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The Role of Relevancy in Online Courses

Introduction

Relevancy is central to online curriculum design and course content selection. This paper provides an overview and understanding of relevancy and can serve as a starting point for developing questions for use in deciding how a course can be relevant to a student’s career, personal, or academic goals, and for developing guidelines for use in helping the student make connections between course content and the ultimate career, personal, and academic goals he or she may have.

Establishing Relevancy

Students who do not immediately perceive how and why the course content is relevant to their career, academic, or personal lives will become disinterested, bored, even angry. But, what masks itself as a quite justifiable and self-righteous anger (”I paid for this! It’s not getting me anywhere!” or “What does this have to do with anything? This is wasting my time!”) is, upon deeper analysis, a consequence of the deliberate disorganization of an individual’s cognitive processes. When something seems “irrelevant” or “meaningless” it is precisely so because the learner has no way to integrate the activity or the cognitive content into his or her existing mental scheme. The confusion that ensues is unpleasant, particularly to an adult learner, because he or she is likely to attach negative narratives to the experience of being “lost.”

The role of the instructor (as facilitator and mentor) must be to be able to contextualize the course content and required activities, and to relate them to already mastered work or tasks. Needless to say, this may require patience. More to the point, it requires the instructor to be able to ask appropriate questions in order to find a way to guide the student to making the connections needed to perform well and to demonstrate mastery of the learning objectives.
These pedagogical approaches are supported by philosophers and cognitive specialists who point to a “connectionist” model of cognition, which suggests that cognitive awareness, and thus meaning, are formed when connections are forged from one region of the brain to another. Symbolic logic has meaning only insofar as there are sets of seemingly unrelated meaning associated with it. In other words, the connectionist model posits that symbols in and of themselves are not enough to explain cognition. There must be other associations, which lead to the ability to posit more complex and real-life applications, such as cause-effect relations, historical sequences, identities, etc. These ideas are used in developing the mathematical models used in artificial intelligence computer programs, as well as in decision trees and probabilities (as applied to human behavior).

Making connections

…to additional material and related readings
The student may understand the material, but the comprehension may be incomplete, or there may be an inability to apply it or demonstrate a working knowledge. If the facilitator can guide the student to additional readings or material (even if it is anecdotal, or in the form of an example from the instructor\’s own experience), the student will have a more comprehensive knowledge.

…to current events
Applying concepts to current events and/or recent discoveries, writings, or activities helps establish the applicability of the course content to the larger, outside world. On a fundamental level, the student is being guided in the practice of “making sense” of the world, and is being presented alternative strategies for ordering, or making meaning out of one’s existence.

…to life experiences
If the facilitator is able to help students make connections so that the student can link life experiences to either the course content or the core concepts under discussion, then learning will take place through what B. F. Skinner termed “operant conditioning.” In this case, the student will experience a reinforcement of both previously held knowledge (which includes beliefs and values), and of the knowledge being presented in the course. Once reinforced, the knowledge can be built upon, and the facilitator can help the student in next-level cognitive skills such as differentiation and discrimination. Assessment exercises should replicate operant conditioning so that the taking of practice tests, the writing of essays and journals, and the preparation of final exams or research papers will further reinforce concepts and reasoning skills.

Think About It! Questions for Consideration, Review, or Journal

” When does your course directly address issues that are of immediate interest to your students?
” Name three ways that the content or objectives of your course can make a difference to your students - either in their personal or professional lives, or both.
” Find five websites that can help your students see other perspectives or to make connections between course themes and their lives.
” What are issues that emerge from your course that relate to the world as it is right now, or in the immediate past

Theoretical Underpinnings:

Green, Christopher D. (1998) Are Connectionist Models Theories of Cognition?. http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/documents/disk0/00/00/02/01/ accessed August 1, 2001

Skinner, B. F. (1976) About Behaviorism. NY: Random House.

Skinner, B. F. and C. B. Ferster (1957) Schedules of Reinforcement. Acton, MA: Copley.

Skinner, B. F. (1953) Science and Human Behavior. NY: Free Press.

Thomas, L. and Harri-Augstein, S. (1985). Self-organised learning. London: Routledge.

Wilson, Elizabeth A. (1998) Neural Geographies. London: Routledge.

Applied to Online Instruction:
http://hagar.up.ac.za/catts/learner/1999/kgarimetsa_rj/eel880/exaprjct/pedagog.htm

http://portfolios.valdosta.edu/tcdowdy/std7.htm