Week 2 potcert

I finished the beginner's questionnaire and I scored 14. As for“Interest in material” and “Content”, I did struggle a bit. It was hard for me to choose. I actually felt not sure about large group discussion and small group discussion. What's the real difference between them? Do they really have very different influence on learning process? If they do, how do instructors decide which one to use in order to enhance learning and teaching? I'm really interested in these issues and hope I can do a further research on this topic. But I still made my choice. I chose large group discussion for“Interest in material”and small group discussion for“Content". As for“Roles", I always think students are active participants in creating their own knowledge. As for “Assessments", I think assessments are most important to test students' application of skills.

I like POT getting started chart. I guess I belong to the group who likes a combination of lecture and discussion/groupwork. Blackboard and Moodle are very helpful platforms for instructors to design, organize and deliver course content.

I also read the first chapter of the book. I enjoyed the reading. The two hypothetical cases are very typical examples of online teaching. I agree with Ko and Rossen that online instructors should change the instructional role they play: they are more facilitators than the expert from whom all knowledge flows. They will “intervene only the flow of conversation strays too far off the mark or when you need to summarize the conversation in order to progress to another point". Since most of the courses in my doctoral program (instructional technology) are online courses, I have gained a lot online learning experience. This is exactly an important strategy my professors used when teaching online courses. Compared with face-to-face courses, online courses do depend heavily on the participation of students. Therefore, instructors should always remember that students are the most important roles in an online course. I highlighted another sentence as well:“'Techies' don't necessarily make the best online instructors. An interest in teaching should come first, technology second". I cannot agree more! I think some people have a misunderstanding about Instruction Technology. When I tell my friends that I study instructional technology, they always ask me "What is that? Is it the same thing with computer technology? Do you learn programming?" In fact, we do need to know some basic and important technologies, but we actually put more focus on teaching, course design and other pedagogical issues in our study. Just like the Ko and Rossen said: teaching first, technology second. After all, we are educators, not programmers:)