I haven’t blogged before either and in a Luddite kind of way don’t feel too comfortable with it. I have never engaged much with social media/Facebook/Twitter etc as I find the blurring between what (I think) should be private/public very troubling in general – although I know I need to engage more from an academic/professional point of view. So that has put me off blogging (and I am not sure how public this blog is anyway).
So back to reflections on Week1.
I set up an online course (badly) about 5 years ago and have never felt comfortable with it. It does not evaluate well either. I thought it would be replaced before now (but that’s another story). I am running another online course for the first time this semester. So I badly need this training.
The first course is basically just a load of stuff that the students need to read. There are four online sessions that I record but not many students turn up in person.They record a presentation half way through the course as one of their assignments and this works quite well (they e mail me a PowerPoint recording). But I have minimal interaction with them apart from this (which I know is not good).
Week 1 has given me a few pointers which I can use.
I set up an Introductions discussion for the first course – as Ros did. I know this sounds very elementary and I should have done it before – but I generally did Introductions during the first online sessions (although of course not everyone came. Doh!).
I have set up two extra online sessions for help with student assignments and have asked them to post questions on the Linoit board so I can prepare answers before the sessions. No questions posed yet though – but it’s another point of interaction to get students to engage.
The webinar was very useful. I liked the poll and the students being able to write down thoughts and I will definitely use this to enhance the online sessions.
I am also in Week 5 of the second course, running for the first time. This takes the form of traditional lectures. delivered online and recorded, with a follow-up session the following week. This course is different from the first as I have tried to minimise stuff within the Canvas site that students need to read, but have two set text books (that are available online) and I give students work to do between sessions. Again, I am looking forward to the next ‘lecture’ where I will try to make it more interactive. I have also now used Linoit on this course too.
So, yes, this is all very basic. But I am feeling more positive that my online courses can be improved with just a little bit of extra effort.
Josie, what a lovely blog post. I really enjoyed reading it and learning about your experiences. We all have to go through a learning process. I can think of things I have done in the past that make me shudder slightly as I know what I have learned since! It is great that there are some things that you can take away immediately to start using with your students. Next blog post could be about how those innovations have gone? Thanks for sharing.