Ashford MATLT Student Blog

Leslie Bowman (2013) created a Comunity of Practice for her online students and writes that students fulfill a role as coaches, mentors, and reviewers.  Through peer mentoring students are able to share existing knowledge and instruct other students while developing new knowledge of the subject through the analysis of the content.  Bowman (2013) writes, "...the COP provides a more balanced perspective of the learning process for students by addressing strengths and weaknesses simultaneously and with equal emphasis."  Self-directed learning continues throughout the whole course. Another CoP that is useful to the online learning environment is the cohort model.  The cohort model shows that each group of learners are expected and encouraged o to stay together as a group (Conrad, 2005).  The cohort model is supposed to strengthen the online community between classmates and increases the bond.  It builds the relationship that enables students to learn from each other. Developi

In order for students to be successful in the online courses, a variety of tools must be used.  I believe online learning must be mostly student-led, with the instructor taking more of a guidance role than the active educator like classroom-led learning tends to be.  In order for the online learning environment to be student-led, the instructor should integrate technological tools to facilitate student engagement. Pelz (2004) wrote a report on his Principles of Effective Online Pedagogy.  His first principle was to "let the students do most of the work."  (Pelz, 2004)  For example, students would lead discussions while the educator would support and contribute to the discussion with questions to help draw students into deeper discussions while deepening critical thinking.  This would help with social presence in the classroom because students would interact with one another and the instructor, while also strengthening cognitive presence because they would be required to res