Finally this certificate is drawing to a close. Appropriately, I will reflect on the goals outlined for the digital content course and my state in reaching them.
The goals were:
1. Produce text content for online courses using html text editors.
My response: I still prefer Frontapge but also learned more about the Kompozer program during this course. I am using this more in building course content for other classes rigth now. i especially liked the two table hint so that the page ahs a heading and then content blurb. It was interesting that many other students didn't use the folder function to have their content travel in and out of courses
2. Create text content for delivery within a course management system.
My response: This has been achieved. I use mutiple formats to produce elarning opjects using text--PDF, HTML, text for audio files
3. Enhance content by incorporating images and other graphics into online learning materials.
My response: I think that photos are and essential part of attractive and engaging learning materials. I keep files of photos based on topics and use them on many webapges. particularly I like using a photo on the firt webpage of a module so that I can catch student's attention and motivate them to learn.
4. Integrate sound components into learning materials.
My response: This is more difficult for me. I did try out the audio file producer and editor (Audacity) and it was very time consuming for a first time user. The second issue is transcribing what you say. For this, i would rather use dragonspeaks as I like to speak off the cuff rather than read from a script!
5. Utilize presentation software to produce course content in a basic multimedia format.
My response: I am sold of Adobe Captivate and have been the calayst in having many co-workers use this now also. i need to learn more video formatting. However, this will occur as the need arises.
6. Deliver a synchronous learning activity.
My response: I presented a Wimba session during the second course
7. Integrate content from online and other digital sources.
My response: Using existing websites, You Tube EDU lectures and available lectures on theweb in a great way to lasso exemplary learning opportunities for students. I routinely do this, although searching and perusing material is very time concuming upfront. It does pay off.
Overall this course has pulled a lot of what we ahve learned over the certificate course together very well. I ahve met all of my stated learning objectives described in the presious blog.
Time to move on and feel satisfied that this formal learning is over. However in the online teaching and learning field, one must stay abreast of new knowledge and technologies. To do so I will remain a member of the onlien elarnign community at GSU (the Ning community set up be Jan and Barbara)
Thisn is the final post for this Blog!
Helen
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Final course digital course material
Final course> Blog entry task: Share your thoughts on the challenge ahead of you as you move to implement in digital form the course you designed last trimester.
The challenge ahead of me is rather difficult as I must both write, design and build the course from almost nothing. I have recently moved universities (3 months ago) and am taking to shell that I created in the design class and altering it to be applicable to school aged children with disabilities, rather than children with just physical disabilities. I will now include some Autism and behavioural issues to appeal to a wider range of occupational therapists. I now work for a university that has campuses in four countries and so there is a diverse potential group of participants. Mainly the students will be graduating OT’s from Australia and Malaysia. As a full time worker with three small children and only limited understanding of digital capabilities I have my work cut out for me. The course will run in 2010—March through June and so there is plenty of time. The course content so far described (see final project document), will stay the same.
Briefly describe the course you are constructing and indicate why you want to put it online.
This is a class now titled: Occupational therapy for school aged children with a disability. I have designed this using a mentorship model so that it will support and extend practicing occupational therapists to work with children with disabilities in schools. This means that weekly tasks will include application to real situations and assignments that require direct experience/authentic assessment. OT’s are generally not technical or up to date with online learning and so luring them into the class will be difficult
1. How will your students benefit from having materials online?
They will be able to work and apply material directly to their daily work, whilst getign a subject towards a Masters in Health Sciences.
2. What problems you foresee in moving content online?
Creating the content in the first place! Another issue will be learning how ot utilize soft ware to create the content. I’d really like to be both competent and confident at the end of this course.
3. Briefly describe the course you are constructing and indicate why you want to put it online.
This is a 13 week course for OT’s that will look at: Evaluation; intervention; evidence; techniques associated with best practice occupational therapy as applied to children with Autism, cerebral palsy and other most common childhood disabilities. The course is currently under review by the academic board at Monash University. I will provide that document to assist with the course description as soon as it is approved.
Helen Bourke-Taylor
The challenge ahead of me is rather difficult as I must both write, design and build the course from almost nothing. I have recently moved universities (3 months ago) and am taking to shell that I created in the design class and altering it to be applicable to school aged children with disabilities, rather than children with just physical disabilities. I will now include some Autism and behavioural issues to appeal to a wider range of occupational therapists. I now work for a university that has campuses in four countries and so there is a diverse potential group of participants. Mainly the students will be graduating OT’s from Australia and Malaysia. As a full time worker with three small children and only limited understanding of digital capabilities I have my work cut out for me. The course will run in 2010—March through June and so there is plenty of time. The course content so far described (see final project document), will stay the same.
Briefly describe the course you are constructing and indicate why you want to put it online.
This is a class now titled: Occupational therapy for school aged children with a disability. I have designed this using a mentorship model so that it will support and extend practicing occupational therapists to work with children with disabilities in schools. This means that weekly tasks will include application to real situations and assignments that require direct experience/authentic assessment. OT’s are generally not technical or up to date with online learning and so luring them into the class will be difficult
1. How will your students benefit from having materials online?
They will be able to work and apply material directly to their daily work, whilst getign a subject towards a Masters in Health Sciences.
2. What problems you foresee in moving content online?
Creating the content in the first place! Another issue will be learning how ot utilize soft ware to create the content. I’d really like to be both competent and confident at the end of this course.
3. Briefly describe the course you are constructing and indicate why you want to put it online.
This is a 13 week course for OT’s that will look at: Evaluation; intervention; evidence; techniques associated with best practice occupational therapy as applied to children with Autism, cerebral palsy and other most common childhood disabilities. The course is currently under review by the academic board at Monash University. I will provide that document to assist with the course description as soon as it is approved.
Helen Bourke-Taylor
Friday, August 7, 2009
Final post design course
At the end of the design course, I can think of many topics that have caught my attention and caused much pondering. However, the most prominent is connectivism and how this new educational stategy affects culturally diverse course design.
Connectivism is a method of teaching that utilizes the e-learning environment to connect students to content, each other and their teacher. Inclusive course design utilizes all three methods of connecting the student and does so with respect and maintenance of differences and diversity among students and the teacher.
When I watched the You Tube about connectivism, I was excited and could see many possibilities. The networked student seemed to have access to it all! I still agree that connectivism is the key to a successful course design. However, it is possible that there are a couple of exceptions to the rule of connectivism. As I have been designing a course for people in Singapore, one problem that I have is that many sources and resources that I wish to connect my course participants too are American in origin. This poses an interesting problem. Google scholar and various other search engines can be configured to local resources or they default to USA sources. For myself, this is useful as I teach in both countries and I can direct American students to American resources and Australian students to Australian resources and cross germinate with these similar countries as students easily relate to literature from either country.
However, when locating resources for my Singapore course, I became acutely aware that I was locating mainly American resources, definitions and sites. I am not sure how this will be perceived and even whether it will be relevant to an Asian culture. Connecting students to local resources is not possible from Australia as I can’t configure to their locale. Language poses a bit of a problem as I am not sure how and what to connect my students too. I have read several resources about international education and the idea of an open world university as described in Atkinsons Presidential address at Nagasaki University in Japan in 2001. This address discusses the changing competitiveness of universities as information is becoming so easily accessible whether one pays fees or not and resides in the country or not. But what is also obvious when ones steps in the shoes of people from smaller nations, is that that education and information is dominated by those producing the information.
Ultimately, how students react will only be known in their responses and posts on the discussion boards and in assignments. Setting tasks that direct students to locate and present local resources will be an education for me as well. Those resources can then be built into future runnings of the course. This next step will place the course design closer to connectivism as I will be able to connect students to their own meaningful culturally relevant resources as well as those that may contrast with their perspective.
An important role that I must play is one of a culturally competent tutor who honours and respects all view points and maintains a safe environment to let students express what they really think and have learned about resources that I post. Student’s interactions with each other will be easy for participants, as they are likely to hold the same or similar attitudes and opinions. As the minority, even though I am the tutor, I must understand and access the group of students by consciously leaving pre-conceived ideas at my office door. After this course has finished I will have more knowledge about how connectivism works within international e-learning courses.
References:
However, when locating resources for my Singapore course, I became acutely aware that I was locating mainly American resources, definitions and sites. I am not sure how this will be perceived and even whether it will be relevant to an Asian culture. Connecting students to local resources is not possible from Australia as I can’t configure to their locale. Language poses a bit of a problem as I am not sure how and what to connect my students too. I have read several resources about international education and the idea of an open world university as described in Atkinsons Presidential address at Nagasaki University in Japan in 2001. This address discusses the changing competitiveness of universities as information is becoming so easily accessible whether one pays fees or not and resides in the country or not. But what is also obvious when ones steps in the shoes of people from smaller nations, is that that education and information is dominated by those producing the information.
Ultimately, how students react will only be known in their responses and posts on the discussion boards and in assignments. Setting tasks that direct students to locate and present local resources will be an education for me as well. Those resources can then be built into future runnings of the course. This next step will place the course design closer to connectivism as I will be able to connect students to their own meaningful culturally relevant resources as well as those that may contrast with their perspective.
An important role that I must play is one of a culturally competent tutor who honours and respects all view points and maintains a safe environment to let students express what they really think and have learned about resources that I post. Student’s interactions with each other will be easy for participants, as they are likely to hold the same or similar attitudes and opinions. As the minority, even though I am the tutor, I must understand and access the group of students by consciously leaving pre-conceived ideas at my office door. After this course has finished I will have more knowledge about how connectivism works within international e-learning courses.
References:
Atkinson, R.(2001) Presidential Address: The globalization of the university. Nagasaki University of Foreign Studies, Japan, May 26, 2001. Retrieved March 20, 2009 from http://www.ucop.edu/pres/speeches/japanspc.htm
Germain-Rutherford, A., Kerr, B., (2008) An Inclusive Approach to online learning environments: Models and Resources. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 9(2), 64-85.
Germain-Rutherford, A., Kerr, B., (2008) An Inclusive Approach to online learning environments: Models and Resources. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 9(2), 64-85.
Morse, K. (2003) Does one size fit all? Exploring asynchronous learning in a multicultural environment. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 7(1), 37-55.
Saskatchewan Learning Resources. (2005) Chapter 2: Instructional models, strategies methods and skills, and Chapter 4: Making instructional choices. Retrieved May 15, 2009 from http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/sitemap/index.shtml
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Designing online courses: Mid course entry
Trying not to drive students off a bridge with too much content
No-one was harmed in this imageWell it is June 28, 2009 and it is nice to know that this class is on the down hill slide as far as the length of the course goes. I have a feeling that the workload is going to steadily increase, but 1 out of 2 isn’t so bad!
My self selected blog topic is overwhelming students with content. When the tutor creates their own content, and connects students to existing content, the students has quite a glut of resources to select from. How overwhelming is this? I think that this is an important aspect of course design—quantity of content. Presenting content needs to be as flexible and consider as many different learning styles and knowledge levels as possible, to ensure that students will interact with the content.
In the course that I am designing and will teach, I am lucky enough to have my own original content. I will present this content in various ways, including HTML lecturette, PDF journal articles and captivate presentation. I am not sure, other than tracking and the assignments that I have set, how much students will interact, if they will interact, and how helpful my material will be. To ensure that I cover other viewpoints, I am loading PDF journal articles and various web links to the sites that are an original source, or at least really expert, or content rich sites. I was really pleased to see that my strategy of multimodal presentation of material and multiple sources for students to select material to interact with is supported in the literature (Academic Technology Center, 2007). However, one of the problems of providing a lot of content for students is that they become less likely to manage interacting with everything. However, to keep students abreast of the overall topic, one must post all views and resources. The student then chooses what to interact with.
I am interested to find out what students like and do not like. Aside from tracking file usage (which I love to do!), I am thinking about setting up an anonymous discussion topic and asking each week to name the best resources and the ones that were not used/engaging. That way maybe I can reduce the load a bit. It was interested to learn that just under a majority of academics track what their students are doing and interacting with online (Shank, 2003). I routinely track the class and individual students out of interest. I actually do it at least weekly when I run a class, and wondered whether I was too anxious to know what was going on in my classes. After reading Shanks article, I am quite satisfied that this is what I should be doing! Thanks for hat reference!
As Anderson 2002, so aptly points out, interaction between the students, content and teacher only occurs at a high intensity when the student is “personally active and engaged in the interaction”. So I am realizing that really excellent and multimodal presentation of rich content may only be selected as a learning experience if the whole class is connecting, interacting and in an upward learning spiral. Distance learning really needs people to form a positive connection. The facilitation class really taught us how to engage a student’s community—learners willing.
I look forward to learning more about course design, appropriate volumes of content, and managing what is delivered within a good online course.
Helen Bourke-Taylor
My self selected blog topic is overwhelming students with content. When the tutor creates their own content, and connects students to existing content, the students has quite a glut of resources to select from. How overwhelming is this? I think that this is an important aspect of course design—quantity of content. Presenting content needs to be as flexible and consider as many different learning styles and knowledge levels as possible, to ensure that students will interact with the content.
In the course that I am designing and will teach, I am lucky enough to have my own original content. I will present this content in various ways, including HTML lecturette, PDF journal articles and captivate presentation. I am not sure, other than tracking and the assignments that I have set, how much students will interact, if they will interact, and how helpful my material will be. To ensure that I cover other viewpoints, I am loading PDF journal articles and various web links to the sites that are an original source, or at least really expert, or content rich sites. I was really pleased to see that my strategy of multimodal presentation of material and multiple sources for students to select material to interact with is supported in the literature (Academic Technology Center, 2007). However, one of the problems of providing a lot of content for students is that they become less likely to manage interacting with everything. However, to keep students abreast of the overall topic, one must post all views and resources. The student then chooses what to interact with.
I am interested to find out what students like and do not like. Aside from tracking file usage (which I love to do!), I am thinking about setting up an anonymous discussion topic and asking each week to name the best resources and the ones that were not used/engaging. That way maybe I can reduce the load a bit. It was interested to learn that just under a majority of academics track what their students are doing and interacting with online (Shank, 2003). I routinely track the class and individual students out of interest. I actually do it at least weekly when I run a class, and wondered whether I was too anxious to know what was going on in my classes. After reading Shanks article, I am quite satisfied that this is what I should be doing! Thanks for hat reference!
As Anderson 2002, so aptly points out, interaction between the students, content and teacher only occurs at a high intensity when the student is “personally active and engaged in the interaction”. So I am realizing that really excellent and multimodal presentation of rich content may only be selected as a learning experience if the whole class is connecting, interacting and in an upward learning spiral. Distance learning really needs people to form a positive connection. The facilitation class really taught us how to engage a student’s community—learners willing.
I look forward to learning more about course design, appropriate volumes of content, and managing what is delivered within a good online course.
Helen Bourke-Taylor
Friday, May 15, 2009
Design course post one
May 15, 2009
The design course has started and this course will involve the design of an overall course as well as application of online pedagogy that will create a significant learning experience for students.
I am using the course structure and resources to assist me as I create a fully online course to be run in second semester (in Australia) this year. We have learned about learning resources. We have learned about facilitation. This class teaches us to match up students learning needs with inspiring methods of material delivery and interaction with that material with other students and with the instructor. Selection of evaluation methods will be a key aspect of the course design.
My time availability for this class is completely crucial. I have very heavy work and study load. I will be looking to learn as much as I can by interacting with the class material, the instructor and the other students. Being a student in these courses has helped me to more fully appreciate learning objectives, materials and instruction strategies.
I intend to be brief but pointed in my efforts to benefit and contribute to this course.
Helen
The design course has started and this course will involve the design of an overall course as well as application of online pedagogy that will create a significant learning experience for students.
I am using the course structure and resources to assist me as I create a fully online course to be run in second semester (in Australia) this year. We have learned about learning resources. We have learned about facilitation. This class teaches us to match up students learning needs with inspiring methods of material delivery and interaction with that material with other students and with the instructor. Selection of evaluation methods will be a key aspect of the course design.
My time availability for this class is completely crucial. I have very heavy work and study load. I will be looking to learn as much as I can by interacting with the class material, the instructor and the other students. Being a student in these courses has helped me to more fully appreciate learning objectives, materials and instruction strategies.
I intend to be brief but pointed in my efforts to benefit and contribute to this course.
Helen
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Self reflection: Facilitation of week 4 (February 2009)
This is a picture taken two weeks ago in Sydney. These are my 3 children (Josie 8, Catie 6, and Seamus 3) standing in front of a giant prehistoric Australian Wombat. This creature existed with dinasours I believe and is considered 'megafauna'!
Now back to the course.....
During week 4 of the facilitation course, I co-facilitated the week along with my capable colleague Cynthia. The topic for the week was the pedagogy on online teaching and learning. I was reasonably confortable with this topic although made sure that I read the resources that were provided in the lecturette and accompanying documents. I discovered some new material and a different way to view the way that synchronous and asynchronous student-student-teacher interactions can offer different learning opportunities. Still, I didn't realize where I was on the learning curve (at the beginning) until our interaction with students began!
Cynthia and I decided to take a discussion board each and I found that I was completely involved in this discussion and was pretty astounded by the effort that it took to facilitate when you are just learning the material yourself. I was relieved that I only had one board to repond too. I did find it hard to respond to postings in a studetn centered way. I found myself thinking about the postings and the persons experiences. Just now I reviewed soem of those posts and I see that I was really responding like a student rather than a facilitator. In my own online classes, I find it easier to facilitate as I have mastery over the material as I did put it together, and I am the content expert teaching the class. When a student posts I can see where they are going and what else they might need to get there. This was not the case on the discussion board for this class.
Our synchronous class was a Wimba session that lasted an hour. Cynthia and I decided to make our session about pedagogy and cultural influences. The problem was that we did not alert our classmates to this interesting topic that we both felt motivated and somewhat competent to present and facilitate a discussion on. We prepared about 6 slides about ethnicity, cultural influences on pedagogy and deliviery of education; diversity among students and how all of this might be approached in the online environment.
The class started a little off kilter and I thought that this was because people weren't quite on our page yet. I recall the silences and did feel a little panicked, but just allowed some time for people to think. As the presentation continued, people did participate, although I did think that there was a little confusion on some topics and I felt that perhaps I was not as attentive to what people offered as examples. I listened to the archive and realized that I probably didn't do too badly, although I only understood the full conversation about what it meant to have an African American President to African Americans AFTER listening to the archive. I do find it difficult to think, listen and talk at once and this was an intense session. My colleague was disappointed in the session, and said that she thought it did not go well or as planned. I was a little suprised as I thought thta she had done well--certainly better than myself. We de-briefed with each other and the instructor and eventually decided that preparing the students for what was to occur was our major error.
So after these experiences I decided that I should facilitate again and have volunteered to take week 12. I have incorporated Wimba into the onlien class that I teach and therefore don't feel the need to do it again, especially since I will be trying to act the expert when I am really the learner! Hopefully I can do a better job with the discussion boards as I will have more time to think about responses!
That's all for now! Back to my thesis writing (UGH)
Sunday, March 8, 2009
End of part two: Facilitation of online courses
This section of the facilitation class was about pedagogy of online courses; building community between students and including the instructor; the managerial role of creating and managing a easily navigated and stimulating course; managing the course as it is occuring and the technical role that we must all keep up with.
The pedagogy of the online learning environment is fairly similar to what I would see as a graduate or post graduate f2f class. Principles of effective teaching has some really important points that must be included for a class to reach the learner and be an enriching experience. Firstly the learner must be understood so that the teacher tailors material and the class to their needs. Further than this though, the learners potential and need for growth must be acknowledged and promoted through a full learning experience. Secondly, learning is a construction of meaning individualized for each learner. This means that the course must facilitate all sorts of new thinking (critical, problem solving, creative) and not just one dimesion that the learner may excell in or be very comfortable to them. Constructivism will say that learners create and define their own meaning about a situation. Thirdly, inline with these principles, the learning environemnt created by the instructor must be challenging and stimulating, always asking that bit more of the person. Finally the online class depends on a learner teacher relationship that is positive, supportive, respectful, engaging and fair (thats my one!). Studnets do need to understand that the instructor has time and resouirce limitations. The online environemnt can be a slippery slope for a teacher when the class is large and the studetns keen. Individualizing relationships with studetns takes time and resources. From the teachers point of view these thin out as the class expands in size. So lets say that 20 is a maximum for one facilitator. The other principle is the wider environmental context that exists for the student. The virtual world must be in sync with the real one or application of learning is limited.
There are many roles that the instructor plays in an onlien class and I think that those were covered in the previous post. However one of the most important is the social role of building community. Personally I look forward to more success with this. My experience with a class that I teach from a distance at present has been somewhat jaded by my inability to build community between the students. My relationship with most of them is good, however, they don't want to gel--there are groups and they have been hard to break down. This week I finally detected plagerism from one student. The student copies other student's posts and modifies them as her own. So another role of the online instructor is detective. If the instructor is not observant about what is going on in the class they will not see the real reasons for the breakdown between students. Of course I could not build community between studetns who were aware that someone was cheating. Web ct 8 will have a plagersim detection function for the discussion boards. Good!
Setting the stage invloves getting all of those features up and ready to direct people around the material and course in a quick and orgaized way. Somes function that need attention are a visually engaging front/cover page; orientation to the course in several formats; topical outline and syllabus with required evaluation tasks set out clearly; a calendar with due dates and cues to where studetns are in the course; ways to contact the instructor; discussion boards for course questions, topical boards, and social interactions between students. I'd like to add course goals to that list as the first course had those linked to each module and it was great to just select the icon and self check if you are keeping up and on target. Probably hard to set up.
Managing the course is a time consuming task that requires perseverance, frequent checking in in check email and discussion boards; prompt responses to students questions; measured and timely responses to content posts; directing studetns to material as per their learning experience and need; and ongoing positive regard and support for students.
Soem difficult scenarios that can arise are prolific posting (encourage more student repsonding to students); studetns who don't know what is going on (refer them to the resources and skill them up in successful online student attributes); and plagerism (turnitin) or google text blocks.
Another role of the online teacher is the technically savvy person. From understanding just basic functions (like using frontpage, or writing html correctly, which I don't find that easy incidently!) to be fluent in using the full capabilities of the programs that are available to many of us (Google functions, Adobe photoshop, captivate potential). We had a great wimba session about current programs and dicsussion boards with some great resources posted. Three of the best that I have bookmarked were
internet4classrooms (Tutorials as application to classroom scenarios as to how to use them)
UCR extension (lots of basic and more complex tutorials)
Online journal of distance learning education
Well I have moved forward with what I have learned. I find this class a very well connected and supportive class. I feel like other students really want to help me solve my class challenges and I am very interested to hear about their classes, successes, ideas and challenges too. Being a student in this sort of class has to be the best way to learn how to teach one successfully. I believe this to be true and self evident!
The pedagogy of the online learning environment is fairly similar to what I would see as a graduate or post graduate f2f class. Principles of effective teaching has some really important points that must be included for a class to reach the learner and be an enriching experience. Firstly the learner must be understood so that the teacher tailors material and the class to their needs. Further than this though, the learners potential and need for growth must be acknowledged and promoted through a full learning experience. Secondly, learning is a construction of meaning individualized for each learner. This means that the course must facilitate all sorts of new thinking (critical, problem solving, creative) and not just one dimesion that the learner may excell in or be very comfortable to them. Constructivism will say that learners create and define their own meaning about a situation. Thirdly, inline with these principles, the learning environemnt created by the instructor must be challenging and stimulating, always asking that bit more of the person. Finally the online class depends on a learner teacher relationship that is positive, supportive, respectful, engaging and fair (thats my one!). Studnets do need to understand that the instructor has time and resouirce limitations. The online environemnt can be a slippery slope for a teacher when the class is large and the studetns keen. Individualizing relationships with studetns takes time and resources. From the teachers point of view these thin out as the class expands in size. So lets say that 20 is a maximum for one facilitator. The other principle is the wider environmental context that exists for the student. The virtual world must be in sync with the real one or application of learning is limited.
There are many roles that the instructor plays in an onlien class and I think that those were covered in the previous post. However one of the most important is the social role of building community. Personally I look forward to more success with this. My experience with a class that I teach from a distance at present has been somewhat jaded by my inability to build community between the students. My relationship with most of them is good, however, they don't want to gel--there are groups and they have been hard to break down. This week I finally detected plagerism from one student. The student copies other student's posts and modifies them as her own. So another role of the online instructor is detective. If the instructor is not observant about what is going on in the class they will not see the real reasons for the breakdown between students. Of course I could not build community between studetns who were aware that someone was cheating. Web ct 8 will have a plagersim detection function for the discussion boards. Good!
Setting the stage invloves getting all of those features up and ready to direct people around the material and course in a quick and orgaized way. Somes function that need attention are a visually engaging front/cover page; orientation to the course in several formats; topical outline and syllabus with required evaluation tasks set out clearly; a calendar with due dates and cues to where studetns are in the course; ways to contact the instructor; discussion boards for course questions, topical boards, and social interactions between students. I'd like to add course goals to that list as the first course had those linked to each module and it was great to just select the icon and self check if you are keeping up and on target. Probably hard to set up.
Managing the course is a time consuming task that requires perseverance, frequent checking in in check email and discussion boards; prompt responses to students questions; measured and timely responses to content posts; directing studetns to material as per their learning experience and need; and ongoing positive regard and support for students.
Soem difficult scenarios that can arise are prolific posting (encourage more student repsonding to students); studetns who don't know what is going on (refer them to the resources and skill them up in successful online student attributes); and plagerism (turnitin) or google text blocks.
Another role of the online teacher is the technically savvy person. From understanding just basic functions (like using frontpage, or writing html correctly, which I don't find that easy incidently!) to be fluent in using the full capabilities of the programs that are available to many of us (Google functions, Adobe photoshop, captivate potential). We had a great wimba session about current programs and dicsussion boards with some great resources posted. Three of the best that I have bookmarked were
internet4classrooms (Tutorials as application to classroom scenarios as to how to use them)
UCR extension (lots of basic and more complex tutorials)
Online journal of distance learning education
Well I have moved forward with what I have learned. I find this class a very well connected and supportive class. I feel like other students really want to help me solve my class challenges and I am very interested to hear about their classes, successes, ideas and challenges too. Being a student in this sort of class has to be the best way to learn how to teach one successfully. I believe this to be true and self evident!
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