Online Instructional Strategies

Welcome to my blog for Online Instructional Strategies!  My name is Christin and I've been teaching for 6 years.  I'm very excited about completing this certificate from Walden University in Online Teaching.  I hope to one day become an online instructor for Florida Virtual School, but until then - I teach high school TV Productions.    I hope you enjoy my blog!  :)

End of Course Reflection

            I hope that the perceptions of distance learning will continue to remain accepted.  In the video featuring George Siemens, he mentions that it sort of makes the world seems smaller because we can talk to anyone at any time.  The acceptance of distance learning is becoming comfortable because we are so used to online communication.  We are less and less secluded because of online technology, according to Mr. Siemens, and I agree.

            In ten years, I can see every American student participating in at least one fully online course in addition to his or her face-to-face studies.  In 20 years, I can see most of education being delivered online.  Mr. Siemens mentions that courses will become more complex in the future and this will, most certainly, be to motivate our students that are essentially in the most technologically driven world to date.

            As an instructional designer, I feel that I am responsible for always pushing forward the boundaries of distance education.  My classmates and myself will be the new “faces” of the online world.  By building classes that are efficient, well designed, and interactive, we are maintaining and upping the bar for distance education.  We need to not be afraid to try something new and always remember that we are out for the benefit of the learner.

            I plan to be a positive force for distance learning by continuing in the field.  In my brick and mortar classroom, I always try to learn the new technologies and incorporate them into my classroom.  Recently, we received Moodle as a school district.  I immediately took the required trainings and incorporated it into my classroom.  Student complete activities, participate in forums, and put their answers in an online form.  Also, they write blog posts and put them online.  They comment on other ideas and expand their own thinking.

            I recently was admitted into the Florida Virtual School full-time pool and am anxiously awaiting a call.  My goal is to become a professor and teach teachers how to engage their students with technology or with online learning.  I will continue my education to receive my doctorate and always do research with online learning.  I feel that it is the wave of the future and see the need in this current generation for the one-to-one learning environment that online education offers.

            One last mention about the future – Florida has already started the wave of required online learning.  Starting with this 9^th grade class, students are required to take one course online in order to graduate.  You can read more about it following this link: http://www.newssun.com/news/021012-ct-online.  I can’t wait to see more states take the lead and push their students to try online education!

Modern Poetry Course at Yale

Modern Poetry – Open Yale Course - http://oyc.yale.edu/english/modern-poetry

            I must say that I am now enamored by these courses.  I viewed a Yale course on Modern Poetry and was amazed at how easy it really is for people to get the privilege of hearing lectures by the most amazing professors in our country.  The course was extremely well laid out and designed for anyone to view.

            When you enter the course, you can view the class sessions.  From there, you can click to move to various points within the course so you may work at your own pace – or even just learn about the poets you wish.  There is even a final exam study sheet provided to you.  In each lesson, it has an overview, reading assignment, and resources.  The resources tend to be a mp3, mov (high and low bandwidth), and Flash version of the lecture, as well as the html written format for quick reference.  This is great for a diversity of learners, including those that are disabled.  The documents that are for reference are usually provided in PDF format so you never have to worry about accessibility (Adobe Reader is available free from the Adobe site).

            Other pages provided in this course are an informational page that includes a short summary of the course, as well as information about the professor.  The syllabus page provides a list of texts, as well as how you are graded.  From the downloads page, you may download each of the videos and course pages so that you can do the course if you are not able to get to an Internet source at all times.  The books page provides access to the bookstore so that you can purchase any of the books for 10% off.  Finally, for evaluation, Yale has provided a survey for students to take to provide general feedback about the course. 

            In comparison to our textbook, Teaching and Learning at a Distance by Michael Simonson, Sharon Smaldino, Michael Albright, and Susan Zvacek (2012), this course upholds quite a bit of the recommendations for course design.  They have the goals clearly labeled and media is in various formats to meet the needs of most learners.  The font size and choice is appropriate and there is plenty of white space to enhance the readability.  They address copyrights by saying that not all the images will be present in the videos.  All of the links seemed to be functional that I clicked on, as well.

            All in all, the course designer did implement activities that would maximize learning.  The only real problem that I saw was the inability to submit work and to have assignments that would promote learning.  There were a variety of lectures and handouts, but very little in the way of assignments on them.  The handouts were poems and such to use for assignments, but no given prompt.  I think that would be very helpful for the at-home learner; however, it would be difficult to provide a literature course without feedback.  I still plan on reading through this course and attempting it on my own though – just to say I “attended” a class at Yale!