The day started with a review of the e-learning adoption cycles (chapter 9 in the book p.248). Once again, I feel that I am not using the technology as best as I could. Based on the morning conversation about the overall instructional design foundations of courses, I found the discussion on design principles to be so insightful. An old term came up for discussion that I had forgotten---Zone of proximal development. I will now be looking to see how this concept plays an important role in the argument for face-to-face courses and online courses.
Extraneous cognitive load is also another important concept to understand and to remember when designing online courses. I will admit that I often forget about this theory and we all know that it is so true. Boy do I feel bad for the students because I have seen some of the "stuff" they have to put up with in online courses.
Our group then discussed Bonk and Dennen's online learning pedagogical activities and online reading and writing techniques. Linda and Amelia pointed out the challenges of making face-to-face techniques work in an online classroom. Blogging is becoming a viable resource for us to use. We also tried to apply some of activities outlined n the chapter and realized how much of a challenge the incorporation process can be.
Rubrics are necessary and Minchi offered an example of one that provides an overview of grading for the entire online environment. The rubric will be put in the documents on Bb.
(I have to remember to look for the two books that was referenced, See PowerPoint slides from day3)
Community Building Design-pointed out the core of successful online learning. The online course must have:
Spirit---I belong
Trust---I trust the community
Interaction--closeness
Learning--gain knowledge
Wow how simple this seems but how complex it is to achieve. I am pleased that I often design courses that encourage these qualities.
We saw another demo of Moodle and I am still somewhat bothered by the layout. I am sure most of my concern is based on my familiarity with Blackboard. Yet, there is something about the layout that I am not able to express at this time.
Got to see a concept mapping tool (bubbl-us) which was great and I hope to use it in my courses.
For my final project I have decided to take a crack at my sociology course and implement some of the stuff I have be exposed to this week. Definitely will include blogs. Will also include some of the collaborative activities outlined earlier today that should provide for authentic learning task.
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3 comments:
I agree - the idea of extraneous cognitive load (which should be minimized for students) and the content-related cognitive load (which should be maximized for students) is important. But even though it's something that seems so obvious, I haven't really thought about it before.
Jim, let's not be too harsh on our use of technology! In the end, it's the other way around -technology should adapt to us... as it seems to be doing at last. Then will we see some big changes in education!
Jim, I share your uneasiness with Moodle's look (all the while I'm so impressed with what it can do.) I'm trying to decide if it's just a case of the much less "cluttered" WebCT/Blackboard interface looking right because it's the one I learned to use, or whether there are pros and cons to chunking information in page-sized documents, one behind the other as opposed to having everything in one long vertical file. Perhaps it's just different. But for my developmental students, I think the interfaces that we've seen demonstrated might be difficult.
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