I thought that the last readings that were assigned were the most interesting. I was surprised that it seemed that hardly any other students chose to discuss the Hara, Bonk & Angeli article in the discussion board. Could it be that because it was the longer article that they did not read it?
The Hara, Bonk & Angeli article “Content Analysis of Online Discussion” raised some interesting issues regarding advantages and disadvantages with discussion boards. They stated that in their study rarely did students ever seem to have “real heated” discussions which led to taking sides, negotiating or compromising on an issue. The article stated: “There clearly is a pressing need to develop pedagogy that motivates students to electronically participate in class discussions beyond standard course requirements. Such pedagogical issues must be addressed before anyone can claim electronic learning success.” I totally find this to be true – too often people are agreeing with or complementing each other’s posts or they are sidetracked from the original topic.
The authors also state that a “lack of time reading all posted messages” is a problem which led to a “one-way, instead of two-way interaction.” I thought that their suggestion of having students divided into smaller discussion groups is a great idea! With this strategy students are not as likely to feel left out.
I have read that supposedly the anonymity of students in a discussion board helps timid or students who lack self-esteem to have the courage to post their thoughts and ideas that they may not discuss in a face-to-face class. I am not sure if this is always the case. There still seems to be those who dominate a discussion board online and there are still those who sit back and post only the minimal amount either because they do not feel they are knowledgeable enough or they may not believe they are articulate or because ???
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Module 7 Reflections
Completing my final rough draft was both exciting and exhausting for me. I believe that I have developed some activities that I will be able to put to use in my online courses in the future. I have already shared some ideas with my office mate and she now wants to take this course next year.
I tried to embed an avatar within the body of my final project but I found that you are only allowed to put it into a web page. You can get a free trial at www.oddcast.com. When you get to the home page click on products at the top of the page and then click on SitePal. It allows you to do a demo and if you want you can get a free trial for 15 days. It was fairly easy to do and I was surprised how simple it was to record my voice, you call a number on the phone and record your message and it is instantly entered into you page. It's great - our librarian uses this at our school's library page. I'm thinking about using them to introduce activities. For a fee you can upload your own face.
Below is the avatar that I developed.
I tried to embed an avatar within the body of my final project but I found that you are only allowed to put it into a web page. You can get a free trial at www.oddcast.com. When you get to the home page click on products at the top of the page and then click on SitePal. It allows you to do a demo and if you want you can get a free trial for 15 days. It was fairly easy to do and I was surprised how simple it was to record my voice, you call a number on the phone and record your message and it is instantly entered into you page. It's great - our librarian uses this at our school's library page. I'm thinking about using them to introduce activities. For a fee you can upload your own face.
Below is the avatar that I developed.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Friday, October 31, 2008
Module 6 - Reflections
Readings
I thought that it was extremely interesting to compare the Casey and Khalsa course activities and to read the other students comments about what they will use in their course and why. It really helped clear up in my mind what type of activities I should use and why I am using them.
Working on my survey
I enjoyed developing the survey. I designed one for the midterm and used it in one of my courses. The students enjoyed completing the survey as well. For this open ended survey I had to take some time to consider what I would like to include that I could really use to help in my course. It wasn't as easy as I originally had thought. I will use this in the future and I imagine that it will be "tweaked" several times before the final version is complete.
Generally if I become frustrated with something it has to do with technology not working for me - either because of my lack of knowledge or becauce of a technical problem. Such was the case with my development of my survey. I know that you are assigned with a URL once you launch the survey and that you can only view the survey for ten days. I am not sure how to save the survey to be viewed after this ten days are up.
My Tentative Update on the Final ProjectFor my Final Project
I will work on my Developmental Psychology online course.The four learning objectives that I will use are:
• Compare the various theoretical frameworks as they apply to development.
• Analyze developmental issues related physical/biological, cognitive and psychological changes across the lifespan.
• Evaluate the integration of genetics and environmental influences on development.
• Describe the nature-nurture debate.
The technology that I am considering using for assessment are Wiki page, discussion board, survey, electronic portfolio and a blog.
I thought that it was extremely interesting to compare the Casey and Khalsa course activities and to read the other students comments about what they will use in their course and why. It really helped clear up in my mind what type of activities I should use and why I am using them.
Working on my survey
I enjoyed developing the survey. I designed one for the midterm and used it in one of my courses. The students enjoyed completing the survey as well. For this open ended survey I had to take some time to consider what I would like to include that I could really use to help in my course. It wasn't as easy as I originally had thought. I will use this in the future and I imagine that it will be "tweaked" several times before the final version is complete.
Generally if I become frustrated with something it has to do with technology not working for me - either because of my lack of knowledge or becauce of a technical problem. Such was the case with my development of my survey. I know that you are assigned with a URL once you launch the survey and that you can only view the survey for ten days. I am not sure how to save the survey to be viewed after this ten days are up.
My Tentative Update on the Final ProjectFor my Final Project
I will work on my Developmental Psychology online course.The four learning objectives that I will use are:
• Compare the various theoretical frameworks as they apply to development.
• Analyze developmental issues related physical/biological, cognitive and psychological changes across the lifespan.
• Evaluate the integration of genetics and environmental influences on development.
• Describe the nature-nurture debate.
The technology that I am considering using for assessment are Wiki page, discussion board, survey, electronic portfolio and a blog.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Module 5 - Reflections
I enjoyed reading Casey's course philosophy, objectives and activities. It had so many activities that it made it easy to complete our taxonomy assignment. It also is a good source of ideas for assessment to use in other courses.
It was good to revisit Bloom's Taxonomy again - however while I was surfing the web I came across a revision of Bloom's Taxonomy. I found this revision to be great! The language used to describe the levels is easier to understand and therefore use. According to the the page I visited at the APA ONLINE site Kevin Smythe & Jan Halonon in their article "Using the New Bloom's Taxonomy to Design Meaningful Assessments" stated that Bloom's Taxonomy has recieved many criticisms because it is out dated. The new adapted model is designed to "fit the needs of today's classroom by employing more outcom-oriented language, workable objectives, and changing nourns to active verbs. Most notably, knowledge has been converted to remember." I have included the link to this revision of Bloom's Taxonomy Chart www.apa.org/ed/new_blooms.html
As I read the articles on plagiarism it mentioned that it is much easier for students to take credit for work that is not their own. However, I also found that the use of the internet also makes it much easier to find the sources that the students have used to cheat. I thought the "turnitin" site was great! I plan on using this site if necessary in the future. I'm happy that it was included in our readings. I have begun to ask my students to print out the pages that they used when using the internet for research. This has substantially cut down on students plagiarizing.
I have a great sense of accomplishment at having been able to upload this table into my blog. I originally was not able to and in the process of getting help to do so I was introduced to a new tool - Scribd.com - I was able to sign up and save my file and embed it into this blog!!
My Tentative Update on the Final Project
For my Final Project I will work on my Developmental Psychology online course.
The four learning objectives that I will use are:
• Compare the various theoretical frameworks as they apply to development.
• Analyze developmental issues related physical/biological, cognitive and psychological changes across the lifespan.
• Evaluate the integration of genetics and environmental influences on development.
• Describe the nature-nurture debate.
The technology that I am considering using for assessment are Wiki page, discussion board, survey, media portfolio and a blog.
It was good to revisit Bloom's Taxonomy again - however while I was surfing the web I came across a revision of Bloom's Taxonomy. I found this revision to be great! The language used to describe the levels is easier to understand and therefore use. According to the the page I visited at the APA ONLINE site Kevin Smythe & Jan Halonon in their article "Using the New Bloom's Taxonomy to Design Meaningful Assessments" stated that Bloom's Taxonomy has recieved many criticisms because it is out dated. The new adapted model is designed to "fit the needs of today's classroom by employing more outcom-oriented language, workable objectives, and changing nourns to active verbs. Most notably, knowledge has been converted to remember." I have included the link to this revision of Bloom's Taxonomy Chart www.apa.org/ed/new_blooms.html
As I read the articles on plagiarism it mentioned that it is much easier for students to take credit for work that is not their own. However, I also found that the use of the internet also makes it much easier to find the sources that the students have used to cheat. I thought the "turnitin" site was great! I plan on using this site if necessary in the future. I'm happy that it was included in our readings. I have begun to ask my students to print out the pages that they used when using the internet for research. This has substantially cut down on students plagiarizing.
I have a great sense of accomplishment at having been able to upload this table into my blog. I originally was not able to and in the process of getting help to do so I was introduced to a new tool - Scribd.com - I was able to sign up and save my file and embed it into this blog!!
My Tentative Update on the Final Project
For my Final Project I will work on my Developmental Psychology online course.
The four learning objectives that I will use are:
• Compare the various theoretical frameworks as they apply to development.
• Analyze developmental issues related physical/biological, cognitive and psychological changes across the lifespan.
• Evaluate the integration of genetics and environmental influences on development.
• Describe the nature-nurture debate.
The technology that I am considering using for assessment are Wiki page, discussion board, survey, media portfolio and a blog.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Module 4 - Reflections
Mid-term Team Activity
I have worked in groups previously and have had some cases where all team members did not do their fair share or where there were problems deciding who would do want and how. When you do happen to get motivated and cooperative team members working on team assignments can be such as pleasure – as it was for me working on my mid-term with my group. I was very fortunate to have been placed in the team that I have was for this assignment. I believe that our team worked together well, communicated well and that we each did our assigned work well.
My Chosen Assessment Tool
For my research part of the team I looked into the survey tools for assessment. This was an interesting and fun assignment for me! In my face-to-face Developmental Psychology class for next week we will be discussing parenting styles and discipline. I developed a Zoomerang survey that had a pre-built template for educators. I was able to design a survey to find out students perceptions and ideas in regards to discipline as well as the demographics of the students. I wanted to use this information as a springboard for discussion and for their discipline research paper. I explained to my students why I was collecting the data and explained to them how I would use it. Most of the students were very willing to complete the survey and were very interesting in the results. After my class discussion next week I will include how this survey worked with this assignment! I am anxious about it. The students were also given extra credit points to complete the survey. I have included the link to the results. I’m not sure how long the results will be available. http://app.zoomerang.com/Report/ResultsPage.aspx?qn=1
Readings
I thought that this week’s readings were great! It is too bad that a discussion board was not put out to discuss the articles. For some of the previous articles I had a hard time finding topics that I really had an interest in discussing. Not so for these articles. As I read I normally highlight topics that I find interesting and I have many parts of these articles highlighted!
I will mention just a few of the topics from the readings that I thought were interesting. From the “Assessment and Online Teaching” http://pre2005.flexiblelearning.net.au/guides/assessment.pdf Article: providing assessment choices – something that I had not previously considered. Also the report discussed as a key issue the importance in “identifying what assessment methods can effectively be transferred to or be done better or differently alone” They also mentioned as a challenge how to measure individual performances with a group assignment.
I was surprised to read that there are counterviews to the benefits or validity of requiring students to participate in online chats, discussion forums, etc.. One of the dilemmas that they mentioned was that of assessing students participation in a fair and equitable way and how should this be qualified. I thought this was interesting because there are always people who will go way beyond what is required in the discussions and those who not. There are also those people who get angry (just like in a face-to-face class) at those people who “hog” the discussion.
From the Edutopia online article www.glef.org I enjoyed reading about applied learning and using rubrics to assess this. They stated that a well defined rubric is one that “both the student and the teacher clearly understand the criteria upon which the work is evaluated.” I agree with this however this can be a problem. In the article they gave an example of watching Julia Child make a soufflé… but the real test is to make on yourself. It reminded me of the cookie rubric that I participated in years ago. We came up with criteria to rate the cookie, size, texture, # of chips, and taste. The problem with this, as is with all rubrics, we have to take into consideration subjectivity. Not all of the participants in the cookie experiment agreed with the taste criteria – which is probably the most important aspect of judging food!
I have worked in groups previously and have had some cases where all team members did not do their fair share or where there were problems deciding who would do want and how. When you do happen to get motivated and cooperative team members working on team assignments can be such as pleasure – as it was for me working on my mid-term with my group. I was very fortunate to have been placed in the team that I have was for this assignment. I believe that our team worked together well, communicated well and that we each did our assigned work well.
My Chosen Assessment Tool
For my research part of the team I looked into the survey tools for assessment. This was an interesting and fun assignment for me! In my face-to-face Developmental Psychology class for next week we will be discussing parenting styles and discipline. I developed a Zoomerang survey that had a pre-built template for educators. I was able to design a survey to find out students perceptions and ideas in regards to discipline as well as the demographics of the students. I wanted to use this information as a springboard for discussion and for their discipline research paper. I explained to my students why I was collecting the data and explained to them how I would use it. Most of the students were very willing to complete the survey and were very interesting in the results. After my class discussion next week I will include how this survey worked with this assignment! I am anxious about it. The students were also given extra credit points to complete the survey. I have included the link to the results. I’m not sure how long the results will be available. http://app.zoomerang.com/Report/ResultsPage.aspx?qn=1
Readings
I thought that this week’s readings were great! It is too bad that a discussion board was not put out to discuss the articles. For some of the previous articles I had a hard time finding topics that I really had an interest in discussing. Not so for these articles. As I read I normally highlight topics that I find interesting and I have many parts of these articles highlighted!
I will mention just a few of the topics from the readings that I thought were interesting. From the “Assessment and Online Teaching” http://pre2005.flexiblelearning.net.au/guides/assessment.pdf Article: providing assessment choices – something that I had not previously considered. Also the report discussed as a key issue the importance in “identifying what assessment methods can effectively be transferred to or be done better or differently alone” They also mentioned as a challenge how to measure individual performances with a group assignment.
I was surprised to read that there are counterviews to the benefits or validity of requiring students to participate in online chats, discussion forums, etc.. One of the dilemmas that they mentioned was that of assessing students participation in a fair and equitable way and how should this be qualified. I thought this was interesting because there are always people who will go way beyond what is required in the discussions and those who not. There are also those people who get angry (just like in a face-to-face class) at those people who “hog” the discussion.
From the Edutopia online article www.glef.org I enjoyed reading about applied learning and using rubrics to assess this. They stated that a well defined rubric is one that “both the student and the teacher clearly understand the criteria upon which the work is evaluated.” I agree with this however this can be a problem. In the article they gave an example of watching Julia Child make a soufflé… but the real test is to make on yourself. It reminded me of the cookie rubric that I participated in years ago. We came up with criteria to rate the cookie, size, texture, # of chips, and taste. The problem with this, as is with all rubrics, we have to take into consideration subjectivity. Not all of the participants in the cookie experiment agreed with the taste criteria – which is probably the most important aspect of judging food!
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Module 3 Reflections
I thought that pairing the Bonk reading with the concept mapping assignment was a good match! It really caused me to take a look at all the educational technology that are out there and how I could use this technology to assess the learning objectives from my various courses. I am pleased that we have and will be using many of the technologies from Bonk’s list in this course. This has not only expanded my horizon to the many methods that are available out there, but has allowed me to have the opportunity to try or use these methods.
As I have mentioned in the discussions - one really has to make sure that they are using the technology tools to assess our learning objectives, and as Dr. Khalsa advised in the discussions: "Never design activities to fit the technology...do the opposite...allow the technology to be the tool that will advance and heighten the learning experience."
This has been a hectic week - especially since our team is busy researching and compiling data for our midterm. So far my only regret with the course is that I don’t have the time to devote to experimenting and further researching all the activities as well as being able to read all the discussions.
As I have mentioned in the discussions - one really has to make sure that they are using the technology tools to assess our learning objectives, and as Dr. Khalsa advised in the discussions: "Never design activities to fit the technology...do the opposite...allow the technology to be the tool that will advance and heighten the learning experience."
This has been a hectic week - especially since our team is busy researching and compiling data for our midterm. So far my only regret with the course is that I don’t have the time to devote to experimenting and further researching all the activities as well as being able to read all the discussions.
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