Week 7

ESSENTIAL QUESTION: HOW CAN WE SUPPORT STUDENTS IN BEING SUCCESSFUL IN OUR ONLINE COURSE? WHY?

When creating an online course, the first thing that needs to occur is planning a course for your students. Think about what type of students will this course be available for. What type of learners? Sending out a needs assessment at the beginning before the course is important. We did this for our Givercraft training and created a product that was geared towards our students. I think if we were to have trained our teachers over everything, we would have lost our teachers, some might have dropped out of the experience and others would have thought the training was a waste of time. I know I have taken classes were the topic was over something I already knew how to do. I always wished the instructors would have sent a needs assessment first to find out the major objectives being asked.

         The other item is creating the course with technology that students know how to use. During our training, we sent a needs assessments and asked about the MinecraftEdu teacher tools and for our evaluation we asked them what type of technology do they prefer for communication or to take a training. After reading the chapter this week, I think we should have put the preference question in our first needs assessment. We always meet in Google Hangout and know how to run it. When we started our training, we decided to use blackboard. Which is a technology tool none of us knew how to use, so we had to prepare ourselves and test the night before. It turned into a disaster during the training and we ended up using the google hangout. “If students are unfamiliar with the technology, they will be  reluctant to use it creatively and adventurously, which will affect their experience quite severely” (Kearsley and Moore).

We lost teachers possibly because they couldn’t log into the blackboard site. Our turn out for the training was pretty low. I’m not sure if that was due to time zones, time of the training or teachers knew we were going to record it, so they decided to watch the recording instead of sitting through the live training.

With online courses students need to; (Lytle)

1. Confirm technical requirements

2. Connect with Instructors early

3. Create a schedule

4. Stay organized

5.Have a consistent work space

         All of these tips are important. I think 3, 4 and 5 are the most important. Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to contact the instructor’s early, but if students don’t touch base with them until the course starts, it won’t mean they’re automatically going to fail. If 3 – 4 do not occur during the online course, then the student will be much more to fail than to succeed. During online courses creating a schedule is going to make the student turn in assignments on time, not procrastinate “Procrastination is the number one enemy of distance learning once students get behind in their assignments, it becomes very difficult to catch up and they invariably drop out” (Kearsley and Moore).  Staying organized will keep the student on their schedule, not procrastinating or feeling overwhelmed with assignments to complete. Students are responsible for their learning in a distance education course and not waiting for the instructor or tutor to push  them” (Kearsley and Moore).  To be successful instructors could, “contact students personally to offer assistance and remind the student of the need to keep up” (ion). This takes a lot of extra time from the instructor and could make tuition rates rise due to a personal interaction with someone instead of a machine responding.

         I like the idea of a “red flag” appearing if students assignments are late. Universities have this when tuition isn’t paid on time, but it’s easy to ignore a machine. If it’s the instructor contacting the student it’s more personal and the student feels an obligation to complete the assignment for the instructors approval. It’s extremely important for students to participate on a regular basis. It’s important to do this to have a “quality online experience for everyone” (nhcc). When students don’t participate it affects the other students in the class.

         Having students who are English Language Learners is important to remember to design a course that is available for any students. I had foreign exchange students live with me when I grew up. Some of them knew English very well and could speak it, others had a difficult time understanding and would have to write or have us write down what we were saying for them to understand it. With an online course, blog postings and written instructions help English language learners understand and process the objectives.

         When creating an online course the way we can help the students be successful is to know our students learning style through an online assessment before the course starts. We can understand when students need assistance and provide extra support for that particular student. The other way we can make sure our students are successful is to check in with our students, make sure the process of the course is working for them and the workload of assignments. Instructors need to be flexible and change their course if it is required for the success of their students.

Resources

Moore, M.G., and Kearsley, G. (2011).  Distance Education:  A Systems View of Online Learning, 3^rd Edition.  Belmont: Cengage Learning.

Lytle, R. (2013, January 14). 5 Tips to Succeed in an Online Course. Retrieved February 27, 2015, from http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2013/01/14/5-tips-to-succeed-in-an-online-course?page=2

Illinois Online Network: Educational Resources. (2010, January 1). Retrieved February 27, 2015, from http://www.ion.uillinois.edu/resources/tutorials/pedagogy/StudentProfile.asp

Student Tips for Online Learning Success. (n.d.). Retrieved February 28, 2015, from http://www.nhcc.edu/student-resources/online-learning-d2l/tips-for-online-learning-success#sthash.KPBxX77N.dpuf

Reflection Week 6

Thomas and I just finished presenting Givercraft at ASTE 2015. What a very awesome experience that was. We were able to explain a program that we helped create. It was neat that we could talk about the different differentiating tools that we are creating this time around and also the teacher training. This week I created the teacher training module that will help us during our training this week. I took apart the minecraftEdu teacher tools website and linked each tutorial video and explanation for each tool used in MinecraftEdu. I wrote out an outline of the training and who would be doing what part. I am going to present the topics for each teacher tool and while the teachers are practicing the tools in MinecraftEdu the other team in OLTAK will be participating as students, of what not to do. I think the training will be a great experience and we will learn what we can do differently for the next time.

I commented on my peers blogs on the process of our training and what I had completed this week. I also talked with my team member and explained what I had created and asked for some feedback on the training module and which topics they would like to present. I haven't heard anything yet. We have a few responses from the needs assessment we created. A lot of the teacher tools and how to manage students was the main part teachers did not know how to do. This will be most of our training and explaining the unit plan and differentiating ideas we are creating for them. My plan next week is to create a video for the teachers to know where to locate the memory books I created for the differentiating idea.  I will add this video to the training modules and teacher folder in Google Drive. I hope teachers enjoy the training and that it goes smoothly. We haven't had very much time to work on this. Only last week we had a team meeting and decided the topics we were going to create for our training. It would be nice in the future, especially for Lord of the Flies and Maze Runner to have more than 1 team meeting or a week to design a training for the teachers. Givercraft is easy for Mia and myself, because we helped create it and know the program very well. However the other team members do not and some haven't read the Unit Plan. So I think giving everyone enough time to prepare for the training/presentation would be more effective.

Thomas, Traice and I at ASTE 2015 Anchorage, Alaska Captain Cook 

Week 6

ESSENTIAL QUESTION: WHAT TOOLS WILL MY GROUP USE AS WE CREATE OUR ONLINE COURSE? WHAT IS OUR RATIONALE FOR USING THESE TOOLS?

            The tools we have decided to use for our training course is Computer Conferencing, Text with study guides and mobile technology.  We have also used surveymonkey for our needs assessment and Google Groups to communicate with everyone involved in the course.

         The computer conferencing will “allow students and instructors to interact in  real time using personal computers to deliver a variety of text, voice, visuals, shared applications, and video” (Moore and Kearsley). We are first going to do an overview and demonstration of the MinecraftEdu teacher tools during our first meeting. Then we are going to have the teachers enter the world of MinecraftEdu and explore and practice with the teacher tools. We are creating a study guide for teachers if they need extra support with a tool in MinecraftEdu.

         We are going to have one document for teachers to reference too. On this document are going to be links to specific tutorial videos on the teacher tools. In the study guide we are going to list and explain during the web conference what the teacher and student responsibilities are. We are going to go over the objectives and the unit plan. We will explain how to upload videos and images to wiki pages and how teachers should log in to their page, create their page and monitor student’s pages.

         A document that we are going to share is being co-created with the diffimooc class. All of the differentiation tools being created in the course for Givercraft will have a short paragraph explanation for each teacher. The document will be uploaded to the Google Drive Study Guide for teachers. I am creating memories for teachers to give to students if they can’t create their own memory. I have created a new teleport station and have hidden the chest full of memories. I will explain and show the teachers how to access the “secret” memories during our teacher training. I will also create a video to add to the study guide and resources page. Teachers will be able to access this document any time they have questions.

            A tool that we didn’t discuss, but could be used when differentiating for students who need help reading the community agreement or possibly differentiating tools they might be using or any other types of documents students need to read for the project is “word talk and word prediction” (teachthought). Word talk is “is a high quality free add-in that provides convenient, versatile and customizable text-to-speech for any document written or opened in Microsoft Word” (UDL). This will allow students to understand what is written on the community agreements, the scenarios in the unit plan and the expectations on the rubric. It can also give them support when reading other students wiki pages, if asked to comment on others blogs.

            The other tool I thought might be helpful for students is word prediction. It helps “predict a word that the user intends to type” (Stanberry and Raskind). If students have trouble writing, they are going to have a very difficult time completing their wiki page about their experience. Word prediction will help them write on their wiki page. I’m not sure if the program can be used right on the wiki page, but students could use word prediction on Microsoft word and then copy and paste their explanation onto their wiki page.

            We only have a week to create our teacher training session. Well less than a week. I think we came up with a lot of tools we know how to use and will be able to have a successful training. I hope for Maze Runner and Lord of the Flies we are given more time to think of other tools or practice the tools we are going to use for our training and not creating them less than a week before the training.

            To use tools during training and a course, educators “need to know how to use them” (Kearsley and Moore). We also need to consider tools students and teachers know how to use. The MinecraftEdu teacher tools are the major tools the teachers don’t know how to use. We had only three responses from our survey and two of the three said they knew how to use the MinecraftEdu teacher tools. To manage students and have a successful Givercraft experience, teachers need to know how to use the tools.

            I’m glad we are creating hands on and web conference style training for the teachers involved with this experience especially following up with a study guide for them to reference. I’m interested to see what training tools are successful and which tools we might want to readjust for the other trainings with Lord of The Flies and Maze Runner.

Resources

Moore, M.G., and Kearsley, G. (2011).  Distance Education:  A Systems View of Online Learning, 3^rd Edition.  Belmont: Cengage Learning.

8 Helpful Assistive Technology Tools For Your Classroom. (2013, May 15). Retrieved February 19, 2015, from http://www.teachthought.com/technology/8-helpful-assistive-technology-tools-for-your-classroom/

Stanberry, K., & Raskind, D. (n.d.). Word prediction software programs. Retrieved February 19, 2015, from http://www.greatschools.org/special-education/assistive-technology/966-word-prediction-software-programs.gs

Free Resources from the Net for EVERY Learner. (2012, May 31). Retrieved February 19, 2015, from http://paulhami.edublogs.org/tag/talking-word-processor/

Week 5 Reflection

This week was by far the most entertaining. I don’t know why. I liked learning about the process of the course design. I’m still not sure where our team lies in the process, Ali mentioned in her blog we were in the middle of the evaluation part. I think we are evaluating what we ended with in Givercraft and starting over at the design stage for our teacher training. Mia mentions that last semester we didn’t have enough time to create a teacher training and this will help guide teachers. She also mentions how creating a study guide will help teachers during the process and throughout the training. I couldn’t agree more. I think study guides will be great “grab and go” tools to use when needing to solve a problem, can’t get ahold of us (time zone difference)…etc Matthew mentions how it’s important to have a student centered learning experience. In all of my lessons, I ask the question to the students, but have them discuss their solution and answers/problem solving to each other.

            Letting students discuss with each other provides a deeper part of learning. With online courses, it’s important that the instructor doesn’t lecture only and tell the students what to learn. I mentioned this in my response this week, I am truly thankful that during our meeting Dr. Graham gave us ideas or thoughts to think about, but let us design our own training course for teachers. There were no steps or an outline of what we needed to have in the training course. This is our project and I look forward to making it.

            Our team last semester created Givercraft. It’s so neat to think that Givercraft was our design, our thoughts and no one told us the certain requirements that needed to be there. We were able to choose the book, design the scenarios, create the world….. I think with this kind of course design, students will be successful. If they’re only regurgitating the information, they will never remember or learn if they were more involved.

            I read on a peers blog that they were worried to let others complete a certain task for our project. I mentioned in the comment, how I was too uncertain when working in a group. I have never had a good outcome. I always ended up doing most of the work. I can honestly say, with Givercraft everyone who had an assigned task completed it and worked as a wonderful team. I think if we remember the steps to creating an online course and communicate with each other and ask for guidance if needed when designing we will have a product teachers can use for many years down the road.

            There is no I in team. This is so true. Everyone has to be open and communicate with each other. We need to pick tasks that we feel comfortable completing and trust each other. During our needs assessment meeting, I took the initiative and created an agenda for the meeting. This would help us stay on track and think about the outline of our course. While we were creating questions for the needs assessment, I created the survey to send to the teachers. I shared my screen and received positive feedback and suggestions from my peers.

            This kind of collaboration is key to creating a successful product. It was a lot easier creating the survey with everyone being able to view it. If I had to create it on my own, then send to everyone for approval, there would have been some miscommunication and it would have taken extra time to complete.

            I think with the student centered learning we were able to discuss and complete our needs assessment on a timely manner. I hope we can create the rest of the tools for the training with the same process.

            I’m glad we all agreed to video the trainings. It will be difficult to have all of the teachers attend the training due to time zones. We found this to be difficult during our handshake meeting with Givercraft last semester.

            I will use the course design steps in our next meetings and hopefully we will create a product teachers can use for many years.  

Week 5

ESSENTIAL QUESTION: IN WHAT WAY IS THE PROCESS MY GROUP IS USING FACILITATING THE DESIGN OF OUR COURSE? 

            When I started reading this question this week and the required texts, I was wondering what process my group was using. I couldn’t think of a process we were using. It wasn’t until after our meeting on designing the “needs assessment” (instructional design) a process fell into place. The first thing you always want to do when designing a course is figure out what the “learning objective” is.  “Planning the teaching strategies, such as how information will be presented and what activities learners will be expected to do, cannot begin until the objectives and evaluation plan have been prepared” (Moore and Kearsley). We have a good start in designing our course. We know what we expect the teachers to do in the training and will design our course based off of a survey we created to get more information on what specific skill to focus on. It’s important to have a  “common goal and vision of the completed project” (Morrison). It’s also important to to “dedicate constructive and uninterrupted time to plan, design and build” a course (Mesa). I think we will be fine with our course, but it would be nice to have more than two weeks to design a training for teachers to use. This is the most critical part in planning our course. “Careful planning at the course design stage not only makes teaching easier and more enjoyable, it also facilitates student learning” (Eberly).

It’s important when creating a course after outlining the objective to use relevant material. Some material that can be used in a course is, “Video lectures of yourself talking about a topic” (Kirk)  “web pages, films, study guides, books, audio tape, teleconferences and trainings” (Moore and Kearsley).  The best distance education courses I have taken were designed with web conferences, text that could be accessed online, tutorial videos for how to complete an assignment and web pages that were not too cluttered and had enough “white space” to allow me to think of the information and not be “overloaded” (Moore and Kearsley). I also liked how the course was “visually attractive” and easy to follow the requirements.

It’s important to let students collaborate when learning online. Wiki pages, Social Network sites let students share ideas, learn from one another and build from each other. It also gives the instructor time to provide feedback to each student and observe the learning from others.

            I have never taken a course that had a study guide accessible. I think when creating a course a study guide is an important concept to think about creating for students. It’s accessible to anyone and “provides a map of the course and the framework for the other materials to rest on” (Moore and Kearsley).

         I think another important aspect to an online course is to create a unit with short segments for students to complete. In a regular face-to-face classroom, you wouldn’t have students sit in their seats for more than 5 – 10 minutes, depending on the age group.  The reading this week, explained how it’s important to “break each

unit into 15 –20-minute segments of study” (Moore and Kearsley). This will help students concentrate, keep them engaged in the topic, make the information easier to remember and use in their own practice.

            The most important part when designing a course is to think about the participants. Are there any time zones? Will everyone have access to internet or the course documents? I think when creating our course for the teachers, it will be important to have tutorial videos for them to watch on their own time. When we did the handshake meeting for Givercraft, we ended up having three live training sessions. Where this was time consuming and almost impossible to achieve, I think if we had created a training video for the teachers to watch at their convenience it would have been a lot easier. I think after the teachers watch the videos, they can send us a google group and ask questions or tell us some concerns they might have.

         It’s impossible to collaborate with students when dealing with timezones. Video tutorials give access to the material at any time. “Links can be placed in the documents to allow movement throughout the documents or to access external documents” (Moore and Kearsley). I enjoy being able to click on the link from our course site and have access to all the course material in seconds. I think when designing a course, it’s critical the required text and material for the class be easily accessible to the students.

            When designing a course it’s usually done in a group setting with more than “20 people” or by individuals such as the “author-editor model” (Moore and Kearsley), but as I have witnessed with Givercraft, great things come in small groups. We had a group of six who created Givercraft. We have a group of 5 or 6 that will create the teacher-training course. I think it depends on the people involved in the group. If you set your mind to it, anything can be achieved.

Resources

Moore, M.G., and Kearsley, G. (2011).  Distance Education:  A Systems View of Online Learning, 3^rd Edition.  Belmont: Cengage Learning.

Morrison, D. (2013, June 5). Online Learning Insights. Retrieved February 12, 2015, from https://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/tag/team-based-instructional-design/

Instructional Design Roles and Responsibilities. (n.d.). Retrieved February 12, 2015, from http://instructionaldesign.gordoncomputer.com/IDRoles.html

Primary Menu. (n.d.). Retrieved February 12, 2015, from http://ctl.mesacc.edu/teaching/designing-an-online-course/

Kirk, K. (2013, December 13). Tips for Designing Online Courses. Retrieved February 13, 2015, from http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/online/design.htm

Design Your Course - Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation - Carnegie Mellon University. (n.d.). Retrieved February 12, 2015, from http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/design/