This article presents examples of, and the assessment criteria for a training event, the factors that assist learning, the attributes of a previous successful training event, and an evaluation of the characteristics of a rich online learning event. Many of the following comments are sourced from past experiences of training provided by employers. However, the more valuable learning experiences were gained from traditional classrooms, and e-learning occurring during the pursuit of two completed online degrees, which have now supplanted the length of time in face-to-face instruction. E-tools can maintain engagement, but should not be used to the extent that it wastes learners' time. Whether online or offline, the criterion of a rich learning event depends upon how well learning is accomplished, and not how well learning is transmitted.
Assessment Criteria of a Training Event
The criteria used to assess whether an educational or training event was good or bad has over time changed as experiences and expertise during three and one-half decades of work experience grew. Personal and professional experiences as well as professional expertise affected the assessment criteria for a training event as these three aforementioned factors impacted the multi-layered depths of gained wisdom, personal and professional needs, and expected accomplishment anticipated based upon self-efficacy. For example, in the early period of my professional career, a sense of naivety resulted in accepting all information as truth, and of the highest possible quality. However, my assessment criteria modified, and demanded more benefits for the time and expense devoted to the training event. Consequently, understanding grew that gaining knowledge is primarily the learner's responsibility whether in a training event or not.
Palloff and Pratt (2001) indicated that staff who are well trained, know their material, and provide up-to-the-minute information on the topics presented encourages learning. Instructors who show that they have been successful in their profession, recognized by their peers, and credentialed and possibly published, provide a sense of reliability to learners. Being provided an appropriate tool to self-evaluate one's learning, and being able to realize knowledge transferability are critical for learning. Whether training is online or not, when an employer or future employer accepts that completed training is of value, the instructional event provided value.
Factors that Assist Learning
The factors that help me to learn include several features. For example, an instructor who does not reflect a sense of being rushed appeals to an ability for a learner to focus. Motivators for learning include when training aids people to change job types, retrain, or are provided training for getting or retaining jobs (Maeroff, 2003). Learners are additionally motivated when employers demonstrate that the new learning is of value, that the training adds applicability to the job, and to career development. Palloff and Pratt (2001) promoted using e-learning tools for synchronous and asynchronous discussion boards, e-mailing, group work, providing beneficial links, an ability to upload or download graphics and audiovisual elements, and a tracking ability for the learner to have quick access to earlier work. Using technology increases students' learning of the course content, the ability to achieve learning outcomes, and promoting the interactive needs of the student. Learning is assisted when flexibility exists in course authoring, assessment tools are appropriately chosen based on the desired learning outcomes rather than the available technology, there is well based planning by the institution's stakeholders, and accessibility exists for all learners despite cultural, linguistic, physical, or financial differences (Palloff and Pratt, 2001).
Attributes of a Previously Successful Training Event
A previous rich learning experience was successful because the benefits achieved from the trainer and learning materials immediately impacted an improvement of a work skill. For example, when placed in orientation side-by-side with a supervisor, and immediately practicing the information gained using a computer, learning was extremely accelerated. Other attributes from learning events included feeling respected by the instructor and other participants when contributing during training, an ability for speakers to answer questions immediately or shortly thereafter, gaining heightened confidence after speaking in public, having quality technical equipment and learning materials, and learning in a comfortable environment that promoted interaction with colleagues. Palloff and Pratt (2001) recognized that e-learning materials improved learning when applicable for all "learning styles" (p. 50).
Maeroff (2003) indicated that "institutions have tailored courses to the specifications of individual business' needs" (p. 125). Businesses and colleges who are aiding minds to work need to work together in establishing strategies for learner outcomes. Businesses, after all, are more "aggressive innovators" (Maeroff, 2003, p. 124). Learning programs and courses' designs must be developed based upon the needs of employers and their goals, which create customized learning experiences and employability.
Broadbent (2002) presented six levels of learning reminiscent of the types of training incurred in the past: "knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation" (p. 113). These levels present successful training because new knowledge is promoted along the six levels during training beginning with new knowledge, and provides learning applicable to using that learning elsewhere at a near or far time. Instructors should accommodate different learning types in order for all to progress through the six learning levels (Broadbent, 2002).
Rich Online Learning Characteristics
The characteristics of learning experiences necessary to provide rich online learning based upon over a decade of online instruction include several attributes. For example, the similarity of instructors to assess work using the same American Psychological Association's (APA), and other academically-designated writing standards provides non-conflicting learning. Learners gain valuable online learning experiences when there is a perceived value for the invested time and money as long as tuition is not increased after a program is begun when learning values remain as assessed before beginning. Rich online learning includes technical aspects that are user-friendly, server stable, easily available for signing-in, and have a provision for posting and retrieving work. In addition, universities with online programs should provide an online directory of major staff and contact information instead of just one person per department. The availability of e-learning class materials and online resources such as a library, learning tools, forms, forums, and so forth enhance online learning. Accreditation must be in order, and availability to credentialing agencies provided. The similarity of required technical software and hardware from class to class promotes user-friendliness, and progressively availing improved e-tools to learning is essential. Responses from instructors and university staff should be within twenty-four hours.
Learning outcomes must be challenging for all students whether a GPA is high or low, and not one-size-fits-all. Classmates' writing needs to be at a level where all can understand the context. Assignments should be aligned with students' situations so when a student has never practiced as a teacher the assignment is not based upon a practicing teacher's experiences. End-of-class assessments need to be responded to when requested. Mentors should provide feedback every time work is submitted due to the expertise provided by them. A rich online experience provides a program's requirements to fit the need of students such as enabling students to take courses needed to learn job goals, or should provide enough flexibility to do so.
Palloff and Pratt (2001) indicated that the development of policies and procedures enables a curriculum to provide increasing skill in critical thinking and analysis as well as peer collaboration. Strategies should be identified cooperatively between administration and faculty addressing the "changing cultural, organizational, economic, and survival issues of the institution" (Palloff and Pratt, 2001, p. 38), and implemented. An obvious "investment in the technical infrastructure needed to support" (Palloff, et al., 2001, p. 42) the implemented strategies is essential. Pedagogical methods should supersede technological attributes, and learning content linked to e-tools that best support them (e.g., provide interactive simulations versus static traditional books). Obvious development of e-learning courses and programs should be provided by the faculty senate and administrators, and a university's departments should use the same quality measurements (Palloff and Pratt, 2001). An effort to retain online students must be exhibited by the university's support systems via a "learner-centered focus" (Palloff and Pratt, 2001, p. 47).
The work completed by students must be appraised by instructors and plagiarism tools to ensure legitimacy to the greatest extent possible (Maeroff, 2003). Broadbent (2002) suggested that online instructors should assimilate effective learning models such as Gagne's or Salmon's who identified five stages in successful e-learning. When e-learning courses are thoughtfully planned, designed, and provided based upon the needs and culture of the provider and learners, a rich online learning event is possible.
Conclusion
This paper presented examples of, and the assessment criteria for a training event, the factors that assist learning, the attributes of a previously successful training event, and an evaluation of the characteristics of a rich online learning event. Keeping in mind the details of the above sections, the most important factor of e-learning is that "interactive learning keeps students energized, and helps participants absorb information and remember it" (Broadbent, 2002, p. 120). Successful online instructors who enable learners to interact can be assured that when the moment of interaction occurs is the moment of when learning occurs.
References
Broadbent, B. (2002). ABCs of e-learning: Reaping the benefits and avoiding the pitfalls. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer.
Maeroff, G.I. (2003). A classroom of one: How online learning is changing our schools and colleges. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Palloff, R.M., & Pratt, K. (2001). Lessons from the cyberspace classroom: The realities of online teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer.
Showing posts with label learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label learning. Show all posts
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Online Collaborative Learning
Abstract
Learning online for over twenty years, and having completed over two degrees, the online learning experiences were subjected to exposure to several universities' online teaching styles. Including discussion-based and collaborative learning, non-collaborative and mentored learning, and mentored learning only, each has provided positive and negative learning challenges. Although over one-third of university programs are now online, and universities have reacted to employers' calls for graduates who are collaboratively trained, not all online universities and online students have adapted successsfully to the online teaching-learning environment. How instructors' mentoring styles affect collaborative learning with their students, how universities design collaborative learning curriculums using online tools, and how online students' motivation to accept responsibility for learning in a collaborative setting are all challenges to successfully learning collaboratively.
Collaborative Activities
Identification of some of the issues affecting successful collaborative online teaching and learning activities, and investigating the potential solutions to those issues promotes the first step in assuring successful collaborative teaching and learning. Depending upon one's online teaching and learning experiences at various universities, the issues affecting good collaboration can vary. Regardless of those experiences, there are challenges facing instructors, universities, and students from the perspectives of (1) the instructors' mentoring styles, (2) the universities' curriculum design using online collaborative tools, and (3) online students' motivations to accept responsibility for learning in an online setting that can be identified, investigated, and proposed.
Diverse Affectors of Instructors' Mentoring Styles
Instructors' mentoring styles can affect successful collaborative teaching and learning experiences for their students. The Illinois Online Network (2011) reported that the goal of mentoring is to "promote learner development drawing out and giving form to what the student already knows…(serving) as a guide rather than a provider of knowledge and…introducing students to the new world, interpreting it for them, and helping them to learn what they need to know to function in it" (para 14). However, achieving such a goal is negatively impacted by such problems as a "lack of time to plan and deliver an on-line course; lack of support and assistance; burden of training time to learn and update technology skills; (and) inadequate compensation and incentives" (Dennis et al., 2007, p. 42).
The lack of time to plan and deliver an on-line course is a serious prohibitor when a university requires such work from an instructor. Although the time invested in planning an online course occurs before the start of a course, delivering an online course requires a constant delivery mode if the course is to be successful in achieving learning outcomes (Brindley, Walti, & Blaschke, 2009). Even if the university has created a course independent from the mentor's input, the mentor is responsible for ensuring its delivery.
The lack of support and assistance from an instructor's employer not only increases the amount of time the committed instructor must invest in planning and delivering an online course, it can also break the instructor's flow or rhythm when mentoring. For example, the lack of support can originate from a university's administration who is prone to not listen to the instructor's advice (whether the university created the course or not), and does not provide the tools that the course requires. Clearly, a paradox exists when an instructor is given a course's objectives to carry out but the university inconsistently provides support.
Online teachers new to e-learning must be able to adapt to teaching paradigms that require "greater initiative, tenacity, and self-discipline" (Dennis, Bunkowski, & Eskey, 2007, p. 37). The burden of training time to learn and update to new paradigms and technology skills as well as other new skills and behaviors to interactively communicate with students (Brindley, Walti, & Blaschke, 2009) seriously impedes an instructor's ability to invest time in collaborating with students. Every university has its particular culture, which includes the teaching software platform. Assuming that an instructor has prior experience with a university's platform, and not providing adequate time to use a teaching platform prior to the course's initiation can significantly prohibit an instructor's ability to use that platform successfully. Furthermore, when a university does not adequately orient an instructor about its teaching mission, an instructor cannot be using the time element to its best advantage.
Brindley, Walti, & Blaschke (2009) reported that an inadequate or uncompetitive amount of compensation and incentives can seriously impede an instructor's commitment to teaching and mentoring. Instructors need motivators as much if not more than students. For example, instructors invest a very significant amount of time and money in becoming an instructor as do students invest in learning. When an instructor's quality of living, which is impacted by salary, pension, health insurance and other incentives, is negatively affected, their willingness to devote time and talent to collaborating with students online is not going to be fulfilling to anyone.
Solutions for Improving Instructors' Mentoring Syles
The potential solutions for improving instructors' mentoring styles for affecting successful collaborative learning experiences for their students can include that the mentor initiates frequent communications between the mentor and student. For example, the mentor can initiate the use of weekly or even daily journals, which can be passed between the mentor and student via the learning portal's or personal e-mailing systems. Such a constant dialogue affects the development of a positive relationship between the mentor and student, and enables the mentor to take advantage of a constant dialogue for issuing feedback, and answering a student's questions, concerns, and issues (Illinois Online Network, 2011, para 15).
"Mentors in education teach by interpreting the environment and modeling expected behaviors, (and) support, challenge, and provide vision for their students" (Illinois Online Network, 2011, para 15). As noted above, the lack of time to plan and deliver an on-line course, the lack of support and assistance by the employer, the burden of increased training time to learn and update technology skills, and an inadequate level of compensation and incentives (Dennis et al., 2007) all impede the instructor's ability to support such modeling. To address and solve such issues in order for collaborative learning to be supported, instructors should carefully negotiate matters in writing with their employer that adequately supports the university's mission: provide adequate training to instructors that is specific to the university's culture and technology prior to the course's initiation, provide ongoing and obvious support to the instructor, collaborate with the instructor to gain professional insight into the course's development and delivery, and continually provide not only competitive compensation and incentives but additional perks that promote an instructor's commitment to the university.
Mentors can also support collaborative learning by using motivational tools to instruct. For example, Dennis, Bunkowski, & Eskey (2007) developed "Nine Events of Instruction" (p. 48) to offer guidelines to online instructors for motivating collaborative learning. Instructors must ensure that students' learning styles, which are addressed in the next section, are paramount to the delivery of the collaborative instructional events shown in the chart above. Generically-used motivators must never dominate an instructor's teaching style. Rather, customizing instructional motivators according to each student's learning style must take precedence. In addition to the points noted in the chart above, Brindley, Walti, & Blaschke (2009) found that after reinstituting a policy of grading group projects, motivation increased for students in the smaller study groups but did not increase for the larger study groups. Therefore, instructors should set group size at three to four members.
Brindley, Walti, & Blaschke (2009) identified several strategies for instructors to use to inform online learners about improving their learning outcomes. The strategies focus upon (1) the significance of collaborating, and (2) improving motivational techniques. The strategies are: enabling instructions and expectations to be transparent; using ice breakers, seeding, and providing expectations to the students about participation, etiquette, behavior guidelines, interaction standards, available tools, and techniques to use the tools; conducting exercises to aid learners in using online tools for retrieving, evaluating, and applying research, detailing of the requirements to participate in a study group in the course syllabus; encouraging participation in the study groups; being open and clear when explaining the purpose and process of online study groups; providing succinct project details in order for students' invested time to center on sharing ideas and workload rather than clarifying and understanding the task at hand; ensuring that the project's themes offer an opportunity for meaning-making and relevance in order for students to apply learning to a real life situation; and enabling exchange and
peer review of the completed group projects to foster an opportunity for enhancing learning. (para 36)
Diverse Affectors of Universities' Online Collaborative Tools Design
Universities' designs of collaborative learning curriculums using online tools is a challenge to successfully delivering collaborative learning. The Illinois Online Network (2011) reported that online instruction can be effective if learning experiences are appropriately designed and facilitated. Furthermore, universities acknowledging that learners use one or a multiple number of learning styles must design learning activities addressing those modes of learning. Each student's learning style(s) should be aligned with collaborative activities, which supports the university's technology that is used for teaching. "Hallmarks of metacognition include a heightened awareness of one's thinking, selection of processing strategies from a repertoire, reflection and readjustment, and sustained motivation to achieve" (Dennis, Bunkowski, & Eskey, 2007, p. 39). Instructors must be cognizant of whether learners exhibit such hallmarks or not, and if they do, address them.
Universities' sourcing of online collaborative course designers must be tied sufficiently to text and online teaching and learning suppliers. Sourcing should be tied to suppliers who are innovative, up-to-date, committed, and who can provide full support. Although governmental entities can affect a public university's ability to freely choose its suppliers, significant strides must be taken to retain sources for teaching software that has been proven to integrate best online teaching practices.
While investigating and retaining designers and suppliers, a university's information technology team and administration should work jointly to integrate the purchased e-tools into the university's software and hardware components. Retaining and integrating e-tools without budgetary approval, and commitment to long-term investing, will not result in a satisfactory e-learning platform for instructors or students, and will significantly impact the university's bottom-line when retention of good instructors and students declines.
Solutions for Improving Universities' Online Collaborative Tools Design
The potential solutions for improving Universities' designs of collaborative learning curriculums using online tools can include pre-assessments before each course's initiation of students' technology skills, learning styles, and collaborative abilities. Designing and reviewing the pre-assessments should be jointly shared by the instructor, administration, the university's information technology team, and the supplier. Course design should introduce and integrate e-tools that are more suitable to collaborative learning such as "wikis, social bookmarking, RSS, and Skype" (Brindley, Walti, & Blaschke, 2009, para. 42). Furthermore, the sourcing of course designers, text and online teaching suppliers should be mandated by the same group. A university's inhouse technology support team should demonstrate via quality reporting that the university's e-learning objectives are being met.
Bhati, Mercer, & Rankin (2010) reported that since e-learning tools have progressed from stand-alone to packaged sets of e-tools to address the request to positively affect improved collaborative learning, universities are impacted by instructors' hesitation to adopt to new technologies. The learning institution must clearly communicate to their instructors that teaching includes learning and using multiple technologies for collaboratively teaching such as "Second Life, Blackboard Vista, Moodle, MS Messenger, Hot Potatoes" (p. 7), and so forth. Hence, universities must provide to instructors the time and resources required to use them.
Diverse Affectors of Online Students' Motivations for Learning Collaboratively
Online students' motivations to accept responsibility for learning in a collaborative setting is a challenge to successfully learning collaboratively. Dennis, Bunkowski, & Eskey (2007) recognized that students need greater "initiative, tenacity, and self-discipline…to take courses in the online environment" (p. 37). In addition, students seeking learning flexibility in online classes often perceive group projects as barriers to learning. Rather than embracing collaborative learning, many students barely tolerate it (Brindley, Walti, & Blaschke, 2009). Brindley (et al., 2009) also reported that negative motivators to collaborative learning occurs when learners are not allowed to have personal control of tasks' content, process, intentions, goal setting, consequences, and outcomes. Allowing personal control of such elements, which has been shown to solidify students' engagement, a sense of responsibility, and heightens task relevance, should be addressed by the instructor and university. In addition, instructors must recognize that learners' disengaging in online discussions need to be motivated, and that a weak social infrastructure may need additional development (Deng and Yuen, 2007).
Solutions for Improving Online Students' Motivations for Learning Collaboratively
The potential solutions for improving online students' motivations to accept responsibility for learning in a collaborative setting can include instructors building a framework to scaffold learners using increasingly more complex interaction skills, which provides e-learning that focuses upon: communication with other learners, collaboration wherein learners share ideas and resources, cooperation between learners, and a community that seeks a common purpose (Brindley, Walti, & Blaschke, 2009). Such a framework provides support of students needing greater "initiative, tenacity, and self-discipline" (Dennis, Bunkowski, & Eskey, 2007, p. 37), who are seeking learning flexibility but believe that collaborative learning is a barrier to learning. The framework also provides students with a personal control of their own learning, and provides instructors with an ability to recognize and address students who are disengaging.
Conclusion
Identifying some of the issues affecting successful collaborative online teaching and learning activities, and investigating the potential solutions to those issues promotes the first step in assuring successful collaborative teaching and learning. The challenges facing instructors, universities, and students from the perspectives of (1) the instructors' mentoring styles, (2) the universities' curriculum design using online collaborative tools, and (3) online students' motivations to accept responsibility for learning in a collaborative setting were identified, investigated, and proposed. Whether there is a desire and an acceptance by instructors, universities, and students to accept and implement the potential solutions identified for improving collaborative learning, which originated from this writer's experiences, is yet to be realized.
References:
Bhati, N., Mercer, S., & Rankin, K. (2010, March). Barriers and facilitators to the adoption of tools for online pedagogy. International Journal of Pedagogies & Learning, 5(3), 5-19. Retrieved from EBSCOHost.
Brindley, J.E., Walti, C., & Blaschke, L.M. (2009). Creating effective collaborative
learning groups in an online environment. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/
index.php/irrodl/article/view/675/1271
Deng, L., & Yuen, A. (2007, November). Connecting adult learners with an online
community: Challenges and opportunities. Research & Practice in Technology
Enhanced Learning, 2(3), 195 - 212. Retrieved from EBSCOHost Education Research
Complete.
Dennis, K., Bunkowski, L., & Eskey, M. (2007). The little engine that could -- how to start the motor? Motivating the online student. InSight: A Journal of Scholarly Teaching, 2, 37 – 49. Retrieved from EBSCOHost Education Research Complete.
Illinois Online Network. (2011). Instructional strategies for online courses. Retrieved from http://www.ion.uillinois.edu/resources/tutorials/pedagogy/
instructionalstrategies.asp
Learning online for over twenty years, and having completed over two degrees, the online learning experiences were subjected to exposure to several universities' online teaching styles. Including discussion-based and collaborative learning, non-collaborative and mentored learning, and mentored learning only, each has provided positive and negative learning challenges. Although over one-third of university programs are now online, and universities have reacted to employers' calls for graduates who are collaboratively trained, not all online universities and online students have adapted successsfully to the online teaching-learning environment. How instructors' mentoring styles affect collaborative learning with their students, how universities design collaborative learning curriculums using online tools, and how online students' motivation to accept responsibility for learning in a collaborative setting are all challenges to successfully learning collaboratively.
Collaborative Activities
Identification of some of the issues affecting successful collaborative online teaching and learning activities, and investigating the potential solutions to those issues promotes the first step in assuring successful collaborative teaching and learning. Depending upon one's online teaching and learning experiences at various universities, the issues affecting good collaboration can vary. Regardless of those experiences, there are challenges facing instructors, universities, and students from the perspectives of (1) the instructors' mentoring styles, (2) the universities' curriculum design using online collaborative tools, and (3) online students' motivations to accept responsibility for learning in an online setting that can be identified, investigated, and proposed.
Diverse Affectors of Instructors' Mentoring Styles
Instructors' mentoring styles can affect successful collaborative teaching and learning experiences for their students. The Illinois Online Network (2011) reported that the goal of mentoring is to "promote learner development drawing out and giving form to what the student already knows…(serving) as a guide rather than a provider of knowledge and…introducing students to the new world, interpreting it for them, and helping them to learn what they need to know to function in it" (para 14). However, achieving such a goal is negatively impacted by such problems as a "lack of time to plan and deliver an on-line course; lack of support and assistance; burden of training time to learn and update technology skills; (and) inadequate compensation and incentives" (Dennis et al., 2007, p. 42).
The lack of time to plan and deliver an on-line course is a serious prohibitor when a university requires such work from an instructor. Although the time invested in planning an online course occurs before the start of a course, delivering an online course requires a constant delivery mode if the course is to be successful in achieving learning outcomes (Brindley, Walti, & Blaschke, 2009). Even if the university has created a course independent from the mentor's input, the mentor is responsible for ensuring its delivery.
The lack of support and assistance from an instructor's employer not only increases the amount of time the committed instructor must invest in planning and delivering an online course, it can also break the instructor's flow or rhythm when mentoring. For example, the lack of support can originate from a university's administration who is prone to not listen to the instructor's advice (whether the university created the course or not), and does not provide the tools that the course requires. Clearly, a paradox exists when an instructor is given a course's objectives to carry out but the university inconsistently provides support.
Online teachers new to e-learning must be able to adapt to teaching paradigms that require "greater initiative, tenacity, and self-discipline" (Dennis, Bunkowski, & Eskey, 2007, p. 37). The burden of training time to learn and update to new paradigms and technology skills as well as other new skills and behaviors to interactively communicate with students (Brindley, Walti, & Blaschke, 2009) seriously impedes an instructor's ability to invest time in collaborating with students. Every university has its particular culture, which includes the teaching software platform. Assuming that an instructor has prior experience with a university's platform, and not providing adequate time to use a teaching platform prior to the course's initiation can significantly prohibit an instructor's ability to use that platform successfully. Furthermore, when a university does not adequately orient an instructor about its teaching mission, an instructor cannot be using the time element to its best advantage.
Brindley, Walti, & Blaschke (2009) reported that an inadequate or uncompetitive amount of compensation and incentives can seriously impede an instructor's commitment to teaching and mentoring. Instructors need motivators as much if not more than students. For example, instructors invest a very significant amount of time and money in becoming an instructor as do students invest in learning. When an instructor's quality of living, which is impacted by salary, pension, health insurance and other incentives, is negatively affected, their willingness to devote time and talent to collaborating with students online is not going to be fulfilling to anyone.
Solutions for Improving Instructors' Mentoring Syles
The potential solutions for improving instructors' mentoring styles for affecting successful collaborative learning experiences for their students can include that the mentor initiates frequent communications between the mentor and student. For example, the mentor can initiate the use of weekly or even daily journals, which can be passed between the mentor and student via the learning portal's or personal e-mailing systems. Such a constant dialogue affects the development of a positive relationship between the mentor and student, and enables the mentor to take advantage of a constant dialogue for issuing feedback, and answering a student's questions, concerns, and issues (Illinois Online Network, 2011, para 15).
"Mentors in education teach by interpreting the environment and modeling expected behaviors, (and) support, challenge, and provide vision for their students" (Illinois Online Network, 2011, para 15). As noted above, the lack of time to plan and deliver an on-line course, the lack of support and assistance by the employer, the burden of increased training time to learn and update technology skills, and an inadequate level of compensation and incentives (Dennis et al., 2007) all impede the instructor's ability to support such modeling. To address and solve such issues in order for collaborative learning to be supported, instructors should carefully negotiate matters in writing with their employer that adequately supports the university's mission: provide adequate training to instructors that is specific to the university's culture and technology prior to the course's initiation, provide ongoing and obvious support to the instructor, collaborate with the instructor to gain professional insight into the course's development and delivery, and continually provide not only competitive compensation and incentives but additional perks that promote an instructor's commitment to the university.
Mentors can also support collaborative learning by using motivational tools to instruct. For example, Dennis, Bunkowski, & Eskey (2007) developed "Nine Events of Instruction" (p. 48) to offer guidelines to online instructors for motivating collaborative learning. Instructors must ensure that students' learning styles, which are addressed in the next section, are paramount to the delivery of the collaborative instructional events shown in the chart above. Generically-used motivators must never dominate an instructor's teaching style. Rather, customizing instructional motivators according to each student's learning style must take precedence. In addition to the points noted in the chart above, Brindley, Walti, & Blaschke (2009) found that after reinstituting a policy of grading group projects, motivation increased for students in the smaller study groups but did not increase for the larger study groups. Therefore, instructors should set group size at three to four members.
Brindley, Walti, & Blaschke (2009) identified several strategies for instructors to use to inform online learners about improving their learning outcomes. The strategies focus upon (1) the significance of collaborating, and (2) improving motivational techniques. The strategies are: enabling instructions and expectations to be transparent; using ice breakers, seeding, and providing expectations to the students about participation, etiquette, behavior guidelines, interaction standards, available tools, and techniques to use the tools; conducting exercises to aid learners in using online tools for retrieving, evaluating, and applying research, detailing of the requirements to participate in a study group in the course syllabus; encouraging participation in the study groups; being open and clear when explaining the purpose and process of online study groups; providing succinct project details in order for students' invested time to center on sharing ideas and workload rather than clarifying and understanding the task at hand; ensuring that the project's themes offer an opportunity for meaning-making and relevance in order for students to apply learning to a real life situation; and enabling exchange and
peer review of the completed group projects to foster an opportunity for enhancing learning. (para 36)
Diverse Affectors of Universities' Online Collaborative Tools Design
Universities' designs of collaborative learning curriculums using online tools is a challenge to successfully delivering collaborative learning. The Illinois Online Network (2011) reported that online instruction can be effective if learning experiences are appropriately designed and facilitated. Furthermore, universities acknowledging that learners use one or a multiple number of learning styles must design learning activities addressing those modes of learning. Each student's learning style(s) should be aligned with collaborative activities, which supports the university's technology that is used for teaching. "Hallmarks of metacognition include a heightened awareness of one's thinking, selection of processing strategies from a repertoire, reflection and readjustment, and sustained motivation to achieve" (Dennis, Bunkowski, & Eskey, 2007, p. 39). Instructors must be cognizant of whether learners exhibit such hallmarks or not, and if they do, address them.
Universities' sourcing of online collaborative course designers must be tied sufficiently to text and online teaching and learning suppliers. Sourcing should be tied to suppliers who are innovative, up-to-date, committed, and who can provide full support. Although governmental entities can affect a public university's ability to freely choose its suppliers, significant strides must be taken to retain sources for teaching software that has been proven to integrate best online teaching practices.
While investigating and retaining designers and suppliers, a university's information technology team and administration should work jointly to integrate the purchased e-tools into the university's software and hardware components. Retaining and integrating e-tools without budgetary approval, and commitment to long-term investing, will not result in a satisfactory e-learning platform for instructors or students, and will significantly impact the university's bottom-line when retention of good instructors and students declines.
Solutions for Improving Universities' Online Collaborative Tools Design
The potential solutions for improving Universities' designs of collaborative learning curriculums using online tools can include pre-assessments before each course's initiation of students' technology skills, learning styles, and collaborative abilities. Designing and reviewing the pre-assessments should be jointly shared by the instructor, administration, the university's information technology team, and the supplier. Course design should introduce and integrate e-tools that are more suitable to collaborative learning such as "wikis, social bookmarking, RSS, and Skype" (Brindley, Walti, & Blaschke, 2009, para. 42). Furthermore, the sourcing of course designers, text and online teaching suppliers should be mandated by the same group. A university's inhouse technology support team should demonstrate via quality reporting that the university's e-learning objectives are being met.
Bhati, Mercer, & Rankin (2010) reported that since e-learning tools have progressed from stand-alone to packaged sets of e-tools to address the request to positively affect improved collaborative learning, universities are impacted by instructors' hesitation to adopt to new technologies. The learning institution must clearly communicate to their instructors that teaching includes learning and using multiple technologies for collaboratively teaching such as "Second Life, Blackboard Vista, Moodle, MS Messenger, Hot Potatoes" (p. 7), and so forth. Hence, universities must provide to instructors the time and resources required to use them.
Diverse Affectors of Online Students' Motivations for Learning Collaboratively
Online students' motivations to accept responsibility for learning in a collaborative setting is a challenge to successfully learning collaboratively. Dennis, Bunkowski, & Eskey (2007) recognized that students need greater "initiative, tenacity, and self-discipline…to take courses in the online environment" (p. 37). In addition, students seeking learning flexibility in online classes often perceive group projects as barriers to learning. Rather than embracing collaborative learning, many students barely tolerate it (Brindley, Walti, & Blaschke, 2009). Brindley (et al., 2009) also reported that negative motivators to collaborative learning occurs when learners are not allowed to have personal control of tasks' content, process, intentions, goal setting, consequences, and outcomes. Allowing personal control of such elements, which has been shown to solidify students' engagement, a sense of responsibility, and heightens task relevance, should be addressed by the instructor and university. In addition, instructors must recognize that learners' disengaging in online discussions need to be motivated, and that a weak social infrastructure may need additional development (Deng and Yuen, 2007).
Solutions for Improving Online Students' Motivations for Learning Collaboratively
The potential solutions for improving online students' motivations to accept responsibility for learning in a collaborative setting can include instructors building a framework to scaffold learners using increasingly more complex interaction skills, which provides e-learning that focuses upon: communication with other learners, collaboration wherein learners share ideas and resources, cooperation between learners, and a community that seeks a common purpose (Brindley, Walti, & Blaschke, 2009). Such a framework provides support of students needing greater "initiative, tenacity, and self-discipline" (Dennis, Bunkowski, & Eskey, 2007, p. 37), who are seeking learning flexibility but believe that collaborative learning is a barrier to learning. The framework also provides students with a personal control of their own learning, and provides instructors with an ability to recognize and address students who are disengaging.
Conclusion
Identifying some of the issues affecting successful collaborative online teaching and learning activities, and investigating the potential solutions to those issues promotes the first step in assuring successful collaborative teaching and learning. The challenges facing instructors, universities, and students from the perspectives of (1) the instructors' mentoring styles, (2) the universities' curriculum design using online collaborative tools, and (3) online students' motivations to accept responsibility for learning in a collaborative setting were identified, investigated, and proposed. Whether there is a desire and an acceptance by instructors, universities, and students to accept and implement the potential solutions identified for improving collaborative learning, which originated from this writer's experiences, is yet to be realized.
References:
Bhati, N., Mercer, S., & Rankin, K. (2010, March). Barriers and facilitators to the adoption of tools for online pedagogy. International Journal of Pedagogies & Learning, 5(3), 5-19. Retrieved from EBSCOHost.
Brindley, J.E., Walti, C., & Blaschke, L.M. (2009). Creating effective collaborative
learning groups in an online environment. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/
index.php/irrodl/article/view/675/1271
Deng, L., & Yuen, A. (2007, November). Connecting adult learners with an online
community: Challenges and opportunities. Research & Practice in Technology
Enhanced Learning, 2(3), 195 - 212. Retrieved from EBSCOHost Education Research
Complete.
Dennis, K., Bunkowski, L., & Eskey, M. (2007). The little engine that could -- how to start the motor? Motivating the online student. InSight: A Journal of Scholarly Teaching, 2, 37 – 49. Retrieved from EBSCOHost Education Research Complete.
Illinois Online Network. (2011). Instructional strategies for online courses. Retrieved from http://www.ion.uillinois.edu/resources/tutorials/pedagogy/
instructionalstrategies.asp
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