While creating a Digital Presence Plan I identified a significant gap in my Digital Identity – lack of personal narrative. I focus too much on delivering theoretical knowledge and not enough on how it is relevant to real life in general and to my life in particular. Why do I care about teaching this stuff? Why should anyone care? vanOostven et al. (2016) suggests an obvious but sobering conclusion “If students do not see their learning as having real world integrity, they tend to become disengaged” (page 8). Cognitive presence, argued by Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, (2000, p. 89), is only one aspect of a community of Inquiry model. Social presence, which includes emotional expression and Teaching presence, which includes sharing personal meaning, are significant aspects of learning. I need to focus on them more while generating content. Once I successfully integrate social and teaching presence, what will it look like? I started wondering about the structure. There is a theory, which suggests (Dron & Anderson, 2014, p. 62) that it is one of the three dimensions of transactional distance, which also includes dialogue and autonomy. The author divided them into four quadrants and suggested that each represents a different level of autonomy, based on low/high dialogue and low/high structure axis. I seem to prefer low structure, high dialogue and the format that fits best with such combination, according to the author, is seminar. I like the idea of having educational seminars, where emotional expression and sharing personal meaning play a major role. I believe it is something I should include in my plan and make it one of my goals.
References
vanOostveen, R., DiGiuseppe, M., Barber, W., Blayone, T., & Childs, E. (2016). New conceptions for digital technology sandboxes: Developing a Fully Online Learning Communities (FOLC) model. In Proceedings of EdMedia: World Conference on Educational Media and Technology 2016 (pp. 665-673). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
Garrison, R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in text based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2–3), 87–105.
Dron, J, & Andreson, T. (2014). Teaching Crowds. Athabasca University Press.