Intro module

Assignment 2 involved initial steps in creating a course on either Moodle or Blackboard. I chose Moodle because that is the LMS that University of Alberta uses, and thought that become familiar with using it could prove to be useful in my future career.

This assignment came at a very interesting time in my life. As an assistant professor of the department, my main educational activities involved small group teaching and some large classroom lectures as well as bedside teaching in my clinic, ward and operating room. Then suddenly a position was posted for a course coordinator for the reproductive medicine and urology block, a 7 week course taught to second year medical students. They were looking for someone who has a Masters in Education and had experience with and interest in educational technologies. Though I don’t quite qualify, I decided to apply. I have yet to complete the interview, but suddenly this made Assignment 2 more realistic for me. I began to think about what I would do to make the course more relevant and effective for medical students.

One of the challenges is communication. Talking to the most recent course coordinator, she states that students expected her constant presence. Because our assignment was to create an online course, how can I make students feel I am constantly present, without feeling overwhelmed by constant messages coming from all directions as Trinh did in our case study? According to Anderson, Rourke, Garrison and Archer (2001), this is the concept of teaching presence, and in an online environment it’s composed of three categories:
  • design and organization
  • facilitating discourse
  • direct instruction

In designing this course, I wanted to make sure that it was well laid out in a logical, orderly manner. This would make it easy to follow and less likely to generate concern from students. In addition, to make it easier to go from one section to the next section, I provided hyperlinks wherever it was appropriate. But some students may not like the linear layout because it makes the page very long; a disadvantage of this method.

With Trinh’s case study, many of us suggested having clear guidelines for students on methods of communication. I attempted to do this in my introduction section. I provided students with three methods to contact me:
  • Through the questions and concerns forum
  • direct email for questions that were personal
  • and through chat during specified office hours
After contemplating the pros and cons of synchronous versus asynchronous communication, I thought that having both would be optimal for student-instructor communication. I am also hoping to incorporate synchronous and asynchronous communication for student-student interactions during group assignments as both methods have their strengths and weaknesses.
When considering assessment, the idea that it can influence what the student studies, how much the student studies and the quality of engagement (Gibbs & Simpson, 2004) was at the forefront of my mind. It took me back to thinking about the goals of my course, which are:
  • promote self-directed learning
  • collaboration
  • effective communication
  • achieve a solid foundation of knowledge in gynaecology
The other aspect that I found fascinating was the notion that peer-assessment of unmarked assignments resulted in higher quality of student engagement with these learning tasks, which also resulted in increased exam marks (Gibbs & Simpson, 2004). This lead me to incorporate peer-assessment of group learning assignments into my course. I am hoping that this leads to greater engagement with learning materials and self-directed learning and thus a greater, in depth understanding of the material.

For the content itself, I plan to use quizzes and a final examination. I would like to modify questions so they are context rich, which require more complex cognitive processes that are characteristic of clinical practice (Epstein, 2007). In addition, as Epstein (2007) recommends, I plan to use more open ended questions that require short answers or a short essay to minimize cueing and require more complex cognitive processes. This will assess their degree of understanding of clinical problems in gynaecology.

Another important aspect to consider is feedback. According to Gibbs and Simpson (2004), feedback influences learning, but it should be provided often and in enough detail. With this in mind, I decided to administer quizzes with each module and design them such that detailed feedback can be given for every question. Each question was dissected and answers were provided with adequate explanations so students will be able to compare their answers to the correct one, create cognitive conflicts if there is a contradiction, and lead to higher forms of reasoning through resolution of conflict (Piaget, 1928).

Finally I am planning to use the discussion forum to assess communication skills. By requiring participation in the discussion forum, both for the initial post and response to other’s post, it allows me to observe their communication skills and assess their level of understanding and analytical skills. Unfortunately, this is going to be a lot work given the number of students that are enrolled in a typical medical school class. I am hoping that I can enlist the help of teaching assistants, in which case inter-rater reliability will become a problem. This can be overcome with proper training and guidelines, which I am yet to develop.

Overall I have found this assignment very rewarding and seeing the shell of my course gives me a sense of achievement. But I found it to be very time consuming. This is likely due to my inexperience in course development and unfamiliarity with Moodle. I feel that this is definitely a work-in-progress and I look forward to working on the content for assignment 3. I am hoping that I will be able to modify this course and use components of it if I am selected to become the course coordinator for the reproductive medicine and urology block. This has been a very good experience for me and I believe the learning I have achieved in this course will be helpful in my near future.

References

Andreson, T., Rourke, L., Garrison, D. R., & Archer, W. (2001). Assessing teaching        presence in a computer conferencing context. Journal of asynchronous learning          networks, 5(2), 1-17. Retrieved from                                                   onlinelearningconsortium.org/sites/default/files/v5n2_anderson_1.pdf

Epstein, R. M. (2007). Assessment in medical education. N Engl J Med, 356, 387-           396.

Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports               student’s learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31.                   Retrieved from  http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf

Piaget, J. (1928). Judgment and reasoning in the child. New York, NY: Harcourt            Brace.