ETAP687

This module didn’t start off any better than the last.  I was able to download, read and listen to the articles and presentations in the module early but was interrupted by work and family commitments that has prevented me from posting as soon as I wanted to the discussion areas. 

After viewing the different exemplar courses and listening to the corresponding audio, I see a reinforcement of many of the concepts listed in Alexandra’s ETAP 687 manual.  The design of each of the courses is similar concerning the course information documents and the “chunking” of material into modules.  In the audio commentary by Piorkowski he explained why ice breakers are used in a course.  I had thought that it was a good way to teach students how to navigate an online course but had not thought about the time frame that it is open and how students add and drop courses during this introductory module.  This was good information to me and is definitely an area that I will develop for all of my courses.  In fact, I will need to extend the date ranges by a week to account for this orientation module.  Another particularly good finding from Piorkowski is the development of his discussion grading rubrics.  It is somewhat complicated with the 4-4point posts required to obtain an A in addition to the 31 points required to receive an A but the ultimate point that he makes is that students should teach each other something in their posts.  Piorkowski’s explanation for the need to change the subject posts was also helpful as I had not made the connection of how this makes students emphasize high order thinking like summaries and synthesizing material.

Another exemplar course which was of great benefit to me was Bill Pelz’s.  He explained his design of the community space and the components of each, which is intended to promote a sense of community within the online class.  However, it did not appear that the shared references area was used too often and perhaps could have been utilized in each of the course modules as a way to build communities and still keep it topic specific.  I particularly like the Coffeehouse section of his course as it contained areas that students could release their gripes and opinions with each other and relates to Scorza’s idea of a coffee shop area (p. 49 of Do Online Students Dream of Electric Teachers).  Pelz also briefly alluded to research into why 6 posts are minimum requirements for discussions and the need for a minimum log in requirement.  I would like to hear more about this research and will need to search for more material to support these findings.  Another cool little tool that Pelz provide was an IE spell checker tool. He also provides an excellent summary document called “The 2 Cardinal Rules” which I hope that I can use in the development of materials for my course. (Do I need permission for using some of his ideas?) 

While I understand the rubrics involved and the reasons they are used based on my observations of the exemplar courses, I find the self evaluation part of our posts and blogs a little annoying.  Am I alone in feeling that the posts that I write are generally worthy of a 3 in most cases.  This sort of required rating really is troublesome to me since I am my toughest citric and rarely think I deserve a 4 with any of my posts.  The same goes for the peer reviews.  I think my peers write extremely well and their posts are highly contributory.  I think we all gather a general sense of whether we are helping and adding to a discussion by the responses that we receive to our posts.

I honestly am learning more from my classmates’ contributions to the discussions than I feel I am contributing to this class and easily think I am one of the worst students enrolled in this course.  I feel like I have 7 or 8 instructors in this course providing helpful links and information that I would not have thought of or found on my own, which is in direct contrast to what I have been able to provide.  However, I am starting to see a recurring theme between this course and a book by Tisha Bender that I started reading while taking this course.

I am feeling extremely frustrated by the multiple tools utilized in this course.  I have the feeling of being lost as there are some many locations, discussions and blogs that are in isolated places.  This is something that I do not see within the course design of the exemplar courses.  The instructors of those courses all seem to direct students to outside areas for researching their discussion posts but all of the information from the discussions to the reflections are done within the frame work of the course and do not seem to be scattered about in different program tools.  At one point I really considered dropping the course despite I would lose my entire tuition.  These thoughts quickly subsided as the course administrator was able to restore my course after I tinkered with the theme settings and all of my work had disappeared.  I guess the take home message from that is one that Alexandra has stated a couple of times;  get the material and design in and make it look pretty later.  I feel like I am spending more time trying to locate things and remembering to check outside the course technologies instead of focusing on my course design.  I guess I would change the location of the reflections to be within the Moodle course instead of navigating to a separate web site. 

I have also started reading a second book by Jairath and Mills that pertains to Online Health Science Education since some of my concerns seem to be discipline specific.  This book seems to be more narrowly focused and may help me apply some of the general online pedagogical themes presented in the course reading material in a more accurate manner.

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Jairath N, Mills M. Online Health Science Education, Development and Implementation. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2006.

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