Online Learning Update Ray Schroeder, editor, COLRS - Online@Illinois Springfield

Online Learning Update - a blog published daily since 2001 by Ray Schroeder, Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois at Springfield

Monday, June 06, 2005
The Role of Critical Thinking in the Online Learning Environment - Kelly Bruning, Instructional Technology and Distance Learning
Research indicates that critically reflective learning provides students with an opportunity to evaluate concepts learned and apply them to their experiences, contemplating its affect on future learning. This process occurs in a learning community where student interaction and feedback fuels the learning process leading to a higher level of critical reflective thinking for the learner. The challenge for online instructors is how to incorporate critical thinking in the online environment in an effective manner. This paper addresses the issue of critical thinking and how it is applied in an actual online environment through an interactive exercise created by the instructor. The exercise not only fuels student learning but also creates a learning community in which students interact and share ideas. The BUS105 Create-A-Problem exercise described in this paper incorporates critical thinking in the online environment to meet the goals of developing reflective critical thinking in students and to nurture and online learning community that can be used as a model for other online instructors.

 



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