Threshold Concepts
The Final Alignment Table containing the Course Learning Outcomes, Teaching and Learning Methods and Assessment methods are contained in the Final Alignment Table.
Two of these learning outcomes present a challenge, which if not achieved effectively, will severely impact an instructor’s ability to meet their student needs in the OLE environment.
The first learning outcome to be addressed is: By successful completion of this course, students will be able to develop strategies to:
foster a supportive Online Education (OLE) culture and community.
If an instructor is unable to achieve a supportive culture in their course site, participants will likely be disengaged in the material, and won’t connect with their peers. In a face-to-face situation, individuals can gauge others responses through non-verbal body language, which is not available online, except through text and emoticons. An example of this in person might be where a student says to their professor, after receiving a poor mark on an exam “Sir, I need some support in this area.” This is said in a quiet tone, with a bashful smile on their face. That could be interpreted entirely differently, if the text was posted in a site forum in this manner: “SIR, I NEED SOME SUPPORT in this area!!!” That might tend to upset the instructor, as it is in a public space, and it could be interpreted that the instructor is providing inadequate information on a topic or that the student is desperate, just with the use of upper case text and the multiple exclamation marks.
If the culture involves several supportive statements from the instructor, the students will see what is expected, and that they are connected to the instructor and other students. This is a transformative concept. Many distance education instructors feel that stopping into their sites maybe every few weeks to look at a discussion board would be adequate. They might see that posting a question for students to respond to would be sufficient as their effort to develop a dialogue. In fact, Mazzolini and Maddison in 2003 argued that the ways in which instructors post to forums can influence the students’ perceptions. Sometimes, an instructor can impede student discussions with too many posts, and on the other hand, the “guide on the side” approach might not be communicating enough enthusiasm if done poorly. It is a delicate balance of weighing in or opting out to create the right tone.
When developing their own “Ways of Being Together” in the course Wiki, students will begin to experience the delicate balance of support and discourse. Additionally, forum topics, with questions prompted by the instructors will help guide students through discussions about literature and current issues.
The other threshold topic to be addressed is the following learning outcome:
By successful completion of this course, students will be able to adhere to principles of UDI that respects diversity in student learning.
Methods to demonstrate this include: course design, strategies to deliver content and various methods to receive student assessments.”
Students responded quite strongly in favour of choosing a course designed with the UDI tenants embedded according to research conducted by Bongey, Cizadlo and Kalnbach in 2009. This pre-print paper also suggests that while this type of design might not lead to increased student grades there might be a “sweet-spot” yet to be defined about the optimal blend of tools and approaches. Online Education can tend to attract older students or non-traditional students who might be trying to overcome various barriers including disabilities and language. Poorly designed courses can provide additional barriers for these students, so attention is required to think about the potential audience. While we might enjoy high-speed Internet, some of the students might be behind dial-up connections and will rail at the thought of an online video that takes a very long time to just access.
This is a threshold concept as it is very easy to disregard those consuming the site compared to an instructor’s own comfort levels with the technology that is required to convey their information. This can be troublesome to transform one’s familiar ways of interacting with media and information. An instructor’s efforts might be meaningless if the recipient might be blind, unable to use a mouse, unfamiliar with English or tapping their fingers while waiting for your latest image to download. It is a constant challenge to be revisited with every new and shiny technology that can be introduced.
Students in the OLE course will be introduced to this concept through discussions, personal inventories to complete, readings about the current literature and legislation as well as the course design being used as a model.
Graduate attributes, SOLO taxonomy and learning outcomes concepts, skills, attitudes and values are explored in Appendix C. It contains the breakdown of how the course learning outcomes align with the University of Windsor Graduate attributes. Each outcome is defined through a combination of the SOLO taxonomy and the concepts, skills, attitudes and value principles. It is noted that all graduate attributes except H are addressed during the course.
References
Bongey, S.B., Cizadlo, G., Kalnbach, K. (2009). Blended Solutions: Using a Supplemental Online Site to Deliver Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Campus-Wide Information Systems Vol. 27-1.
Mazzolini, M., Maddison, S., (2003). Sage, guide or ghost? The effect of instructor intervention on student participation in online discussion forums. Computers & Education, Vol. 40-3, pp 237-253