This week’s reading and assignment has taken us into considerations of how to build communication opportunities into our online Moodle course.\u00a0 Anderson states that once the teacher has established the content and direction of the course, the second step of\u00a0 “teaching involves devising and implementing activities to encourage discourse between and among students, between the teacher and the student, and between individual students, groups of students, and content resources”. (Anderson, p. 345)\u00a0 It is here that we begin the task of designing communication opportunities, both synchronous and asynchronous, to facilitate this interaction between students and their community of learning, as well as between teacher and students.\u00a0 This is an important distinction between an online course and a tutorial, where little interaction, and more importantly, little feedback is possible.\u00a0 The online course allows assessment and feedback such that the course can evolve to suit the needs of individual students (Anderson, p. 346).\u00a0 The students therefore begin to take ownership for their learning.\u00a0 This is truly self-directed learning.<\/p>\n
As a starting point to designing my course, I thought I’d revisit previous courses I wrote on Blackboard about 8 yrs ago as well courses I wrote for the Min of Education more recently.\u00a0 As I read Anderson, I felt I had overlooked many opportunities to add assessment into my course designs.\u00a0 This seemed like a good time to re-invent or at least improve on the wheel.\u00a0 I asked one of my students to show me an online course she just started last week to see if any new features had been added to the design.\u00a0 Our board uses Blackboard to host the content of courses written by teachers for the Ministry of\u00a0 Education.\u00a0 I recognized the format I had used in courses I wrote.<\/p>\n
The student took me through the course as we searched for opportunities for discussion and feedback.\u00a0 Sadly, no opportunities were provided other than an email link to all students and the teacher.\u00a0 I asked if she would be able to see her grades and she answered that she could call the teacher or email her for any mark she wanted to see.\u00a0 It was clear to me that the student had not realized the power of assessment for<\/strong> learning, rather than of<\/strong> learning.\u00a0 Lastly, I asked how she was introduced to the course.\u00a0 She stated that she had a short f2f meeting with the online teacher to show her the course environment and answer any initial questions.<\/p>\n From this knowledge, I tried to improve the format I used in previous designs.\u00a0 The course I chose for Moodle is grade 11 Marketing.\u00a0 I am teaching this class this semester.\u00a0 In the past, students have been difficult to engage in this class simply because it’s been a mix of keen Business students with some who see it as a filler course.\u00a0 Unfortunately, optional courses don’t always attract the most academic students.\u00a0 My challenge has been to create meaningful activities and allow for discussion in a group that doesn’t listen well or structure their ideas very well.\u00a0 Giving everyone an opportunity to join the discussion is an important aspect to building communications opportunities.\u00a0 The other design consideration is offering short answer assignments mixed with group projects to balance the demands made on students who are not terribly literate in the traditional sense.\u00a0 Discussion questions are well suited to thoughtful consideration and opinion giving in a safe environment.\u00a0 Anderson refers to research from Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) in his model for online learning, of which one of the components, social learning<\/em>, requires ” establishing a supportive environment such that students feel the necessary degree of comfort and safety to express their ideas in a collaborative context…” (Anderson, p. 344)<\/p>\n The elements I have built into my course are as follows:<\/p>\n Asynchronous discussion: <\/strong><\/p>\n Synchronous Communication:<\/strong><\/p>\n Finally, an opportunity is given for a chat session in the form of a Q & A session with a guest speaker<\/strong>.\u00a0 This is scheduled a little further on in the course as part of the career exploration expectations in the curriculum.\u00a0 The teacher will lead the discussion, followed by an open question period from the students.\u00a0 It would be a good idea to have each student prepare a question before the actual chat session to improve the amount and quality of the questions.<\/p>\n You can find my Moodle course at http:\/\/moodle.met.ubc.ca\/course\/view.php?id=118<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n
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