Upcoming CIDER Sessions

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TBA Facilitator:   Dr. Maggie Hartnett Institution:   Massey University, New Zealand Date and time:   Mar 07, 2012 11:00 AM Mountain Time (Canada)   This session is currently being prepared. Visit us again for full details.

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More is different: Sensemaking and wayfinding in complex information environments Facilitator:   George Siemens Institution:   Athabasca University Date and time:   Apr 04, 2012 11:00 AM Mountain Time (Canada)   Human use of information is constant in daily activities. Pirolli extrapolated food foraging models to information: information foraging. The internet, social media, and emerging technologies have not only made information more abundant; they have made it more fragmented and complex. Conducting research on the online information interaction activities of individuals can be difficult as information environments co-evolve with the actions of individual agents. If the research project is too structured and intrusive, participants may begin to alter their activities in response to the researcher's activity. If the project is too open, researchers will have difficulty tracking participant activity in distributed settings. Fortunately, with digital technologies, the trails and traces that individuals leave as they interact online can provide researchers with valuable insight. Open online courses (sometimes called MOOCs: massive open online courses) are situated between structured classrooms where the educator typically defines information structures and the open web where learners are self-directed without cohort goals and objectives. This presentation will provide an overview of how our relationship to information is changing, review a grounded theory analysis of sensemaking and wayfinding activity of learners in open online courses, and present the Sensemaking Wayfinding Information Model (SWIM) for how individuals deal with complex information.

The Blended Teacher as Bricoleur: Diverse and flexible teaching requirements for seamless, engaging blended learning Facilitator:   Marti Cleveland-Innes Institution:   Athabasca University Date and time:   Jun 06, 2012 11:00 AM Mountain Time (Canada)   Blending diverse learning experiences has been in existence since humans started thinking about teaching. Recently, the term blended learning emerged to describe the infusion of new technologies into the traditional learning and teaching process. In particular, the Internet provides the opportunity to create, support and/or maintain a community of learners in a blend of place-based and Internet-based environments. Still under discussion are the fine distinctions and effects of activities in learning environments touched by the Internet, and its social, instructional, and cognitive impact. In an autoethnographic account of leading and facilitating such a blended university course, descriptions of the instructor's intrapersonal and interpersonal experiences are referenced against proposed teaching strategies in a blended community of inquiry. Post-course student responses to the learning experience demonstrate that the highest value was placed on the learning environment created by the group and the instructor's support.