Online Course Design - 0 views
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alexandra m. pickett on 23 Jun 10Joy! thank you for making your learning visible to me! I am awed and inspired by the depth of your insights!
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So establishing teaching presence is what all the designers, Alex, and even I, am doing when we make decisions about the content of the course, the types of activities we want to include, the tools we would like to use, how we want to assess, how we provide channels for providing and managing feedback, how we want to induct students into the course, how we want to wrap up the course….Basically – everything!
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From planning, to execution, to assessment, to revision. So this is why developing a course is an “iterative process”.
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And nothing happens by chance. Everything happens by deliberate design. And I am seeing how this is happening.
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People are important, so… (make decisions, plan activities, evaluate, discard, adapt, iterate, etc.) Thinking is important, so ….(make decisions, plan activities, evaluate, discard, adapt, iterate, etc.) Learning is important, so….. Content knowledge is important, so… Skills are important, so…
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From this, I have learnt that it is perfectly fine to change your mind, as long as you have solid justification. This was also a useful reminder abot the importance of accurately matching the number of objectives with activities. A designer needs to avoid creating an objective that has no activity, and an activity with no objective, as can sometimes happen through oversight.
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“You need to rethink lots of things, to be open to possibilities, opportunities to options, then you’re more likely to be successful,” says Alex. This kind of openness does not happen as a matter of course. It has to begin with an awareness. This attitude of being open to possibilities, opportunities and options has to be actively worked upon. I failed to understand this at first. So I found it perplexing that Alex would pursue what I thought was a trivial line of discussion. What do you think is not possible to teach and learn online? I volunteered several bright contributions. I was still unaware of the purpose of this apparently innocuous discussion. Of course now I know better. That discussion was supposed to challenge a closed mind. Because with a closed mind, we render ourselves unable to be open to possibilities, opportunities to options. A closed mind works against innovation, progress, improvement, expansion. This is a new frontier, and therefore the stance which can reap untold benefits and leanings should be “Let’s explore!” So the question we should be asking isn’t “What cannot be done?” but rather “How do I make this possible?”
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thank you for this observation, joy! thank you for taking the bait and giving us all the opportunity to question our assumptions and to arrive at creativity, innovation and possibilities!! : )
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I need to be open to possibilities, opportunities, to options. I must put aside my prejudices and temporarily suspend “logical thinking” in favor of creative thinking.
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But we should never give up on the unwilling ones.
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The best way to spark change is to let them attend an effective online course.
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I am beginning to see how “developing a course is a transformative experience”.
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I don’t think I can return to the classroom and teach anything the same way before.
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Designing an online course has been, for me, a truly transformative experience. It has allowed me not only to reexamine, reformulate and reassess, but to also move forward to innovate and in some ways, to reinvent myself as a teacher.
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I was therefore quite relieved Alex confirmed what I had feared. I was packing in too much. Even before even before Alex provided her completely justified feedback that my course was too packed (“for you Joy, less is more!”)
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An online environment is different from a f2f setting. Being able to state it in a theoretical way is not the same as understanding it and translating it into practice. Of course I knew the theory. But when the time came for application in the design of the online course, my knowledge did not transfer well into practical application. This is one of the main problems when there is a failure of the student to successfully transfer learning, which is basically one of great challenges of teaching. So basically, what I did initially did was to replicate my f2f activities directly into my online classroom.
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As I feared, and Alex confirmed, this large amount of group work puts a strain on the students and also poses too many logistic difficulties. Perhaps one or two group work activities might work, but not several in each module. It is unrealistic. So I have learnt, in a very concrete and hands-on way, that designing for my online classroom in this instance is different from designing for my face-to face classroom.
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Once again, I am reminded that theory and practice need mutual reinforcement. Understanding the theory is one thing. Transferring the theoretical knowledge into action requires experience, reflection, and feedback from others.
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Having experienced a wonderful sense of community, and seeing how it is done, I do feel that I have a fair idea of the basic ingredients that go into creating a sense of community. However, Alex has set a high, high standard, and I don’t know I have the energy to sustain the community building effort, even if I knew how to do it!
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this is a process
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Yes!!! the value to me and to the others in the class is to be able to watch your process. we see how you think and refine and how your ideas change and evolve and that adds to our understanding of you and our own learning.
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My present ideas never look like version 1! The result is that the ideas I handed up in the proposed learning activities resemble very little of what I actually have now
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Oh Joy, I can relate! By the time Alex reads my submitted writing assignment, my actual course design has already morphed a few times. I've visited your course, it looks great! the activities you set up indicatethat you have high expectations for the participants!
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Confucius
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In short – let the students do the work. This is the best way to learn. This principle, I think, has been demonstrated in this course. And I intend to pursue it in my own course. I see the value of giving the students both structure and space.
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One of the insights has to do with letting go as a teacher.
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Reading Sue’s
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I agree with Sue.
