This is the third full day of my first online course. My initial impression of this experience is that of great excitement for what I am learning as an instructor and course designer and how I am growing as an educator. This journal will document my impressions of this experience on three levels:
1) Knowledge - What I am learning professionally from this experience
2) Skills - The skills that I am developing
3) Affect - My thoughts and feelings of what is taking place through this experience.
Although I am beginning this journal two days later than I had hoped, I will attempt recapture what has transpired since I began working with students in the course. Beyond the three levels of observation mentioned above, this journal will serve a dual purpose:
* To provide documentation of the instructor role in conducting an online course, and
* To accompany my analysis of a curriculum for a semester project in my EDCI 200 course taught by Dr. Richard Brice.
Last month, my course was publicized via two different email listservs across the state of North Carolina: a restricted listserv for the School System Organizational Coordinators for LEARN North Carolina, and via State Superintendent Mike Ward's bi-weekly message. The result was more than 100 email inquiries and more than twenty phone calls in the span of one week. I was very pleased with the interest, but overwhelmed with the responsibility of responding to everyone. One of the advantages of technology is that one can send a single message to many people with only one click of the "Send" button. This still required a lot of sorting through messages in my Inbox in order to compile a distribution list while talking on the phone to others about the course. Lesson learned: designate someone else to respond to inquiries!
Having processed the plethora of email, I then chose the first thirteen requests to participate in the course. Each was contacted individually by email and given a copy of the course overview and requirements. Upon review of this document, they were asked to reply with their intent to participate in the course. All agreed and student accounts were created for each. Since this course is being offered free of charge as a professional development offering to North Carolina Educators, I was able to process their registrations using our in-house registration system. Participants were sent another email which included their login information and the URL for the course. Specific instructions were given on how to begin the course which officially began on Monday evening. Due to some problems with the registration system, four students were not able to access the course that evening, but recieved access the following morning. This did not affect their participation in the course.
Day 1 - Tuesday, October 30th
I think I place too much faith in technology despite what I often preach to others about not doing so. There were problems today with registration. Four students could not access the course. This was resolved by noon and everyone was happy. There has been no activity from a number of students in the course while others have emailed me to indicate to apologize for being behind in their assignments. I am excited to see the activity in the Courseroom, i.e., the discussion from the first prompt and also the first assignment.
Knowledge
Based on my readings for one of my graduate course, I can see the opportunity from the first discussion to recycle the conversation later into the course, referencing a chapter which elaborates on the discussion topic, variables which affect lesson planning.
Skills
I am learning to use the discussion area to foster more communication among students. I have decided that I will ask students to respond to one of the classmates' postings. With respect to the courseware, I am becoming more comfortable with grading student assignments.
Affect
The lack of participation on the part of some students has bothered me. It makes me wonder how I can better motivate them to stay on track. My guess is that some of them are so busy that they are waiting for the weekend to get started.
Day 2 - Wednesday, October 31
With the exception of those students from whom I have heard nothing, everyone seems to have access to the course. I am making some changes to later lessons based on discussions with staff about the organization of the course.
Knowledge
I have located some additional resources on writing objectives. I had originally focused on "writing measurable objectives" ,but now think I will augment the focus to include "writing meaningful, measurable objectives." Having read the information on a particular page, I realized that I need to ensure that teachers develop objectives for their lessons that have some purpose and bearing on the curriculum. It is not enough that the objectives are measurable if they don't really make a difference.
Skills
Today I realize how easy it is to succomb to the trap of checking in on the course every five minutes to see if students have posted anything. I spent too much time doing this when I should have been working on other things. I am going to limit my involvement there so that I only check the course at select times during the day. The challenge is to determine what times would be best for doing so.
Affect
Despite any glitches with the course, I am very excited about this experience. I can already tell that I would love to teach it again and perhaps with different configurations. For example, it would be interesting to see how the students would interact online if they were all from the same school. A further twist to the course might focus on actually meeting with the students the before the begin the course or perhaps at the end.
