I graduated with a Bachelor's in Psychology from Georgia College & State University and served for a time as a juvenile detention counselor for the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice. Somehow I fell into technology when I seemed to be the only person who could fix broken computers in our small office. Thus I decided to pursue my Master's of Information Technology, which I received from American Intercontinental University in 2001. I worked in the Southern Regional Education Board's Educational Technology Cooperative for a wonderful mentor and crusader for online learning, Bill Thomas. I came to teach at Lanier Technical College in November of 2002 because I wanted to find a way to combine my counseling and technology skills. What better way than teaching! And naturally I love it.
Somewhere along the way I married a wonderful guy and had a beautiful daughter, who turned 3 years old this past July. And she can already type on a PC keyboard and play Reader Rabbit online games better than I can. She's proof that the next generation will be serious about online learning, so it's up to us to lay a good foundation. I am also getting ready for another future online student in our family...our second child is due May 5, 2005. I am hoping that I will be able to continue teaching an online class or two during my maternity leave. I think it will be a great experience for my students and me to really experience learning without boundaries.
Motto: There are no dumb questions, only dumb silence.
Saturday, October 30, 2004
Today's discussion focuses on assessments and evaluations. Very interesting theory on late assignments!
"Well, I've been asked to comment by some of you on policies for Late Assignments. I've also done interviews with the Arizona Republic (yesterday), Detroit News, and NY Times on the subject (none have been published yet, maybe next week). So Here goes.1. Late work is almost always turned in by boys rather than girls, according to our national survey of teachers.2. The reason boys turn in work late is neurological in origin (hard-wiring) and cannot be changed.3. Being penalized (lower grade) for behavior (lateness) rather than knowledge is a primary cause for the decline in men in higher education today (2 million boys missing from college this year), as well as why boys have lower GPA than girls.SOLUTION: Students should not be penalized for turning in work late.PREDICTION: Like hitting was outlawed in schools 100 years ago (back then teachers and fathers regarded hitting as moral, motivation enforcing, and helpful) penalizing boys for lateness unrelated to knowledge acquisition will be outlawed in 20 years as gender discrimination." Bill Draves
View the Virtual Tour of Interactive Simulations. The Eye Test is really cool! The Teacher Online Self Assessment is very good, too.
Learning online is active (not passive) and self-initiated (not responsive), requires self (not external) discipline and is results (not activity) oriented.
Go to Hollywood Self Quiz score: 100% x3 ties
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Today's discussion revolves around how to facillitate online discussion as well as some fun games that can be used.
Played a drag and drop game called Learning Space. This is a good example of an interactive game to help learners. Looks like it could've been built using Flash's drag and drop template, with much modification. Is also a great example of how video game programming is going to be big in online learning. So I had better get better at my game programming! And look what I found after a 30-second Google search! http://www.gamemaker.nl/teachers.html Looks easy and fun (and cheap)!
Talking online is a tough one for me because I need to be more organized to get my discussions going. View a good checklist of Best Practices. I need to work on these in my classes. It's important to logon to online classes and view the Discussion Boards *at least* once a day (during the week). It does seem a little difficult to make sure every comment is responded to. I do like the idea of posing as a student with a pseudonym to subversively (but in the best intentions!) get the discussion going in a positive way.
The Lind Institute (disc sold at ProductivElearn) has created music set to the beat of the human heart to encourage learning. I also found the Learning Web with a good book, The Learning Revolution, by the founder of the Lind Institute.
Defend the Castle Self Quiz score: 100% x2 tries
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Here's a good Virtual Tour of Animations. I like the use of Virtual Tours and WebQuests...the latter is getting very big, can be built using blogs and wikis and was a feature at NECC!
"Today is a "how-to" day. Ask lots of questions. If you have taught online before, help me answer questions and contribute.Today we are talking about building the content of your course, including:* Audio* Intellectual property and copyright* Modules, units and breaking down your curriculum* Animation and simulations, and much more! Enjoy. " William Draves
Antique Treasure Hunt Self Quiz score: 100% x3 tries
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Discussion today was fairly open. I like the use of SIGs, Special Interest Groups, in which students can start their own threads and invite others to join them in topics of interest to them.
"SHOULD you post a "caveat" for students wishing to take an online course? Does the "self-motivated-this-will-be-tough" caveat turn away people who really can learn successfully online? And what about those who argue everyone should HAVE to take an online course because it is an essential skill of the 21st century? I'm not sure we know enough yet to know the answers to this question. We tend to blame the drop on the student, but we know that there are a lot of inferior or poorly taught online classes as well.We also do not relate well to an individual's learning style. So I'm not sure faculty do much online 1:1 or tutoring either.The BEST answer right now is GOOD PEDAGOGY, that is "continuous involvement" as Mary d. would put it, and frequent contact (email, phone, F2F) with potential drop-outs.Whether we try to keep some students out is an interesting question. Personally I do not favor it. " Bill Draves
Land on Mars Self Quiz score: 100% x2 tries
Monday, October 25, 2004
Resource List for Rubrics for Assessing Interaction --- how does one grade participation, discussion and 'knowledge generation' in and online learning environment?
http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php
I have just compliled my rubic for my new class. Each discussion will be worth 5 points and will be graded on progressive participation from 0 - no participation to 5 quantity + quality. I will be posting what exactly outlines quality for the students to review the first week. The rubric divided the participation criteria into: 1) number of replies to the discussion and to fellow students 2) frequency and timing of the posts (over the week or on the due date) 3) quality -does it add new concepts from the text and/or other resources 4) critical thinking- shows that student has studied the topic and discussion is accurate, clear and logical 5) netiquette- gives encouragement and positive feedback, answers others questions. I would be happy to share this with anyone. (it was compiled from 2 different rubrics...found online)
http://its.marquette.edu/blackboard/discuss.pdf
http://www.edusite.nl/docs/edutrip2003/dwyerengagingstudents.doc
http://www.cete.org/acve/docs/pfile03.htm
http://www.metrostate.edu/col/rubric.pdf
This document, available through Metrostate University in Minneapolis, MN is used by several colleges in our state system to review online courses and contain course design, assessment of student performance, learner support/feedback, learning community, pedagogical practices and use of technology components. Based on our need, please pay specific attention to the learning community section.
http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/assess.html#rubrics
Although you have to register for this site (free), it has some good articles on creating rubrics, and lots of information in specific areas. Its targeted at elementary and high school level...
http://www.quadro.net/~ecoxon/Reporting/rubrics.htm
This is also a helpful site for developing your own rubrics and seeing samples from lots of different curriculum areas, but it is only available until June 1.
http://www.aect.org/Divisions/DDseries3.asp?clientid=
This site, from the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, includes information on a research study that was done to test the effectiveness of online discussion and if they were meaningful to learning. The study also looked at whether the degree and type of structure of the discussions impacted the quality of it.
http://www.mtsu.edu/~itconf/proceed01/11.html
The article addresses what instructors need to do to have successful, content related online discussions. It also talks about durable knowledge construction.
http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=7&n=3
Moskal, Barbara M. (2000). Scoring rubrics: what, when and how?. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 7(3).
http://kathyschrock.net/cooking
The icing on the cake is Online tools for classroom use.
http://www.techlearning.com
In the april 2003 issue of technology and learning, there is an interesting article on a successful online course "Build and teach a successful online course"
http://www.uh.edu/~strived3/incr_participation_article.html
Obviously participation in the online class first would first require the learner to be signed in to the online class for some period of time. Participation in online discussions, the level of collaboration with other class members and actual "learning value" of the learner's input should carry some weight in the assessment of interaction.
http://www.merlot.org/search/ArtifactList.po?keyword=rubric
This is a comprehensive list of resources available at MERLOT, the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching.
Sunday, May 09, 2004
Often we attend seminars and conferences, get a lot of great ideas, and then return to the reality of our institutions and never use what we've learned. SOOOOOO, before that happens, please take time to do one or all of the following things:
- Write down the top 3 issues you need to resolve before moving your course online.
- Write down 1-3 things you need to improve/modify in your current course when moving it online.
- What's your game plan? Write down the next 5-10 steps/tasks you need to accomplish to move your course online.
- Reflect upon the top 3 things you have learned as a result of this course.
Hands down, the biggest issue I need to resolve in order to move my class online is to be given adequate allotted time to do so. With all the duties & requirements on instructors these days it is vitually impossible to develop an online class to quality standards without release time. In our institutions it is currently not the norm to give instructors release time to develop online courses or to acquire the support they need to do so, although there are opportunities to receive competitive grants in order to complete this task. However much more support is needed if we are going to be able to consistently offer quality online courses to students as a whole institution.
The next issue I must resolve is locating a text that is a platform and version independent as possible. As the class I've chosen is a JavaScript programming class, this will be fairly easy although not completely possible. If I can find ways to isolate the changes and updates I will have to continually make from the very beginning, I will have a course that will last and escape that problem of going through reinvention every quarter or so.
The next issue that is important to me is nailing down a workflow to create LMS-platform independent learning objects. As my field of insruction just happens to be development in Internet-based technologies, I am very lucky in that I can provide my own technical support. I have personally witnessed the not-so-stellar business practices of some of the LMS companies (no names will be mentioned!) that market to the K20 markets and am accutely aware of the need to provide online instruction to students that is as open source and independent as possible.
My current course needs improvement in the following areas:
- Better organization
- Projects & lectures adapted to online environments
- Additional, highly organized group projects to achieve that online, collaborative learning community.
My game plan is as follows:
- Approve textbook
- Map curriculum to standards/objectives
- Identify 'choke points'
- Choose technologies
- Choose format/organization
- Produce simulations/lectures/interactive objects, etc.
- Develop individual & group projects
- Identify weekly 'workflow' to help students know what to expect each week.
- FIND THE TIME!!!
I have gained an enourmous amount of insight in being an online student in a high-quality, interactive, group-oriented course. I immediately see things from a new and very appreciateive perspective. I have learnied how important it is to have some 'human' element provided by the teacher, whether it's a picture or a voice lecture. Just that one or two additions makes all the difference in the world. I did learn that group activities must be simple and very organized. Something that may fly well in a group setting in a classroom can be surprisingly confusing when executed online. Most importantly, I learned that there are teachers and other key people who care about online students and actually go that extra mile to make the experience worthwile. Thank you, Dr. Conrad and LERN!
Friday, May 07, 2004