reflectivejournal

As I near the end of the E-learning for Educators course, I am amazed at how this course and my online teaching has coming together.

The most significant ways that I have grown during this course include reflecting on my own experiences with online teaching, learning from other colleagues based on their experiences, and learning by doing activities relating to the resources offered in distance education.

I completed a weekly reflective journal based on our experiences with assignments each week.

Week 1

Icebreaker

There is always so much excitement when a new course starts. I think the feeling is the same no matter what age you are. In various articles I have read, an introductory week or icebreaker week is the best thing you can do when teaching an online course. We are all trying to get acquainted with each other and start building our online community.

Unfortunately, I was in New Orleans for a conference the first week of class. This always makes you feel as if you don’t have enough time to do quality work on activities. This is the difficulty of an adult learner. Jobs, families, etc. sometimes require strategic time-management while in school.

Since I have experience this myself during years of taking online courses, I do feel that I am very understanding of these circumstances with the adult learners in my program/courses. I feel I can prove myself throughout the remainder of the course by demonstrating how committed I am and the importance of this class.

Week 2

Course Management Systems

It’s very exciting to use Moodle. This is a very flexible course management system. I strictly use Desire2Learn (D2L) CMS when teaching online courses. I do not have the support to teach with any other CMS. I have seen so many different ideas of how to incorporate other CMS while taking courses at UW-Stout. I spoke to an IT person at UW-L and suggested that they help instructors with other means of delivering online coursework. Specifically, I would like to see an area where students could login to a blog area or get more interactive resource information.

After completing the Moodle activities, I have ideas of how I could use this in my program. I like the “coffee house” idea too. I also see this CMS more flexible in offering a better course orientation environment.

I felt a comfortable connection with the reading activities this week, and enjoyed them immensely. I think our online community is growing and we are already learning from each other.

Week 3

Wiki’s

While experimenting with Wiki’s and Web 2.0, I have been able to see what aspects I could add to my online course collaboration. I think that providing an area where students can work on projects, complete checklists, and collaborate about additional topics can keep the main online course management system free of excessive information and less “overload syndrome” for students. However, the most important aspect of this should be that it is very clear and organized in such a manner that it provides less confusion to students instead of more confusion. If students collaborate between two different course management systems, it can possibly lead to confusion and a feeling of overloaded information or not knowing what to do.

I think that switching back and forth between course management systems and then trying to figure out what to do was a little confusing to me. I think that having clear guidelines and a syllabus that is very explanative is the key to less confusion. I have started a few different Wiki’s after viewing our course content video. I am experimenting first before trying to implement this into my program and courses.

Week 4

Assessment Tools

We are assigned to create an assessment tool. I chose to do a survey because this is easy to me. I have used electronic surveys routinely in my program. I have had much experience in creating surveys within D2L as well as in UW-Stout select survey tool. I have had a lot of experience in creating quizzes within D2L also, so I decided not to do that as my activity for the week.

I tried to give feedback to my group as well as one person outside my group. I hope feedback was taken as constructive and welcomed by my classmates. I also look forward to getting feedback from them as well.

We were given a sample quiz after reading an article and were shown how frustrating this was when certain things were not in place as well as how clear the reading and directions should be. I felt a certain level of frustration which made me think of how my students would feel if I didn’t have things organized or prepared. I believe this was the point of the assignment.

Other colleagues in the course created quizzes and surveys. These were created with different software and technology. There were so many ideas we were able to share with each other. Again, this is another example of building an online community.

Week 5

Knowledge Seeker

This week we focused on evaluating hoax web sites as well as internet search activities. We also discussed research practices involving the internet and how accurate our resources really are. I especially like the search activities as I proved to have good search skills. They were actually a lot of fun as well. I thought that evaluating hoax web sites was such a good activity because I never actually realized how many of those sites existed. I spent a great deal of time evaluating the tools to use in reviewing hoax sites. I realized that everyone should be thinking of this every time they visit a website, more importantly when doing research.

My classmates have proven to be very resourceful and full of wisdom. These are my colleagues and I enjoy the interaction of our online community. I strongly believe that we not only learn from our instructors in the online courses, but we also learn so much from each other. This is the powerful aspect of education.

In general, this has been the most enjoyable module for me thus far. I appreciate some hands on activities to use my skills and to know how and when I can use this for my teaching and the benefits it offers my students. More importantly, I think of ways to help my students in search methods and teaching them to be cautious of so many things on the internet.

Week 6

Personal Search Engines

This week we worked on creating our own personal search engine. For this class, we were able to pick something of interest to ourselves and then use a site to create a personal search engine regarding this topic. I wanted to pick something that I thought would be useful for educators as well as students. I chose to do a personal search engine on HTML tutorials. I personally would use this myself when working on a web page again or trying to use HTML within my CMS at the University.

We also discussed self-paced learning and self-reflection. The class really communicated with each other when discussing personal feelings of what self-paced learning is about. Many of us could relate to the self-reflection as well as the self-paced learning in various circumstances. I believe many of us have circumstances in our academic and professional lives that require self-paced learning. We all have to use self-reflection in education, our profession, and our personal lives.

If I were to create another personal search engine, I believe I would make it specific to my profession and then place the link within my online courses for my students to use. I do believe I will be doing this prior to the next class starting in September. I appreciate the lessons learned and the value of this activity for the education of myself and my students.

Week 7

E-Porfolio

The last few weeks of this course will focus on creation of e-portfolios. This is not just a tool to be used by educators, but a tool for students as well. We have discussed the benefits and barriers to creating an e-portfolio.

My personal experience with an e-portfolio is within my place of employment. There is a specialized software version for faculty and is accessible via the web site at the University. It does not have a personal touch to it and you need to follow the guidelines of this pre-designed tool.

Creating an e-portfolio of my own would allow for a personal touch and be able to offer a variety of opportunities of what I would like to include. Overall, the e-portfolio is a compilation of our personal work as well as professional accomplishments. This also serves as a resource for others who can learn from your site. Not to mention that it can be used as a resume purpose when looking for future employment or projects.

I have chosen to place my e-portfolio on a web site. This is easier for me to do since I maintain my own web site. However, I will most likely create it on a separate stand alone web site for now, as the University is changing our academic web sites during the summer.

Week 8

Accessibility: Section 508

The last week of the course, we read a great deal of information regarding accessibility of the web environment by students or individuals with disabilities. We learned about various means of technology available for institutions and instructors to make the learning environment accessible to these students.

There are online sites that will check web sites for you and list whether your site has passed or failed the accessibility rules. I have checked my faculty web site which I designed myself, and I passed all areas but one. However, I am relying on my IT department to change my web site and make sure it’s updated.

I have a better understanding of why these rules exist and how instructors can change things to follow these guidelines. I don’t believe instructors should be expected to do this alone. The IT departments must be able to assist in this process. The end result is that all students are learning and that we are providing quality education to various types of learners.

End of Course Summary

I am taking several new ideas from this course and implementing them into my online program. I am excited to progress to the next level in the online teaching certificate program as I move on to the next course. I will be updating my e-portfolio as I continue with the courses.