Teaching for learning: design and delivery of community college courses

Community College Enterprise, The, Spring 2003 by Major, Howard, Taylor, Debbie

Many observers believe that online class discussions and small group work have some advantages over traditional classroom delivery for facilitating higher-level thinking skills in learners. In an online discussion, all members of the class must actively participate whereas in a traditional face-to-face classroom environment, many learners may remain silent while a few members of the group do most of the talking. Also, the quality of the learner contributions to an online discussion is typically higher than in a face-to-face class because students in a face-to-face classroom must respond to an instructor's question immediately without having time to reflect or consult resources. In contrast, learners interacting online do not have to respond immediately. They can read the instructor's question, log off, think about the issue for a while, formulate an answer, use resources, then post a response to the discussion board. The result is a higher level of thinking and a higher quality discussion overall, one that builds as the unit progresses.

For these reasons, many instructors teaching in face-to-face environments have decided to add an online discussion section to their traditional classes. The students are required to log in a certain number of times per week to participate in the discussion. Typically, the instructor will post a "question of the week," and students respond. Learners are also often required to log in from two to five additional times per week and respond to other students' responses. The number of required postings will vary depending on course content and the philosophy of the instructors. Some instructors also choose to reduce the number of face-to-face meeting hours because some of the discussions occur online.

In summary, the online discussion is viewed by many educators to be a breakthrough in developing students' abilities to engage in higher-level thinking. It is one way to promote active engagement in the learning process, allowing students to "try out" ideas and receive feedback from the instructor and other students. One online student remarked that she felt she knew her colleagues better than if she had been meeting in a classroom with them. In the online discussion, she got to "see how their minds work."

Cognitive, affective and psychomotor learning

Another valuable conceptual tool that emerged from the committee chaired by Benjamin Bloom in 1956 was the categorization of learning into cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains. The first category, cognitive learning, deals with knowledge and "knowing." It is subdivided as the taxonomy in Figure 1.

While cognitive learning is perhaps the most common concern of school and college curricula, the committee identified two additional types of learning critical to school and college processes, learning in the affective domain and learning in the psychomotor domain.

Affective learning

The affective domain of learning deals with attitudes and values. A taxonomy of the affective domain Figure 3) developed by Krathwohl depicts a hierarchical relationship between levels of learner engagement or commitment. At the lowest level, level 1.00, the learner is willing to receive new information but is not necessarily willing to respond to it or to value it. At the second level of the affective domain, level 2.00, the learner is willing to both receive the information and respond to (interact with) it and the presenter. Learners at level three 3.00 of the affective domain recognize the value of the information and agree that it has relevance in their lives, thus, they are willing to make an effort to master the content and its application.