Participatory Styles

[James Kerr]

I find myself moving toward participatory-styled coursework, in my f2f, blended, hybrid (love HyFlex!), and fully online courses.  I’m sure it’s a result of the influences of graduate school and my doctoral program.  I’m also sure my experiences as a graduate student are leading me to want to teach graduate students over undergraduates, but one takes what one is offered these days…

The social element of learning generally requires more nurturing in online courses than in f2f courses, but not always.  In my opinion (and experience) there’s nothing worse than a room full of occupied desks where no one interacts with the instructor, the content, or each other.  Participatory course design encourages participation and the social element of learning, which helps to contextualize the learning situation and make a more worthwhile experience.

The key, when assembling templates, is to know from an instructional design perspective what activities encourage participation and how to arrange materials to enhance the experiential learning.

[Jillian Pawlyn]

Hi Jim,

For some time now my teaching has been blended/hybrid with web-enhanced and web-assessment. In my current role I have stepped back to ‘teaching’ staff in a f2f environment about the tools and technologies available so they can develop their own delivery whether web-supported — web-dependent or anywhere in between.

I totally agree about the disengaged f2f audience, fortunately or unfortunately I can be relied on to ask a question or two when I am a participant. When I am the facilitator I enjoy the use of silence to give time to pause and reflect, I try and have a few contentious questions in mind to stimulate a response.

In my personal development I certainly find I am moving towards the participatory style courses and course work. This MOOC is the second fully on-line course I have participated in. The first had no opportunity for interaction with other learners, self paced reading, so I reflected alone and then chatted with my colleague in person about my progress and findings etc. This MOOC has the participatory activities and is more demanding and engaging, which I am enjoying, however I am still behind the cohort. The study at your own pace  and own time and fit it around everything else has gone a bit wonky  :$ 

I am finding the blog the least ‘participatory’ of the tools.  I put it out there and really don’t know if it is received and by whom.

You can read more of my thoughts and reflections on my blog.

 

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