Through the first portion of this semester all students have found the necessity to learn and adapt new skills for online learning. With the sudden shift from face-to-face learning to this new online learning system, I have noticed some ways teachers have executed effective teaching skills. For those teachers who are receiving voluntary participation and are actively engaging with their class have proven their implicit and explicit knowledge of their course material. There are also classes I am currently taking where it feels as if the professor is non-existent and I find the need to have to teach the material to myself. In some of these cases it can be easy for students to tell how effective a professor is at teaching their course material during these difficult times.
In this week’s reading I found it very intriguing when I came across the Community of Inquiry model, or the CoI model. This model is important to keep in mind for online teaching because it stresses the importance of teacher involvement in learning. Students have proven to respond well to “constructivism” because they can consider their prior experiences and relate it to their learning. This model can be broken down into three key components; the three being cognitive presence, teaching presence, and social presence. The first element being cognitive presence means the critical thinking done by a student. The critical thinking students will make focuses on the outcome of their learning experience, so it is a key element to the model. The teaching part of the model is extremely important because in online learning there is and understanding that you are in a “teacher less” environment. Although students do not see their educators face-to-face on a consistent basis, it is important that they do not feel alone especially when they will have important questions to ask. The social aspect is the last element to the model. This element is very important as it demonstrates a student’s capability of putting their own personality and emotions into their learning.
Focusing on the CoI model in regard to online teaching is very important for all educators to keep in mind. All parts of the model are interconnected and benefit the students the most when they are all focused on by the instructor. When teachers participate in class discussions it has been proven to raise the cognitive presence of the whole class. With a solid social presence established by the students, the cognitive presence will flourish and there will be lots of opinions. Without a strong teaching aspect, the cognitive presence will be minimal as there will be a lack of knowledge of the content.
Overall the Community of Inquiry model has taught to me that online learning has a lot of aspects to it, but the key component to the model is the teaching aspect. Without being able to learn the course material effectively, it affects all of the students in the course negatively and reduces the participation/will to learn the material. When instructors show emotion, and actively engage with their class it has been proven to raise the overall satisfaction level of the entire class. Educators who demonstrate the ability to make the course interesting enough, make the class want to participate regularly and prove their implicit and explicit knowledge of the content will be the most effective in their teaching. There are a lot of benefits to online and a lot of costs to not learning face-to-face with an instructor, but with some extra effort online schooling can be a very effective way of teaching in my experience.
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