EDH O3
Woody Trathen: The CAROL Discussion Forum
Beth Frye: Children's Literature
Gary Moorman: James Gee Discussion
Steve Bronack: LESN Courses
Jeff Church & Greg Simmons: WebCT
Discussion Forum on Discussion Forums
RCOE Community Conversations
Journals, reading, articles and books from the Distance Education Clearinghouse
Excerpt from:
Elements
of Quality Online Education
Practice and Direction
Edited by John Bourne & Janet C. Moore
Randy Garrison of Calgary University finds online learning “uniquely suited to create a
cognitive presence for higher order learning.” In online communities of inquiry, the climate of
social presence is enhanced by teaching presence that creates structure and process in the
group; teaching presence and social presence create cognitive presence, the selection of content
and discourse uniquely suited to the community. Teaching presence is “conceptually rich,
coherently organized, and persistently exploratory.” This online model of presence goes
beyond some traditional models for classroom learning; online learning better enables
reflection and collaboration, as it helps bring learners’ attention not only to what we learn but
how we learn. Thus Garrison advises going beyond traditional models. “Start with the big
ideas, start with the learning outcomes,” says Garrison; this enables learners to construct
content and take advantage of the “multiplicative properties of communicative freedom,
information access, and individual control of time and space.”
WebCT Article: Creative Use of Threaded Discussion Areas, Part 1
Contact John Spagnolo