Guest Speaker Session - The 2nd and final session

The second and final Guest Speaker session took place last night and it gave me yet another opportunity to share my research on peer mentoring, delving deeper into the topic of implementation and  ending the session by outlining a recommendation to the programme team to introduce a Buddy scheme on the BOE( Blended and Online Education) programme ran at Edinburgh Napier University - MSc BOE Programme. 

In one of my previous post I discussed the Phases of Engagement Model Conrad, R., and Donaldson, J. (2011).  This model had much more of an influence on the overall design of this final session and the amount of interaction incorporated into the design with the goal of  encouraging engagement between the cohorts.  Purchasing Conrad and Donaldson's book "  Engaging the Online Learner" , Update Edition has certainly be a good purchase and I am sure that this will continue to be a useful reference guide as I design more and more online learning programmes. 

Returning back to the session, yet again the shear amount of feedback provided in the chat to my questions was a times overwhelming. This is evidence that the questions posed throughout the session were encouraging the group to share well considered and spontaneous views.  A limitation of using  online interventions for learning is that the audience do not have the opportunity to reflect on the questions,  as much as they would if this were an asynchronous discussion an learning interventions providing the group with the time to reflect on the questions posed.  Was I able to encourage the group to perform at higher levels of thinking as highlighted in Bloom's taxonomy (Bloom, 1956)? I believe that through the in sessions questions I was able to encourage the group to think at the higher levels, especially if I consider the diagramme highlighting  a newer version of Bloom's taxonomy in the following link: 

Bloom's Taxonomy

Why do I believe that I was able to foster critical thinking during my session?   Critical thinking and reflection need assessment methods that encourage individual expression and in Conrad and Donaldson's book  "Engaging the Online Learner" , Conrad, R., and Donaldson, J. (2011) they highlight that this may be achieved through the open ended questioning, non graded activities allowing the learning to explore concepts in a non-threatening environment.  The session I held was dotted with open ended questions and if I look back at my first session the asynchronous discussions allowed me to assess the understanding of the group through there replies to the questions posed.  

What did I do differently? 

There were a number of elements that I included in this second session, which I did not utilize in the first session, which came about from the feedback a received from it. So, what was new: 

• More time was spent setting the expectations of the session 
• Housekeeping 
• Clear Agenda 
• Interaction - There was considerable more interaction designed into the session, although this was not an overkill: 
• Polling 
• Open- Mic discussions 
• Chat discussions 

I noticed that this reduced the amount of small talk, which I felt was evident in the first session and encourage the group to discuss the topic being shared in much more depth and not just via the chat, but through the open mic discussions, which ultimately allowed me to have the group moving into the higher levels of thinking as discussed earlier in this post. The discussions provided me with valuable feedback on my proposal, which I can incorporate into my final recommendation and if you are interested in seeing evidence of what I have highlighted in this post, then take a look at the session recording: 

2nd Guest Speaker session - Implementation and recommendation

Resources : 

• Bloom,B.S. (1956) Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. New York: Longman
• Bloom's Taxonomy - Emerging Perspectives on Learning, Teaching and Technology. 2012. Bloom's Taxonomy - Emerging Perspectives on Learning, Teaching and Technology. [ONLINE] Available at: http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Bloom%27s_Taxonomy. [Accessed 29 March 2012].
• Conrad, R &Donaldson ,J (2011). Engaging the Online Learner . San Francisco,CA: Jossey-Bass. 28.