VSTE

Virginia Society for Technology in Education

virtual virginia

Your LMS isn’t JUST for virtual learning!

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As we take a moment for a much-needed rest, we may not be thinking much about instructional plans for those inclement weather days that now seemed to be called “virtual learning days” in some areas. Don’t worry! Your VSTE friends have got you! The VSTE Regional Advisory Council, best known as the VSTE Coaching Crew is a new statewide council aimed at building capacity for virtual and blended learning in each region of the state. This magnificent, not at all motley, 'crew' of technology leaders works to strengthen online presence in Virtual Virginia by expanding our digital PLN, and by partnering with VVA and Instructure for monthly webinars. But that’s not all!

At this month’s VSTE conference in Roanoke, The VSTE Coaching Crew debuted a cool new and ever-expanding resource guide aimed at helping you use your LMS in your instruction every day! The best part of that is that when those inclement weather days hit and we do another “PIVOT!”, then you are all set for learning! Take a look at over 40 Ways to Use Your LMS for ideas, strategies, and some killer resources to help you design and implement seamlessly blended instruction. These resources will also help you to streamline your in-person instruction as well all while sharpening your students’ technical and content knowledge skills.

graphic showing photos of the members of the VSTE Coaching Crew

Let’s explore a few of those great ideas shared at VSTE! Coaching crew member Ann Nash from Henrico County in Region 1 shared a great idea to create virtual “Gallery Walks” with digital artifacts giving students a place to display their work proudly. Gallery Walks can also be used to help students synthesize their research and presentation skills and offer a collaborative space for reflection and feedback. Learn more about this strategy in the Strategy #3 Resource Guide!

Coaching crew member Patty Gilham from Manassas Park City in Region 4 shared a cool idea to help your little learner navigate your LMS with ease! She suggested using emojis and buttons for a visual representation for young learners who are unable to read allowing them to follow along with the lesson with ease. While she provided examples from her courses in Canvas, this strategy could easily be done with many other types of learning management systems. Learn more about this strategy in the Strategy #21 Resource Guide!

One of my favorite ways to use your LMS in your day-to-day classroom is by presenting content and resources as embedded content. Your LMS can serve as your “home base” of instructional content and support for all of your students. By having your links to activities and resources in one easy-to-access place, you save essential time with one-click access! Want to take your students to a faraway location? No problem, just embed one of Nearpod’s free virtual tours lessons! Your students will be able to explore places like Glacier National Park and many more with or without VR equipment. Learn more about this strategy in the Strategy # 13 Resource Guide!

There are so many wonderful ways to blend your in-person and virtual instruction! The VSTE Coaching Crew is working to expand these resources over the next year. We hope to see you at one of the monthly regional meetings. For more information about the regional meeting times subscribe to the Virtual Virginia calendar, or contact VSTE’s Executive Director, Dr. Karen Richardson at karen.richardson@vste.org.

Written by Heather Askea. Heather is the Instructional Technology Coordinator for the Center for Teaching Excellence at UVA Wise. She is also the Chair of the VSTE Board of Directors. You can connect with her on Twitter @HeatherAskea or by leaving a message on this website.

It’s All About Community: Using the Community of Inquiry Framework to Design Quality Online Courses

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As we begin the wind down from one of the most unusual school years in history, one of the biggest takeaways that I have learned is that the time-old sage advice of Harry Wong still rings true no matter what platform we are using to teach. Plan, Plan, and PLAN some more! In the traditional classroom, it is easy to pivot and make corrections moment by moment but in the online environment it takes careful and thoughtful planning to ensure that your students have the best possible learning experience.

To help you build an effective online learning experience for your students, you must start with a well articulated plan and it is best to use a well researched framework to help guide that planning process. There are many frameworks, rubrics, and guides that can help you but the one that I have used for many years is the Community of Inquiry Framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000,2010).

The Community of Inquiry Framework, was first articulated in 2000 by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer. It was mainly applied to distance learning courses where the primary mode of interaction was through text and asynchronous discussion forums. Over the last two decades more and more research has helped to evolve the framework to help guide instructors in creating more and more engaging and effective online learning experiences. The framework is broken down into three types of presences: social, teaching, and cognitive.

Social presence is defined as the ability to project personal characteristics to be perceived as a “real person” (Garrison et al, 2000). In the early days of online instruction when most instruction was heavily text laden, the task of enhancing social presence was challenging. With today's many synchronous and asynchronous tools, we can build a sense of shared community and collaboration using a wide variety of tools.

Zoom and Google Meet are some of the most widely used synchronous tools that can help teachers and students connect. Other tools can also be helpful such as FlipGrid for video responses, traditional forum discussion that allow for more reflective responses, and the collaboration features found in most Google educational tools that allow for shared editing and make group work more manageable.

Teaching presence consists of three key categories: design and organization, facilitation of discourse, and direct instruction (Garrison et al, 2000). The majority of teaching presence is built prior to any students actually seeing the online course. It is the planning of structure, pacing, materials, and assessments that are the foundations of a great online course.

But teachers must also focus on supporting students with the right materials, video tutorials, and timely and appropriate feedback. While most learning management systems offer multiple ways to do this, there are also lots of tools that can help such as Loom and Hippo Video that can support teachers in creating highly engaging video feedback or tutorials to help students navigate the content in the course.

Cognitive presence is defined as the “extent to which the participants in any particular configuration of a community of inquiry are able to construct meaning through sustained communication” (Garrison et al, 2000). Simply put cognitive presence is how students interact and learn the content of the course. I always tell my instructors that the CONTENT should be the hardest part of the course, NOT the structure.

Your students should have challenging and engaging content that is structured and supported in a way that students spend the majority of their time constructing meaning not trying to figure out how to do an assignment. Cognitive presence can be built by providing direct instruction supported by quality materials and resources and by asking higher order thinking questions that help students to dive deeper into the topic.

The task of building online learning experiences can seem daunting but with a systematic approach to the design and careful planning for student feedback and support it can be a truly effective learning space. For a more in-depth view on how you can use the Community of Inquiry Framework to transform your online courses watch this video of a presentation from the Blended Learning Conference sponsored by Virtual Virginia on May 1, 2021.

Resources:

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education model. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), 87-105.

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2010). The first decade of the community of inquiry framework: A retrospective. Internet and Higher Education, 13(1-2), 5-9.

Written by Heather Askea. Heather is the Instructional Technology Coordinator for The University of Virginia's College at Wise Center for Teaching Excellence. She is also a member of the VSTE Board of Directors.