The 10 Best Things about EDUC 251-Essentials of eLearning

1. Judith's Boettcher's - The Online Teaching Survival Guide - is a good organization and explanation of eLearning.
2. Wiggins Model of Understanding - enduring understanding, important to know, worth being familiar with - is a good framework for helping properly focus the course.
3. The jing tool has become my new "snip" tool. Being able to capture and make a screen video is extremely useful.
4. Providing additional time in the first lesson - in this case 2 weeks, rather than 1 - to allow students a transition to the platform and tools is a best practice for me for on-line courses.
5. The weekly instructor availability during class hours is another best practice, as students know there is a time they can get information and questions answered in an interactive manner.
6. Another communication 'best practice' for me was the weekly update emails and the personalized note in the on-going grading.
7. The course lessons were laid out in an easy-to-follow manner. Having a new one each week, was a good way to pace the students and keep us focused. The only instance this did not work well for me, was in regards to the final project. My understanding the 'course framework' project was not clear to me for a while.
8. This course is the second in a three course series for a eLearning certificate. Its emphasis on pedagogy and how to develop an on-line course was exactly needed and has been great. I'd suggest adding a 'series envelope' defining the learning goals of each course. Additionally, as makes sense, add content. For example, the next course in the series is assessment, so the introduction we received in this course was good. Another example is in the previous course on tools jing in addition to snip could have been introduced.
9. The diigo forum and getting to know my fellow elearners. The way diigo allows for email updates and postings, enhanced communication. Some of the other students had been in my previous class, where we used the Vista and I didn't feel the conversations were as in-depth. Diigo allowed for easy communication and to form a 'bond' with my fellow eLearners. (I would get a daily email, read the updates, and then click on what I wanted to respond to.)
10. And, of course, the instructor - Jennifer. In addition to clear and outstanding logistics - such as responding to emails, groups posts, assignments quickly - she imparted a passion and excitement for the material by the depth of her comments and openness to feedback.

Thought I would post my thoughts to Jennifer's mid-week email so others could comment as well. There was alot of explore.

1. Student participation. Jennifer's question was how to keep up the momentum for all students when the student pariticipation varies. To me, this goes to the initial course design. As a teacher, I have to decide how much of the course I want to be contributed to peers. This class, for example, lends itself to shared experience. Expectations need to be set for student participation and, to me, a priority for that participation. eTools allow for peer collaboration that can be overwhelming and derailing to the focus, as well as expanding and helpful. We can blog, email, post, etc., in addition to the traditional ways - study groups, phoning.

2. Eric Mazur. Dividing the education process into information transfer and assimilation was an extremely useful model to me. As he points out, technology in information transfer - i.e., providing data to students - has enhanced that part of education. Assimilation of the information - what the student has learned - can also be enhanced by etools, but to me his points were not as obviously implemented. From my own experience with on-line tutoring, I find that students learn how to learn the system. They are given automated practice tests, which they learn to "pass". When they interact with me, I find they don't always relate the information. For example, they have lessons on adding fractions and adding decimels. If I give them a sample problem of adding a fraction and adding a decimel, they have difficulty understanding they need to convert one to the other form without my intervention. He also discusses "intelligent" testing systems that can ask different questions, based on past successes, which is currently how SATs and many other standardized tests are done.

The "lasting" part of diigo is a positive, but the issue isn't one of having a place for information (I, for example, keep a "notebook" page for information I want later), but having too much of it to have meaning. I have expectations when I take course to learn information on a specific topic. Not all the peers who take the class with me have the same interest, knowledge, time, etc., so their contributions can and are uneven. This distracts me from the core of what I am trying to learn, if there is too much of it.

The point for me is not the amount of time I spend in a class, but having a filter for what is important. Posts, for example, that come with a highlight of what the link about or some reaction to the link that is a youtube, is more valuable to me. So, I usually filter those out.

As an analogy to "social presence", I have termed how a teacher interacts in the eLearning environment, as the "teacher presence". In reviewing the ten best practices for Teaching Online (Boettcher, p 37), half of the practices were about teacher presence: be present; supportive online community; set expectations and how you will communicate; informal feedback; and discussion posts. Boettcher (p. 196) also indicates (and is consistent my own personal learning experience) "the most difficult part of many learning tasks is getting started."

I, therefore, decided to create a Voicethread introduction for my course framework, to introduce myself to the student and also set the expectation and outline how communication will occur. I chose the Voicethread tool, so the students would have a place to add their voice and introduce themselves. You may also read the script of this Voicethread. These links have been integrated into the Course Framework page of my blog.
- VoiceThread: Blog: http://voicethread.com/#q.b1735418.i9130694
- Script: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GLh5g59WI1c-gaOjRQsO8VlFVDYBCIyshLkEcvFfYHg/edit?hl=en&pli=1#
- Blog: http://elearner151.blogspot.com/p/course-framework.html

In addition, this module in the course was about learning platforms. A post - http://elearner151.blogspot.com/2011/02/learning-platforms-module-5.html - on my blog based on my personal experience is also provided. Platform selection is complex and is easier to experientially relate to, so I chose to reflect on my use of the platform I use for tutoring.

This scenario - to augment access to education by on-line learning - has some merits, but as with many things the devil is in the details. And in reading this, there are so many details to understand. Does each university that has transfer credits get to set their standards, for example? I thought it was interesting that WGU - who would be offering these courses - was a private company founded by former politicians. Although I philosophically like this idea, it raises a flag about whether this is a money-making propostion for some people.

I also was at the office hour session. Thank you so much Bruce for the lively and interesting dialog you had with Jennifer. What I found particularly interesting was. She indicated there is always more information out there and so does not usually bookmark sites. . She also said that studies indicate we can keep up with about 150 people in a social network. She indicated she often purges her twitter account, but more always want to join. It was interesting to me to see how integrated in the internet is in Jennifer's professional life and how it seems to come naturally to her. She is a generation younger, so it goes to the previous discussions it might be in our human DNA to use technology.

Jennifer's virtual office hours are Thursdays, 8-9, http://bit.ly/EDUC251

http://elearner151.blogspot.com/ - is the link to my blog post describing my process for my course - Everything you wanted to know about Colon Cancer.

http://elearner151.blogspot.com/p/course-framework.html - is the link to the page in my blog which will be the centralized place for my framework course

Reference: Jennifer's response to Joy's Essential Questions (Note: Am chosing to post response here as I find this to be a good focal for our discussions.)

Anyway, this discussion reminded me of a business effort, which was to establish the vision, mission statement, and goals and objectives for the organizations and departments within the organization. I found the process to be useful in developing a focus from the collective consciousness, but not as much as the end results of what we finally agreed on. In other words, if someone new joined us or we had some choices to make, we would refer to what we had agreed upon, but it was the process of discussing that was helpful.

Thanks for underlining the point about recasting classes based on the environment. I particularly thought the Wiggins module/reading was very helpful. I found the "worth being familiar with" priorities are often the ones that "hook" me into the class material.