lifelong learning…

This course is proving to be quite a challenge to me. I have spent most of my time setting up my course shell and previewing the exemplary courses provided in module 2. Looking at the work provided by masters in online learning, I am feeling a bit humbled. The courses are very well developed and provide opportunities for students to interact with the instructor, work on individual skills and interact with each other. One thing I am learning that I hadn’t considered is how to construct questions that will provoke thoughtful and inspiring discussions. While I was looking at the questions for discussions in the exemplary courses and previewing Alex’s breeze presentation, I got thinking about a workshop I took a few years back called QUILT or Questioning for Understanding in Learning and Teaching. This workshop taught me how to develop deep questions using Bloom’s taxonomy that would get students to produce answers at the instructor’s desired level. Here is a link to more information about the QUILT model, if you are interested: http://www.ed.gov/pubs/triedandtrue/quest.html

In addition to learning about how to construct educative questions to inspire thoughtful discussions with my students I am also learning about blended learning environments. I didn’t realize that creating a course that was partially delivered online and partially delivered in the classroom was an option. After interacting in the discussions, I had a chance to investigate blended learning and found that it will likely be a nice fit with the course I am developing for 6th grade students. I also found when searching for music education courses for elementary students that there is really no model to follow. I feel like I am forging a new path in integrating technology into the music curriculum for elementary students.

In developing my own online course I found that I had to keep in mind the kind of language I use with 6th grade students. I need to make sure that what I am writing is on a level that 6th graders can understand. Having worked with 6th graders for 4 years, I have a general idea about the questions they will have about the wording of my documents, and I tried to adjust accordingly from my drafts.

I also have a better understanding of why it is important to use statements that are personal such as “You will learn…”. The Scorza article clarified for me the need to make students understand that the people interacting in an online environment are living and feeling human beings and the way the course is set up should be conducive to making students feel welcome and engaged with the instructor and with eachother. It is up to the instructor to provide an environment that mimics the personalities present in a F2F classroom.

For my self-observation during the completion of learning activities in this module, I felt myself feeling a bit overwhelmed with the amount of time spent constructing the course in Moodle and finding time to complete the course reviews and the readings. I feel that I have sacrificed doing my personal best in discussions partially because 1) I am taking another class, 2) I am working and wrapping up the school year and 3) the time it takes me to contribute a solid discussion post is almost an hour. I feel like I am making choices between spending time on developing my course and completing the readings or developing good discussion posts. In this course I am really understanding the saying “there just isn’t enough time in one day!”
I think that if I were make one suggestion for a better experience for me personally, it would be to change the interaction in the discussions to make them a little less “heavy”. By heavy I mean that the discussions are great and rating each post is good for helping students to understand what a quality post entails, but I am finding that I am working so hard to create a 4 point post, that I am loosing time in developing my course, and loosing time for reading. If the discussions were a bit less “heavy” and were more laid back and conversational, rather than extensively deep, I would feel a bit more relaxed. Part of my anxiety with discussions may be due to the fact that I am not used to so much self and peer evaluation and I am finding it difficult to adjust to this. Also, the way the discussions are displayed in Moodle makes it challenging to find your own posts and track the conversations you are having with others. It is a bit frustrating to me, but as with anything, I’m sure I can get used to it and become more skilled in completing discussions this way over time.

Overall, I am really enjoying this course and am learning a lot, including a new respect for online instructors. The sheer amount of time spent constructing the learning environment is amazing to me and I had no idea how much time and thought went into the process.  I appreciate all of the help I am getting from my classmates and from Alex. Thanks for learning with me!

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