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
