Something that stood out to me is that although I recognize that I often learn from my students (in a face-to-face context…I’ve yet to teach on-line), I think that I’ve neglected to recognize how much students learn from each other. The article certainly indicated that the teacher plays an important role as the facilitator and yet, the students are also facilitators of their learning process.
For the teacher, I think one of the most important steps in creating a learning environment that promotes cognitive presence is in the design of activities and discussion questions that promote reflection and discourse. It’s not just about having activities that rely on factually-based answers, but rather activities that broaden one’s perspectives and encourages one to think outside the box – to amalgamate information from a variety of sources, including one’s own personal experience.
I concur with some of the statements made by other bloggers for posts “101 #2”, that the focus must be on higher order thinking processes and an emphasis on community that encourages debate, problem-solving, and idea integration.
My question is, “How do we best guide students into each phase of the Practical Inquiry Model?” I’m especially curious about tactics to guide students into the integration and resolution phases because these seemed to have the least amount of engagement in Garrison et al.’s study.