How will you apply what you have learned to your own course?
There are several things that I in mind for applying what I have learned to my own course. Given that it is important to understand the student perspective, and the fact that I am still a student, I can tune in and take notes about experiences in my traditional and online courses. I can also solicit feedback and input from my classmates and ask my instructors about their specific course designs and the rationale that went into their decisions.
As I mentioned previously, online teaching is different. So I have learned in advance that I am NOT going to remake the wheel or try to replicate a traditional course in an online setting. I faced this difficulty when I was trying working on my new class concept and course building activities over the past two weeks. Shea et al. (2003) discuss the importance of teaching presence in their article and state that not only does it support student satisfaction, but it is a mechanism for maintaining high quality online teaching and learning. I need to work on this in my course design. I got some ideas from the exemplar courses that I may tweak and I learned that I do not have to recreate the wheel, but I would like to research some ideas to try and put my own novel spin on the class.
I also learned from Shea et al. (2003) and the course observations that online courses should be learner-centered, knowledge centered, assessment centered and community. I tried to build these into my course as I sketched it out. For example, the course is a theory based course which can be really boring and dry material. As a result, I tried to design the course in a way that the students will have fun and put into practice what they have learned. In every module, I try to accompany the reading materials with movie videos of real life examples. I am using authentic learning activities that replicate real life, current issues and situations. Every decision that I am making has to do with the students learning and retaining the material. I am having students work collaboratively to address current public health issues as they will have to do when they get jobs and having various discussions to foster community. I can and will improve on all of these areas as we move along in this class, but I feel I need to work on assessments and do a better job in that area.
What decisions have you made so far about your own online course?
I have chunked the modules into manageable topics. I was torn between organizing by topic or population (e.g. gender, race, children etc.). However, I decided to arrange the modules by topic and tie in populations in each module through supplemental reading (e.g. an article) and the movie and learning activities.
I made a decision about the exam. It is standard for the course and all of the sections do it in traditional courses. My decision for including it is that I think it will be a good way to assess student learning. I have taken it face-to-face; it is difficult, intense but served an excellent purpose as it really helped me to understand/reinforce the material. Throughout the modules there are learning activities where students must discuss, apply and work with the theory or model. The exam is a written with short-answer and essay questions. It will include scenarios that they may not have used. For example, the stages of change model is popularly used in smoking and alcohol cessation programs, an exam question may ask students to use the model to address another issue. As well, I specifically ask them to compare/contrast specific theories/models in various modules. Another question may ask them to compare/contrast different theories/models and provide supporting rationale.
Bill Pelz talks about his experiences with using examinations in various versions of his developmental psych course. I agree with his assertion that multiple choice exams do not add anything to student learning. In our discussion thread, I shared about a professor who utilized student-led questions to teach us and how much I learned from it. However, I think in this case the standard exam will be a better alternative and I want to start with that. I have taken essay question exams online and found them to be challenging and helpful. I am thinking about using time constraints to prevent collaboration.
How do you interact in this course?
I have organized activities to encourage interaction in the hopes of fostering a community. I have seen my role primarily as the facilitator but as I stated above, I learned that I really need to work on my teaching presence. Pelz and Piorkowski in their interviews and Shea et al. (2003) in their article really allowed me to see my deficits in this area. I learned from them that teaching presence is the “design, facilitation/direction of social and cognitive processes for the recognition of personally significant and scholastically useful outcomes”. I have learned that this includes:
- Instructional design and organization
- Facilitating discourse
- Direct instructions
Consequently, I am using this as part of my “blue print” as I work through the design process in my course.
What if anything has been difficult for you?
Organization has been the largest thus far. I keep shuffling things around and I am certain that I will continue to do so. The dates/calendar is problematic. The large group project that builds on throughout the course is also proving to be a task.
What if anything do you find yourself feeling resistance to?
BLOGGING! I struggle so much with this. It is personal to me and I know there is an appropriate way to do it, but I want to just free fall it if you will. I really resist doing it and I was so caught up these past two weeks in trying to work on my new course that I missed an entry and did not realize it until long after. This was not intentional and I was shocked that I missed it and now have a calendar to remind me. However, it also allowed me to tune in to my feelings about it. The good news is I have visited various websites to view content and I understand the rationale behind the structure and concede that the rubric for doing our blogs not only reflects standards but is actually the better way of presenting material.
As well, I have issues with finding other alternatives for reflection in my course. The traditional course used reflection papers that I thought was helpful for reinforcing the information and helping prepare for the exam. I tweaked it for my course and am satisfied with it but feel that I could do something “more” or better. In his video on innovations, Larry Ragan stressed the importance of designing courses for reflection and pointed out the differences between traditional and online courses. They are not the same and I have to keep reminding myself of this also because I am not going to be able to squeeze all of the content that is generally found in traditional courses. However, I can design a process through various activities where students will learn just as much as or more online than in a face-to-face setting.
What is working for you in this course?
Not sure if you mean the course I am developing on this course. If you are talking about this course, just about everything is working for me now that I get how it works. If you are referencing the course I am developing what is working for me is the nature and pedagogy of online classes. I personally love them and think that this particular course when it is well-designed will be a fun learning experience.
What would you change/suggest to make it better for you?
Larry Ragan also mentioned the lack of training among faculty and the need for self-evaluation. I am in the process of seeking out additional training but I could do a better job with self-evaluating. I am seeing a personal theme here, resistance to blog reflections, needing improvement with self-evaluation….
Something else that I need to work on in this class and my course design is social presence. In her YouTube presentations on topic, Alex talks fostering a community of inquiry framework and I learned about importance of 3 elements:
- Affective expression
- Interaction and open communication
- Group cohesion
I participate in this class and have built in myriad opportunities for students to do so in my course. However, I need to improve in that area in both instances. I have been so busy playing catch up that I am missing opportunities to contribute in class and engage with my classmates. In my course, there needs to be a healthy balance of various types of interaction and I am not sure that I have found that happy medium yet.
Pelz, B. (2012). Developmental Psychology Course Learning Activities. Herkimer County Community College. Retrieved from http://ualbany.mrooms.net/file.php/187/mp3_files/bill/learningactivitiesbp.wav
Penn State World Campus. Competencies for Online Teaching Success (COTS) Larry Ragan – Innovation. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=10135682177CBD2D
Pickett, Alex. Social Presence. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4774D4B83AF5DF41
Piorkowski, R. (2012). Learning Activities, Elementary French I Course. Cayuga County Community College. Retrieved from http://ualbany.mrooms.net/file.php/187/mp3_files/rob/learning_activities_tour.wav
Shea, P., Fredericksen, E., Pickett, A., Pelz, W., (2003). A Preliminary Investigation of “Teaching Presence” in the SUNY Learning Network, Elements of Quality Online Education, Needham, MA.
(Ungraded but if it were I would have given it a 4)