Ideas from Module 3

I've had a lot of fun this week experimenting with various tools in Moodle and being able to see the instructor side of a learning management system. It's also been helpful for me to become more proficient in Moodle because Blackboard works fairly similarly and I am currently learning how to use Blackboard for the class I'm teaching this semester.

Overall, OL 101 has given me a lot of ideas for both my online and F2F courses. I definitely will plan to use Audacity to make podcasts available, and I also would like to either use Jing or simply upload a video to YouTube of important concepts. In F2F courses, these resources will also be valuable for students that may have not picked up on those concepts during class or just want to see them again.

I have to admit I've been a little frustrated that I simply haven't had the time I would have liked to get all out of this course that I could have. During module 1, I was also finishing up a summer grad course; during module 2 and part of module 3, I was out of town; and during module 3, I've been getting ready for school to start and prepping for the class I just found out I'm teaching.

Also, as a grad student, there simply isn't time nor the flexibility right now to develop the ideas I've gained from this course further. I'm anxious, though, to graduate and being able to devote more time and energy to teaching. When that time comes, I will be very grateful for all of the ideas that were sparked by OL 101!

Ideas from Module Two

Module two has been a lot of fun! I've enjoyed dabbling in various tools and getting ideas for ways to implement these tools in my own online course. One of the biggest advantages I see to these tools is making my class much more personal and fun...and I'm all for making math fun!

I think I will definitely be making use of Jing and YouTube in my online course, as these are both great ways to emulate a live in-person lecture. Since math is so much about hearing and seeing explanations of concepts and seeing examples, I think this is very important.

Something else I've learned from module two is how flexible and patient I'll need to be with my students who are having technical difficulties because I've had several technical difficulties myself. It's amazing how out-of-the-loop you can feel when you don't have access to the means of communication in an online course. For the first few days of our group project, I didn't have access to our Moodle discussion forum, and as a result I was unaware of what my groupmates were doing and also kept them wondering what had happened to me. This also showed me how important it is for the students stay on top of what's expected of them and to know alternate ways to communicate with the instructor and with classmates.

I also learned during this module that Google Chrome is a way better Internet browser than Firefox or Internet Explorer. I had been using Firefox, and I was having trouble with the comment feature on Blogger but didn't realize it until I lost several comments that I had posted over a few days. After doing some research, I was able to change the settings on my own blog to be able to comment on my own blog, but that didn't help with commenting on others' blogs. Finally, I decided to see if using Chrome would make a difference, and it did! Not only that, but I'm finding that Chrome is much more user-friendly and the other Internet browsers.

Finally, thanks to a few of the articles from the module two resources, I have more ideas of how to implement Google+ and YouTube into my online course. That should be fun!

I'm looking forward to having fun with Moodle in module three!

Ideas from Module One

Tonight ends the first module of OL 101. Here are a few of the ideas rolling around in my brain as I've participated in the various activities and tasks of module one.

One of the first things I did during this module was completing the faculty self-assessment from Penn State to assess my readiness to teach an online course. As I expected, I am not exactly ready. I'm not extremely under-prepared nor particularly nervous about the technological aspect of teaching an online course. What I lack, however, is experience in just about every other area. This is why I think it's important for me to take this course seriously by reading all of the assigned articles and learning from my more experienced classmates.

Many of the articles from module one I found to be very helpful as I think through various issues related to teaching online, and many of these articles I will plan on referring to in the future, particularly the articles on fair use and copyright laws. The article from Faculty Focus entitled 10 Principles of Effective Online Education: Best Practices in Distance Education provided me with many thought-provoking ideas. In particular, I was struck by the importance of the role of the instructor in an online course. In the words of Dr. Ragan, "The role of the instructor is actually more important than ever before. The students are looking to the instructor to serve as the guide, facilitator, and 'teacher' and the need for them to do so is pronounced because of the lack of face-to-face interactions." That may sound silly and elementary, but I want to make sure I'm being careful not to view online courses as self-taught courses with some mysterious "teacher" who really doesn't do much more than assign and grade homework and tests, as this especially would be an utter failure in mathematics.

Thus, what I need to be doing during the course of OL 101 is thinking through ideas for how to be the best guide, facilitator, and teacher of mathematics that I can be for my students. I'm very thankful for all of the discussion that already has and will continue to take place between all of the OL 101 participants, especially since you are all much more experienced than I am. I already came across an idea - from Michael, I think it was - of having our students create their own study guides in online study groups instead of a more typical approach of handing students an already-made study guide during class. Equipping myself with ideas such as these will be a tremendous help in developing a strategy for teaching mathematics online and will help the task to seem much less daunting when the time comes to start the actual planning for the course.


Looking forward, I am excited for the chance to evaluate an actual online course at Trinity, and I am even more excited to get to experiment with and learn about the various tools (such as Jing, Audacity, and Voki) that will allow me to make my online course more personable. One of my goals in teaching mathematics is to knock that "math-phobia" out of my students and maybe even make math fun for them! This will be much easier if my online class is as personal as possible, and these tools will help me to achieve that goal.

See you all in module two as we continue to integrate ideas into the online classroom!

Introduction

Hi everyone!

As is evident from the appearance of my blog, I am a math nerd. As is evident from my participation in OL 101, I am seeking to share my love of math with others, potentially in an online format.

As I begin this series of blog posts reflecting on my experiences in OL 101, I feel compelled to mention a few disclaimers. First, I have never actually taught any courses. In fact, I'm still a full-time student myself. Although I have done a fair amount of tutoring have performed various teaching-related support (such as grading) over the past few years, the closest I have come to teaching an actual course is leading weekly recitation sessions. I'm far less experienced than any of the other OL 101 participants, and since I have little to contribute from an instructor's perspective, I will have to offer all of my insights from the perspective of a student/future instructor and hope that I'm not wasting the time of the more experienced educators. Second, I have never actually taken an online course. The closest I have come to that is taking an educational technology course which was in an online format for two weeks of the semester. I was, however, homeschooled through high school, and so I believe the independent and self-paced nature of most of my education will help me to understand the challenges and benefits of online courses.

Of all the disciplines, math seems to me to be one of the most difficult subjects to teach online. As I've been reflecting on my own education, I have realized that math was one of the only subjects that I pretty much always had a real instructor for. For instance, I learned history and economics by reading textbooks and being tested over the material. Although my mom was the one who made sure I stayed on track and was doing well in the course, I was basically my own instructor. For math, however, I really needed an actual person to teach me the material before I could do the work on my own to reinforce the material I had learned. I know some students can learn math by reading a textbook, but those students are far and few between, and I'm certainly not one of them. As I prepare to teach a math course online, I need to keep in mind that although I won't be seeing my student in the typical face-to-face setting, I am still that "real teacher" that they need.

For all of these reasons, I treating these blog posts as a way to communicate the various ideas I have of what teaching online is all about and how to implement these ideas into my own online math course. I would love for all of my readers to comment and improve upon the ideas of an inexperienced math nerd. Your contributions will be an integral part of my learning, and I hope that somehow my ideas will be an integral part of your OL 101 experience as well.

Math people aren't generally known for their excellence in writing, and I'm certainly no exception to that stereotype. Please be patient with me as I seek to derive ideas from the readings, forum discussions, etc., from OL 101 and integrate them into coherent blog posts.

I promise I won't use as many math puns from now on.