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!
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!
I agree that the technology we will use will help make our courses more personal. The more I learn about these technologies the less impersonal and online course feels to me.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth, I'm glad you found some the material helpful at this point. Your comments about being able to see a Trinity online course made me think about the online stats course that Rachel Robbert is teaching. You may want to take a look at that if it can be worked out.
ReplyDeleteRick, I hadn't thought of that, but I think that's a great idea. I'll definitely have to take a look at Rachel's online stats course. Thanks for the suggestion!
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