Course:OL Delivery:OTL101

OTL201

OTL301

Planning

Overview
This course explores cognitive presence in a community of inquiry in relation the idea of promoting deeper approaches to learning. Participants will have opportunities to develop strategies for providing meaningful feedback in alignment with stated intended learning outcomes to promote deeper approaches to learning.

Outcomes

 * 1) analyze the characteristics of ‘cognitive presence’ in an effective online learning environment
 * 2) explain the importance of deep approaches to learning in relation to assessment, feedback and student attainment of learning outcomes.
 * 3) evaluate the quality of the feedback that they provide for students in light of relevant evidence-based research (SOLO Taxomony and Hattie & Timperley.
 * 4) analyze learning activities and their effectiveness to promote deep approaches to learning
 * 5) provide high quality feedback using appropriate tools to promote deep approaches to learning.
 * 6) create an environment that supports and enhances deeper approaches to learning in your courses
 * 7) monitor your progress towards achieving your goals resulting in an improved and enhanced cognitive presence in your courses.

Welcome
Hello and welcome to OTL101, 'Encouraging Deeper Approaches to Learning'. We trust that this will be an enriching and challenging course for you that will help you to understand more deeply how you can encourage deep, meaningful learning experiences for your students. This course is one of three courses offered by Thompson Rivers University Open Learning's Program Delivery department and is based on the venerable Community of Inquiry (CoI) model of teaching and learning described by Randy Garrison, Terry Anderson and Walter Archer in their article Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education.

This course is structured differently from what you may be accustomed to in that it is built using WordPress rather than a learning management system like Blackboard Learn or Moodle. The reason for this is to allow for a wider reach and greater possibility for community engagement after the course has completed. Instead of logging into a 'secure', protected course space where your only audience is the instructor and a few others who may be taking the course at the same time as you, you will create and control your own space which can be as open or closed as you want it to be. Certainly, we will encourage you to make your thoughts as open and as public as you are willing which will enable you to gather an audience that is potentially as large as the Internet.