Wendy Barber

Democratizing digital learning: theorizing the fully online learning community model

The integration of digital technologies at institutions of higher education are profoundly influencing formal learning on a global scale. Social-constructivist models of fully online learning are well-positioned to address the demands of government, and economic and social-development organizations for civically-engaged individuals with strong problem-solving, critical-thinking and collaboration competencies. With an established record of performance at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), Canada, the Fully Online Learning Community (FOLC) is one such model.This paper theorizes FOLC as a response to several problematics, including (a) the aforementioned demand for greater educational focus on higher-order competency development, (b) the deficiencies of distance education and MOOCs as learning models, and (c) a quest for new learning models that strengthen deliberation skills and deepen democratic experience. As a divergent fork of the Community of Inquiry model, FOLC describes collaborative learning as a symbiosis of social and cognitive interactions amplified through effective use of synchronous and asynchronous digital affordances. Furthermore, it models democratized learning communities that reduce transactional distance between learners and educators, incorporates authentic assessment, and encourages negotiated technology affordances and cognitive outcomes while distributing responsibility for constructive criticality.Having positioned FOLC conceptually, and addressed current limitations, a research agenda for extending its empirical foundations, and leveraging UOIT’s EILAB affordances, is presented. The underlying argument is that self-regulating and transformative learning communities can be established and sustained in fully online environments, and that such communities (a) produce a diversity of beneficial learning outcomes, and (b) deepen the democratic functioning of learners and their social contexts.

Inclusive and accessible physical education: rethinking ability and disability in pre-service teacher education

ABSTRACT This paper identifies and explores emergent themes in inclusive PE in the specific context of pre-service teacher preparation programs. Fully inclusive PE encompasses four areas: knowledge and curricula related to ability and disability, teacher attitudes, pre-service teacher education and a reframing of our understandings of multiple perspectives on physical literacy. Fully accessible PE involves material and attitudinal conditions configured to render these programs actually usable by all those whose ‘inclusion’ is intended. Access is, indeed, conceptually implied in ‘inclusion’, however, in practice the latter can easily become more of a slogan naming an aspiration than a realizable state of affairs. Unless an organization or individual brings a universal commitment to access, attitudinal barriers may prevent full inclusion from becoming a reality. The paper uses qualitative case study methodology to examine pre-service teacher education students’ preconceptions about ‘dis’ability and analyses heuristically how pre-service teachers pre-conceived notions of ability and disability may be challenged through an intervention. 21C PE programs can move towards an emphasis on inclusive activities which are not based on traditional conceptions of physical competence, size, shape, appearance and ability, but instead focus on how all bodies can develop fundamental movement skills, functional fitness and physical literacy. The author challenges pre-service students to address issues of accessibility, normative notions of ability, body equity, social justice and inclusion, as well as the need for multiple definitions of physical literacy. The paper is a case study of the specific phenomenon of ‘broadening student teachers’ understandings of ability and disability in PE’ as a necessary condition for preparing students to work in schools where full inclusion may not have been integral to PE policies, programs and practices.

Online Learning as the Catalyst for More Deliberate Pedagogies: A Canadian University Experience

Abstract This chapter explores issues of quality teaching, learning, and assessment in higher education courses from the perspective of teaching fully online (polysynchronous) courses in undergraduate and graduate programs in education at a technology university in Ontario, Canada. Online courses offer unique opportunities to capitalize on students’ and professors’ digital capabilities gained in out-of-school learning and apply them to an in-school, technology-enabled learning environment. The critical and reflective arguments in this paper are informed by theories of online learning and research on active learning pedagogies. Digital technologies have opened new spaces for higher education which should be dedicated to creating high-quality learning environments and high-quality assessment. Moving a course online does not guarantee that students will be able to meet the course outcomes more readily, however, or that they will necessarily understand key concepts more easily than previously in the physically copresent course environments. All students in higher education need opportunities to seek, critique, and construct knowledge together and then transfer newly-acquired skills from their coursework to the worlds of work, service, and life. The emergence of new online learning spaces helps us to reexamine present higher education pedagogies in very deliberate ways to continue to maintain or to improve the quality of student learning in higher education. In this chapter, active learning in fully online learning spaces is the broad theme through which teaching, learning, and assessment strategies are reconsidered. The key elements of our theoretical framework for active learning include (1) deliberate pedagogies to establish the online classroom environment; (2) student ownership of learning activities; and (3) high-quality assessment strategies.

Profiling the digital readiness of higher education students for transformative online learning in the post-soviet nations of Georgia and Ukraine

This study profiles the digital readiness of university students in Georgia and Ukraine for fully online collaborative learning, theorized as an educational pathway to democratic transformation. The Digital Competency Profiler was used to gather data from 150 students in Georgia and 129 in Ukraine about their digital competences. The analysis grouped students into high-, medium- and low-readiness segments for 52 actions in technical, communicational, informational and computational dimensions. Findings show that large percentages of Georgian and Ukrainian students are ill-prepared for many online-learning activities, and there is generally greater readiness on mobile devices than desktops/laptops. However, large percentages of Ukrainian students appear in high-readiness segments for communicating online and using social networks. In Georgia, many students report high-readiness for technical and computational interactions. Therefore, the researchers recommend using the digital-readiness data in tandem with a well-chosen, online-learning framework to align these patterns of strengths with future educational innovation.