With the hustle and bustle of life i.e. kids’ activities and work obligations behind me today, I was able to sit down and look over my schedule for the course and realized that I did not post my “Gems to Remember” from the virtual symposiums that I watched or participated in. So, here it is…
I really enjoyed the very informative and very thought-provoking virtual symposiums. The speakers were a wealth of knowledge and really kept my attention with their topics. I was really happy that the symposiums were recorded because this gave us all the ability to replay important points that we may have missed.
As posed by Dr. Elizabeth Childs, there were three questions that I kept in mind throughout all the symposiums:
- Is there one thing that’s unclear? Yes, when looking at our roles in the digital learning environment, are we facilitators/collaborators or are we experts?
- Is there one thing that was completely off the wall? Well, not exactly off the wall, but for me who likes the answers in “black and white”, I was taken by surprise that in this field the answers are “grey”.
- Is there one thing that you’re curious about? Yes, the concept of Open Education.
When reflecting on the symposiums, these are my thoughts:
As other members in my cohort have mentioned, there was a “theme of dualities” that is quite evident. For me what stood out is our role as educators in the digital learning environment. Are we the facilitator/collaborator or are we the expert as Dr. Hodson had stated in her session? Dr. Hodson had suggested that to be “SM/indfulness” we, as educators, have to keep the following in mind:
“You need to be the expert”
“You need to provide options”
“You must be the most critical”
When considering the idea of open education, an educator must be critical of the platforms and social media that will be introduced to the students; however, the educator must also be the collaborator/facilitator in order to guide the learning, so the students don’t go astray. As Dave Cormier said, “people learn things that you never intended”. Is this good or is this bad?
Paul Stacey states that in the digital environment, “openness is affecting many different parts of education today” in resources such as textbooks, curriculum material and publications of research which are all free. We should keep in mind the “5 R’s”: Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute (Stacey, 2018) for open. He also states that data is “FAIR” (Free and Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable). The bottom line is that the resources are collectively shared to a learning community.
The core values of open as Dave Cormier listed are: “teamwork, trust, openness, respect and honesty”. If we don’t have these values, it would be difficult to build a learning community which would take the journey together. This is echoed by Trish Dyck who describes a successful team/learning community as having open-mindedness, collaboration, common goals, good communication, trust and the feeling of safety. Thus, by establishing the trust and safety, by sharing thoughts openly and honestly, and by being authentic, we try to reduce the “psychological and communications space to be crossed” as stated in Moore’s Theory of Transactional Distance (Shearer, Gregg, Joo and Graham, 2014).
“It has never been more risky
to operate in the open.
It has never been more vital
to operate in the open.”
– Martin Weller (2016) as cited by Catherine Cronin
Cormier, D. (2017, April). Intentional Messiness of Online Communities. In E. Childs (Chair), MALAT Virtual Symposium – Lay of the Land. Symposium conducted at the meeting of Royal Roads University, Victoria, B.C.
Cronin, C. (2017, April). Open Culture, Open Education, Open Questions. In E. Childs (Chair), MALAT Virtual Symposium – Lay of the Land. Symposium conducted at the meeting of Royal Roads University, Victoria, B.C.
Dyck, T. (2018, April). Key Success Factors for Virtual Teams. In E. Childs (Chair), MALAT Virtual Symposium – Stories from the Field. Symposium conducted at the meeting of Royal Roads University, Victoria, B.C.
Hodson, J. (2018, April). Navigating a Dangerous Landscape. In E. Childs (Chair), MALAT Virtual Symposium – Lay of the Land. Symposium conducted at the meeting of Royal Roads University, Victoria, B.C.
Shearer, Rick; Gregg, Andrea; Joo, K. P.; and Graham, Kimberly (2014). “Transactional Distance in MOOCs: A Critical Analysis of Dialogue, Structure, and Learner Autonomy,” Adult Education Research Conference. http://newprairiepress.org/aerc/2014/papers/82
Stacey, P. (2018). Diversity, Equity, Inclusion – Building a Global Learning Commons. In E. Childs (Chair), MALAT Virtual Symposium – Lay of the Land. Symposium conducted at the meeting of Royal Roads University, Victoria, B.C.
