1) Precis of my flight path
At the onset of the course I set out to become more familiar with setting up a course and gain practical experience working with an LMS. Through building the course I hoped to improve my understanding of basic coding and options for incorporating different activities to maintain learner engagement. I wanted to gain a better understanding of how students would interact with content and how multimedia is processed cognitively. From an assessment perspective, I wanted to improve my skills in developing valuable assessments both formative and summative to identify areas where learners would need more guidance. Becoming more familiar with how the LMS platforms is set up to provide feedback would enable me to create a supportive learning environment for learners. The support may come in the form of direct instructor feedback or student-led discussion forums. Through the discussion forums, I wanted to gain a better understanding what factors have an effect to make collaborative spaces encouraging for students to share openly. Lastly, I set out to broaden my experience with using different online tools to create an engaging online course.
2) Reflection of overall ETEC 565A experience
Looking back as the ETEC 565A course comes to an end I can say it was a solid learning experience. The course truly had combined the theory into practice. The readings by Anderson (2008, Bates (2014) and Chickering (1996) provided the theoretical foundation for most of my Moodle course creation. I found myself regularly revisiting those readings to confirm if my design decisions were logical and substantiated. I really enjoyed building the Moodle course because it gave me hands on experience with creating a course using a popular LMS platform that I have not used before. The knowledge gained from this experience will be invaluable when encountered with different LMS platforms. Even if the user interface may be different I will still be able to take the same approach of asking the proper questions to achieve the learning objectives of the course.
Part of my learning from ETEC 565A came from seeing the work created by my classmates. I would observe unique features that they have used for their Moodle course design and would try to find the feature in my own course shell. This broadened my understanding of more features available in the Moodle platform. Another source of my knowledge development came from discussion forums on weekly topics. The forums provided a safe space to question readings and share one’s own perspectives. Our course instructor Natasha has a unique was of encouraging students to try new things “just for fun”. In particular I recall in one of the Collaborate video calls that she facilitated, she gently suggested a classmate to turn on her video just to see if it works. This approach was effective instead of requesting that everyone must enable their web cameras for the video conference call which may have resulted in less students participating in it. Additionally, I found it rather welcoming when Natasha put herself out there by actually taking the lead on posting a video message which I felt empowered others to be less reluctant to post their own. Acknowledging the reservations that students may have with that particular communication medium really made the experience positive. I felt that watching other classmates video messages about their digital story making experience was the most enjoyable interaction. I likely spend the most time watching those messages since I was eager to connect with them on a different level as compared to the prior weeks of reading their discussion posts.
I gained a basic sense of some of the coding involved in Moodle; however, the html editor tool makes it easier for user to create pages without having to particularly know how to code. I took some time to research how to perform certain functions using coding language only for the purpose of modifying formatting issues that the html editor did not cooperate with me. Looking at the source code behind the html pages that were created was useful to gain an better understanding of how the coding language is structured.
I believe the most important factor that optimized my learning in ETEC 565A was “time on task” (Chickering 1996). The learning curve was steep at the beginning when I first logged onto my empty Moodle shell. Viewing examples from previous years’ work was both inspiring and intimidating at the same time. I found it helpful to spend some time each day whether it was while commuting home to work or waiting at a medical office to watch tutorials on Moodle to learn how to perform certain functions. The flexibility that I was granted with having access to tutorials anywhere drastically improved the efficiency and productivity in this course. Once I got home and was set up on my main desktop I already had more familiarity with what I wanted to do and how I needed to do it. Having access to the Moodle platform from both the author and student perspective was useful for carrying out user testing. I found myself switching roles from taking an instructor perspective and then taking a student perspective which helped to shape my course design to achieve intended goals.
All in all, I learned to become more critical when considering adding any form of media to my course whether it is an image, audio message or video. I understand that creating a technology support learning environment does not mean that pedagogical foundations can be marginalized at the expense of any decorative media. Through this course I have become more resourceful on the internet to find solutions to features I wanted to add to my Moodle course. These are the most important things I learned which I am grateful for since these transferrable skills can be applied to any technology based educational endeavor.
3) Reflection on my next steps
My steps to continue to build on the skills I have developed in this course is to explore in more detail the Articulate Storyline 2 software for building interactive courses. I will join their online community to learn from other experts in the field and expand my network. In the online community space I will grow my knowledge of design approaches. Learning the software will help to build my technical capacity in conjunction with building my theoretical framework from the remaining MET courses I have to complete my degree. I will set out to get involved with usability testing for patient education websites created by the University Health Network. Taking part in this testing will provide me with a different perspective of how end users actually interact with a website and challenges associated with it. Lastly, I will aim to attend the eLearning Alliance of Canadian Hospitals (eACH) conference regularly to keep informed about advances in technology among teaching hospitals.
References
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, T. (2014). Teaching in digital age http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/ (Chapter 8 on SECTIONS framework
Chickering, A. W., & Ehrmann, S., C. (1996). Implementing the seven principles: Technology as lever. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), 3-6. Retrieved from http://www.aahea.org/articles/sevenprinciples.htm