ETAP687

I think the most important thing that I learned this week is no matter how clear you think you write instructions, someone is going to interpret them differently than you intended.  I have encountered this in the teaching of my laboratory classes and have wondered how 1 student can interpret something different than the other 13 in my class.  This week, I became that 1 student.  I think that some of my confusion came from my interpretations based on how I have made assignments similar to this one in this module but used the bold face type in a different meaning.  Lesson learned: be specific.  When a mistake is made, review the instructions, make clarifications and try again next year.

Reflecting on this course I have learned how to provide effective instruction in an online environment.  Design is crucial in that you need to address things that we take for granted in a FTF class.  Building community comes easily in the FTF curriculum I teach but in the online environment, you must design activities and discussions that help foster community building, which in turn helps all of the students learn in the online environment.    For example, creating a problem based or case study activity engages the student and helps them apply the information to their own situations.  By having the students post their findings or thoughts about the case study, you encourage student to student interactions that help them see how their classmates engaged the material, noting similarities and differences.  By designing activities that encourage these interactions, students learn not only from the material but from each other.

I have more to report for this last module’s blog but I wanted to get this in before I forgot what I was thinking about tonight.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 8:23 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.