One of the best courses I have taken in a long time. This course was amazing and I had great things to learn from my colleagues’ postings, projects and assignments. Everyone brought a great wealth of knowledge and experience on the table.
ETEC 565A was a great learning experience. It challenged me and pushed me to the limit. I felt that I was prompted to create an authentic learning environment and a constructivist approach was adopted. As a community of learners I was able to participate in broad-based research generating Open Educational Resources (OER) using WordPress to share my findings and my experiences with my peers.
In ETEC 565A we were given number of familiar tasks for an educator, creating course outlines, course introductions, lessons, and quizzes alike. However, the course allowed me to place an emphasis on all aspects of creating an online course, not simply the lessons and the content contained within them. It allowed me to examine the course as a whole picture; not just one aspect of it.
Reflecting back on my vision for this course in my flight path, I can tell that I was craving to implement and try a number of different applications and software options that I had encountered within the past couple years. I was really eager to get started with the Moodle site. I had previously used Moodle, but was working under a number of restrictions that limited my ability to field test a number of strategies and learning activities.
This course was hands-on and allowed me to apply the theories I learned throughout the program to build learning experiences for my learners. In this case it’s a WordPress websites, Digital Story using GoAnimate, an eLearning course and a MOODLE site. I am really proud of completing this course and I am also grateful to all my peers for providing feedback that will help me improve further.
READING MATERIALS:
The readings for this course were just enough to get you going and force you to research and dig a little deeper on items of interest. I appreciated the real world grounding that the scenarios provided, although it took me a week to realize they were real and I should be researching them as well.
DISCUSSION THEME & QUESTIONS
The reading, scenarios and discussion board were one of the most useful parts of this course. Being able to apply theory to practice and reflect and discuss has made the learning stick. The discussion board was important for reflecting on what you thought you knew. There were quiet challenges thrown down and assumptions questioned which made you defend and explain your learning. It would have been nice to have the synopsis of the discussion, done earlier so that a more thorough discussion might have been had around that. As the schedule dictated moving on was essential.
LMS: MOODLE
It was a group project (Craig Ferguson and I) both worked on the same content but used different platforms. The biggest difference between the course implementations on Moodle and WordPress is the way in which participants are registered and tracked. This has implications for both participant registration and certification.
I choose to work on Moodle as it is actually designed to be an LMS and all the necessary activities can easily be uploaded into the appropriate modules, whereas WordPress was designed to be a blog or static website and requires complicated technical workarounds to perform even the most basic LMS functions.
In my experience Moodle is the best choice for an organization that values ease of use. However, if you’re more interested in producing a course that looks good and doesn’t need its own server to run on, WordPress might be the right choice.
DIGITAL STORY
My idea behind this was teaching our employees how easy the process can be if they fulfil the requirements and collaborate with their colleagues for additional resources.
I am always questioned how eLearning can be effective, interactive and guarantees the retention in my learners. A genuine concern. My only answer to this question is the same way you remember movies or TV shows.
Converting your boring PowerPoint into scenario-based eLearning courses not only keep the learners motivated and engaged, but provide them with the best possible educational experience that effectively enhances their skill sets and/or knowledge base.
Scenario-Based eLearning, essentially, immerses the learners in real life or situational simulations or learning experiences that allow them to gather skills or information that they will recall for future use. Information offered within a contextual setting enables learners not only to easily manage it within their working memory, but also to commit it to their long-term memory.
SUMMARY
This course gave me a better understanding of why online courses are structured like they are. This course, in my opinion, took its plan straight out of “Implementing the Seven Principals” (Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996). The discussion board and Connect facilitated contact between the peers. The real life scenarios and e-portfolio tasks, like the digital storytelling and assessment, required us to be active learners. The structure of the modules gave us an approximation of time that was required and expectations were clear enough that you had to aim high. “Criteria need to be explicit and understood by student, and demonstrable used in forming grades” (Gibbs & Simpson, 2005). One item that would have put me more at ease was to either have the rubric, to know clearly what I was aiming for, or make the class pass/fail. The expectations were vague enough to keep you guessing and working, which is excellent, but also stressing if you were going to hit the target. Prompt feedback from classmates was facilitated by the discussion board, although this could lead you down the wrong path.
REFERENCES:
Chickering, A.W. and Ehrmann, S.C. (1996). “Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever,” American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), p. 3-6.
http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples.htm
Gibbs, G. and Simpson, C. (2005). “Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning.” Learning and Teaching in Higher Education Accessed online 17 October 2010 http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf