I did not enjoy creating this assignment and found it difficult to get started, mainly because I had a hard time making the creation of an online course relevant to my own teaching practice. I teach grade 6/7 and have no intention of creating an online course, especially not for the 12 and 13 year olds that I teach. I instead tried to make my Introductory Module a simple novel study unit that students could work on independently at home or at school, as opposed to an online course.

I had originally liked the idea of having students post a video to introduce themselves, as we did for this course; however, because my students are under the age of 13, I feel like I would have to get approval from my principal and parent permission before having them post videos of themselves. Even though the course would not be open to the public, I’m not sure that this is a skill I want to spend my limited instructional time teaching, and I don’t feel like I have the necessary skills to be able to trouble shoot any problems that may arise. I’m also not sure that all of my students are skilled enough computer-wise to do this on their own. As Anderson (     ) suggests, I have tried to make my novel study unit learning centred; that is the learning context meets the needs of not only myself as the teacher, but our school, other adults who may be assisting the students,  my class, and the individual needs of the students in my class (pg. 47). My other reason for posting the introductory ice-breaker, 2 truths and a lie is because in theory, I would not be starting this unit until second term, and my students would already know each other.

I do like the idea of having students complete this novel study at their own pace as I have quite a range of student abilities in my class. This would allow the more advanced readers in my class to work at their own pace and move on with the novel study assignments. My one concern is the slower readers and less organized students may have a difficult time self-regulating and staying on track. I do like the option of having control of when the assignments become available, and when students are (or are not) able to move on in the unit. I also like being able to track student progress through out the unit.

Already having a novel study unit created really helped me input the information, but I do not know if I see myself using this type of online course in my own teaching. Another reason for not wanting to put in the time to develop an online course is because not all of my students have unlimited access to the internet, and so for some the work would have to be completed at school, and even then our internet does not always work consistently. I do not see myself developing a full online course using an LMS, but I could see myself perhaps creating some type of unit for my more advanced students to work through at their own pace.

References

Anderson, T. (2008). 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/01_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf