Menu
Teaching in an online environment requires one to create an online course. Delivery of material to help social-emotional wellness must be easily accessible and easy to follow to be effective. You wouldn’t want to cause any unnecessary stress in a course designed to help you cope with stress. After spending time creating a course shell and the front end material full of policies and procedures, some testing of the learning environment is important. The pre-course review time with a classmate was very useful in flushing out functionality issues. While neither one of us were content experts, we were able to work through each other's courses and provide feedback from a user standpoint. One of the most useful parts of this process was observing other courses and how they had been organized and delivered. I was able to take my ideas and blend them with some of the other successful ideas that I saw to make a course flow and function more effectively. I didn’t want to run into some of the issues that Powell (2003) did during course design that caused students to be very confused over navigation issues.
During the class session where we worked on each other's material, I didn't have much content into the course shell. I underestimated how much time it would take to create the front end material like the course introduction, assessment rubrics, policies and procedures expected. The importance of the the storyboard and blueprint came back to light again and I still had part of this to iron out. The peer review session became the catalyst to complete the content specific material. During that session, and through the feedback that was submitted, several functionality issues were addressed. At each step I tried to imagine myself as the student and create content with purpose that was practical and easy to follow. I wanted it to both look pretty and be pretty useful. The peer review process proved to be valuable because it provided a real life practice run of the course, highlighted weaknesses and areas for improvement. It also provided positive feedback to build off of to keep moving forward. References Powell, W. (2003). Essential design elements for successful online courses. Journal of Geoscience Education, 51(2), 221. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.uproxy.library.dc-uoit.ca/docview/202777946?accountid=14694
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI am a teacher in Halton and have spent 12 years dedicated to learning about and working with students who have special learning needs. I have been teaching since 2005. I have 4 kids (2 + 2 step), I play bagpipes, ride a motorcycle and love being outdoors. Archives
August 2017
Categories |