EDTECH 504 Module 5 Reflection

The most important thing I learned in this class this semester is how important it is to provide interactivity within a course, especially between the learners, and to give value to that interactivity in the form of a grade, however small. This is the first course I have taken for the MET that did not include graded discussion boards in each assignment, and while I realize that I could have participated in the ungraded discussion boards, personal time factors did not encourage me to do anything beyond the graded assignments. In short, I have to admit that I was guilty of “social loafing,” as described by Koller, Harvey & Magnotta (n.d.). As a result, I have included more interactivity in the course that I designed during the first part of this semester. My school is on a quarter system, so I actually started teaching that class about halfway through the Boise State spring semester, and I believe that the students are more engaged with the class this quarter than they have been in previous quarters.

This concept of interactivity was also strongly influenced by many of the readings I did for the class, especially on the concepts of social constructivism, connectivism, and transactional distance. While each of these theories looks at interaction differently, each of them includes the notion that interpersonal networking is a vital component of successful learning. As a result of this research, I remain convinced that it is not sufficient to simply hand out assignments to be completed individually, especially for an online class. Giving students the opportunity to share ideas as they work on more complex assignments allows them to use the connectivist strategy of using shared knowledge in the creation of new ideas. Most students also benefit the opportunity to receive feedback from peers, as well as from seeing the course content from the perspective of their classmates. In Moore’s (1993) way of thinking, these activities help reduce the transactional distance between the learner and the course, which makes learning more effective.

A couple of weeks ago, I accepted a completely new, non-teaching job as a course designer and project manager through a business that specializes in online course development. During the interview process, I emphasized my beliefs that online courses should be as flexible as possible, to allow the student the ability to interact with the course content, with classmates, and with instructors. The department manager who interviewed me explained that one of the first courses students would take in this new program is a fast-paced intensive course on writing computer code, and she was worried that the intensity of the course could drive students out of the program. I suggested that the students be put in small teams of 3-5 students, and that assignments be completed as teams, rather than by individual students. She liked the idea that this structure would allow each student the opportunity to learn the skills required for the course, as well as give students a support network to encourage them to do well on each assignment.

For the AECT standards, I believe that the assignments for this course map the most closely to Standard 1, Design. As an example, the Module 1 Reflection looks at the ability to identify the learner and the learning context, and to identify appropriate strategies based on that context, which is described by Standard 1.1 Instructional System Design. My focus on the learner’s reaction to a connectivist-type course setting maps to both Standard 1.1 and to Standard 1.4 Learner Characteristics. As a different type of activity, the Peer Review of the Synthesis Paper maps primary to Standard 5, Evaluation. The ability to identify technology appropriate for a learning goal (Standard 5.1) was used to indicate whether the proposed technology was appropriate for the author’s stated learning goals. In addition, we had to use a rubric to evaluate the work, which maps to Standard 5.2, Criteria-Based Measurement.

References

Koller, V., Harvey, S., & Magnotta, M. (n.d.). Technology based learning strategies. Retrieved from http://www.doleta.gov/reports/papers/tbl_paper_final.pdf

Moore, M. G. (1993). Theory of transactional distance. Theoretical principles of distance education, 1, 22-38. Retrieved from http://www.c3l.uni-oldenburg.de/cde/support/readings/moore93.pdf