Bonjour and welcome to another screen side chat.

In this chat I'm going to be discussing questions that you had about the

organization of the course and the course planning.

So, I will address questions specifically about the estimated hourly commitment,

reading expectations, availability of the course when it's over the embedded quiz

questions, tracking your own posts and questions about whether offering a course

in this format is opposed to or supplements and follows an Aboriginal

World View. So that's the last one I'll try to address

in this particular chat. So, let's get to the questions.

One of the questions was, what is motivating you to offer a course in this

format, and I take that to mean a, a massive open online course.

The, the idea, I think, that was appealing was the transformative learning potential

of such a course, so that a number of people who are getting very interested in

Aboriginal World Views and education and aboriginal issues generally.

Especially with the rise of the idle or more movement that people were looking for

ways to deepen their knowledge about the issues and their understanding of the

complexities of the issues. That, that was certainly a reason for

saying yes when, when asked if this might be a course that we could offer through

the Coursera platform and through UFT. So, that was one reason we said, we said

yes right away. So to transform their learning potential,

but also the, the potential of engaging people from all different parts of the

world and discussing these issues in ways in which they could make it personal, but

also ways to connect, potentially, people in different regions who are working on

similar issues. So, I, I have yet to see that happening in

the forums, but it's something that perhaps, in week four as we start to talk

about what to take away and where to go forward that these things start to emerge

and take place. So getting back to some of just a real

mechanics of the course. There were, there were questions, a lot of

questions actually, about how we arrived at our weekly and expectations where we

said on the, the course homepage. How many hours were, would you be expected

as, as is it, is it wrong or unrealistic to say that it would be six to eight hours

a week? And I think there's a couple a ways to

answer this question. The first is to just say why, why do we

answer it in that way in the, in the first place?

We were thinking the amount of material that would be provided by the instructor

and the team would equate to about six to eight hours a week.

We weren't going, we were aiming for around two hours of video lecture content,

and then the supplementary material which might be a reading or two per lecture.

Possibly those additional videos that were, where people could say things better

than I could about some of the issues would be also included.

So, we, we arrived at this estimate of about six to eight hours thinking it

depends on how quickly you read and how quickly you view the lectures.

There is an option, actually, to speed up the videos.

And so, some of, you know, to use that. If you look at the shortcut when you're

playing the video lectures, you'll see that if you press the plus button, it

speeds up the, the speed of the video, so you can watch them faster and saves some

time for some people who are really pressed for time.

So, so that was what, how we arrived at our estimate.

Now, here is the other thing that we weren't quite expecting.

But we wanted to encourage people to do a lot of work, in, in response responding in

the forums. But we had no idea just how popular that

would be. And so, I think where people's hourly

expectations are, are going like beyond what we thought.

And it's because they're spending a lot of time in the forums.

And it's really interesting, I gotta say I've been spending a lot of time there

reading what people are saying and looking at the a really exciting and interesting

conversations going on. This was a reason that we thought the new

platform would be an interesting one to offer this material on.

But in terms of the hourly expectations, it was not factored in.

So, and still, it's quite variable too. I mean, you could go to the forums and

just search for ones that you're particularly interested in or you can try

and read, read them all and find that there's probably over 15,000 posts or even

forums maybe but it's impossible to read all of it.

So, I think, I think it depends on how much you want to go, go into that and

delve into it. And that leads me to one of the other

questions that came up and that it is will this course be open beyond the four weeks?

And absolutely, we're going to leave it accessible to people.

So, you probably won't be able to do the assignments but people can come in later

and, and, and see what's going on in the forum, I think even post to forums.

There might not be the same kind of involvement on the part of the research

team I'm sorry, I mean, the course team. But we're going to leave it open, so

people have access to it as an archive. So, that's probably some good news for

some of you who are thinking, oh, there's so many great books that people have been

recommending and I want to read them. And, and there's, there's other great

conversations or discussions that I want to return to you.

So, yes, it will be open for awhile. And I don't, I don't think we'll close it

without sending out some sort of announcement about you know, you only have

three weeks before this closes for good or something like that.

So it will be accessible beyond the end of the course.

Another question was, you know, the addition info and resources, are they

required or supplementary? And this is you know, this is a, this is a

tough one because in the beginning, a lot of those addition resources are there to,

they, they are in fact, the actual content of the course.

So you know, when I'm pointing people to, say, Castelano's article or something like

that, it absolutely is an important thing to read and it's part of a quiz questions

and so forth. For week three, I think in response to

just how much hourly expectations there were, I was seeing that as more

supplementary. So, the, the, the work in week three

really is if you want to deepen your knowledge, here's some, some material that

you can consult to do that work. But it, is it absolutely required?

No, it won't be on the quiz. The quizzes will be based on the video

lectures. And the, and the content that is like, the

primary content there. So I hope that helps.

The embedded quiz question. So, this is a question that's come up a

few times. And it's in response, again, I think to

the information that's on the home page. So, when you first discovered Aboriginal

World Views in education as a course, it said, there would be embedded quiz

questions at all the lectures. Well, this was something we thought was

going to happen way back in the summer of 2012 when we first learned that this

course was something we were going to put together.

And we thought we would use that feature a lot more and we thought that a way of just

checking in with your, your understanding would be to, every now and then, have an

embedded quiz question. And early on, I think well, not early on,

but I guess close to the launching of the course, we started to realize that the,

the way that it was, it was organized and the, the supplementary and additional

resource material would make it harder to do that.

We thought, we'll just make the quizzes designed in that way, so that they're just

enhancing understanding. They're not a real, like tricky test of

what you know and don't know, but, but rather to sort of underline some of the

key principles and overarching understandings to take away from the

course. And so, the embedded quiz questions are

actually not there. You're not missing them.

They are, they are actually not part of the video lectures.

But we've redesigned the quizzes to take into consideration, our original intent,

which was just to underline understandings.

And provide those on far reaching understandings.

So, another question about the course design is how to track your own posts.

I guess this is more kind of a technical question and it has been addressed in the

questions about the assignments forum or sub hm, yeah, that, that forum has a sub

forum about tracking your own posts, probably has several, but Derek's been,

been involved in answering some of those questions.

And right now, I guess the Coursera platform does not have that, that ability

built into it. I think it's something they are addressing

for future courses, so you might see that in future Coursera offerings.

So right now, I think what you need to do is either sign your posts with your name,

and then search using your name and that will, they will come up.

Another way is to, and this is kind of strange but, to think about a word that

was in your posting that perhaps won't appear in a lot of other postings, and

then search by that word. It's not exactly elegant, but it's one way

to try and find something you posted and maybe you forgot where you posted it.

I think it's very important too to remind you to try to pick the most appropriate

sub forum. We did try to, to make sub forums for each

video lecture, so that if you had a question about a particular thing that

came out of out of a lecture that it could go right under that, that area, and then,

it's kind of easy to find. But I know that there are multiple

postings within each of those forums, and it gets, it gets a little complicated.

Anyway, that's, that's a feature that Coursera will be looking into, but it's

unfortunately, not available for us at this time.

So, finally, I just want to end this, this chat with a question about Aboriginal

World View. And are you following an Aboriginal World

View in teaching this course or is Aboriginal World View a part of the design

of this course, variations on that theme. And so, what I'm going to say about this

is it did seem somewhat ironic or, or strange to me to be looking at Aboriginal

World View in such a you know, a highly technological mediated format, which is

not to say that indigenous peoples are, are not you know, quite capable of

technology, but, but rather that the, the importance of working closely in high

context arrangements. You know, where you, you know your, your

students well. In, in this case, you know, this is, this

is where I've not met, perhaps you know, 98% of you.

So it's a, it's a very different kind of format in that way.

But one of the things that I, I sort of noticed as, as we were putting the

activities together is, and it, it wasn't exactly conscious but it, it emerged and

it's something that now I see. Kind of represents that indigenous world

view, is the, the learning orientations of the activities.

So, the meaningful place activity really kind of has a spiritual element to it.

And the understanding loss, that's a very emotional element.

And the, the activity that's coming out very soon on analyzing the apology

discourse analysis, is a very intellectual exercise.

It's not to say that there aren't other elements operating with those activities.

But you start to see that there is some balance, at least, in terms of what

faculties of your being are, are immersed or engaged in that kind of learning.

And so, I started to see that, there is some, there is some balance there about

requiring a spiritual and emotional and you know a mental response to the

activities. And in that way we're kind of addressing

that medicine real understanding of, of different ways of learning and, and

different ways of knowing. So, that's in there.

The other thing too is trying to create that, that connectivist way of learning

where people are learning from each other and making connections to their own lives

and, and personalizing information. That's something that I try to do when I

teach this material in a classroom setting.

And so, taking it to an online environment, it was important for us to

find ways that you connected personally. And so, the activities are designed that

way kind of encouraging those questions and comments to be taken up in the forums

is one thing that we thought would be a really important way to make those

personal connections lively and intimate connections with each other.

So, that's another thing in the classroom, I'm trying to do is create a community

where people are seeing each other each other as both teachers and learners, so

that we're not just not just there to learn from me.

It's not like what Paulo Freire talked about as the, the banking model of

education, where I have all the content and I'm just putting it into you, but

rather that we all have something from our own personal experience to offer, and that

we can all engage in this circle of learning.

So when you come together in my classroom, that's the idea is that people know

something about, about different things. And they can teach that to those who don't

know as much about those things. And creating the opportunities for those

connections to happen and for those conversations to occur is an important

part of, of my own pedagogy. And it's respecting that everyone has

something to offer. And this is certainly can, can be called

indigenous, not exclusive to indigenous learning, but certainly something I've

seen an indigenous learning and teaching is a profound respect for each person as

a, a, as a knowledgable person, someone who has knowledge to share and you respect

what they have to share because they experience it.

And so, it means something to them. So, in creating the opportunity in the

forum was an important an important piece of the pedagogical construction of the

course. And also, by bringing in other people,

that was a reason why there's a lot of you know, supplementary videos and why we had

interviews with other people, was to bring that knowledge into the course that, that

I don't carry and that I wanted other people to be exposed to and, and have

some, at least an introduction to. Much of the course, of course, is, is, is

necessarily surface and introductory. This is only just a beginning.

Right? So, so, we were trying to get people

ignited, get their passions ignited by the course and hope that they continue to find

more of their own learning. And this will become more evident in week

four where we start to talk about, you know, the way forward.

What, what sort of things can you take up in your own place of learning and, and how

to keep going with this learning. Now that you've started what you are going

to continue to do to make the learning alive and aware in your own life and also,

then, how to act upon it. So that's the end of this first screen

side response to your questions and there will be additional ones.

And I look forward to seeing more questions.

In the questions for instructor section of, of the form.

Thanks again.

Jean-Paul Screenside Chat for Week Two - Course design questions

Aboriginal Worldviews and Education

Meet the Instructors