On-line education has become an essential component of most learning environments in courses offered entirely through distance education as well as more traditional face-to-face classroom settings that utilize an online learning management system. The facilitators of this workshop have backgrounds working in on-line environments that represent a number of dualities: learner/instructor, digital native/immigrant, as well as a mix of teaching/learning in undergraduate/graduate courses with large/ small enrollments. While they will offer their insights from the perspectives of on-line facilitators and learners, the interactive nature of this workshop invites contributions from participants on their experiences in creating an on-line learning environment that empowers learners.
This session will draw heavily on the Community of Inquiry (Garrison, Anderson, Archer, 2001) as a framework that represents a process of creating a deep and meaningful (collaborative constructivist) learning experience through the development of three interdependent elements – Social, Teaching, and Cognitive Presence. Using interactive activities like Value Line, Four Corners, and the work of small groups to deconstruct two online project sites to tease out key teaching and learning elements, session attendees will contribute to the content of this session. By the end of this co-constructed workshop, participants will have an appreciation of the reciprocity and synergy that can be created in on-line teaching environments, as well as cultivating a deeper understanding of how “digital natives” and “digital immigrants” survive and thrive in an on-line learning environment.
