humanMOOC wk 1: teacher presence, listening, and the inconvenient act that is caring about students

As Week 1 of HumanMOOC is coming to a close, it’s fitting to continue the trend of reflective blogging to capture thoughts about this week’s content.

Week 1 explored the “teacher presence” within CoI. Teacher presence is “…the design, facilitation, and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realizing personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning objectives” (Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, & Archer, 2001, p. 5).

Basically this means teacher presence is both behind the scenes setup of a course and active direction/guidance once a course is in progress so students have an experience that actually makes a difference in their educational/vocational journey. Teacher presence is crucial so students don’t feel isolated or alone.

Teacher presence is, for me, the most important of the CoI trifecta. I know there’s much to be said for general student agency in learning but even in a course as somewhat amorphous as HumanMOOC there still seems to be strong teacher presence (albeit disguised as wayfinders) working behind the scenes to ensure that events unfold. For example, though I’m tending my garden and watching new ideas begin to sprout…without the wayfinders doing the work of (metaphorically) giving me the chance to connect my plot to a whole bunch of others, I’d never have cultivated these ideas at this time and in this way.

All this to say coming into and going out of the week…I’m still a believer in the idea that all. the. things. may indeed hang on teacher presence.

But, lest this be a reflection of me blindingly praising teacher, this week did bring up a new idea for me namely that perhaps with teacher presence the ultimate end goal isn’t so much the teacher doing everything humanly possible to get their presence within the course but rather the ultimate end goal might be the teacher setting an example for all participants of what it means to model genuine human care within the distance mediated space of an online classroom.

It’s a subtle but significant difference.

If the goal of teacher presence is to create ample touch points within the classroom so students know the teacher is in fact human, all a teacher needs to do is create some videos, vocally-modulated audio comments, let an occasional spelling error slip and generally exhibit behavior that proves someone who isn’t programmed robotically is in control of the course. And yet at the end of the day…does it really matter as a learner to know that my teacher is in fact human if all I see exhibited is generalized human behavior? Or, does the real benefit of teacher presence come when the teacher becomes curious enough to understand my preferences as a learner (spoiler alert: I actually prefer text based comments…in fact I prefer text based everything), learn to recognize the nuance in my vocally-modulated/text-based comments (i.e. note when I’m standing on a ledge contemplating jumping), and gently correct my occasional spelling (or more likely APA) errors?

What this week has made me think lots about is that perhaps the real genius of a teacher being human in an online course context is that it enables the teacher to discover student intention and from there partner with the student so personally meaningful/educationally worthwhile learning outcomes are achieved.

In my own current experience working with my supervisor, I have little doubt he is human because I’ve watched videos of him on YouTube, and had emails/phone calls with him. While those things are nice, if I am honest the real reason I care about his humanity is for the very selfish reason that I need him to help me find my own intention amidst all the fuzzy dissertation ambitions I have and even more I need him to share his story with me and show me how I too can be a bit more human in the crazy online spaces we both find ourselves in on a regular basis. I need him to periodically check in with me not to remind me that I need to write more but to inquire how I’m feeling and genuinely listen/guide me when being a doctoral student takes a heavy mental toll.

His video/audio/text touch points are great but if I don’t get the sense that he actually cares about me as a human…I don’t think all the touch points in the world will have lasting transformative impact on me. Knowing he cares makes me want to care too and in that reciprocal connection…I am certain transformation in both of us happens.

So, in a lot of ways this week has messed me up and made my life as a teacher more difficult. I once patted myself on the back because I was clever with multi media and great about sending out regular messaging to students but admittedly I wasn’t so clever about actually listening back to them. If I believe that presence is a reciprocal relationship is just showing myself as human enough or is the real key showing myself as caring enough to draw out the intentions and ambitions of my students?

Reference: Anderson, T., Rourke, L., Garrison, D. R., Archer, W. (2001). Assessing Teaching presence in a Computer Conference Environment (Links to an external site.). Journal of asynchronous learning networks, 5(2), 1-17.

hi mooc-ers (who are humans)

Why am I here?

Basically read this great post by Autumm Caines and my answer is yep…me too.

all. the. paradox. : )

Like Autumm, I too heard murmurings of #HumanMOOC and decided though it sounded interesting…after three months of intensive doctoral course work I just didn’t have the mental bandwidth to engage on any level. Like Autumm, I also quickly changed my mind after hearing several people I knew were participating, seeing the schedule of guest speakers and realizing that the course is based on the Community of Inquiry (CoI), a model I first encountered two years ago during orientation week at Athabasca. (During orientation CoI came up so frequently it seemed to me it was pretty much the answer to every question, the solution to every problem, and if you were clever about it…probably held the secrets to staying young, fit, and beautiful.) Since orientation, CoI has fallen off my radar. In HumanMOOC I am looking forward to getting reacquainted and seeing how Lisa-on-the-cusp-of-doctoral-candidacy‘s experience of CoI differs from Lisa-the-total-academic-novice.

Week Zero (basically a fancy name for orientation) of #HumanMOOC opened last Saturday with a conversation hosted by Matt Croslin (head “wayfinder” basically a fancy name for course facilitator) with George Siemens (my supervisor who prescribed lots of down time over break…which means I’m now living with low levels of paranoia that he’ll find out I’ve joined a MOOC.) It was an interesting chat about the tension that is human + technology and particularly the tension that comes with defining just what it means to be human whilst co-existing with so many non-human actors.

George is passionate about disseminating an anti-technofetishism message, proclaiming that humans are creative and if we resist the weird determinism that is rampant, we can leverage technology as a means to bring hope, compassion, and connection on a grand scale. Technology, by doing its piece very well and with great efficiency, can free us to pursue lives of deeper creativity as we engage in the things unique to us as humans. That said, we must think critically about who does what so we don’t inadvertently mistake ourselves for robots and venerate the programmed as our leaders.