I have been in academia for more than 6 years. I was not aware about few jargon but I have been actually practicing most of the things mentioned in the lesson 1 in the “Think” course in my online classes. Still, this lesson is very insightful and brought the COI model to my attention. I totally agree that education should be applied in social setting, only that way we will make students realize how relevant are studies to their successful life and career. The most important thing which I have learned from the course are the learning theories of John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky. I really appreciate the concepts of Zone of Proximal Development and Potential Development. These theories has made me realize that how assistance plays key part in performance of students beyond their capacity.
Over the topic of “Cognitive Presence”, I would like the feedback of my colleagues that how a successful sustained communication can be deployed? What they are doing in their online classes? How can we use different strategies in order to compel students to realize and explore key concepts and integrate their existing knowledge to resolve the problem in hand? Comments will be highly appreciated in this regard. In my case my usual trigger points are the mathematical problems related to the field of Finance and then I open forum discussions where students should participate actively so that they can realize how they are related to the real-life situations.
For example, in the online classes where I have the total control over the course design and execution, my students might be assigned, say, to assess the value of a stock and then use the existing knowledge of “Time value of money” along with newly acquired knowledge on “Dividend Growth Models” to calculate the prices. Then I ask them different questions so that they engage in an open discussion and realize why the prices are different in stock market compared to their calculated values. In doing so they will go through the process of explorations, integration, resolution and collaborative constructiveness to deeply understand the topic.
It occurs to me that, in an asynchronous course, students taking the course earlier would have a simpler time interacting with materials, while those coming later would need to read considerably more posts from students who engaged the materials before them. Thus, if fifteen people took the course one at a time, there would be a cumulative social context developed, and the later students would benefit from the work done by the former. In such contexts, it might be good if students who complete the course earlier might be encouraged to revisit the course later on and comment where pertinent to their study in the meantime. What do you think?