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/