Assignment 2 was focused on developing the general structure and introductory module for an online course in a LMS, while Assignment 3 provided the opportunity to develop course content and to work through the process of developing an actual course. I have grown immensely through Assignment 3, complementing the learning in Assignment 2, through progressing through the LMS course development and working with three other excellent colleagues in developing our poetry course, “Express Yourself!”. Similar to Assignment 2, all four of us were separated across the world geographically but we were further challenged in dealing with four time zones, instead of three, in New Zealand, China, B.C. and Alberta along with personal commitments. It often felt like a rotating carousel of people logging on and off, especially near the end when we were all working long hours at the computer and chatting with each other via Google Hangouts! I am happy to say that through these assignments, we have become friends and fellow educators with a shared passion and vision.

Building off the efforts invested into Assignment 2, we felt much more organized in our course and documentation structure for Assignment 3. In selecting a module of our course, we decided to focus on Module 3, the last module of our course that would culminate what students learned throughout Module 1 and 2 with a virtual poetry slam. It integrated all our learning objectives together, as well as more fully reflecting Fink’s course design model and the six domain of significant learning. We found that Eliademy continued to fairly well for our learning objectives, integrating it with GAFE tools to integrate with the LMS for instructional activities and assessment. Features like Google Forms, Docs, Slides, Hangouts and YouTube all contribute to what I consider to be a richer learning experience for our students in our course.

We also had the advantage of edX Edge to compare to, thanks to Pam’s initiative to utilize and to do more with that LMS. As we dug deeper into the functionality of Eliademy and edX, we realized there were more limitations than initially realized. For example, we encountered a sometimes non-functional “Save” button, as well and the inability to reorder the threads in the Discussion Forum. We also discussed the positive and negative aspects of Eliademy’s menu hierarchy that does away with submenus. We also revised our decision to use Google Calendar and switched to Eliademy’s native calendar tool in order to keep it within the LMS and to centralize information like the virtual instructor office hours and task deadlines in one location. Our experience further exemplified how there are affordances and limitations with each LMS; there is no one perfect fit, and it is a matter of understanding the chosen LMS thoroughly and finding the most appropriate fit for the objectives and activities of the course.

This assignment was a realistic representation of the time and structural pressures that course developers and educators encounter when developing an online course in a learning management system, as well as the sheer amount of time needed to make this course coherent and aligned with the learning objectives established. I am proud of what our group has accomplished in the time that we had, and hope to be able to use this poetry course at some point! Working together versus working independently helped to refine the many ideas proposed in our continuous discussions; I so appreciate my colleagues’ diligent efforts in all aspects of the LMS development, and suggesting things that I did not think of myself. I also realized that one of my weaknesses is in the area of using research to support my ideas, and I hope to continue to work on this in future MET courses. It has been a humbling experience as I realized how much there is still yet to learn, despite the learning curve I encountered through this course.