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Week 12

For some reason this week was my favorite discussion. The discussion was to surround Ahas from Bender or from the web conference we were formatively evaluating. We covered lot of good and important topics:
How to incorporate social and web 2.0 tools
Should ice breakers be used?
Individual student contact.
Maintaining the same focus, pace the whole course
Tailoring to students needs and wants
Tone and purpose

The two most important topics to me were generated by David Sprouse and Lesley Wallace.

David's post was regarding tone and moved into purpose. Sometimes online courses are too formal and it leaves the students out, but other times the course is to laid back and doesn't fit the purpose. It's important to match the two when planning a course.

Lesley started a thread that focused on finding out what the students need and want out of the course. I agreed to this and also stated that the students need to feel like individuals in that class, it's very easy to get lost in the crowd in an online class.

Week 11

The week's discussion started out with ideas to keep students engaged: redundancy, thematic divisions, relevancy to the real world, games, etc. And then we moved into a discussion about SCORM. Which lost me a little. I still don't quite understand what exactly SCORM is, which caused me to lie-low in the discussion.

Lesley was very vocal in our discussion, asking questions and moving us along. I thought it was interesting that she suggested a workshop, which is EXACTLY what my EdWeb is being developed for. I guess that kind of validates it in a way.

Greg started the discussion on SCORM and provided some good clear information about it, but I still need to do some more research to help myself understand it better.

My best contribution was probably when I stated that I need to make the EdWeb more relevant to the real world, the student's real world. It's so easy to get so focused on design and content and forget about audience, but that is the key factor.

Week 10

The week we were asked to discussion what new approached in activities for our EdWeb's we'd come up with because of the reading. We all threw out various ideas: blogs, wikis, discussions, variety, etc.

Two people that influenced me more this week were Lesley and Mae. Lesley opened up the week with a comment about bringing more of a Social aspect to her EdWeb. This really hit home for me, because this is how I'd been feeling for a while. And we had a bit of a back and forth on how to incorporate "social" into to a tutorial-type course. Mae stated that "a well developed EdWeb cannot simply ask the students to memorize facts it needs to use reflective thinking to gain comprehenion." I think this is a very important idea to keep in the forefront of my mind while I develop this EdWeb. Students need an outlet to reflect, be forced to reflect, that is when the best learning takes place is when students make the information their own.

During this week, I'd been doing a lot of questioning about my EdWeb. I wasn't feeling comfortable with it and that is very apparent in all my post. My main post was probably more blog like and I got bunch of "thing off my chest." But I think my analysis of various online "classes" was still important to show the need for the facilitator or teacher to have balance in the class and guide the students.

I have since completed a formalative evaluation, realized that my teachers are still on board and that the students are really excited about my EdWeb. These were my main factors of doubt, which was bringing my whole thinking process down. I mean, what's the point if no one is going to use it?

Week 4

I had trouble getting into this discussion. I even had trouble getting back into it for this write up. The discussion began with costs for designing and EdWeb, something I've never really thought about and still can't really wrap my head around. Maybe teachers just get to used to giving things away and using their own funds for classroom supplies that the cost factor isn't priority number 1 like it is in the business world.

From there we moved into discussing various aspects of formative evaluations and how we were going to apply it to our EdWeb. Maybe my work on the Evaluation committee last semester, but nothing in the conversation grabbed my attention or caused me to question something. Overall, I was pretty passive in this discussion.

I did offer up my insight from doing a usability test with Google last fall. And I do think that it helps you understand formative evaluation when you've been on the other side of it.

Jessica stated:

I love that he made that comment about making your questions about the subject and not about "them". For example, don't ask what they "don't understand" because that is about what "they" are able to do, rather than what is missing or confusing about the material.

This is important to remember because you aren't 'judging' your testers, you are judging yourself and your product and you can't have them feeling judged or they are less likely to provide good, honest feedback.

Jenn Olsen also deserves some credit for asking lots of good questions that Dave had to answer for us and our formative evaluations.

Week 3

The ideas presented in our discussion in week three have proven to be important and reoccuring themes in eLearning. Our main discussion surrounded the idea of instructor vs. student involvement, especially in threaded discussion. For the most part our group agreed, instructor involvement is a must, but should not over-power student involvement, because students tend to get to other students better. David Sprouse put it quite nicely when he stated:

In my view a good instructor doesn't just provide the right answer, but tries to lead his/her students in discovering the right answer for themselves. That is when the "learning" really takes place.

This is right inline with how I was thinking, but this is something I think needs to be told to the students. Students tend to see teachers as "right" and they aren't always, they are (or should be) good at getting others to think. I really like this idea. I want to be this kind of teacher and really person in general. Too often, I try to be 100% right or at least look that way.

Eileen brought up a quote on self-disclosure and moved the discussion in that direction. Our group was torn, but I see our main topic of concern as being the true definition of self-disclosure. My greatest contribution was when I attempted to help clarify this when I stated:

I don't think self-disclosure is necessarily something personal, or personal in the way it seems to be being discussed. Self-disclosure could be sharing your "personal" idea, or agreeing with a statement by shaking your head.....either way you are disclosing what you believe and understand.

This was one of the last comments made and no one responded, but I think it is always important to define your terms before you discuss with others, otherwise you may never be on the same page.

Week 1-2: Key Questions

We started off this semester with a split discussion (meaning the class was in three different groups) about key questions we need to address as a group for our upcoming conference. As anyone can imagine, how do you get 30 people to agree on thing? Well, it probably won’t happen, so you have to put it up to a vote, or in our case survey.

Our group ended up being the biggest group I think, due to a miscommunication, which caused a lot of thoughts and ideas to be thrown out. To recap them all now, would take nearly as long as the discussion took. In reading back through the discussion, I was struck by how everyone seemed to be on the same page for the most part and when they weren’t they were respectful. I guess sometimes I’m amazed to work with adults, they are such a long way from high schoolers. J I did find a few people to be rude with there responses and it made it hard for me to participate….what if I screwed up?

Although it got lost along the way, I think my best contribution was:

I want to be sure though that we don’t make this decision on OUR needs, we will have conference participants and our decisions should be based on THEIR needs and how to structure it so that THEY get the most out of the conference.

I think this redirected the group for a little bit, but eventually and even outside out “discussion” group and into our class, I think we forget that it’s not all about us, we are not in competition with each other; It’s about them (conference participants) and we need to look and act like one cohesive group.

I think the key person in our discussion this week was Stephanie. I know she is a bit self-conscience about it, but had we not had someone who took the reigns so early and got us started, I don’t know if we would have gotten as much out of the discussion. Her efforts of asking questions and keeping “peace” among the group should never be overlooked.

Although, I felt a bunch of people deserve the recognition of helping the group discussion, my next person is Richard Stewart. I didn’t agree with everything he said, but there were several comments that stood out as important that he was responsible for. The biggest being:

Along these same lines, is there a general course format that we should all be using? Are there specific questions we should all address as part of the conference? “How does such-and-such-a-topic help learners….?....?....?” Should all sessions be focusing on the same aspect of education and how their topic gets at these aspects?

I thought this was a really important idea that didn't get discussed quite as much as it should have been, but again, it brought the conference attendees to the forefront, where they should be.