In my professional role, I support faculty and instructors in their work in developing and delivering online courses by offering them guidance and consultation that is based on research and recommended practice. Some instructors are more experienced in and comfortable with online teaching than others, so the level of support I provide varies.
I’ve been an Instructional Designer for a few years now, though I have been working in the post-secondary online learning environment for about seven years. (Over the past several years, I have also taken several online courses, which varied in terms of how they were delivered and how engaging I found them.) Though I feel comfortable using educational technology, I realize that there is much to still be explored out there.
One goal that I’d like to achieve through this course, ETEC565A, is to develop a rubric or plan of action that I can use to evaluate and select new and existing educational technologies. This goal might be a bit ambitious for the length of this course, but if I could end up with at least an outline of an action plan, that I could work with to build into a rubric with my team, I would be happy with that. This rubric or action plan can be based on one or a small number of models or frameworks (which I hope to become familiar enough with that I can effectively discuss them with my colleagues, peers, as well as the faculty and instructors whom I work with).
Another one of my goals in the MET program is to end up with a toolkit of technologies and teaching strategies for the online environment so that I can bring some new ideas to my consultations with faculty and instructors who are developing and delivering either classroom, blended or online courses. I want to be able to assist instructors in making choices in technologies for teaching that are appropriate for meeting their needs. I’d like to offer more innovative and creative suggestions across disciplines, class size and instructional strategies. The technologies that I currently suggest to instructors are the ones I am most familiar with, of course. In order to more effectively achieve this goal, I am aware that I will need to explore more of the technology out there, so using the tools that will be covered in this course is a good starting point for exploration. (And, perhaps, also developing a plan or promise to set aside time to continue exploring educational technologies after this semester is over, would also be a good idea.)
More specifically, some of the tools that I’d like to become more familiar with through exploration in this course include:
- Communication, interaction and assessment tools – I want to learn more about new and different options for each of these activities. For instance, when instructors are moving their classroom course to the online environment, it’s important to be able to find creative alternatives for synchronous activities.
- Social media – I want to learn more about integrating these tools in learning, as I haven’t worked on any courses incorporating social media yet (though I’ve attended conference presentations and read articles about this). The concern with using these social media tools, of course, include student privacy and the fact that these are in general third-party tools that are external to password-protected Learning Management Systems (LMS), which are used in most intuitions of the type that I work in.
I have experience working with different LMSs, as both a student and administrative staff. Though the LMS is one feature that is, in general, institutionally selected, it is important to be aware of the different features of the most popular ones out there, in order to assess one’s own LMS and how it can benefit the learners at one’s institution best.
I’m looking forward to exploring and discussing the different technologies this semester!