Week 4 Course design

In chapter 3, Ko and Rossen explain the process of course development and introduce the basic elements of course design. “The development stage involves the actual creation of a syllabus, class schedule, content, and exams, as well as activities the class will follow”. Before starting to design a course, the first thing we should do is to figure out the problems and needs of students, so that the course design will move in a right direction and meet students’ needs. Creating specific course plans or storyboards is a necessary and important step of course development. During this process, we need to consider how to design and organize various instructional activities. These activities are divided into the following categories:

1. Instructor-generated content and presentation

2. Discussion/interaction/communications

3. Group-oriented work and student-created content

4. Research

5. Assessment

What elements of design from Chapter 3 will I be considering as you build a class? Although I am currently not teaching any online course, to answer this question, I would like to take an online tutorial I designed for a class project as an example. Click here to access my project. This online tutorial is an interesting tryout of online course design for me. As for the first category, I have used text, graphics, audios, videos and screen-casting. As for the second category, asynchronous discussions via discussion forum and synchronous discussion via Skype are both applied in this course. As for the third category, discussions and commenting on each other’s work enhance the collaborations among students. However, group project is not accommodated in my course. I think this need to be improved in the future. I should think about some group work to enhance student-student interaction. As for research, students need to do some web research, library research and social bookmarking in this course. As for assessment, I have used both formative and summative assessments. There are many different types of assessments designed for different lessons. But I think there is still plenty of room for improvement. It’s impossible to create a perfect course, but we can make it better.

I like Pilar Hernández and Vanessa Hollanda Gutierrez’s online class tours. Both of them teach Spanish. I taught Chinese class via videoconference before, but I didn’t get a chance to teach online, so I’m really interested in it. I think Pilar and Vanessa’s online Spanish courses are good examples.

Week 3 Course design

Course design is always the most important task for instructors, no matter if they teach traditional face-to-face class, hybrid class or online class. As for online course design, I do agree with Ko and Rossen that“putting your class online doesn’t mean copying your lectures and syllabus word to word". “Converting your course to an online environment means adapting it to use some of the tools available in the new environment”. Instructors should reshape their course according to different teaching environments. There are many online course design and delivery methods instructors can utilize. However, I don't think these methods are all fixed or cannot be changed. Flexibility and creativity are two necessary characteristics for a good online instructor as well. 

Storyboard is a useful tool for e-learning course design. I did write some storyboards for my class projects before. I like it. Storyboard visualizes the whole teaching process. It helps instructors to think ahead about what their instruction looks like, what students need to learn and what instructors will do to achieve teaching goals. By creating storyboard, instructors create“the direction (flow), the structure and sequence for the instruction". I think the pedagogical design sheets Lisa presented in the tutorial Where the Hell Do I Start are great examples of storyboard. The design strategies she demonstrated are also very helpful.

As for the pedagogical goals and objectives, I would like to show a very simple e-learning course I designed for a class project. Click here to access the homepage of my project. You will find the goals and objectives on the “About” page. The learning objectives are also available on the homepage.

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:)

Week 1 potcert

Hello, everyone, my name is Zhetao Guo. This is my third year in Instructional Technology Ph.D program at the University of Alabama. I'm also a graduate research assistant. I have been in the U.S for about four years. I got my bachelor and master's degree in Chinese language and literature in China. In 2008, after I finished my second year of graduate study, I got an opportunity to come to the U.S. and be a Chinese teacher at the University of Kansas. I started to teach elementary and high school students Chinese via videoconferencing. This technology allows me to teach different schools at different places at the same time. It was really fun and amazing! Because of this teaching experience, I became very interested in instructional technology and then decided to pursue a doctoral degree in this field. That's why I'm here in Alabama now. I really enjoy the life here. I've met many new friends and also learned a lot.
Anyway, I feel very glad to meet everyone and get to know each other!

Just a test

Here is a post for testing. :)