higher education institution in order to complement virtual classroom work with WASs, there is one single thing that worries me a lot, and I do not know if this has already been brought to their attention. At my university what I have been witnessing for quite a while is the lack of use of the Moodle platform we have, at least in my department. It is incredible to see blank virtual classrooms where no information is displayed for learners to aid them in the “digestion” of new content and theories. If our institution has invested thousands of dollars on a tool like this to boost student learning and autonomy, the way is being used has to do with the lack of training provided to faculty members. It is for this reason that at my higher education institution it is necessary that all teaching professionals get some sort of accreditation to start using Moodle to complement their F2F courses with the principles of content selection. And if they were introduced to some principles of instructional design, the use of our Moodle platform would take a more sound direction to potentiate leaner autonomy and deep learning.

What are my expectations and needs for "teaching and learning strategies"? I have high expectations to what it is in store for me in the future while deepening my understanding of WASs. I want to see and even experiment with teaching strategies that can help me assist my working adult students become better at assimilating content, at using this content effectively –first- in class and –then- in their jobs, and at what they do at their workplaces on a regular basis. A lot of what I try to do is based on my common sense, but I am not quite sure how common my way of thinking can be for my WASs. I need to get a solid theoretical background to use teaching strategies that can yield positive results for my students such as learner autonomy and time management and balance in the resources used by adult learners.

Saturday, May 06, 2017

Teacher Performance in Online Learning Scenarios

Online Instruction, online learning, Online Teaching Practices, Virtual Learning Environments, VLEs 0 comments

Taken from http://www.paneuropeannetworks.com/science-technology/eit-digital-announces-best-digital-technology-scale-ups/

Teacher Performance in

Online Learning Scenarios

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Sunday, April 30, 2017

Post 312

As an active online instructor with a compressed experienced gained in two years and a half of course delivery in VLEs (Virtual Learning Environments), I am often asked by faculty members and other teaching professionals if online courses are good room for teacher training and professional development. Basing myself on my gained expertise I must go beyond my professional experience as a current instructor and as a former online student; I must then refer to Pawan, Wiechart, Warren, & Park (2016) who have stated that “evidence suggests that online courses can be effective in improving teacher knowledge, instructional practices, and student achievement.” In other words, online courses can help teaching professionals improve and grow professionally.

This is not just my gut feeling about online learning and of what I am currently doing in virtual learning scenarios as an instructor, but this is now based on what Pawan, Wiechart, Warren, & Park (2016) have detected in their research and professional practice in online English language teacher education. The fact is that my etnographies of courses I have delivered, when compared to the experts’ way of thinking, do point out towards teacher knowledge, instructional practices, and student achievement as the room for teacher training and professional development. But how can the training in these areas improve teacher performance in online learning scenarios? What needs not be be overlooked by professionals?

A look into Teacher Knowledge

VLEs and online learning are not equivalent to technology usage as it is commonly mistaken by some teaching professionals; they are much more aligned with pedagogy for distant education. As I get to explain colleagues and other educators, online learning is not about using platforms such as Moodle, Blackboard, Canvas, Schoology, and so on; it is much more connected to pedagogy or andragogy, depending on the target group of students one has in mind. The online instructor needs to be trained on the real understanding and development of pedagogy (andragogy) since they are much more relevant to student learning processes. As pointed out by Pawan, Wiechart, Warren, & Park (2016), “pedagogy rather than technology should drive online instruction,” not the other way around. Online teaching ought to be focused on pedagogy when student teachers and regular students are trained online.

Teacher Knowledge that is developed in VLEs is not measured by how much an instructor knows about Web 2.0 or the use of CMSs (content management systems); it is measured by how much s/he understands the pedagogical processes behind deep learning and the development of skills and competences needed by professionals in their daily work. Teacher Knowledge is linked to how an instructor is able to profit from the tools s/he is provided to help students develop themselves within the course content (and beyond). All this is about how educators make use of social, teaching, and cogntive presences in a course to replicate what can be done in a F2F classroom but with the aid of technology driven by pedagogical comprehension of learning processes.

Instructional Practices in VLEs

As it can be understood by any neophite instructor teaching an online course for the first time, instruction in an online environment is not the same as in a F2F setting. As stated by Laureate Education Inc. (2012), though there are similar features in both teaching/learning environments, an instructors must be present and available for his/her learners though there may be preset times to interact synchronously or asynchronously for both teachers and students. As in a F2F teaching environment, an instructional practice that needs to be present is the setting of clear expectations for learners. And because students can interact with the course content any moment, “it is important to establish how much time you expect them to be working on coursework each week” (Laureate Education Inc., 2012). This is another area where teachers through online training can profit to help learners focus on their learning.

Laureate Education Inc. (2012) also insists on the importance pedagogical features of online learning. For Laureate it is crucial to “create a learning community” with the students (social presence), “vary learning experiences” students are exposed to to foster skills and competencies development (teaching presence), provide learners with “timely feedback” as part of instructor’s guidance for them (teaching presence), “invite discussions for inquiries and reflections” needed for the interaction of students with coursework and content (cognitive presence), and “use content resources that are easily accessible by all students” (teaching and cognitive presence). Going beyond these practices for online teaching, Laureate Education Inc. (2012) also suggests that all instructors “customize learning to individual needs and interests” to provide them with educational tasks that can fulfill their learning expectations in one’s course, and they also insist on the importance of the “use of Real-World examples in learning activities” and the “use of proper netiquette and cyber-activity.” To sum up, “… presences are essential for learning by means of the online medium, and instruction through the medium should strive toward their attainment” (Pawan, Wiechart, Warren, & Park, 2016).

Teacher Performance in Online Learning Scenarios by Jonathan Acuña on Scribd

Student Achievement in Online Learning

Oftentimes I have had this discussion with colleagues and teaching professionals, Are learners in a VLE over, average, or under achievers? Though my very personal experience triggers an answer to this question, the fact is that no overgeneralization can be made for all online instructors. Based on what I have been able to document in my courses in which I only count with faculty members of various university across the globe, students become “over achievers” with the right doses of motivation. Laureate Education (2012) differentiates two types of motivation when dealing with an instructor-led or self-paced course; for them any learner “must be self-motivated, however an instructor and other peers typically help motivate” them (instructor-led course) and “must have a strong self-motivating personality to be successful” in a self-paced course. Teachers in online courses can for sure profit from them if they possess the right motivation and desire to grow professionally triggering a lot of knowledge in their current and future students.

If a student enters an online course with the right encouragement (self-motivation), s/he is ready to partake in a VLE course. Anyone with the right doses of motivation can become an over achiever (or an average one); anyone who can be positively motivated and who has been given the right amount of formative feedback can also become an over achiever (or continue being an average one). Though there is no way of knowing if a student will become someone who likes to perform beyond the expected and average, another element to consider is the summative assessment criteria used in an online course. Based on my instructor’s experience where constructivist tasks are mostly problem-based learning-oriented linked to real-world learning scenarios, students get engaged and usually go the extra mile in spite of the fact that you also find learners who simply do the minimum to get the right score to comply with a task. My experience with training faculty members from various universities has also given me certainty that teaching professionals can be interested learners.

Are online courses good room for teacher training and professional development? Sure! Teachers can gain lots of teacher knowledge, comprehend instructional practice trends quite common in virtual learning scenarios, and help foster student achievement by means of the right motivation exponentially, all as part of teacher training and professional development. Online teaching is not about technology or how it is used; “online teaching is enhanced by technology but not subsumed by it” (Pawan, Wiechart, Warren, & Park, 2016). Teaching professionals can also be part of this online experience to grow professionally beyond the mortar-and-brick walls of a classroom. Their teacher knowledge can be expanded to understand how pedagogy works in VLEs; the discovery of new instructional practices connected to a community of learning online can be of great use for current and future courses; and ways to help student achievement can also be learned to help all kinds of students.

References

Laureate Education. (2012). Instructor-Led vs. Self-Paced Courses. Retrieved from Laureate Faculty Development: global.laureate.net/

Laureate Education Inc. (2012). Top 10 Practices for Teaching Online. Retrieved from Laureate Faculty Development: global.laureate.net/

Pawan, F., Wiechart, K., Warren, A., & Park, J. (2016). Pedagogy & Practice for Online English Language Teacher Education. Alexandria VA: Tesol Press.

Sunday, April 30, 2017

Problems with Usability and Accessibility

Teaching Practices, WAS, Working Adult Student 0 comments

Problems with Usability and Accessibility

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Thursday, April 27, 2017

Post 311

What needs to be done when a Working Adult Student (WAS) or any other traditional student in higher education is having trouble with the course content and the cognitive, learning-driven balance it needs to show for them? If usability in course content and balance is meant to imply easiness in use of the content for a course and if accessibility is the possibility of material being accessed by all learners, having trouble with any of these two college education constructs will alter the logical balance for a WAS and how s/he is to cognitively interact with it for learning purposes; consequently, this “ill” situation must be corrected to aid them in their learning process.

How could this “ill” situation affecting WASs (and any other student) be solved satisfactorily to foster deep learning through usability and accessibility? First of all, course material that is provided for learners in a course needs to be adhered to the principle of usability. Material must be representative of what is being addressed in a F2F classroom or while the students is interacting with the course content on a virtual environment; it needs to have epistemological meaning and specificity within the discipline in which it is used and where skills and competences are meant to be developed. Moreover, material, which does not favor learning, does not use the principle of transferability and durability. For instance, if a mindmap is rather confusing than helping learners recall information to be used for application, analysis, synthesis or evaluation, then this map violates the principles of transferability and durability, and it will not help a student learn or even just recall information that can be used –initially- in the classroom and –later on- in their future jobs. If readings are long and questionnaires meant to help learners comprehend them are vague, then we encounter problems with specificity and representativity and lacks real epistemological meaning for what the learner is studying and its applicability to his/her future or current job.

Secondly, material that is provided for students in a course has to be linked to the principle of accessibility. As a faculty member at a private university in my home country, I have seen learners trying to find books, material, mindmaps, software, and the like for their course homework, term papers, projects, and so on, material that was supposed to be available for them from day one onward since it was included in the course outline. Through my many years in college settings, I have been appointed to teach courses in which the material is not available for learners in the campus library, or at least in the copying center when this material has been designed and developed by other professors. As a proactive faculty member, what I have done many times is to either have the material ready for students to get it at the university photocopying center (which I rarely do), or what I try to do is to have the material ready to be downloaded from the university’s Moodle platform. In this way, I have provided accessibility of the material to every single member of a course directly from their Moodle accounts, just one click away, and tried enhance usability from day one onward.

To sum up, if there are problems with usability and accessibility, they must be fixed at once, and not just for WASs but for any other traditional student taking the same course with adult learners. To be sure that these college pillars are met, here you have a simple checklist to use or to have learners provide you with some feedback:

Thursday, April 27, 2017

The Teaching Plan in a WASs’ Learning Environment

Higher Education, Lesson Planning, WAS 0 comments

Taken from http://projectamplify.com/insight/seven-really-useful-tips-write-website-blog-article/

The Teaching Plan in a WASs’ Learning Environment

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Post 310

Part of any faculty member’s professional development is to be active in his/her own learning by means of courses or by being inquisitive in educational matters that can help to achieve a better teaching performance. While being part of a Laureate Faculty Development program for faculty members, part of our reflective work was to examine what our expertise can teach us of what we have already experienced in the classrooms. And this time around we participants were provided the following questions to delve into one’s believes:

· Based on one’s own experience, how does a coherent and consistent planning contribute to the WASs' learning process?

· Why is planning important in the use of technological tools such as virtual campuses and platforms?

Here is some of my thinking as part of my reflective journaling. Let’s see whether these ideas make sense in the reader as a starting point of his/her own reflective teaching.

As an active faculty member at Universidad Latina de Costa Rica teaching didactics, I confront my students with four basic types of planning in ELT (English Language Teaching). All of them have their pros and cons in language teaching, but they serve an ultimate purpose: to guide the teacher from the start of a new unit to the full apprehension of contents by the learners. From my viewpoint in planning these can be stated as follows: 1) SWBAT Plan (the student will be able to …), 2) ABCD Plan (audience, behavior, condition, & degree), 3) TBI Plan (task-based instruction), and 4) GTOP Plan (Goal, Technique, Objective, & Purpose). But which one can be used for the WASs’ learning process?

Based on my expertise dealing with adult learners, three of the types of plans stated above can help WASs achieve learning goals. ABCD Plans are quite good to work with working adults because we start planning backwards, having in mind the end product for a given thematic unit. In the ABCD lesson planning fashion, there is a behavior that needs to be replicated to ensure a skill can be developed and then replicated by learners at their workplaces. TBI Plans are also helpful for an instructor who has some experience in instructional design. Tasks can be linked to yield a given end product, but they do not necessarily focus learners on a behavior that can be replicated in the workplace. The focus of the task is to make learners realize that to achieve a goal different steps need to be taken. And a GTOP Plan is another good way of planning that can help the instructor (and the learner as well) to identify their roles along the learning process. Though they use ABCD objectives, the plan does include the rationale why activities are carried out by having in mind the end product or competency.

What about WASs in virtual environments? For faculty members who have working adults in virtual courses, TBI Plans with their corresponding cycle of activities aiming at achieving a goal can help a lot. But as stated above, it is recommendable that the instructor can make use of ADDIE or ASSURE instructional models to frame the plan in such a way that learners can really develop themselves, see the use of what they are doing at work, and the potential it has for their professional lives, as well. GTOP Plans can also aid instructors to create learning tasks that can produce some good skills and competencies, which are a synonym of deep learning among students.

Finally, why is planning important in the use of technological tools such as virtual campuses and platforms? Having no clear purpose while using a virtual classroom is a dead-on street with more frustration than any other thing. Since a type of behavioral leadership is needed when using an ABCD or GTOP plan, the design of activities need to be focused on what kind of behavior is expected from learners in given tasks at work. In this knowledge society, it is crucial for learners to develop their potential for their current or future jobs. As a consequence, it is necessary that working students (and the traditional one as well) understand how to use Web 2.0 tools that can help them accomplish working goals quickly and efficiently. Autonomy will play a great role here rather than just being told what needs to be done and how.

To sum up, group management for a good traditional F2F classroom instruction or for a good virtual environment is a must. This management is achieved when the instructor is clear on the way planning needs to be carried out, which depends on the purposes of course outline and what is actually needed by the students (traditional or WAS). It is also important to become a multiple lesson planner; that is, having the ability to switch from plans to help WASs learn and become more efficient is also necessary. Needless to mention the fact that all faculty members ought to have some knowledge on how to use instructional design methods to create impactful, meaningful learning tasks for all types of students, especially on a virtual environment.

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Group Management in a WASs’ Classroom

Classroom Management, Higher Education, WAS 0 comments

Taken from http://www.preppath.com/blog/three-biggest-challenges-for-adult-college-students

Group Management in a WASs’ Classroom

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Monday, January 9, 2017

Post 309

Some time ago, while taking a certificate with Laureate Faculty Development on Working Adult Students (WASs), I was triggered with two burning questions that gave me some good time to think and consider ways to deal with group management and this implies:

o What would you call group management strategy?, and

o What are your thoughts on the students' motivation?

With the following blog entry, I have tried to summarize my own thoughts regarding group management either in a face-to-face environment or in a virtual scenario. And I just hope that this can provoke more thinking on the potential reader of these ideas of mine.

Based on my expertise with WASs, group management strategies can be defined as basic principles that need to be followed in other to have or exercise control over a group or team of individuals. Group management implies the use of leadership techniques that allows any instructor to deal with disruptive behaviors but also to minimize the off-task, non-disruptive behaviors we can have in F2F classrooms or VLEs.

Learners, whether they are the traditional kind or the WASs, need to be “controlled” though they may find certain sections of a lesson rather slow or boring because of their empirical expertise they could have gained at work. Understanding the cognitive load students have (their capacity to process and retain information for later tasks) can be of great use to have them focus their attention on the instructor’s explanations while one is lecturing, while watching a video tutorial and applying what is being demonstrated, and so on.

Monitoring what individual learners or groups of students is another way to exercise one’s group management as instructors. If the learners are or not in class, this can be done beyond any doubt; in a F2F classroom this is done by means of scaffolding, but in a VLE this is done by collaborating on Google Drive, exempli gratia, with a group and see what they are achieving and/or not completing yet. No matter what kind of management control is needed, it must be wisely combined with a good use of leadership techniques and strategies. Making learners aware of their responsibility towards their own learning is part of the leadership needed to help them collaborate or to assist an instructor to scaffold students.

Leadership and group management are not the full extent of the equation needed to have successful learners; motivation is part of this formula. Comprehending that there are various types of motivation is crucial; the Andragogical instructor must bear this in mind at all times. There are intrinsic learners, who do not need to get motivated much, since they come to class with a strong desire to learn and continue building their knowledge and then be more functional at work. We also have students who are extrinsically-motivated. Extrinsic motivation is connected with the goals that must be achieved by learners to have access to certain perks or positions at work; lacking the proper education in a given area is something counterproductive for this kind of WASs. More traditional students are extrinsically motivated with grades or other kind of academic rewards. And still there is another type of student who is at the university because of some kind of instrumental motivation: the chance to have access to certain benefits or perks that can only be attained if certain educational qualifications have been accomplished.

No matter what kind of motivation is driving learners’ interests, it is important to notice when this is absent from one’s students. Lacking motivation means that an individual is not really interested in course content and in the development of skills and competencies needed at work. This kind of off-task behavior is counterproductive for both teachers and students. The learning process is then affected and it does not take place as a consequence. The leader teacher needs to exercise his/her motivating power to re-focus learners and help them go back on track and on task to keep developing themselves as students, as workers, and as individuals.

To sum up, to achieve group management needs some very basic and essential ingredients:

o Understanding the scope of student cognitive load to process and retain information,

o Student progress monitoring via collaboration or scaffolding (depending on the teaching scenario the instructor is involved), and

o The type of motivation driving force that is pushing students to learn.

I have no doubt that this shallow list can be greatly expanded, but it can be used as a starting point for anyone interested in managing groups of working adult students.

Monday, January 09, 2017

Teaching Presence vs. Teacher Presence in Online Teaching

Some Reflections of Leadership Styles

Teacher Performance in Online Learning Scenarios

Problems with Usability and Accessibility

The Teaching Plan in a WASs’ Learning Environment

Group Management in a WASs’ Classroom

Reflective Online Teaching

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