Abstract
In the 2011 Winter semester, the University of Guelph engaged in a pedagogical experiment: an online first-year seminar. This article is a conversation about the learning journey that surrounds this seminar, as experienced by three participants: Jacqueline Murray (JM), Professor of History and Director of the First-Year Seminar Program (FYS); Natalie Giesbrecht (NG), Manager, Distance Education and a Distance Learning Specialist; and Samuel Mosonyi (SM), an undergraduate student who was enrolled in the course. We reflect upon the online seminar and discuss the technology and pedagogy, student learning experience, and process of online interaction. We conclude that this seminar, an innovation in both enquiry-based learning and first-year seminars, is arguably comparable with classroom-based offerings.
Highlights
J M: I have been facilitating first-year seminars since 2004
This seminar would be offered online, something that had never occurred in the First-Year Seminar (FYS) Program, which generally prided itself on close faculty-student contact
First-year seminars are capped at eighteen students to ensure interactivity and engagement
Summary
J M: I have been facilitating first-year seminars since 2004. The First-Year Seminar (FYS) Program provides small, intensive, interdisciplinary learning experiences for first-year students. When the opportunity to develop a seminar on The Politics, Science, and Culture of Hunger arose, I was most enthusiastic This seminar would be offered online, something that had never occurred in the FYS Program, which generally prided itself on close faculty-student contact. Students analyze a number of scenarios pertaining to the seminar’s theme (Garrison & Cleveland-Innes, 2005) These examples provide the context for student learning. I developed a number of cases that examine the complexities of hunger in both global and North American contexts, for use in the online seminar. Through these examples, students would confront issues of food security in refugee camps, genetically modified foods that could help alleviate hunger, competing or contradictory government policies, and strategies to address domestic hunger. I developed the theme of the seminar and its scenarios in the same way as I would for a face-to-face seminar, but I had no idea how the course could be structured for online delivery or how the cases would work in an online environment
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