Education
Seminar Date: November 4, 2015 at 1:00 pmAbstractOnline discussions are extensively used in online and mixed-mode courses. However, a common concern is that students will minimally participate in order to fulfill the grading requirements, and not truly engage with the content, instructor, or peers. In this session, we will share strategies to create and sustain online discussions that foster critical thinking and student voice. These strategies guide an instructor to effectively design the discussion before it commences, as well as to facilitate the discussion as it progresses, and assess the discussion when it concludes. Specifically, an instructor’s experience of using innovative discussion prompts within Webcourses@UCF will be showcased.PresentersBeatriz Reyes-Foster Ph.D.Assistant Professor of Anthropology College of Sciences University of Central Florida Dr. Beatriz M. Reyes-Foster is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UCF. Since 2012, she has taught online and mixed-mode classes and regularly incorporates online discussions. She has co-authored two articles that explore the relationship between the use of word clouds in online discussions and increased critical thinking and engagement. She is also the 2015 recipient of the Chuck D. Dziuban Award for Excellence in Online Teaching.Rohan Jowallah Ed.D.Instructional Designer Center for Distributed Learning University of Central FloridaDr. Rohan Jowallah is an Instructional Designer for the UCF Center for Distributed Learning, assisting faculty in the design, development, and delivery of online courses. He has over twenty years of experience in the educational field and has taught online, mixed-mode, and face-to-face courses in the United States, the Caribbean, and England. His research focuses on developing and sustaining participation in the online learning environment.Session Recordings and Supporting MaterialsRecording: Streamed Podcast Session: http://media.blubrry.com/faculty_seminars_in_online/p/cdl.ucf.edu/staticfiles/faculty_seminars/seminar12.mp3Podcast (faculty-seminars-in-online-teaching): Play in new window | Download | EmbedSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS | About Faculty SeminarsPresentation MaterialsSeminar Presentation (3.5MB; PDF) Resources Wordle: Free, online word cloud generator used by Dr. Reyes-Foster TedEd Talks: Build a lesson around any TED-Ed Original, TED Talk, or You Tube video – as presented by Dr. Rohan Jowallah Pic Collage: Application which allows you to build a collage made up of student photos, used by Dr. Reyes-Foster in her photovoice assignment. Available for iOS and Android. Word Cloud Discussion: Dr. Beatriz Reyes-Foster’s discussion activity with word clouds is located in Canvas Commons, which is a learning object repository available to Canvas users. Log into Canvas and click on Commons. Search for “Group Discussion Using Word Clouds”. Click “Import into Course” if you’d like to use/edit the survey in one of your courses. Survey about Discussion Strategies: Dr. Beatriz Reyes-Foster’s survey about discussion effectiveness is located in Canvas Commons, which is a learning object repository available to Canvas users. Log into Webcourses@UCF and click on Commons. Search for “Survey about Discussion Strategies”. Click “Import into Course” if you’d like to use/edit the survey in one of your courses. Articles Using Word Clouds in Online Discussions to Support Critical Thinking and Engagement: This article, published in the Online Learning Journal, shares the study that was presented by Dr. Reyes-Foster in the seminar. Strategies for Creating a Community of Inquiry through Online Asynchronous Discussions: This article in the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, co-written by two instructional designers from UCF, shares practical strategies (such as peer facilitation and providing audio feedback) that support the emergence of a student community of inquiry.