Learning Through Course Room Postings
Learners
gather to share knowledge, formulate questions, examine
practice, analyze findings, critique and thus refine
conclusions, and challenge each other with new problems.
The online course room is a model of such discourse.
Since the discussion is asynchronous, meaning that
contributions gather within the course room over the week,
unconfined to a common time, participants can reflect and
prepare, respond, and then refine their responses, building
knowledge and stimulating reflection.
The
following are procedures you can follow – as a student or
as a teacher- for building knowledge through online
discussion in every course in which you participate.
It is also a way you can begin to track your thinking
and your interests as you progress.
At
the start of each week, prepare a Word document for the next
unit, based on the following steps.
-
Copy
and paste learning objectives for the unit, and
make additional notes on how you might accomplish
these objectives.
-
Review
readings assigned and identify salient points
-
Compose
questions of your own that illuminate salient
points
-
Answer
those questions in depth
-
Answer
the assigned discussion questions, incorporating
what you have discovered in the above process.
Save
this document, naming it by Course and Unit.
Cut and paste selected information from this document
to the course room under the discussion thread to which it
relates.
-
Sorting
by "Date," so that you catch every
posting, search for comments by colleagues that
relate to what you've prepared, or provoke your
thinking further.
-
Craft
responses to these learner comments, and copy and
paste them to the course room under the
appropriate thread.
-
Sorting
by "Date," search for class mates'
comments that relate to the questions you
developed in preparation for the unit.
Pose your questions as part of your
response to those learners.
-
Sorting
by "Outline," watch for responses to
your questions.
Copy
and paste any posting by a learning colleague that adds to
your reflections recorded for the week.
Be sure to note the date and the learner who wrote
the posting.
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