Personal reflections on the quality of groupwork and my engagement with my group's Mini-course
I'm sharing with you my personal reflections on what I have learned during the process of developing my group's mini-course"Introduction to Violin basics", with my perspective as a course designer and adult educator, and as an adult learner.
Please join our course and start your journey with violin via
https://imaesc-516.moodlecloud.com/course/view.php?id=4#section-1
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As a course designer and an adult educator...
AMBITION
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Despite the fact that only one member in our group has expertise in music, all of our member groups share the common view on the helpfulness of learning musical instrument, especially for adult learners. That is why when I first raised my idea of creating a course of teaching adults playing violin, all other group members said yes, which made me feel so happy and supported. My initial opinion was that this course could challenge the current ageism against adult learners’ ability to learning new thing, to use technological tools. Other members in my group added their views about the positive impacts of learning violin online on adults’ mental health, especially during this harsh time of isolation, physical disconnectedness by Covid-19. Thanks to our shared interest and enthusiasm, we joined our hands to fulfil our ambition: a meaningful and effective course for anyone who wishes to start the journey with violin.
PROCESS OF SELECTING PEDAGOGIC THEORIES
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For us, learning a musical instrument depends much on individual practice and self-realization through rather than formalized, structural knowledge from instructions, theories that behaviourist approach tends to deliver. That is why as written in our proposal, we believed our combination of constructivism and connectivism matched perfectly with our violin course. At the same time, as we hope to include a wide range of adult learners with diverse backgrounds, conditions for work-study balance, we initially did not draw attention to how long each student is required complete the course but let them learn in a self-paced process. However, when my group started to upload and organize our contents, learning activities including forum discussions, I realized that it would be unrealistic to expect all students to interact and give feedback on time to peers, to make the most of social interdependence while each of them is at different own learning pace. After I discussed my thoughts with other members, we changed our mind that we set the duration of 2 weeks for each unit with detailed timeline to promote the effectiveness of timely feedback, comments with peers and instructors while guaranteeing students’ space for self-regulated individual practice with the violin. Moreover, during our process of designing the Moodle for our course, we tried to put ourselves in beginner learners’ shoes and recognized our assumptions on their ability to be successful independent, self-regulated learners. We recognized the significance of instructional course content and practice, informative feedback from instructors from the beginning to the end to make sure everyone can have “sense of direction and feelings of safety” as in our course’s detailed guideline.
I realized that instead of choosing the best approach, my group made efforts to combine different pedagogic theories: behaviourism, social interdependence, constructivism and connectivism for the highest effectiveness of our violin course. This reflected our perception of an intersectional, rather than exclusive, learning approach to learners.
PROMOTING COGNITIVE, SOCIAL AND TEACHING PRESENCE
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The three elements of the community of inquiry were enhanced in our course. Regarding cognitive presence, we assigned many critical tasks during the course such as creating own way of exercise based on materials, discovering own useful tips for tuning violin, self-reflection short essays and all were designed to enable students to improve critical thinking skills through online learning. When it comes to social presence, our discussion forums could show our promotion of interactions in a collaborative and respectful online learning environment which help students learn from each other and improve their own cognitive ability. Also, with our role of designers as well as adult educators, we made attempt to design the course with the method of sequence and reinforcement to make sure our students are on the right track of learning violin with the feeling of safety. In addition, we initially designed the course based on merely asynchronous interactions to let students learn with their autonomy and individual pace. However, after consideration, we added synchronous meetings every two weeks to make sure that learners can have direct dialogues with peers and instructors which help each learner receive timely and individualized feedback, address the arising challenges during their individual practice. The new synchronous meetings can not only benefit learners’ individual learning process but also enhance the sense of community, a sense of belonging among class members. Our wide range of learning activities including both individual reflective tasks and discussions reflected our teaching presence’ proficiency in promoting cognitive and social presence of our online course.
However, I acknowledged that as an educator, I should not make assumptions on any abilities, interests of all learners such as all of them are happy and comfortable to share their own practice or give others feedback. At the same time, despite some remained uncertainties in my mind about the equality of the whole class members’ engagement, I hope our efforts in promoting collaborative learning and interactions will be paid off.
CHOOSING ASSESSMENT METHOD
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The primary method of assessment of our course is formative which is based on mainly peer feedback and instructors’ comments on students’ learning activities as well as their individual self-reflection throughout the course. This form of assessment is grounded on the constructivist and connectivist approaches whose emphasis is on the collaborative learning and individual autonomy, independence of learning process. Regarding the final assignment, we believed a self-reflection would enable students to look back to what they have gained during the course and whether it would be beneficial for their future learning. During the course, we promoted critical tasks from small exercises of self-discovery and self-creation to a reflective essay in order to engage learners in the process of meaning-making of their own learning. Also, from the beginning of the course, we encouraged students to create their individual portfolios as “a portfolio…is a powerful tool for the development of reflective practice” (Jone, 2010, as cited in Boud & Soler, p. 409). Our assessment mainly aims at promoting students’ self-evaluation skills that is helpful for not only current learning process with the violin course but also for their next steps with violin. In addition, we offer a summative assessment given by instructors on what students do well and what they need to improve for future practice. Either formative or summative assessment, we aimed at enhancing students’ ability to make meaning of their learning and self-assess to facilitate their current and future learning process. The certification of accomplishment we would award to our students is our way to motivate their active engagement from the very beginning of our course. And rather than marks or grades which categorize learners’ levels of achievement, we believe that the certification of accomplishment will be a recognition of learners’ efforts, accountability and an encouragement to their future practice of violin.
Boud, D., & Soler, R. (2016). Sustainable assessment revisited. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 41(3), 400-413
As an adult learner...
Listen to my Podcast. You may find my learning journey along with my engagement in the Mini-course development.
My acknowledgement of social interdependence and collaboration
"During our process of developing our course, I realized the meaningfulness of group collaboration, of the mutual support and learning from each other for both group’s shared goal and individual attainment."
My recognition of learning from theories
"Either unconsciously or consciously applying what I learned from theories, I know that they all did help me design my first course more effectively with confidence and the feeling of safety."
My self meaning-making of using portfolio during the OUC course
"My portfolio showed what I have gained, how I have grown, what I can do to improve for future, both in my intellectual and emotional aspects"