Your First Online Course: Care Instructions

Setting up your first online course can be a huge challenge but equipped with the expertise of others more experienced in it and a self-assuring ‘mantra’ of your personal choice you can do it!

Technology

Boettcher & Conrad (2010) stress the importance of not overloading yourself as an instructor while designing the course for the first time and be open to accepting help from your students and just add more tools to your course when you teach it the second or the third time. Mostly what you need to get acquainted with or decide on is the Course Management System (CMS) and what components you are going to use within it. As I explained in my previous post I will be relating all the questions to the real course I am thinking of designing. My asynchronous Mnemonics course 2 weeks long will be delivered using the following technology: Blackboard CMS and an added synchronous collaboration tool like Skype or OOVOO messenger or Elluminate depending on how big the class is going to be. The tools within the CMS I am planning to use are quizzes, discussion boards and announcements. I will be delivering the content through short subtitled video lectures that will be immediately followed by taking a related quiz. For example, after learning about association method used for memorising vocabulary the students will be asked to choose the best association for a selection of vocabulary units. There also will be text material available for download but I am planning to make content interactive to suit all learners’ individual styles.

Expectations

To make sure learners feel comfortable I will present them with a set of expectations through the announcement tool. They will be informed about the netiquette, deadlines and contact information (however most of my first class for the first course are going to be the students that I have been teaching synchronously for quite some time, I will still make sure they have my mobile number as well as email and Skype contacts).  

The rubric for their discussion activities with explanation for grading is another important step that will ensure participation as Boettcher & Conrad (2010) said 'if something can be done anywhere and anytime, it usually never gets done'.

Discussion

Additionally discussion questions and structure of discussion and its facilitation are at the core of my consideration in creating this course. Boettcher & Conrad (2010) describe discussion boards as the 'campfire' around which course community and bonding occur at the same time that content processing and knowledge development are happening.  I am still in the process of designing the questions but I can share one already. The idea is that students will be given up to 10 words that are easy to create mnemonics for and asked to come up with mnemonics to at least 3 of them and post them by a certain day. They will also be invited to post up to 5 words that their groupmates will come up with mnemonics for. They are required to post their mnemonics suggestions to at least 3 other students’ vocabulary units. This is an open end problem solving question that is challenging and stimulating but at the same time is conducted in a game like form. This discussion activity gives students a way to describe how they are integrating incoming knowledge with their existing knowledge structure, which is coincidentally what mnemonics is all about.

Presence

This week also taught me how to establish presence for both an instructor and students in a fun informal way through ice breaking activities. You can see my Little Men and Little Miss activity that I am planning to use in my course here.  Boettcher & Conrad (2010) emphasise that establishing presence is crucial to building trust between the participants of the learning process as without it it's impossible for students to be open and vulnerable about their beliefs. Also Pratt and Palloff (2010) suggest that you can refer to your students' bios throughout the course to make informed comments and responses.

References:

Boettcher, J., & Conrad, R.-M. (2010). Ten best practices for teaching online. In The Online Teaching Survival Guide (pp. 36–47). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Video: Laureate Education (Producer). (2010). Launching the online learning experience [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

Go on, Have an Icebreaker!

Mr Men Books by Roger Hargreaves

I am a big believer in fun in education as are Pratt and Palloff (2010). That’s why I came up with 2 activities that tick several boxes in an Effective Icebreaker Checklist designed by Conrad and Donaldson (2011). It’s fun and non-threatening, it is person-focused, not content-focused, it requires learners to read one-another’s entries, it requires using imagination and being creative, and learners are required to read each other’s entries and respond to one another (only in one of them they do not directly respond to one another but have a follow-up quiz instead).

Black Box Recorder - Child Psychology

Activity: Mr Men and Little Miss

Method: Asynchronous

Instructions: the learners are invited to open the images of the characters from popular children’s books ‘Mr Men’ and ‘Little Miss’ which Roger Hargreaves commenced in 1971 and which since then got televised as well (See the images attached). The students and the instructor are invited to find 2 positive and 2 negative characters of Mr Men or Little Miss  that best describe their personality. They are also invited to comment on at least one other student’s description that is similar to theirs or someone’s whose they find exceptionally funny or clever.

Notes: Additionally students are invited to use the picture of a chosen Mr Man or Little Miss as their avatar if they don’t feel like putting up one of their own.

The technique I described goes well with Pratt and Palloff (2010) speaking of the importance of the informal introduction that should be initiated by the instructor, they noted that many instructors’ introduction sounds like their Curriculum Vitae. They continue saying that talking more about the human aspect of their life an instructor becomes more of an equal player in the learning community. At the same time an instructor can provide their students with a visual, a graphic image that some students might want to use as their avatar instead of a photo if they prefer to stay anonymous for personal reasons (Pratt and Palloff, 2010).

Pratt and Palloff (2010) recommend to throw another icebreaking activity in the middle of the course and reenergise the course in a fun way. For the middle of the course ice-breaker I would recommend the students to use a choice of interactive software that is very easy to use and one of them (Voki) fits the description of the free software Pratt and Palloff (2010) were talking about saying you can have an animal, a person or even a plant talking with your recorded voice.

Activity: Create a Voki / Prezi / Glogster

Method: Asynchronous

Instructions: the learners are asked to create a one minute Voki / a short Prezi / a Glogster Poster introduction that is centered around a question “What are the 3 things most important to you in your life and why?” for which they will receive extra credit. The follow up activity that goes into the next week is a little fun quiz that includes questions from all the students’ Voki’s / Prezi’s / Glogster’s and those who get all the questions right will receive some more extra credit.

Notes: This activity will also get students to use a fun easy app that can be used in the future in a presentation setting. The instructor will determine how much credit the students get for doing the task but the credit system makes the activity more motivated than if it is just optional.

Examples of all the software used you can see on my school’s website (it is in Russian unfortunately)

Prezi and Voki Here

and Glogster Here

Little Miss Books  by Roger Hargreaves

Here is mine: I am a Little Miss Everything really like most of us but one of the strongest in me is Little Miss Giggles (7). I love giggling over things and making people smile, I even have a ‘Whimsy’ day where a chosen friend and I are supposed to come up with whimsical ideas over a glass of cider. Thus was born an apron that has  Vladimir Putin (the infamous Russian President) cross-stitched on it. Big success that was. Actually after reading what I have just written I might be assigned Little Miss Cuckoo (not invented yet).

And I think of myself as Little Miss Wise (21), too. I am a big fan of Eckhart Tolle Spiritual teachings, which is a mix of Zen and Mystical Christianity. Always and forever stopping myself from having the end of the world exaggerated reaction to things. Like when Ruble is plummeting (my business depends on that currency as it caters to Russians) I keep reminding myself that nothing in life has an absolute value and that the world of form is transient and ever changing.

My husband says I imagine myself to be Little Miss Wise but I am in reality Little Miss Scary and Little Miss Stubborn. Scary because I am Russian, all British people I know do not get tired of making KGB spy and other inappropriate jokes about me. Stubborn because I sometimes find it hard to see others’ point of view, though I am working on it.

All in all this is what my ginger half-Irish cheeky twit of a husband says,  I would never say such things about myself, what a nuisance and how simply dare he (in my best British voice)! But I love him really :)

References:

Conrad, R.-M., & Donaldson, J. A. (2011). Learning in an online environment. In Engaging the Online Learner (pp. 1–14). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Video: Laureate Education (Producer). (2010). Launching the online learning experience [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

Sofware:

Voki http://www.voki.com

Prezi http://prezi.com

Glogster http://edu.glogster.com