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Evaluations and feedback are essential for effective design and delivery of a course. Upon completion of every course I teach a survey is made available for participants to complete (the return is around 80%). Questions presented to the participants are related to the course content, materials, connections to the curriculum and state standards as well as instructors knowledge, organization, support and availability. The information received from the survey will often times result in making some modifications within different unit/modules along with changes in the amount of time spent on a specific topic area. A pre-assessment (survey) is also sent to participants ahead of class to gather information on internet access, technology skills, knowledge of content, grade level and curriculum area. There survey includes an open ended question for other concerns. This has been helpful in gauging the amount of time needed for instruction along with customization towards curricular areas.

Knowledge of the content for instruction is significant. Participants for a course rely upon each of us as experts and look for us to provide the highest level of training possible. The worst impression one can present is the inabilitiy to respond accurately to a question or fumble through the content being delivered. We need to be continuously on alert and checking for changes or updates. I will often spend the night or morning before a class checking websites and links to make sure something hasn't been changed or removed.

Technology can be overwhelming to our students and if we are asking them to utilize specific tools we need to be available to provide support as needed. There are a number of databases that are utilized in my courses and teachers sometimes find it difficult to set up teacher accounts, create folders and save content to specific folders. I have already seen the value of creating a short video to walk-through the steps, instead of a phone call or face-to-face meeting. The short video used to demonstrate highlighting and annotations has spark the idea of creating video to set up teacher accounts among other items for certain databases used in my course.

Kathleen, I agree with you that technology can be overwhelming to students…adult or school age….maybe more for adults.  Right now I am teaching the Para Certification class to 42 adults, and I am amazed that some people do not know how to do the basic functions on the computer. But, I am determined that everyone will be successful.  Being new to online learning, I can identify, though, with the feelings of inadequacy or panic that my adult students have felt. When taking Ollie: Introduction, I was so appreciative of Mary's patience and help with technology.  Now Evan is assisting.  The video clips are very helpful.  A participant can see, hear, and then do which is multisensory.

I agree that video clips can be very helpful. My experience in trying to talk my mother through navigating her new iPad over the telephone reminds me of how futile and frustrating for all this can be. Providing a video and screenshots can be extremely helpful in helping to guide people in using technology that is new to them.

I appreciate the flexibility of the feedback and timely grading- when the assignment is done. This has been very helpful in trying to balance a career, household, and extracurricular schedules.

Timely and constructive feedback to enhance learning has been well documented in educational research for face-to-face instruction. I am finding as a student taking part in online learning, it is critical for me to have feedback to enhance my learning.  It is not about the grade.  I want to learn.   I want to know that I am understanding what is being taught and I can apply that learning. 

I think this is really interesting becuase I never really thought about how necessary it is to have a basic understanding of web design when one is an online instuctor. I guess it makes sense becuase you have to figure out ways to visually represent content to your audience. It seems as though the best online instuctors wouldn't necessarily be those with the best understanding of threir content, but rather the best understanding of how to communicate that content in an effective, visual manner.

I think this is a really important expereince for an online teacher to have, and maybe one that is taken for granted. Online teacher need to have the experence of what it is like to be an online learner to understand what works in online instruction and what doesn't.

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At this point in my online learning, as a student going through this class it is very apparent what the differences are between online teaching and face to face. I think that each instructor should be required to take an online class such as this to help guide them in how to be a more effective and helpful instructor.

Here's one element that we can control and that we should control; however, it is also an element that I sometimes have trouble with. Sometimes it takes me awhile to find my style.

What font should we be using? My journalism minor is quite dusty, but I was taught that body copy should be a serif typeface (e.g. Times New Roman, Georgia) and headlines should be a sans-serif typeface (e.g. Arial, Helvetica). Your choice of type might also give you a better grade: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/19604/does-size-12-times-new-roman-font-receive-better-grades-in-school S

This is a potent quotable.

This is off topic, but I can't let it go. This is an image of the Parthenon. The Pantheon is in Rome.

I'm going to give this some thought because this suggestion is opposite of what I generally try to do. I've always thought it was better for readers to close the new linked area. 

My too. I like new windows for new material. This seems contrary to my preferences. 

It is not the way I think either. I tend to want to separate things so I am not distracted. New windows keep me focused.

Same here. Especially with Moodle, I try to have it open in a different window so that they don't lose the original course.

I saw a Tweet recently suggesting to do something similar: Turn on speech to see if you can navigate on your site without vision. Is the site usable for all?

All of this is what is missing from the powerpoint I created for Mollie 3 in the week 2 lab section. 

This could/should be my checklist for design!

To be clear, these elements are always present, even in their absence. That is, even when one has the ugliest colors imagineable, they still are using a color palette. If you are Picasso, you get paid a lot of money for having the absence of these basic elements.

Oh no, so what I'm learning now will be different in 6 months or one year. I need a suggestion of a good blog or online resource I can use to keep up-do-date with all of the online design developments.

These make perfect sense to me. I'm thinking that if I can remember and use these 5 chunks of precedence I would be taken a giant step toward fine-tuning the online lessons I create. 

One slight difference between the online lesson and the "webpage" this designer is talking about is that there is going to be more stuff on the webpage. An online lesson doesn't have as many elements vying for attention.

The DE website is a "pretty bad example" if you ask me. (Although there have been improvements made over time.)  There is just SO much there that is difficult for me to find what I want and need. I guess I could use that website as a non-example of effective navigation. 

True. Of course, Heartland's old website was bad too. That is one of the occupational hazards of people like us who have our fingers in everything.

So what are some other things people expect? Where might we learn more about these ideas? The one example here is a good one, but now I'm curious about other expectations that I should be aware of. 

Hmm. . . .what is a CSS style sheet?  So much unfamiliar content specific vocabulary in this article makes me wonder if I'm actually understanding what is being said. 

A CSS style sheet is a set of rules (in the shape of a bunch of code) that govern a website. It would look like this: All headlines are in Maroon, 24 point, centered All sidebars have a box that is 100 pixels by 80 pixels. Except... in a language we can't understand.

But, didn't we read somewhere earlier in the class to place pictures/photos on the left-hand side of  slide? Do these 2 ideas contradict each other? Someone please clarify for me. 

Well... in our lessons, we advocated for putting them on the right side, as it helps with wrapping of text. Though putting them on the left is not a design faux pas. The "golden ratio" layout is more beneficial for designing a website, where you have grids to place content.

OK, i can see how too many choices is confusing in web design. But as an educator, I want to assure that my students have the freedom to make some choices regarding assignments and activities I ask them to complete in order to show their understanding. How will I balance these 2 ideas when creating online lessons/courses? 

I think you already answered your question. Design is different than learning choice. It's like the new textbooks that have so much sidebar information that students aren't reading the main text. Too much design choice. In a lesson, you can present students with different learning options (enrichment, accomodated assignments, etc), but keep the webpage consistent.

I don't think the image on the right is more interesting? What am I missing? 

"Interesting" is of course subjective. Typically, the rule of thirds means if you move the subject over to the 3rd-line of the picture, the picture shows more dynamics. Instead of "here's this rock formation", it's "Here's the rock formation, in its habitat, and now your eyes are moving over to this side of the photo to examine what is around it"

I so agree. If I'm asked for email or other info to enter a site, I just close out. I want some hint of what the site has to offer me before I give them all my info.  Great tip!

I steer away if I am asked for identifying information before I can explore the site's information.

I hate it too. I have an email site dedicated to these throwaway signups that I never check (unless I need to confirm an account). I grumble every time.

I agree with this Paradox of Choice; a few good options is better than a lot of medicore ones.

I have never given this thought before, or had any idea how layout (in thirds) affects someone's perception of a page; fascinating, yet useful!!

I admit, I was visualizing the scene from Clockwork Orange when thinking about this activity.

The use of space can be often overlooked or just not something that we always pay attention to.

Lisa, I agree. In fact, my opinion is its the best place to start, since it is one of the easier elements to understand (not sure I can identify what "good Gestalt" is) and one of the easiest to actually do.

I think it is great the students will have a choice on how they want to present their project at the end. I do get feedback from students on what they prefer for projects and presenting them. They are different.

This is something I need to learn to get use to, a "disorganized" classroom. I do think it has to do with working in special ed so long. I have a hard time letting kids go as not all of them can handle it. I may need to try letting go a little, but with daily goal for tasks.

I am learning a lot of different ways for presentation through the Ollie courses. I like that it doesn't have to be just a written response as this had been a barrier for some students in the past.

I think that this tool we are using here could also be useful. If you have students post their work to a site like this, and then use this tool, I wonder it you could get students collaborating across different teams or even grade levels I recently used it with the other 8th grade team so they could see how students on the other team were learning the same content. It was really cool for them to make connections to each other's work and I think it helped increase the "realness" because they were explaining their thinking to their peers.

Math can be fun. The math teacher I work with tries to get the kids moving and doing activities other than pencil to paper. Kids benefit from seeing what math can look like in the real world, like creating a graph.

I think that this is something that both teachers and students likely struggle with at first. Because it looks so different, teachers really have to be prepared to help 28 different students on any one thing. At the same time, students have to be comfortable with knowing that there isn't that one way of doing things to get it right. I've spoken with some of my students and I ask them what they would be interested in studying if they had some more choice and a lot of them give me the traditional "idk" answer. They want choices, but then when asked what they might choose, they realize that the decision isn't as simple.

I've definitely had some struggles along the way with trying to set up a more blended classroom. Even small things that I thought were set up correctly in Moodle and then when students go to access them, I find out I forgot to do something. However, the small successes when things go well do make the effort to shift thigns worth it. I do try to listen to the students who provide input beyond the usual complaints because they know what works best from their perspective.

I hear you. I hope 9th graders are little more forgiving when things don't quiet right. Most of my bumps in the road have been setting up different types of forums. I agree the some students have provided good and useful feedback that I've used to make my Moodle site better. I can also relate the authors comment about the wrong delivery methods. I have already gone back and changed some lessons and activity types. Hopefully next year will go smoother.

There is definitely a learning curve as you begin to blend or flip your classroom. It's great that you are using student feedback to make decisions as you continue to change your classroom.

This sounds like such a freeing way to operate a classroom. I would love to have students move through things at their own pace so that I have the opportunity to meet with small groups or individual students based on their needs. It makes me uncomfortable though, because I cannot imagine being able to have a full unit ready ahead of time that students can go ahead and dive into. I'm guessing this teacher had a curriculum that was well developed because sometimes I am planning things as I go. I also how this works from a perspective of science teaching? How does a teacher manage multiple labs within one day or anticipate when labs would be needed at times? Perhaps there is more structure that would be needed for those days and deadlines to where all students need to be at a certain point so that the whole group can do a lab and then they go back to moving at their own pace?

This is such an important part in the path toward helping students take charge in their own education. Getting student voice is key. I think that too often we forget this aspect and for the most part our educational system hasn't changes a whole lot. Most of our classrooms still look like they did 100 years ago and yet the "real world" had moved beyond that. What future will our students have if they can't or won't take a hold of their own education and become invested?

I just plain like this part. Making the students choose. I use this a lot and for the most part is works. Sure, sometimes the student makes the wrong choice or the choice I wish they wouldn't, but it's their choice. They are the ones who have to deal with the consequences good or bad. It is also nice at the teacher when students want to complain about the situation. You simply say, well that was you're choice, and again you put the ownership back on them.

The assess as you go is something I've been trying to do more of this year. I haven't waited until the end to do one big assessment, but rather, I've done several smaller ones. For the most part, student don't always realize they are being assessed as the smaller pieces seem to fit seamlessly with our current activities. I think it is easier for me as a instructor to make needed changes on our learning course before it's too late. What I need work on next would be getting meaningful feedback to students. Getting better, but it's not where I want it yet.

I would say that this year, I am hurting big time in the area. My group last year loved it and they really excelled. They got to the point that they wanted to explore on their own. My group this year just doesn't want to take charge of their learning and seeks the easiest way out of work. They say things like, "...just tell us the answer or can we just read an article or something". I'll keep pushing them because I know it's worth it, but man it's a struggle.

This is my second experience with online learning. I just thought my first experience was a stretch. This class is stretching me way out of my bubble with technology. I can understand the frustration a student would feel if they didn't understand how to do something.

I found this You Tube Video entitled "How to Use Diigo for Education." A middle school teacher shares how he is using Diigo in his classroom with his students. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RC3uvzv4_8

Like Peggy, this is my second online class. Both have been extremely challenging, but very rewarding. I really have to know what it's like, if I'm going to expect teachers and students to incorporate online training/learning. It can be very frustrating, so customer service is key:).

This is my first online class. I have students that work on Moodle for there science classes and are very comfortable with the format. My concern is can I catch up to where my students are technology-wise.

This is the second online class I have chosen to take for this very reason. I have taught hybrid and online classes and felt that I needed to see the process from the student's viewpoint!

I don't necessarily think it is a matter of catching up anymore. I think it is mostly the determination to continue learning and experimenting with what you find. I thought I was behind the students, but I am beginning to think it is only because I don't have the same gadgets. Much of what I ask the students to use in regards to technology they have to be taught. I like on-line learning, however, I realize from taking this course and Introduction to the On-Line Learner there is so much advance preparation and so much to take into consideration to make everything run smoothly for the learner. Fixes to struggles seems to be more immediate in a face-to-face course than an on-line one, especially if I am working late at night. Diligence would be key for an instructor.

Though not impossible, and absolutely necessary, I think this could be a particularly daunting task in online classes with students and would require constant supervision of the sight and the ability at times to read between the lines in some of the group assignments.

Differentiation is important. Appealing to students' interests is important when engaging students in the learning process.

Each student is going to be different and it is very important that a variety of learning styles be used--especially knowing there is no face-to-face contact.

As educators, we are always looking for the best way, the most effective way, to teach content and skills.

I have learned about more technologies in the last week and a half than I have learned in the last year. Choosing the best strategy to meet the target is essential.

With so many tools available, it is a huge task to just try and decide which tool would be best to achieve an objective.

I agee....a huge but necessary challenge!

One of the things that is difficult is the time it takes to learn the tool, let alone apply what you have learned to develop the content with it. Possibly within a school you have different 'experts' of different tools so not everyone needs to be an expert right away with all the tools. Might be worth 'assigning' or 'signing up' to learn different tools for the district - ones that are considered critical.

What challenges me most is learning about the different technologies and then selecting which ones are appropriate for the content at hand. I feel I could read forever, so I just have to make a choice and go with it to test out how the students respond.

As I am posting beyond the due date, I'm a good example of how technology has really challenged me. I didn't realize I needed to to OPEN the standards while using Firefox. Something so little can hinder progress.

This concept is nothing new. Everything we do is or should be driven by data.

This component seems to have found its way into the new Iowa teaching blueprint.

I think this is very important since technology is always changing and it is important for educators to try to stay current.

Timely feedback is very important for students. But when you have 150 students, how do you make it work?

This is where a small school is helpful. I have a smaller number of students and it is easier to meet with them during the day or in class. I wish the students knew to use the feedback more effectively.

This is one really important benefit that I see in online learning, and it is important that the online teacher creates the environment for this to happen with assignments and discussions.

If this learning community is not developed, the student will feel that they are doing an independent study!

I am trying to figure out how to get students to learn astronomy like I have over the past few years. I start with the Astronomy Picture of the Day site and just click link after link, learning along the way. I think it would be awesome if students used Diigo to help each other learn and see what other students are learning. They could share when they've found something they found helpful (if trying to complete an assignment on specific content) or just something they thought was cool.

Unfortunately, many people don't use data to determine how to procede with instruction or redo instruction.  Instead data is used to "give" grades.  Much learning needs to happen with this standard.

Having prompt feedback is a priority in any classroom setting, but especially important when you are operating an on-line class.  Without the daily/weekly face-to-face, it is difficult to have an instructor presence or establish the all-important cohort climate.  Quality feedback becomes essential to enhance the on-line learner's experience.

I feel it is very important that teachers are knowledgable of the programs that they use. The problem is that sometimes, there is no time for training and getting help with new programs. Teachers often have to figure it out on their own.

I think that this is so obviously important but I have in the past noticed I had taught something and then never assessed it. The freedom I am hoping for in my online course may make it more difficult to come up with old-fashioned assessments.

I feel it is very important that the presentation of the content is easy to understand and follow. The process has to include exact steps in the lesson plans and posted in such a way that is clear to all.

Without a doubt, planning and design is essential for online le

Continually engaging in professional development is crucial for improving online learning experiences for participants taking my courses

How many times have I heard students complain about how long it takes other teachers to grade papers?

Consistency is essential. Students are keenly aware of fairness.

While I believe this to be an important standard, I witness daily the struggles administrators face daily with issues of inappropriate student use of technology. This is an area of need.

As I teach my current class, I believe that there are times when an online class can facilitate more productive collaboration. An online format promotes student engagement and conversation rather than saying nothing during the classroom experience