Thanks for your participation in Lesson 7 discussion and shared your learning experiences, thoughts, and reflections on distributed learning. Your thoughts and reflections are very valuable.
Online discussions are important learning experiences in ETC645 because we value interactive and collaborative learning is distributed learning system. The purposes of online discussions are (just name a few):
- Enhance three types of interaction: learner-learner; learner-instructor; & leaner-content.
- Engage learners in critical thinking
- Respond to open ended discussion question requires higher order thinking because we need to justify our arguments.
- Moderating discussions require higher and better understanding in content.
- Increase online social presence.
- Enhance building of online learning community.
I hope you had good learning experiences in our seven lesson discussions. It was challenging but frequently, students would agree they learn the most from their classmates via lesson discussions. This is a perfect example of Learner-Learner interaction.
Overall Reflection
In lesson 7, we integrated and were engaged in new types of online discussions and online learning, Survey Discussion/Learning which is engaging learners in participating learning survey, reflect their survey results, and learn from other learners. This is a new concept of network and social learning. In the past, frequently we tool survey and have never received any survey results and have a chance to reflect on the survey results.
With new emerging survey technologies, such as Google Docs' Form, we can create online surveys in a few minutes and share the survey results with learners with visual figure or charts etc. Survey respondents can compare and contrast their survey responses to the survey participants as a whole. In fact, online learners can take such surveys on regular basis, for example, pre or post semester, or every semester to observe their own progress and growth in the survey content areas. Survey discussion and learning generally provide more substantial results to help us to know where we are and what we should improve in the future.
Several of you have asked whether you can use these surveys for your own teaching and learning purposes. Yes, feel free to use them.
I hope this new discussion and learning experiences have been useful and positive to you.
Below are my reflections on each discussion question we had in Lesson 7 Discussion. My reflections were posted to our discussion board as well.
Regards,
Chih
KEY-1-7-week Instruction
Chih's Reflection
Based on observations, many of you focused on your feedback and comments on convenience, satisfactions, content load, and personal time management aspects. Very valuable! I noticed that Connectivist instruction designs were not discussed comprehensively. As experts in online instructional designers, we should be able to analyze 7-week course instructions from instructional design aspect. 7-week instructions are so called minimester courses. Some students commented it is almost impossible to learn the content within 7 weeks vs. 16 weeks. I would like to us to ask ourselves these questions to conclude our course.
· Is effective learning all about learning content?
· If not, what other thing learner should learn in online instructions?
· Many of us would agree effective online learning should engage learners in learn how and what to learn with what tools in additional to the content.
· Is 7-week instruction provide enough time to learn how/what to learn?
Is Connectivist learning theory relevant to this learning concept (to learn how/what to learn with what online tools?)? Continue challenging yourself this question because we will use this question to continue our ETC655 instructions which would learn about Connectivist/Connectivism, an emerging learning theory.
KEY-2-PLE
Chih's Reflection
Is Personal Learning Environment (PLE) a new concept for effective teaching and learning? Shouldn't learning always be personalized and individualized? How may digital technology enhance PLE? Web 2.0 tools integrated with the concept of PLE will enable authentic learner-centered and learner-driven applications for more individualized learning instructions. Self-regulated learning is critical to both face-to-face learning and online learning, and is indispensable in PLEs. Learning is always personal, constructive, ubiquitous, collaborative, and connective. While PLE is powered by technology, its design and applications should be firmly rooted in the theoretical framework of pedagogy. ePLE may not come naturally because frequently we, as students, are provided with ready-use PLE, like BBLearn PLE; therefore, some learners may lack of PLE building and organizing skills and knowledge. Would you agree we should prepare new online learning literacy, PLE?
KEY-3-Mobile app for ETC645
Chih's Reflection
I really appreciate your feedback on ETC645 mobile app. I will present your feedback to ETC course/curriculum team. I hope we will our ETC645 app and/or other course apps available for our program.
KEY-4-Two posting periods for lesson discussions
Chih's Reflection
I would like to share my story and reflections with you to help you obtain better understanding on online discussion integration and designs. When I taught online courses 15 years ago, I valued the effectiveness of online discussion to enhance learner-learner interaction. I integrated it into my online teaching. I told my online students that we needed to participate our online discussions. At the end of lessons, no one posted anything. I asked the students. They indicated online discussion activities were not required so they did not participate since they were busy for other required course activities.
In the next course, I made online discussion as required with assigned grade points. The students did not post their postings until the last day of each lesson or last minutes. It lacked learner-learner interaction because most did not read others' postings and posted their responses in the last minutes. Additionally, many postings did not respond to the original questions. Many postings simply said "I agree," "I like your point," or "Great idea."
So I updated my online discussion guidelines with two posting periods, and with additional requirements for each posting period. It is like our lesson discussion requirements.
Frequently, as online teachers or online instructional designers, we may think simply just tell our students what to do would be enough to achieve effective teaching and learning, like what we do in FTF instructions. Unfortunately, asynchronous online discussions require much more online design guidelines and ideas. We could not replicate what we do in FTF to instruct it online. I hope this helps you to understand the importance of online instructional design.
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