Webinar: A Campus-Wide Approach To Improving Higher Order Thinking Skills

When: Tuesday, February 25, 1:00-2:30 EST
Type: Online Webinar
Host: Innovative Educators
http://www.innovativeeducators.org/product_p/2105.htm

Overview:
One of the most exciting innovations in higher education in the past few years has been the development of High Impact Practices. Building on platforms such as service learning, internships, and other active and collaborative learning experiences, researchers such as George Kuh have articulated pedagogical guidance for making an impact on educational experiences inside and outside of the classroom. These practices have been demonstrated by decades of research to improve student learning and success. They have also been linked to the development of Higher Order Thinking Skills. In an age in which higher education is transitioning from models that stress knowledge acquisition to an emphasis on critical thinking, reasoning skills, and information literacy, these programs provide practical ways to pursue these important goals.

Kind of Learning:
-Demands that students devote considerable amounts of time and effort to purposeful tasks
-Puts students in circumstances that essentially demand they interact with faculty and peers about substantive matters
-Increases the likelihood that students will experience diversity through contact with people who are different than themselves
-Gives students frequent feedback about their performance
-Provides opportunities for students to see how subjects work in different settings, on and off the campus
-Connects students personally and professionally to others through opportunities for active, collaborative learning

In fact, students who participate in these experiences often outperform their peers who do not participate - even when these peers are better prepared academically and at significantly less risk for attrition. Participants will leave this webinar with an action plan in order to begin building high impact experiences on their campuses.

Webinar Objectives:
-Learn to apply the six attributes of effective high impact practices to a variety of curricular and co-curricular programs
-Identify strategies for collaborating with internal and external constituents to build a culture of impact
-Create models for encouraging faculty to implement high impact practices into their courses
-Leave with an action plan in order to begin building high impact experiences on their campuses

How Multiple Forms of Media Impact Our Social Understandings

Communication is seen as a process of information transference from one person to another. Few think about the cognitive models that develop from information transference and how different communication channels influence meaning. Dennis, et. al. (2008) discusses the nature of information conveyance and convergence when dealing with groups and how media synchronicity impacts meaning making among recipients.

Media richness theory indicates that task performance will improve when task information are matched to the medium’s information richness.  Difficult tasks require more information when compared to simple tasks while less rich media are better suited to tasks that require less information. The media used to transfer information should be based on the type of task.

For example, someone who wants to complete a simple task such as changing a wiper blade on a car will need few instructions to successfully complete this task. Changing a car transmission may require multiple forms of written instructions and videos to successful complete this task. The more difficult the task, the more media synchronicity can help.  

In communication we prepare information, transfer it through a medium, and others will process this information into their mental models. Different people obtain varying levels of information from media and process that information according to how their particular mental models work. Two people can see the same thing but each will notice the information that fits within their understanding while selectively ignoring information that does not fit within their personal models.

In groups, the meaning of information is based more in the interactive interpretation of multiple persons. Meaning requires a level of negotiation among members that are engaged in tasks. Meaning is subjective depending on the cognitive models others are using. Each group will come to their own slightly different interpretation of the information.

When transmitting information to groups it is important to understand the processes of conveyance and convergence. Conveyance processes provide transmission of diversity of new information that allows individuals to create revised mental models of situations. Convergence processes is the way in which people interpret and make models out of the information to come to mutually agreed upon understandings.  We can see this as receiving information, building models of that information, and then coming to an understanding of that information.

It is possible to see this in an example. The latest gizmo makes its way on the market. The type of spokes models, celebrities, music, and impressions provided through the media make their way into everyday conversations. Each interpretation adds to the collective development of a fad product. When the product becomes old people will leave it for something new. That is the nature of fads and hype which are socially constructed concepts of “coolness”.

The researchers found that when individuals have experience with tasks and each other they have fewer convergence processes and less need for media synchronicity. In other words, they are familiar with each other’s cognitive processes and a small amount of information is enough for them to come to a shared understanding (i.e. a tight group of teenagers who like a product). When individuals have little experience with each other or the tasks it is beneficial to use multiple rich forms of media to transfer needed information.

The study helps highlight how we use media and information to build cognitive models. When tasks are unfamiliar it is beneficial to use multiple forms of rich media to help us build new models (i.e. learning) and come to a social understanding of those models. Once the models are built, lower forms of media are enough to transfer information. Thus, understanding is based on cognitive models and they are individually constructed and then negotiated against others cognitive models to come to mutual understanding.  Therefore, understanding is a social construction process fostered by the information we receive from our environment and multiple forms of media (i.e. phone, Internet, face-to-face, music, television, You Tube, etc…).

Dennis, et. al. (2008). Media, tasks, and communication processes: a theory of media synchronicity. MIS Quarterly, 32 (3).

Twenty-First International Conference on Learning-2014

Twenty-First International Conference on Learning

Date: July 15^th to 17^th, 2014

New York:

Submission Deadline: November 5^th, 2013

The International Conference on Learning is for any person with an interest in, and concern for, education at any of its levels – from early childhood, to schools, to higher education – and lifelong learning in any of its sites, from home to school to university to the workplace.

Topics: Pedagogy and Curriculum Adult, Community, and Professional Learning Assessment and Evaluation Learner Diversity and Identities Educational Organization and Leadership Technologies in Learning Early Childhood Learning Literacies Learning Learning in Higher Education Science, Mathematics, and Technology Learning

Submission Page and Information

Online Interactive Learning Forums

Dr. Arulchelvan from Anna University in India has written a paper in the Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education that analyzes online forums for positive interactivity that fosters learning. The survey was conducted on 250 students from different media courses. He studied what beneficial practices fostered online learning and furthered the educational learning needs of the students. Through this study it was found that interactivity, use of content, and student preferences had a bearing on the learning level. 

Online forums are often difficult to measure and judge. Some focus on content and some focus more on quantity of posts. Quantity of student posts can be an indication that students are interested in particular topics. They will naturally respond to those questions are of more interest to them personally. Analyzing quantity can help determine the overall interest in certain questions which should be fostered in the remaking of the courses in the future. 

Interactively helps students learn by hedging each other’s experiences and knowledge. By discussing issues openly students can learn about varying perspectives on issues and incorporate these perspectives into their understandings and alternative explanations. It also provides the student with a social feedback about the varying ways in which people see these perspectives. 

Professors often use knowledge density, message length, and message count as methods of evaluating online discussion forms. Density includes the overall quality and depth of the work that helps to ensure students understand the material. Length includes the ability to discuss concepts at length. Message count helps professors understand how active students are in the forums. 

The study found that as a learning tool 72% use online forums, 63% blogs, 51% web based training, 38% wikis, 20% podcasts, and 7% learning tools. As a primary method of learning online discussion forums appear to be common. A total of 82% believe online forums support learning while 18% disagreed. Online learning forums appear to have large support among students. 

The type of information that is included in a forum is of interest to students as well. The results show that 90% of students prefer textual explanations, 63% prefer links, 70% prefer images, 19% prefer audio and 64% prefer video. The students gravitated toward text, images, video, and links in their discussion forums. The use of such multimedia may further help engage students through interactivity. 

It is important to ensure that the content of the course is credible and this should be managed by the instructor/moderators. The key topics that create building blocks to the next level of thinking should be controlled. How students understand these things and how they come to these understandings is more open for debate. In general, students will use their personal experiences to determine the validity of the concepts. They will use the forum and its multimedia aspects in ways that encourage higher levels of information obtainment.

Arulchelvan, S. (2011). Online interaction forums as learning tool among the media students- an analysis. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, (12), 4.