Week 4 Reflection

            This week we talked about the lessons we have learned through OCL. After reading my peers blogs, the lesson that is presented through each blog is organization and training. It’s important to have a successful online course, the class needs to be well organized. Matthew said in his blog, “teachers can’t wing it, I mean they could, but it wouldn’t be a good course.” This is true. With an online course you have to prepare the course materials way in advance, have everything planned out and basically have the whole course outlined before students start completing it. If the class is not organized, it’s difficult for the students to understand the expectations, requirements and learn anything from the course. I despise taking a professional development course for work or a class and at the end, say why did I take this course. Even a presentation from a guest speaker or an all weekend event. I have left so many times saying, well that was a waste of my time. Recently a lot of our professional development trainings at my school, have given me that same thought. With online courses, we need to keep the information relevant.

            Mia said in her blog, online courses should stay relevant and change periodically. Receiving this degree has shown me some classes that were required at the beginning are no longer with the program. Other classes have been added and change has occurred. It’s important to stay relevant with the learning content The director from AKLN, said we need current and relevant courses. It was a little disappointing to hear that only high school credentialed teachers could teach a course. Some of us in the program are only k-8^th certified, so to get a high school credential would mean more classes to take, exams to pass to receive a new certification.

            Ali mentioned how to have a successful online course, teachers need to be trained and know how to teach an online course. Teaching an online course is different than in a classroom based setting. Classes need to be organized and student collaboration needs to occur. Google hangouts allow students to build a relationship with one another and provide student self learning. Twitter sessions, give students the opportunity to collaborate, share ideas and learn new things from one another. Without collaboration, an organized course and a teacher that knows how to teach online, students will not have a successful experience with an online class. When I think of designing my online class, I will have class meetings through google hangout, let students collaborate with each other and have a very organized website where students can access materials and understand the learning objectives and requirements for the class.