Here is our mission for week twelve. Next week we will be asking you to wrap up our journey together by giving us some feedback on your experience in the certificate program and share your ideas forimproving it in the future.
Our Mission...
While the toolbox approach of this chapter offers a pretty impressive summary of the range of tools available out there, my favorite elements of this chapter come at the end when our dear writers lay out some ideas about why and when to use these tools and when to avoid doing so. I have been doing a lot of thinking about those pages lately, and I do not think they are complete--I think they miss some key principles. But I do think they prod us to think about this new and exciting element of our teaching in productive ways. I look forward to reading what you think!
Our Mission...
Points: concerns about blending, f2f time for complex issues, online discussion for an on-site class, using the web for class discussion, quizmaking, office hours, group projects, student presentations, don't make it optional, calculate total student time on task, interact with class online weekly.
This week's chapters and supplemental material expose us to a ton of material. I highly recommend focusing in on what most interests you. Two things caught my eye this week from the reading.
First, the instruction to "provide feedback that stimulates higher level thinking" (326). Unfortunately, we only get two paragraphs of advice on that here, but to me this is one of the crucial challenges in teaching. On the positive side, I have found this easier to do online than onsite--especially in discussion forums where I feel that my written feedback is so much stronger than the verbal feedback I provide in class...
Second, "presentation of content needs to be paired whenever possible with an application that provides the student with an opportunity to eavluate if they understand the content presented" (314). Aside from the irksome pronoun agreement issue, this is another sentence from the book that opens up volumes for me--and has me wishing I could find further volumes! In so many ways, this idea seems at the heart of online and onsite course design (although onsite I would talk more about activities than applications).
Enough of me, on to our mission!
Points: record keeping, always store files and content on your own machine, announcements, Twitter, protocol for questions, workload and class size, using groups to decrease workload, adjusting for class size, student activities and participation, tips for synchronous and asynchronous discussions, team teaching / privacy, identity, noisy/quiet./disruptive student behaviors.
For me, this week's reading has been the most important. I have been struggling with students signing up for the course who do so for many important personal reasons even though they are not comfortable on computers or the web. I am always on the look out for helpful ideas, so I am particularly looking forward to reading this week's responses.
Here is our mission...
Points: terminology and navigation, helping with distance, student readiness, creating orientations, FAQs, anticipating problems.
This week for me was a tough one--these legal issues seem complex and not as fully decided as many experts claim they are, but I think it is important to be literate in these questions, so I pushed through. I found the Lessig video particularly interesting. I hope you will too. After you read the chapter and check out the other sites Lisa has provided us with, share your thoughts.
This week's mission....
Week 6: Class Resources
Points: fair use, TEACH Act, linking and embedding, institutional policies, password protection, Open Educational Resources (OER), Creative Commons, academic integrity and plagiarism.
The chapter you are about to read this week was my favorite chapter in the text so far, probably because it walked me through some very interesting things that I do not do--like groups--and challenged me to rethink the possibilities. I look forward to seeing what you discover in its compendium of online learning activities, and I hope you enjoy discovering Wesch's work; you have probably encountered some of his work before, but this week's prompt encourages you to explore what his class is up to in more detail. And, finally, speaking of exploring, we hope to see you share all of the cool stuff you are finding with the rest of us by using our POT Diigo account!
Our Mission...
Read: Ko and Rossen, Chapter 7: Student Activities in the Online Environment
Points: multiple learning opportunities needed, teach collaboration, rubrics, projects, role-playing, simulations, groupwork, lab, reflective activities (blogging), discussion, case studies, peer review, guest speakers, cultural issues, using the whole web.
- Peruse Michael Wesch's Digital Ethnography course page
If you find the Ko and Rossen reading for this week a bit dry (I found it a useful reminder of the tools I need to be thinking about--and it looks like I need to add a downloadable version of my course syllabus!) then despair not, for Pilar's presentation on creating classroom community and the Mott piece we are reading for this week will get your synsapses flashing, connecting, sparking--whatever it is that they are supposed to do!
Here is our mission:
Week 4: The Online Classroom
- Read: Ko and Rossen, Chapter 6: Buidling an Online Classroom
Points: adapting favorite teaching strategies to the online environment, units or weeks, determine how much to show, pacing and class size, course areas, make a downloadable syllabus, set up communications, quizmakers and gradbeooks, student tracking, student lounge.
- View Video: Building Community in Your Online Class (Pilar Hernández, Fall 2009 POT workshop)
- Read Jonathan Mott, Envisioning the post-LMS Era: The Open Learning Network (2010)
I freely confess to being a syllabus nut--I love em--and think they are such a great tool for teaching students how to succeed in our courses and for developing and articulating our own teaching philosophy. So I am very happy to see this week's focus of conversation, and I hope we will all wade in and share our reactions to the reading and the video for this week. I also help people will share their own approaches and compare them to the resources we are shraring here. We intend nothing as gospel; what we are hoping for is a lively and stimulating conversation.
Here is this week's mission:
Points: include lots of detail, due dates by time zone, define participation, be clear on task sequence, schedule by weeks in 2-3 day spreads of activity, supply information several times in different places.
Thanks to those who contributed to our first week of conversation. This week we move into work of matching our teaching philosohies and principles with the structure and form of our courses.
I do not think any of us will have trouble finding material in these two readings to reflect on, respond to, and dialogue with.
For me course design can become addictive--as I layer one new cool idea on another like some kind of demented football coach designing plays on a three dimensional blackboard. I look to Ko, Rossen, Chickering, and Ehrmann to save (and my students!) from myself...
Here is our mission:
Points: converting a course means adapting it to available technologies, syllabus and assignments as raw material, goals versus demonstrable objectives, sequence of activities, presentation, discussion, groups and research, assessment
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