ETEC565A e-portfolio

This assignment built on a lot of the things I had learned completing assignment 2. Having already become comfortable with the functions in Moodle and the structure of my course, I was able to focus on the content and assessments. In the past, I often looked at the individual components in isolation, but this experience has taught me to view them as pieces of a puzzle. As outlined by L.D. Fink, the learning goals, assessments, and teaching and learning activities must all be integrated together.

With the assessments, I learned about creating quizzes that could offer immediate feedback, while using different question types to test not only comprehension, but also analysis. I also incorporated forward assessment, which helps students related the content to their lives outside of the course.

While creating the teaching and learning activities, I learned how to distribute content and resources in a variety of ways to satisfy multiple learning styles. I also took the opportunity to closely review some open access materials, which gave me a better understanding of what is being offered. This exploration of open resources opened my eyes to some good content, but also some real limitations that might be placed on the instructor and students. It really becomes a matter of trying to find the right balance of cost and quality, in the end value should be the goal.

I found Emaze to be a relatively easy product to use. I wanted to have a way to deliver an overview of the material covered in the readings in a visual way and Emaze seemed to do the trick.  Rather than have static PPTs, Emaze offers something a little more fluid. I found it took some time to choose a proper template, but after that it seemed pretty intuitive.

Once I had created the presentation, I was able to add audio files to each slide and set up the time delay to deliver a voice over experience. This took some time, but once I figured out the process, it was just a matter of repeating for each slide. I found that adding the timing and audio took it from being similar to regular PPTs to a flowing, automated presentation.

Although I found Emaze pretty easy to use, I am not sure I would have much use for it in the future as I do not use presentation software very often. I would have to explore the paid features a little more closely as the delivery options were pretty limited in the free version.

I found the experience of working through Moodle to create an online course and introductory module gave me a glimpse into some of the issues the instructors I work with face each year. After reviewing many different models for course creation, I chose the “backwards design” by L.D. Fink. I really liked this approach of starting with the end of course learning objectives and working back through assessment and the teaching and learning activities. This process was a great way to ensure that all components of the course fit well together. I also thought the suggestion to look at situational factors first was a great idea as the size of course and type of student can really influence the design features.

I found Moodle a little tricky to use at first, but quickly started to figure out how to manoeuver through the site and build my course. I found the Wiki collaboration project we did earlier in the term was extremely helpful when learning how to use Moodle.

As I worked to set up the introductory module it was a great learning experience for me to think about everything a student would need in their first online course at university. This is relevant in my professional life as first year students are the primary users of our products.

In the end, I found this experience will enable me to have better discussions with the faculty I work with and will provide me with a better understanding of what is important from a student perspective.

I participated in the Moodle Wiki collaboration group. Having never used the Wiki tool within Blackboard, I found this a bit tricky in the beginning. Since I was away on vacation for the early part of the week, there had been some significant work completed when I joined in later on. My first contribution was small as I had not seen the history option where you could see how many others had been contributing to the overall Wiki page. I later went back in to add some additional content.

I found this experience extremely helpful as I start work on my introductory module for an online course. Having never used Moodle before, I feel like I have a lot to learn about the different tools in the site and how they work. The Wiki collaboration made the understanding and evaluation of the different learning tools much easier. I was able to quickly scan all the different tools and see some of the advantages and disadvantages to using them. This collaboration has really sped up my understanding of Moodle and its capabilities.

As we worked through this assignment, we ran into a number of typical group challenges with 4 time zones and various commitments outside of the course. I found we did a great job of meeting and collaborating to deliver a solid proposal. We started out with a few Google Hangouts to get to know each other and have some very thorough discussions about our scenario and the possible LMS choice. We followed up these discussions with a week-long collaboration using Google Drive and Google Docs. These products enabled us to share articles and work together to build the evaluation.

As has been the case in many of my other ETEC courses, everyone was willing and able to help with the development of our evaluation. At times it was difficult to make sure everyone had enough work to satisfy their desire to be a solid contributor to the team, but I think this is a good problem!! Again, my experience in this program has been that everyone is really passionate and dedicated to learning.

What I did find unique to this project was the challenge that we faced when it came to evaluating the LMS and the varying perspectives that each member had. When we first started to have a discussion about particular LMS, you could see that there were different views when it came to Connect versus Moodle, open source versus proprietary, and even the criteria that should be most important for the organization. Should the evaluation be made primarily based on administration needs, the instructors, students, or a combination of all factors? Although this made for some “engaging” discussions, I think it was a great experience to provide us with a glimpse of what happens on post-secondary campuses every day. When committees go through this process at different institutions, they are bound to have people on all sides of the fence. Even though we had different ideas, you could see that everyone had prior experiences or solid research to back up their thoughts, which made it tough, but also informative.

In the end, we were able to establish a criteria that worked for everyone and then we let the evaluation process lead us to the best LMS choice. Even though we had some ups and downs, I found it a great learning experience to understand all the various viewpoints and research involving different LMS.

Thanks team!!

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to my e-Portfolio where I will be reflecting on my progress through the ETEC 565A course.  I look forward to working with everyone over the summer!!

                                   Josh