Week 7 Online Community

This week’s topic is building an online classroom. We discussed this issue in the class this week. How to build an online community? This question is really hard to answer. Building an online community is not an easy task. From my perspective, the online community initiated in a course management system is mostly forced. Learner’s participation in the online community is not spontaneous if the learner is not interested in it or forced to involve in this community by course policies or other external factors. I guess this is the nature and one shortcoming of learning management system which might be hard to conquer. This makes me to think about the use of virtual learning environment, such as Second Life. Did anyone use Second Life before? What about the online community in Second Life? Could it be really different from the one in course management system? Is the communication in virtual learning environment more effective than learning management system?

Additionally, I would like to introduce Richard Mayer’s cognitive theory of multimedia learning. This theory is based on three main assumptions: there are two separate channels (auditory and visual) for processing information; there is limited channel capacity; and that learning is an active process of filtering, selecting, organizing, and integrating information. The figure below presents the model of how people learn from multimedia lessons.

The principle known as the “multimedia principle” states that “people learn more deeply from words and pictures than from words alone”.  However, simply adding words to pictures is not an effective way to achieve multimedia learning. The goal is to instructional media in the light of how human mind works. This is the basis for Mayer’s cognitive theory of multimedia learning. 

Mayer’s cognitive theory of multimedia learning presents the idea that the brain does not interpret a multimedia presentation of words, pictures, and auditory information in a mutually exclusive fashion; rather, these elements are selected and organized dynamically to produce logical mental constructs. Design principles including providing coherent verbal, pictorial information, guiding the learners to select relevant words and images, and reducing the load for a single processing channel etc. can be entailed from this theory.

Week 6 Video

As for the Internet skills quiz, I scored 92%, not bad I think. The questions in this quiz are pretty common and basic knowledge of Internet. The only question I answered incorrectly is the last one about the definition of an“open source”program. I found the correct answer after I googled it. I guess besides scores, it would be better if we can see correct answers as well after submitting the quiz. 

I have never tried to write HTML myself before. In my mind, writing HTML seemed like a complicated and professional task for IT folks, and I had no idea about these complex codes. After reading Dave’s introduction about the HTML, I feel better. His introduction is practical and simple. I like the templates and examples provided in this introduction. I get to know some basic codes.

I embedded a video I found on YouTube. A professor in the college of education at Indiana University talks about how to plan an online course. He provides some good advice and guidelines for online instructors. He also recommends several free online educational resources. I think it would be helpful and I should share it with you. 

Week 5 Online Syllabus

Syllabus always plays an important role during learning process. It becomes even more important for students who take an online course, since students don't have many direct interactions with their instructors, compared with face-to-face class. Students may feel confused and even get lost if an instructor fails to provide a good and clear online syllabus. In my opinion, syllabus is like a detailed and practical “survival guide". If you want to “survive” in a course, the first thing you must do is to read the syllabus carefully!

I like the way Ko and Rossen interpreted the roles of syllabus in a course. They used three words to conclude its functions. The first one is contract. Syllabus is the contract between students and instructors, laying out the terms of the class interactions. This is also the reason why an instructor needs to write a syllabus and usually discuss it with his/her students in the first class. Informing students their expected responsibilities and duties, the grading criteria, the musts and don’ts of behavior is the first task for instructors. The second one is map. Students will know the “geography” of the course through syllabus. That means students will understand the whole process of a course and know where everything is located. Therefore, besides syllabus, I think it might be helpful for an instructor to make a site map if that course is web-based. The structure of a course web site can be visualized by a site map. The third one is schedule. I do agree that the course should be laid out by weeks for students. All the details of writing an online syllabus are explained  in this chapter explicitly. I learned a lot. The checklist for online syllabus on page 123 is very useful. I will definitely use this checklist to examine my online syllabus.

The method Lisa presented in the workshop is similar to the textbook. However, besides the things stated in the book, Lisa also demonstrated how to make an online syllabus interactive and live in Blackboard and Moodle systems. By adding hyperlinks on the syllabus, students can access related course materials and class activities directly by clicking those links. These hyperlinks look quite convenient and neat. I may consider using them in my syllabus as well.

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.