This session will describe how free technologies were used to engage students in an asynchronous college preparatory course and enable more authentic online discussions.
Do you teach blended or online courses? Are you concerned about lack of community and student engagement?
This session will describe how free technologies were used to engage students in an asynchronous college preparatory course and enable more authentic online discussion opportunities. We will discuss the purpose and potential pitfalls of using discussion threads and explore an alternative to the traditional text forum. We will also explore how to use screen capture tools to give critical and timely feedback to students when you can't see them face-to-face.
I created an online asynchronous course that facilitated speaking and listening and student engagement with a cohort of students in remote communities and First Nations reserves, using only my Blackboard LMS and a handful of no-fee technologies: Jing, VoiceThread, Remind 101. We will discuss the purpose and potential pitfalls of using discussion threads and explore an alternative to the traditional text forum. We will also explore how to use screen capture tools to give critical and timely feedback to students when you can't see them face-to-face.
Our goals in this workshop are as follows:
ï Identify and evaluate free technologies to promote engagement and participation in an asynchronous environment
ï Evaluate the use of discussion forums and create opportunities for asynchronous speaking and listening in online classrooms
ï Apply free screen- and video-capture technologies to provide course content as well as useful feedback to students
As a teacher of literacy and basic skills, I am focused on creating democratic, learner-centered educational opportunities. Most of the courses in my program are self-paced and the curriculum is geared to each individual student. However, this often raises the issue of lack of community, even within our traditional on-campus courses, as often no two students are working on the same material at the same time; the problem is magnified when teaching online. I believe that community and engagement are essential for growth; in many cases, we are teaching social engagement as well as language as many of our learners have felt marginalized in the traditional educational system and have, as a result, "opted out" of participating. In Ontario, literacy providers use the competency-based Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum Framework (OALCF), which identifies "engage with others" as a core competency for adults. The Speaking and Listening Workshop we created is an attempt to fill this gap for our learners. In designing this Workshop, however, we had to overcome traditional barriers to education such as cost, technical ability, equipment and geographic location.