Tag: Reflections

A One-Term Course Requires One Term to Develop… At Least

While I have never designed a course online or face-to-face, I have tried to prepare the teaching materials for a course I have never taught before. From that experience, I would say that, for each week of lessons (two or three lessons at 80 minutes each), I would need about the same amount of time (i.e. 4 hours) to prepare the teaching materials.

Translating that to Benoît’s scenario, assuming that the business writing course is a 3-credit, 13-week course, I would think Benoît would need about 13 weeks of preparation time working at 5 hours a week. At first glance, the estimate may seem a little conservative because university lectures are only 50 minutes in duration, generally speaking, so Benoît technically only needs to prepare the equivalence of 150 minutes of teaching materials per week, and yet he has 5 hours of time to do so. However, this estimation does not account for the additional time of technology-related work that Benoît must do, which I believe, in the developmental stage, would take substantially longer to put in place than a face-to-face course.

This is of course not to say that the development time is not worthwhile. Similar to a face-to-face course, where once the materials are developed, the subsequent implementation would require a shorter amount of time, I see the same thing happening to Benoît’s business writing course. Once the foundation of the LMS is in place, future delivery of the course should be much easier.

Finally, a “curve ball” that may be thrown in is the delay that Benoît would need to endure for technical support. If he uses WebCT/Vista and has to wait for the very sparce technical support, a little glitch can take him hours to fix. If using Moodle that is not supported by his institution, then the research he needs to do to find the solutions to any technical problems can take hours to deal with… In short, I think a term’s worth of time to develop a one-term course may even be too generous of a timeframe to give to Benoît.

Benoît and LMS

“How might Benoît go about deciding whether to go with Moodle or WebCT/Vista? What questions might he ask himself?”

The most pressing question Benoît must ask himself when choosing a LMS is, “How much technical support would I receive when I choose a specific LMS?”

As an educator, Benoît is responsible mostly for the delivery of the online course. While we do not know the competency and the level of computer literacy that he owns, we can safely assume that managing the daily operation of the LMS would not be a task that is high on Benoît’s mind. If Benoît is working for an institution (e.g. a university, a school board, etc.) that has a network of technical support personnel for a particular LMS, regardless of how Benoît himself is competent and confident in using the other LMS, it would still be ill-advised to go against the institution’s flow.

The strengths and shortcomings of the individual LMS aside, almost everyone who has taken an online course can attest to the challenges faced when the LMS is down for various reasons. Signing onto a LMS that is not supported by the institution is almost suicidal in terms of an educator’s time, and I would argue, sanity as well. With a supporting team providing the technical support, Benoît can focus on the development of the course, and the delivery of the course.

Reactions on Chickering and Gamson 7 Principles

After completing this week’s reading, I can say I can see myself agreeing with many aspects of the 7 Principles, as well as Bates and Poole’s Sections framework. Having said that, since I have written in another course about the Sections Framework, I want to reflect on the 7 Principles instead.

As a new counsellor and a former classroom teacher, I feel that the 7 Principles have taken a different interpretation. As a front-line teacher, my focus would probably falls for the second and the third principle. As a counsellor, however, principles 1 and 7 would take a much more prominent role.

#2 Develop reciprocity and cooperation among students – as many public school educators would attest, our typical classroom is filled with students of diverse talents. A cliché often used in sports suggests that a team is only as good as its weakest player, and I feel the same can be said about a class – a student who is lagging behind the entire class can become disruptive, and the amount of time and energy needed by an educator to provide remedial support can be extremely draining. A more proactive approach would be to help this student remain “on pace.” This is not to suggest that this student is inferior, but that he/she requires support that the most traditional method of knowledge transmission cannot do. Cooperative learning, multiple intelligence, etc., are all ways to help the students foster a sense of success, and allows student groups to utilize individual strengths to create a more positive learning environment.

#3 Active learning techniques – As mentioned, the traditional method of knowledge transmission only works for some students. As a former science teacher, I can attest to the joy I see when students, through hands-on activities, discover the otherwise irrelevant scientific principles they see in a textbook. Tapping into multiple intelligence, students can use other creative means (e.g. drama, film, art, etc.) to present their learning as well. This would also foster that sense of success, not to mention that it creates a sense of ownership to the knowledge that students are a part of in its creation.

#1 Contacts between students and faculty – as a school counsellor now, this is a task that I often have to do. Some teachers, unfortunately, are very entrenched in curriculum delivery, that they forget their “clients” are but very young students. Sometimes, when these students are faced with personal and family adversities, school is really not relevant to them, or at least is not one of great priority. My role as a counsellor is to bridge the two sides, to plead with teachers to be flexible and understanding, to individual students’ needs. As Chickering and Gamson suggest, “faculty concern helps students get through rough times and keep on working.” By showing concerns to the students’ needs, and communicating that need to the teachers, students have a better chance to succeed.

#7 Respect diverse talents and ways of learning – as a counsellor, I have to work extensively with students with special needs, including learning disability. A common misconception from some teachers is that students with special needs are lazy and/or intellectually inferior. Almost always, that misconception is not true at all. Content delivery and assessment often need to be adapted/modified to accurately measure how much these students know. As a counsellor, it is my job to support both the students and the teachers do so in a harmonious learning environment.

Unit 1 Reflections

After reading NETS, it’s easy to see that B.C.’s public education system is not really on board for education technology, and a product of the system like myself inevitably faces a difficult up-hill battle to change things around. Specifically:

1)      Design and develop digital-age learning experiences and assessments

The learning experience of most public school students, unfortunately, is not strongly tied to technology. At least, this is the experience I see teaching at an inner-city school in East Vancouver. Unless a student is enrolled in a course that is technology-based (e.g. info tech, media arts), the only contact they would have with technology is the use of a computer as a word processor and a resource provider. During my days as a science teacher, I tried to incorporate technology into the classroom – I worked with department members and other teaching staff on projects on robotics; I use Google Docs to post my assignments and notes online; I captured You-tube videos to show students when it is not safe to perform a demonstration in the classroom… As much as I try, I know my students are lagging far behind their peers in, say, a private school.

2)      model digital-age work and learning

Similar to the last point, it is an uphill battle for a public school educator with very limited resources at hand. I have worked with the drama and film program to allow students to do their projects as videos. These students learn to edit their video clips, add sounds and other effects to the videos, and generally have a very enjoyable time while also learning science. However, for the most part, the only students who get such experience are students who are already involved with the media arts program and courses.

3)      promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility

As a counsellor now, this actually is a job that I am required to do on a very regular basis. Cyber-bullying has become a very common phenomenon in schools, and I regularly have to deal with students who are targets of this new form of bullying. To teach and to foster digital citizenship and responsibility is no different from teaching students not to physically or verbally abuse another student – the digital world is but a new venue to which educators need to be aware of. A similar but very different concern surrounds the notion of privacy. Students who are involved in personal friendship websites (such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.) sometimes are not aware of who may be lurking around looking at their personal information. As educators who may not know as much as the students do about these channels of communication (I still do not have a Twitter account), it is a challenge to advise students of the dangers associated with these site.

4)      engage in professional growth and leadership

I actually have been quite heavily involved in my school’s technology development. For the last few years, when our school moves from one mark-entry program into another, I have been on the advisory and peer-helper team. These last two years, when our school becomes one of the first in Vancouver to enrol in the new student information system called BCeSIS, I serve as a scheduler as well as one of the hub leaders to teach our school’s staff on how to use this system. It is a challenge that is sometimes very frustrating, as some teachers are far less receptive to the use of technology than the students, but it is also rewarding to know that I am preparing my staff to face a new age of technology in education.

Step 2.

As a counsellor, I see a lot of students who struggle in our regular school system because of their learning disabilities. Technology has helped some students in the past (e.g. having a word processor greatly assists students who have difficulties in hand-written output), but there are still many students who are struggling. A great interest and passion of min is to help develop and/or implement technology-based curriculum/teaching environment that would assist students with special needs.

From the course syllabus, I see that Module 3 would particularly interests me in terms of the strategies that I look forward to gain in the delivery and the assessment methods using technology. Of course, this doesn’t mean I won’t be actively engaged and involved in the other parts of the course… but strictly from a professional prospective, Module 3 seems to intrigue me the most at this point.