The topic that resonates is “strategies for facilitating the process of critical inquiry, especially those leading to integration and resolution”.
To ascertain the strategies for facilitating both social and cognitive presence used by others an interview was conducted with a colleague perceived to be well familiar in the blended environments of teaching and learning. Some points worth noting out of the interview is that education is considered to begin with the curiosity of the learner, inquiry in the classroom place the responsibility for the learning on the student. It encourages students to arrive at an understanding of concepts by themselves. This confirms work of Lee et al. (2004) who defined inquiry-based learning as an “array of classroom practices that promote student learning through guided and, increasingly, independent investigation of complex questions and problems, often for which there is no single answer” (p. 9). Students are supported in developing their abilities to: ask good questions, determine what needs to be learned and what resources are required in order to answer those questions, and share their learning with others. The key lesson learned from the interview is the interviewee is quite experienced in teaching and learning but lacks insight of social and cognitive presence. My thought rather here was sharing my experience obtained in the lessons from this course.
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