Designing online interaction to address disciplinary competencies: A cross-country comparison of faculty perspectives

This study was conducted at colleges in three countries (United States, Venezuela, and Spain) and across three academic disciplines (engineering, education, and business), to examine how experienced faculty define competencies for their discipline, and design instructional interaction for online courses. A qualitative research design employing in-depth interviews was selected. Results show that disciplinary knowledge takes precedence when faculty members select competencies to be developed in online courses for their respective professions. In all three disciplines, the design of interaction to correspond with disciplinary competencies was often influenced by contextual factors that modify faculty intention. Therefore, instructional design will vary across countries in the same discipline to address the local context, such as the needs and expectations of the learners, faculty perspectives, beliefs and values, and the needs of the institution, the community, and country. The three disciplines from the three countries agreed on the importance of the following competencies: knowledge of the field, higher order cognitive processes such as critical thinking, analysis, problem solving, transfer of knowledge, oral and written communication skills, team work, decision making, leadership and management skills, indicating far more similarities in competencies than differences between the three different applied disciplines. We found a lack of correspondence between faculty¿s intent to develop collaborative learning skills and the actual development of them. Contextual factors such as faculty prior experience in design, student reluctance to engage in collaborative learning, and institutional assessment systems that focus on individual performance were some of these reasons

How to Design Culturally Inclusive Online Learning Experiences

In this paper, we argue that adapting online courses for specific cultural groups takes time-intensive guesswork. Instead, instructional designers should employ the principles of universal design and social constructivism to build a course culture inclusive of all learners. Culture affects learners’ experiences in important, interconnected ways. Yet, it is equally difficult to predict culture’s effects on learning (Guild & Garger, 2016). These difficulties stem from the inherent complexity in human behavior. First, individuals may not reflect their cohort, especially when they belong to groups with conflicting values. Second, beliefs can influence one another in unforeseeable ways, and cultural values can be situational. Third, aligning with learners’ cultural preferences may not enhance learning outcomes. Building on the work of Mitchell and Joseph (2002), we propose a different approach, one in which instructional designers embrace culture without attempting to anticipate a given cohort’s unique needs. This can be done by reflecting on cultural values, designing with intention, communicating expectations, and giving control to learners. In the final portion of this article, we introduce the Wisdom Communities Instructional Design Model (WisCom)and describe why it is particularly well-suited for designing courses that account for the cultural experiences of all learners. WisCom emphasizes the formation of a dynamic learning community based on social-constructivist principles. In a WisCom-based online course, the community is at the heart of the learning experience. This emphasis on the group dynamics underscores the importance of culture by providing venues to explore preexisting values and negotiate new ones as a learning group

Designing Wise Communities that Engage in Creative Problem Solving: An Analysis of an Online Design Model

Addressing the conference theme of “design thinking,” this paper discusses an instructional design model, WisCom (Wisdom Communities) that we developed to build a wise learning community online, to solve open-ended, ill-structured problems such as solving a health crisis or an environmental disaster, which requires the exchange of multiple perspectives, inter-disciplinary thinking, creative problem solving, and social construction of knowledge. Based on socio-constructivist, sociocultural theories of learning and mediated cognition (Vygotsky, 1978), distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1995; Pea, 1993), group cognition (Stahl, 2006), research on how people learn (Bransford, Vye, Bateman, Brophy, & Roselli, 2004), and distance education design principles (Moore & Kearsley, 2011), WisCom specifies three components that must be designed to create a wise community online that engages in creative problem solving and transformational learning: (1) a cohesive learning community involved in negotiation of meaning and collaborative learning; (2) knowledge innovation – moving the learning community from data, information, and knowledge to wisdom, providing opportunities for reflection, sharing of perspectives, knowledge construction and preservation within the community, and (3) learner support and e-mentoring to achieve the communities’ learning goals

Synthesizing Social Construction of Knowledge in Online Conferences Using Concept Maps

By using content analysis techniques to compare social construction of knowledge in online dialogues to concept maps generated to synthesize this knowledge construction, this study showed that concept maps are an effective tool to synthesize knowledge construction in online conferences. This finding was also supported by self-reported data in a moderator survey. Concept maps were also considered an effective tool for organizing information which indicates that they can be utilized as a knowledge management and preservation tool in online conferences. All students perceived that the Cmap tool software could be used as a tool to foster online collaborative learning in distance education. While it is possible to use concept maps as a collaborative tool, it is important to provide training not only in the use of the software but also on how to collaborate using concept maps in an online environment. In this study, participants were able to generate, save, and post concept maps in the online environment. We also found that students with low technology experience and no previous knowledge of concept maps can learn how to use the tool with a few hours of training and ongoing support during the semester

Designing Online Interaction to Address Disciplinary Competencies: A Cross-Country Comparison of Faculty Perspectives

This study was conducted at colleges in three countries (United States, Venezuela, and Spain) and across three academic disciplines (engineering, education, and business), to examine how experienced faculty define competencies for their discipline, and design instructional interaction for online courses. A qualitative research design employing in-depth interviews was selected. Results show that disciplinary knowledge takes precedence when faculty members select competencies to be developed in online courses for their respective professions. In all three disciplines, the design of interaction to correspond with disciplinary competencies was often influenced by contextual factors that modify faculty intention. Therefore, instructional design will vary across countries in the same discipline to address the local context, such as the needs and expectations of the learners, faculty perspectives, beliefs and values, and the needs of the institution, the community, and country. The three disciplines from the three countries agreed on the importance of the following competencies: knowledge of the field, higher order cognitive processes such as critical thinking, analysis, problem solving, transfer of knowledge, oral and written communication skills, team work, decision making, leadership and management skills, indicating far more similarities in competencies than differences between the three different applied disciplines. We found a lack of correspondence between faculty’s intent to develop collaborative learning skills and the actual development of them. Contextual factors such as faculty prior experience in design, student reluctance to engage in collaborative learning, and institutional assessment systems that focus on individual performance were some of these reasons

Designing Online Interaction to Address Disciplinary Competencies: A Cross-Country Comparison of Faculty Perspectives

This study was conducted at colleges in three countries (United States, Venezuela, and Spain) and across three academic disciplines (engineering, education, and business), to examine how experienced faculty define competencies for their discipline, and design instructional interaction for online courses. A qualitative research design employing in-depth interviews was selected. Results show that disciplinary knowledge takes precedence when faculty members select competencies to be developed in online courses for their respective professions. In all three disciplines, the design of interaction to correspond with disciplinary competencies was often influenced by contextual factors that modify faculty intention. Therefore, instructional design will vary across countries in the same discipline to address the local context, such as the needs and expectations of the learners, faculty perspectives, beliefs and values, and the needs of the institution, the community, and country. The three disciplines from the three countries agreed on the importance of the following competencies: knowledge of the field, higher order cognitive processes such as critical thinking, analysis, problem solving, transfer of knowledge, oral and written communication skills, team work, decision making, leadership and management skills, indicating far more similarities in competencies than differences between the three different applied disciplines. We found a lack of correspondence between faculty’s intent to develop collaborative learning skills and the actual development of them. Contextual factors such as faculty prior experience in design, student reluctance to engage in collaborative learning, and institutional assessment systems that focus on individual performance were some of these reasons

Culturally inclusive instructional design: A framework and guide to building online wisdom communities.

WINNER OF THE 2019 OUTSTANDING BOOK AWARD FROM AECT\u27S DIVISION OF DISTANCE EDUCATION! As online courses and digital learning enable more people from more places to learn together, it is crucial for instructional design to incorporate diverse cultural perspectives. Culturally Inclusive Instructional Design provides a framework for thinking about culture in digital learning, offering insight into how to build inclusive online communities that encourage reflection and growth, regardless of content domain. Chapters cover the foundation, components, and implementation of the authors’ Wisdom Communities (WisCom) framework, which enables learners from global backgrounds to experience long-lasting, transformative learning through real-world problem-solving. This book is a timely, resourceful guide to building truly collaborative, inquiry-based online learning experiences.https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/books/1069/thumbnail.jp

Enhancing Collaborative Problem Solving in Distance Education Courses Using Web-Based Concept Mapping

The purpose of this study is to investigate the use of web-based concept maps as a communications and problem-solving tool in an online graduate level course. The study used an exploratory-descriptive research design that applied a qualitative methods approach in order to explore how concept maps foster collaborative problem-solving activities in an online learning environment. Three of the five groups participating in the study effectively used concept mapping, which they combined with other communication strategies such as eliciting group suggestions, asking questions, and brainstorming ideas, to reach consensus and solve the CBR project required. These results indicate that concept maps are a practical and effective strategy to help distance learners communicate and collaborate in order to solve problems in online courses

Designing online interaction to address disciplinary competencies: A cross-country comparison of faculty perspectives

This study was conducted at colleges in three countries (United States, Venezuela, and Spain) and across three academic disciplines (engineering, education, and business), to examine how experienced faculty define competencies for their discipline, and design instructional interaction for online courses. A qualitative research design employing in-depth interviews was selected. Results show that disciplinary knowledge takes precedence when faculty members select competencies to be developed in online courses for their respective professions. In all three disciplines, the design of interaction to correspond with disciplinary competencies was often influenced by contextual factors that modify faculty intention. Therefore, instructional design will vary across countries in the same discipline to address the local context, such as the needs and expectations of the learners, faculty perspectives, beliefs and values, and the needs of the institution, the community, and country. The three disciplines from the three countries agreed on the importance of the following competencies: knowledge of the field, higher order cognitive processes such as critical thinking, analysis, problem solving, transfer of knowledge, oral and written communication skills, team work, decision making, leadership and management skills, indicating far more similarities in competencies than differences between the three different applied disciplines. We found a lack of correspondence between faculty¿s intent to develop collaborative learning skills and the actual development of them. Contextual factors such as faculty prior experience in design, student reluctance to engage in collaborative learning, and institutional assessment systems that focus on individual performance were some of these reasons