Lift Off

In a previous post by Eileen, she made the comment that “a person can be more careful, editing [their] remarks and opinions” when using distance education. She continues by pointing out that “teachers and students can access each other when they want interaction, in many cases”. I appreciated that Eileen pointed out these important characteristics of distance education.

Nathan, Julie and I had a conversation in which Nathan brought up two important points related to Eileen’s post. If within the time lapse communication items tend build up, learners can then become either overwhelmed and “shut down” (let’s show hands of the people in this course who are fighting this tendency ) or they can use the time to employ critical thinking.

Nathan brought up another interesting notion in his post addressing Social Presence. In his post, Nathan states that writing presents fewer social cues compared to audio.

In my previous life as a Technical Assistance Specialist, the majority of my work was conducted via distance. My coworkers and I spent endless amounts of time on group conference calls and email. Although productive, it was amazing to me just how many misunderstandings occured while solely using audio channels.

Often when a miscommunication or confusion occured, we would tend to resort to writing for the very reason that Eileen mentioned….writing offers the advantage of timing and editing! I don’t know how others feel, but I spend more time thinking about what I am going to type compared to what I am going to speak out loud . I also believe that as we rely on more and more distance correspondance that we are adapting our writing to include social cues (i.e.the smiley icons).

I also appreciated the notion that Nathan shared regarding the definition of social presence, that “no person can judge his/her own social presence”. That must go hand in hand with the saying; assume the best in people, because those same people are assuming something about you.

Isn’t communication great!

CRITIQUE OF ARTICLE: “HOW TO PROMOTE CRITICAL THINKING” by Daithí Ó Murchú and Brent Muirhead

The focus of this article is on the concept and practice of critical thinking. Daithí Ó Murchú and Brent Muirhead use thought provoking examples to demonstrate the influence that critical thinking has on learning, reading, and writing. The authors begin the article by introducing a philosophy of “action with vision can change the world” (R. Barker, 1978). This philosopy is congruent with the author’s position that true education is goal oriented. They assert the premise that a, “wise teacher seeks to guide his/her students toward greater maturity which translates into new skills and knowledge.” Therefore, a “wise teacher” utilizes meaningful learning strategies. Meaningful learning requires learners to actively process their experiences and assign meaning according to thieir previous experience. As a result, learners must actively engage in new experiences beyond information aquisition. Learners must utilize critical thinking at all times through careful examination, astute perception, skillful interpretation, and practice.

Although I agree with the authors and I fnd little aurgument with any of their concepts , I believe they underplayed three important characteristics of active learning: interest, emotion and generalization. Within the article, Murchú and Muirhead reference a study by Courts and McInerney (1993) and offer that “student’s did [do] not engage fully or energetically in learning something they did [do] not want to learn or see any reason to learn.” The authors support this notion later in the article by pointing out that “students find recall of knowledge easier from a novel than from a book. Novels hold two of the characteristics that I mentioned: 1) people tend to chose novels in which they have interest and 2) novels tend to instigate emotion.

In my experience, I find that learners are more actively engaged and employ more critical thinking skills towards topics in which they are interested, passionate or in which they need to utilize the information on a frequent basis. Even in my field, working with children who are deaf-blind, we try to start the learning process by utilizing what children enjoy or like. This facilitates the childrens’ interest to further engage and explore.

A question I would like to pose to our group is what strategies as “wise teachers” can we employ to ensure that our online courses draw interest, emotion or relevance?

References

O Murchu, D.O. & Muirhead, B. (2005). Insights into Promoting Critical Thinking in Online Classes. Retrieved September 1, 2005 from http://www.itdl.org/Journal/June05/article01.htm