Reflection on Module 1

During this first module I have learned so much about online learning.  One of the major concepts, which are foundational to online learning, is the ability to build and maintain community.  Building community within an online environment proves to be more difficult and is something the facilitator and students need to be very intentional in harvesting.  It is imperative for a professor to encourage collaboration among the students and in order to do so it often times requires making collaborative projects mandatory.

Along with building community there are numerous factors to consider when building and facilitating an online course.  A few of these factors include using a variety of mediums to engage the students, set clear expectations, constant communication, and consider the possibility of students having learning disabilities.  Understanding the impact of these factors allow me to be more analytical about the structure of a course and how to remain impactful to the student audience. 

After being a participant in several online classes the use of various mediums to present the material sticks out as important.  We read about a few different programs to utilize to create audio and video files including: Jing, Screencast-o-matic, voicethread, tokbox, creately, and teambox.  I have been part of classes, which do not use these tools much if at all.  I believe the challenge for myself would be finding the balance between overusing and not using them enough.  Many of our resources reiterate the importance for videos and audio files and how much more they are valued over text.  My issue would be determining how long these files could be to continue to captivate the audience.  I guess it will be important to evaluate the multimedia a professor uses and analyze what value it brings to the class.

One concept, which was mentioned in one of our readings, is the practice of recognizing go-getters.  I personally have a love language of words of affirmation, so the idea of getting a message or encouragement from my professor would certainly affirm my effort.  I had not thought specifically about sending individual messages to those students, which I believe could be a great idea.  Being able to encourage these students continues to set a standard for other students.  Another concept along these lines is the idea of using student moderators.  I found this idea very interesting because my immediate response was this would not work, but I do like the fact this concept would require students to take ownership of the material and lead their peers.  As I continued to read about this idea it just keep making more and more sense because as different people moderate they also bring different perspectives which results in more learning.  The only concern I have is does it work?  Our reading emphasized in order for it to work there needs to be clear expectations, reminders for students about their turn to moderate, and input by the professor.

            After completing the Faculty Self-Assessment: Preparing for Online Teaching, I was able to reflect on many ways which I can further my knowledge of teaching an online course.  I have come to realize although I have the skillset needed to accomplish the tasks related to an online course and have the competency in the subject matter I lack in the experience in teaching others.  Therefore, this course will be elemental in deepening my understanding of the necessary objectives an online course will require.  It will also be important for me to glean information from other experienced online professors to help me along my journey.  It would be my hope that I would be able to build a support system, which I could turn to during a time while I was teaching a class.  I also plan to be able to look back on the several resources provided in this course as a reference during developing and facilitating an online course.

            This first module was eye opening and has reminded me of what being part of an online community and the amount of effort it will demand.  There are numerous components and technology options that can be included into a course.  The idea of leading a course seems somewhat overwhelming at this point, but look forward to learning more about the various components, how to use them, and discovering how to balance everything to create a complete and relevant learning experience.