Center for the Scholarship of Teaching < Events < 2007 < Who Are We as a People? Gauging Shifts in Historical Consciousness acroos Generations

Center Events: Speaker Series

John Dirkx (Michigan State University )
A Problem of Process:
Issues in Fostering Collaborative Learning in Online Environments
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
12:00 – 1:30 p.m.
133F Erickson Hall

A Selected Bibliography of John Dirkx

Colloquium

The Department of Teacher Education, Center for Teaching and Technology and Center for the Scholarship of Teaching are pleased to announce the second talk in a new colloquia series: Online Teaching and Learning Colloquia

These colloquia will be offered to share with the COE community models of effective online teaching and learning, as well as explore issues and challenges with learning and teaching in online environments. One goal of these colloquia experiences is to encourage communities of practice around online teaching within the College of Education, between those experienced in online teaching, those who are just developing or creating a new practice of online teaching, and those who are learning in online environments.

In its early days, online learning often resembled electronic correspondence study and concerns emerged around student dissatisfaction, alienation, and attrition. To address these issues, some called for the adoption and integration of more collaborative methods of teaching and learning within online environments and a plethora of books, articles, and monographs appeared seeking to foster such ideas as active online learning, virtual learning communities and e-groups. For the most part, these approaches have emphasized instrumental techniques for fostering relational environments and have largely ignored the challenges associated with emotional and dynamic processes of group learning, particularly in online environments. In this session, we will explore the promise and problems associated with fostering collaborative learning in virtual environments, based on eight years of experience with a problem-based learning approach to teaching in online contexts.

A light lunch will be served.