Today was packed with ways you can engage your students in your online course, you, and with each 0ther. Reflect upon what you learned today that will help you with the development of your online course. What did you find most helpful today and what questions do you still have?
I appreciated working with a blog site. I need to consider using this for my class. A couple years ago I had graduate students set up blog sites for their portfolio’s. It was met with some resistance, especially from students who were over 40. The 20 somethings enjoyed the exercise. I also appreciate the instructor resources! Thanks!
Glad to hear it, Barb! Perhaps getting students accustomed to commenting in a class blog would help “break the ice” for the older students before getting them involved in setting up their own blog site. I’ve also found that when I tell students the log-term benefits of doing something such as setting up and ePortfolio in a blog site, they tend to buy in to the project a bit more.
The amount of technology discussed today was somewhat overwhelming, however, the way the information was presented was manageable. Having the list of resources is beneficial since I will not remember everything we talked about today. I am extremely excited about the potential use of the u.osu.edu website to complete activities. The blog site will allow for multiple modalities (media) to be used by the student to complete an assignment.
By any chance, does ODEE offer online instructor collaboration type sessions? It would be nice to attend a session with other people who teach online course to discuss strategies, etc in an open forum type setting. I find that I always learn a new way to do things or a different strategy when I collaborate with others outside of my area of expertise.
Thanks!!!
Ah-ha! That’s a great idea! We will definitely see about offering collaboration sessions for online instructors. Thanks for mentioning it here.
I definitely will start up a blog site for my future courses. I do worry about the larger course not being conducive to student postings. I probably would still lean towards discussion boards for the large sections. I do like the idea of making the blog available to industry folks so that they might be able to respond to student posts – I don’t believe this is possible in the LMS.
Questions for today:
What are thoughts on mixing groups during discussion boards? I like the idea of leader, feedback and grader, but I also would like to mix the groups up during the semester so people here different opinions and interact with different people.
Is there a list of other professors who have taught extensively on-line that would be willing to share there thoughts on the transition from in-person to on-line and the potential pitfalls? Also, how does running multiple sections of the same course (one online vs one in person) go?
Michael, these are all great questions. Let’s talk about them this morning with the group before we get started with guest speakers.
http://ucom.osu.edu/photo-gallery/?galAlbum=15
Your stock photo
Hi Jamie,
Was this link to the OSU photo gallery posted for a specific reason?
I was surprised by the number of “cool” options available to support the development of an online course. The tools are so abundant that the issue becomes how to pick and choose. I understand we should incorporate these tools progressively but it may still be difficult with so many cjoices pick the best one or two that apply to a specific course.
Hi Wladimiro,
Yes, it is hard to sift through the abundant resources available. My suggestion is to figure out what you want students to do in your course, such as case studies, and then look at the resources that would help you present the case in a manner other than text or resources that students could use to communicate about the case or present their solutions. Here are just a few ideas using OSU supported tools:
U.OSU is a great place for a case to be presented and have students discuss it. Students could also be in small groups in the Carmen discussion board to discuss different cases and then create a presentation together (in the manner of their choice) that they could post in the whole class discussion board or to the class blog site.
You make some excellent points! While there have indeed been studies on the effectiveness of homework, there hasn’t to my knowledge been any conclusive findings on how much is too much or too little. What this, and other comments seem to make clear though, is the need for a general online faculty learning community. Such a community could discuss very topical and relevant best practices that work within OSU. Stand by for more thoughts and details on this!