Back from hiatus…

For the past couple of months I’ve been exploring some different endeavours - in motherhood. My little guy Milo is 8 weeks old now and I’m dipping my foot back into eLearning by participating in my first massive open online course (MOOC) - eLearning and Digital Cultures (#edcmooc) offered by Coursera. I plan on posting my thoughts on both the course material and my experience participating in a MOOC. I’m sure Milo will make his way into some of the posts as well - I plan to start him on his lifelong learning journey young, while I can read anything out loud to him in an enthusiastic and whimsical tone.

Any experiences or thoughts on MOOCs? Let me know in the comments.

Musings from the 2012 Ontario D2L Regional User Forum

On Friday October 12 I had the opportunity to attend the Ontario Desire2Learn Regional User Forum. It’s a one day conference for educators using the Desire2Learn learning management system (LMS) to get together and talk about how they are using the LMS to support and enhance teaching and learning. This is the second year I’ve attended and I always come away with something new to try when I get back to my desk.

This year, my takeaway came from a presentation by Pia Marks and Lance Chase from University of Waterloo. They did a study observing students navigate their way through online courses and took note of how they interacted with the material and the learning environment. The most striking observation to me was the fact that the students who participated in the study didn’t read content - they scanned it, they looked for bold text and links and used Ctrl+F to search for key words. This likely won’t come as a surprise to those who have read about web usability or writing for the web - but unfortunately it goes completely against my painstaking efforts to diligently explain a number of concepts in my online course using the good old written word! 

So now I’m on a mission to further investigate web usability and applying it to my online learning environment. Pia and Lance recommended books by Steve Krug and Janice Redish, as well as this paper so I have some reading to do. Please let me know about your experiences with web usability in online education or any further resource recommendations in the comments! 

I’m thinking of using the Ted-Ed video above and the associated “think” question as a part of a module on evaluating the media in my online class. Has anyone used TedEd resources in their teaching? I will revisit this to let you know how it goes!

Organizing my online classroom for September

It’s September! The leaves on the tree in front of my house are falling, Staples is packed and my virtual classroom is almost ready to go. Here are three things that I do at the start of the term to try and get my online students off to a good start:

1. Reminders and notifications - I’m spending some quality time with the calendar. My course is running on the Desire2Learn (D2L) LMS which allows me to create reminders in advance and release them to students on the “start date” I designate. Students can subscribe to receive reminders by text message, external email or RSS. In an online course, I’m aware that it might be easier for students to disconnect so my first news item highlights how to subscribe to updates and encourages them to log on often.
2. Online icebreaker - When I’m facilitating in person I always like to do an icebreaker, even if it’s just going around the room and having each person introduce themselves to the class. In my online classroom I’m including an Introductions discussion forum to allow students to introduce themselves to each other. I include a few typical leading questions regarding their college experience so far, such as:
  • what is your program of study?  
  • what is the most valuable course you’ve taken so far?
  • what do you hope to gain from this course?
  • what career are you pursuing? 
I also like to include some random questions about their life outside of school, which will hopefully allow students to connect with a classmate who has a  similar interest or background. For example:
  • in your (infrequent) spare time, what do you like to do?        
  • where is your hometown? 
  • what is your favourite tv show or movie?
The “Introductions” forum also serves as a practice run for composing discussion posts and replying to classmates. Hopefully students can work out any kinks so that when they are being assessed on their posts, they are confident in how to do it.       
3. Welcome video - I want my students to know that I’m a living, breathing human being and there’s no better way to do that than welcome them to the course with video instead of text. This is a bare bones production complete with unflattering fluorescent lighting and no witty script, exactly how it would be in the classroom on the first day. I upload the video on Youtube and use D2L’s “insert stuff” tool to embed it on my course homepage. I’m hoping that having an idea of who I am makes them feel a bit more connected to the course.
After a few weeks, there’s always something that I wish I had included at the beginning of the term.  I’ll make sure to keep you posted on my “should haves”, successes, and miserable failures. Feel free to comment below to let me know how you prepare your online classroom.