Reflection #3 - Foundations

Think back over the last two weeks and the subjects and our related discussions. We have defined online communities and discussed how to best organize and produce high performing teams in virtual environment. Now it is time to reflect back and wrap up all of these issues into one last reflection. Consider this one as the “last reflection” and focus on both how we have defined online communities and looked at the many variations of them as well as the complex, high performing team creation.

Now, what does all that mean to you? What are the big issues and ideas you have taken away from these two weeks of discussions? Finally, how does it apply to you? What will you do with this new knowledge base?
 
Hi Dr. Rob, 

Looking back over the last two weeks, I think the community and teaming topics are the "secret" to a good online course or program. Community in an online course means that the students and faculty member/facilitator rely on and trust each other, frequently. Teaming in an online environment means that students produce work together and thoughtfully discuss material. Community can be produced easily, but teaming takes much more time and energy.

When I say these things are the "secret" to quality online learning, I mean they create understanding and that most online programs probably do not follow these principles, from the little online learning I have observed. I keep mentioning this course I am TA-ing for these semester. The instructor, nor the program encourages teams. The sense of community was weakly established with a "get to know you" discussion and through other weekly discussion, but I do not think this is enough! I tried to encourage more when the course was designed but the instructor was rather afraid of going beyond templates and established program guidelines.

Going forward, I have already blended these ideas of teaming and community into my online course design (I'm completing this certificate backwards), but if I ever TA a course again in the organization I work for, I will push for more community activities as I can. The teaming idea I think will be a harder push but it is worth a try. 

Thanks for your guidance and instruction the last 8 weeks!

Best,
Kelli Urry 

Reflection #1 - Foundations

Think back over the last three weeks of the course and the subjects and our related discussions. We have explored the “History of Online Learning”, the “Strengths, Weaknesses, and Benefits”, and analyzed the various application that deliver online courses. In your mind, try to synthesize these concepts and the related discussions and activities. Reflect back on what they have meant to you. How have these affected you and which ones are the most important to you? How do these concepts and discussions connect to your professional career?


Hi Dr. Rob - 

As I mentioned in a whole group discussion post, I knew if I wanted to stay in the higher education industry I could not ignore online learning. If not for this career choice and interest in education I would have never given online learning a chance. I would probably have been forced by my future kids or the economy or some combination of that to adapt to this type of educational delivery method. While it's still a very new concept, and I only began fully online courses in January I must admit these courses at JHU have exceeded the expectations I set. Online learning has actually become a very natural thing for me as more than half my life is spent at a computuer! I enjoyed the conversation during week 2 of the strengths, weaknesses, and benefits of online learning. It was good to see some of my thoughts affirmed and then as my team drew up ways to make online learning more effective this will help me with a project I just started.

Recently I agreed to help a not so tech-savy instructor plan and build her online course in the organization I work for. I will share with her the lists we created in the second week and the suggestions from the other teams on how to make online learning more effective. The presentation of tools we just completed in week three was so helpful. I wish we had more time to go over 30 additional tools but I will try to explore some on my own. I was surprised though at how many tools I already knew of or had experience in. This gave me confidence that I've got what it takes to keep up with the educational world and the growing opporutnity of online learning.

Reflection #2- Administration and Evaluation

Now that you are more than halfway through the course, reflect on the content presented and discussed up to this point. What is something new that you have learned that you can apply in a work or professional setting? What do you think will be the most difficult part of online program administration and evaluation to implement?


Hi again Chris,


New learnings since the last reflection:
Learning how to write effective survey questions was a great new piece of learning in the third week. Like I mentioned before, I administer course evaluations in the graduate school I work for. We are thinking about rewriting a few of our survey questions since they were written when we mainly had f2f instruction. Now that so many of our courses our online, we have got to update and I will be assisting in this process. 


I also enjoyed learning about scalability this week because sometimes I do not think my organization gets that right! Too often I think we decide to grow to increase our revenue, and ride off the Hopkins name, but then we produce less than stellar classes and we do not stop to think about the consequences of higher enrollment.


Most difficult part of online program administration and evaluation:
Is this question referring to our group project or in general for online learning? I will focus on answering this question for our group project. Up to this point I think creating the program infrastructure will be difficult because we do not have many resources. We will need to use a free or nearly free course management system or social networking site to accomplish training for the client, A Better Tomorrow. My team has some good ideas in the works but I am hesitant as to how the infrastructure will be sustainable.

Reflection #1- Administration and Evaluation

Reflect on the content presented these past two weeks and how you have been able to apply your learning thus far. Reflect on the progress that you have made on your e-learning initiative evaluation plan and think about if you need any further clarification at this time.


Hello Chris!


My current position at Hopkins has me administering and managing our student evaluations, so I'm glad I have that basis, otherwise I think this content would have taken me longer to process. I've noticed my school is very good about conducting frequent formative evaluations, but I don't see the analysis coming into action that consistently or summative program evaluations being conducted. Perhaps this kind of evaluation is taking place at a more senior level or when accreditation happens, but we have some online programs that could use some tweaking and they are not getting it! I would also like to state that what I'm hoping to gain and apply from this course are the best processes of putting the data of evaluation into action. 


For my e-learning initiative evaluation plan, I will formulate a plan that evaluates the e-learning course I just designed in the Instructional Design course with Donna. The template seems very clear and I am not hesitant about working on that. Here is a brief summary of my e-learning initiative: 


My e-learning initiative will be teaching to adjunct professors in the graduate school I work for which caters to part-time students. Our adjunct instructors are working professionals and subject matter experts but receive little to any training on how to teach successfully, so I will address strategies/techniques to help them teach effectively in f2f classrooms. The teaching will be divided between 4 live Adobe Connect sessions, over a period of 4 weeks.

Reflection #2 - Instructional Design

Hi again Donna,



My responses are below:


Part I - Developing and Implementing e-Learning Initiatives- Do you plan to implement the e-learning initiative you developed? Be honest. If yes, what are some specific challenges that you foresee in implementing the initiative? How do you plan to overcome them? If you do not plan on implementing your initiative, why not? 

What other thoughts and ideas do you have for developing future adult e-learning initiatives in the context of your teaching and learning environment and/or work setting?



I would like to implement my e-learning initiative during the internship/capstone of the Online Teaching and Learning Certificate, but I would have to make it 1 session instead of 4 to attract faculty members to come. My organization really has a hard time getting faculty to come to trainings, they don't even attend mandatory trainings for Blackboard basics! With f2f training we use food to lure them in, but with this online format I think that will be the incentive that they don't have to travel anywhere and can access the training from their home or office. 


Future e-learning initiatives will revolve around training and teaching adjunct faculty in my work setting. A possibility exists that I might be able to facilitate a 4 week online training for faculty about Blackboard and online teaching and learning techniques. I am excited for that! I started this program with the vision of joining our Instructional Resource Center (IRC) or something like it at another school and my current workplace has been more than willing to let me use what I've learned in my job or help out the IRC. 


In the future I hope to become a subject matter expert in something beyond teaching how to teach. Thoughts are still forming in my head about what that will be, but I'm envisioning spending a good portion of my career in online learning whether teaching or designing it. 


Part II- Use of Templates for Assignments- This part of your reflection is for me personally.  Each time I offer a course, I take notes throughout the experience about what works, what doesn't, and then I make revisions accordingly.  I would be curious to know specifically your thoughts about the use of templates to complete main assignments.  In our Week 4 Assessments discussion, we talked about offering choices for different formats of assessments, and the use of templates doesn't foster that.

Consider the main assignments in this course, and the use of the templates. Were they helpful, relevant, apppropriate?  Would you have preferred more freedom and flexibility?    Feel free to be as candid as you want! I am open to opinions and suggestions!



I appreciated the use of templates because I am not familiar with online learning. The templates gave me a framework and I let my creativity take over. If you had not provided the templates I would have been lost and it would have taken me twice as much time to complete the assignments. I'm a big believer in setting the groundwork right before letting students have total freedom and the templates allowed for that. You have given me much freedom and flexibility with this last assignment and I am most grateful for that! 


Thanks for a great course Donna! Hope to meet you in person one day!


Best,
Kelli 

Reflection #1- Instructional Design

Share your thoughts and ideas about the e-learning initiative you are developing.  Have you selected a topic yet, and if so, what is it and why did you choose this particular initiative?  What knowledge or skills do you bring to designing the initiative?   If you haven't selected an initiative, what are you considering?  Do you need assistance with identifying a topic or narrowing your focus?

Are there any other areas of the course where you need assistance or feedback?


Hi Donna!


Here is my first reflection for the Instructional Design course.




E-learning initiative topic:
The topic I have selected is a carry over from my Adult Learning Certificate internship. For that internship I conducted a workshop where I taught adjunct faculty members at the graduate school I work for many new and interesting techniques/strategies (web 2.0 tools, quick assessments, and reciprocal teaching concepts) to engage their students in the f2f classroom. Many instructors wanted to participate but getting to our Washington, DC campus where I taught the training was a challenge because like many adults, our instructors stretch themselves thin every night of the week. Some of them wondered if the training would be held on the web, and if it was they would be happy to attend in that format. So I saved that thought and will now be taking that f2f training and running it in Adobe Connect. I am excited to do it! I do not think many of them have used Adobe Connect before, or if they have experience with Adobe Connect it is likely they were only listening to a webcast and not actively using all the features of Adobe Connect. I felt confident giving the f2f training because I had just finished the course work for the Adult Learning Certificate, and I got a lot of positive feedback from our faculty who attended. By the time I deliver this initiative, I will have completed the Online Teaching and Learning Certificate. I am also familiar with Adobe Connect because I use it at work.  I see a great need for more of these types of trainings in my workplace because our f2f instructors our subject matter experts but get little, if any training on how to teach effectively. We do have an excellent Instructional Resource Center in my workplace but all of their resources and time revolves around training our online faculty. In addition, when I look over our student evaluations, students consistently comment that they crave engaging f2f classrooms. They get very frustrated when they pay such a high tuition rate and sometimes only receive power point lectures from our instructors.


Question:
I am concerned about the short length of this initiative though, it will probably be only 1 hour in length. I am wondering if that is sufficient for the assignment.


Comment:
This is my first online class and I've had a pleasant experience so far. I still feel like I do not know my classmates that well, but that will come in time. I see how working in an online team provides a social experience to the class because I do know my teammates moderately well at this point.


Thanks for your feedback!




by the way: my co-worker Michelle Mentzer says hi!