This assignment was the most interesting, challenge able and exciting assignment. It was the result of 13 weeks of studying literature and building the moodle course structure.
In our second assignment, I had to decide which subject I would like to teach, which topic interests me, however, in this assignment I had to work on every detail in the course.
Because of being this my first online course, I had to think deeply about specific details that I have studied about in this course and bring it to life. This is my first course in the MET program that requires practical practice and making connections between the literature I have studied and my personal experience.
My course is built on team work skills. Each activity requires the students to work in pairs, or to post their thoughts or answers and discuss them together on the discussion forum. According to the rise of new learning theories, like constructivism and constructivism, the Internet has an excellent role to play in this stage. Because, these theories help us to understand “that learning is about making connections with ideas, facts, people, and communities.” (49)
Delivering the course in attractive way for teenagers required me to think about the media or the tools in my course. To make up my decision, I used the “SECTION” model for “Bates and Poole, 2003” and “Evaluating Media Characteristics” by George Siemens, 2003.
The SECTIONS I considered in Bates and Pole model were: Speed, Ease of use, teaching and Interactivity. The material of my course required an average Internet connection, which is supposed to be available for students in Canada. The ease of use factor appeared clearly while creating the home page of the course and the navigation buttons. Bates and Poole says that “Interface design is a highly skilled profession and is based on a combination of a scientific research into how human learn, an understanding on how software works, and good training on software design” (Bates and Poole, 2003, 89)
We had to create a “GUI” interface. At the beginning, I thought it is a hard mission, but after reading my friends comments and watching several tutorial videos on YouTube I could do it. I had a problem with the editing bar and I had to use an online html edit bar, then I pasted the code to my moodle course.
Also, I tried to make it easy to navigate through the course and added clear instructions to students.
“Teaching” must be the most important factor, because this is a full on line course, so If the technology won’t be effective in teaching, teachers don’t have to use it. Moodle is one of the best LMS, and the content delivery method I have chosen serve teaching. I have provided several videos relate to the topic, I also included the required readings as PDF files that are easy to download and read.
“Interactivity”, many recent theories suggest that learning to be effective it must be active. Learner must respond in some way to the learning material. (Bates and Poole, 2003, 98)
I have created several discussion forums for students to share their point of view, and post their answers. They had also to create a wiki for the course to collect information from several several resources and create their own page in the course wiki.
For choosing media, I relied on “Evaluating Media Characteristics” of George Siemens. He says: “Effective learning is linked more to media characteristics and learning context. Sometimes, text is still the best way to learn. No tool is perfect for every situation.”
In my course, I used text and videos. Text is the backbone in learning, and for most learners it is still the most comfort. (Siemens, 2003) Blogging, discussion forums are effective use of text.
I also added some video to my course. As we know, Internet is a visual medium and one picture is worth a thousand of words.
Net provides expanded opportunities for learners to plunge ever deeper into knowledge resources, providing a near limitless means for them to grow their knowledge and find their own way around the knowledge of the discipline, benefitting from its expression in thousands of formats and contexts. (Anderson, 2008,89)
Therefore, I included “Resources” link for my students to make it easy for them to get the right information about the course topics, and expand their awareness.
As a conclusion, I did my best in my course and I would be happy if you visited it:
There’s a self-enrollment button if you like to access the course.
Resources:
- Anderson, T. (2008a). Towards a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and practice of online learning. Edmonton AB: Athabasca University. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/02_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf
- Bates A. W. & Poole, G. (2003). A framework for selecting and using technology. In A.W. Bates & G. Poole, Effective teaching with technology in higher education (pp. 75-108). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 4.
- Siemens, G. (2003). Evaluating media characteristics: Using multimedia to achieve learning outcomes. Elearnspace. Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/mediacharacteristics.htm