Month: February 2017

As I think about how I’ve planned my online course, I realize that I have strived to emulate a lot of what I’ve experienced as a student in the Digital Learning and Leading program. Every course that I have taken in this program has challenged me to learn skills on my own, at the level where I am. There are students in my classes with far more educational experience and technical savvy than I have, yet I am able to take the same courses with them and build on my own knowledge and experiences to learn and move forward. We all come from different backgrounds, teach different subjects to different grade levels, but we can still collaborate and learn from each other. This is what I want to create in my own courses because I have seen first-hand how well it works and how empowering it is from the student perspective.

In my course, I chose to use Fink’s 3-column table as my instructional design model. I could also use UbD for an online course, but I prefer the 3-column table because it is simple and incorporates the learning goals that I feel are the most important: foundational, application, integration, human dimensions and caring, and probably the most important: learning how to learn. The assessment and learning activities are built around those learning goals. I used the 3-column table to build my Radiography course online, and it now meets all the learning goals I want to incorporate. Before learning to use the table, my Radiography course focused too much on foundational knowledge and application, but largely left out the other goals.

Planning and implementing online learning from a leadership perspective requires that everyone (admin, teachers, IT) work together and maintain the same focus. Professional Development will be vital in order to get everyone on the same page. In one of our videos this week, Don Knezek, discusses the importance of co-learning (teacher-student, student-student and teacher-educational peers) because in our digital age, everyone has access to so much information; teachers can’t expect to be all-knowing experts on their topics (ChangSchool, 2011). We need to adopt a Constructivist mindset because we can learn so much from each other; utilizing discussion boards properly can help facilitate co-learning. Another way to utilize technology for co-learning is discussed in the video on Omaha public schools and how they use Office 365 to collaborate: teachers from all grade levels can use Office 365 to communicate with each other and share tools that will make them more effective teachers (Microsoft in Education, 2016).

According to Bates (2015), quality can be defined as “teaching methods that successfully help learners develop the knowledge and skills they will require in a digital age”. Not all online courses provide these skills, and I believe this is where some people become misguided into thinking that online courses are inferior to traditional face-to-face ones. Online courses are so new that quality assurance practices are just now catching up and being implemented. Only a few states currently have specific requirements for teachers who are teaching online (iNACOL, 2015). Since online teaching requires different skills, it makes sense to ensure that an online course is designed specifically for an online environment for it to be successful. I want to hold myself accountable for the online courses I design, and also help my colleagues design better, more effective online courses that rival or even surpass the quality of traditional classroom courses. This takes the cooperation of many people at our institution: our Academic Dean, Program Director, IT, and the instructors.

 

 

References

Bates, A.W. (2015) Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning (Chapters 11-12). Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/

iNACOL (2015). How to Start and Online Learning Program: A Practical Guide to Key Issues and Policies. Retrieved from http://www.onlineprogramhowto.org

Microsoft in Education. (2016). Omaha Public Schools turn to Office 365 to streamline professional development. [Video File] retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ3fv3n9RFs

ChangSchool. (2011). Perspectives: Teacher skills in a digital age. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_BJcRVYQsE

I chose to develop a blended version of my Dental Radiography course because I think courses with didactic and lab components are perfect for it. Students can learn through different media (PowerPoints, textbook readings, videos, and discussions) online- on their own time and at their own pace. In lab, they can receive face-to-face instruction with hands-on learning and creative activities that reinforce and deepen the knowledge they learned earlier online.

When I think about other courses that would work well with this format, two particular courses that I teach come to mind. The first is Oral Embryology and Histology. This is a course taken in the junior year of the dental hygiene program and provides a foundation for understanding concepts in Oral Pathology (the other course I would like to blend). Oral Embryology and Histology would be wonderful as a blended course because it has a challenging didactic component and a lab component. I think it would really benefit the students to have the ability to learn the information at their own pace with helpful links to videos and information that might clarify difficult topics. The lab component would consist of guided activities including looking at histology slides under the microscope and mini-projects related to the online modules.

My other course, Oral Pathology, would be fantastic as a blended course. I had the experience of taking Oral Pathology online when I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Dental Hygiene. That online course actually used the same textbook that I currently use in the class I teach. I’ve always wanted to include more case studies in the course, but never seem to have enough time. I would love to put most of what is currently taught in the classroom online so we can spend time working on case studies in class; I think it would really help them learn to apply their knowledge in a meaningful way.

 

This week, I created discussion posts for the online portion of my blended course. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I had to ensure that the discussion questions were broad enough to facilitate discussion on various topics within the parameters of the modules, but narrow enough to prevent too much vagueness. I also wanted to ensure that students are grasping the key concepts in the modules and can use that information to apply their knowledge to real-life situations. Another thing I worked on was aligning dates of exams with the discussions. Right now, the dates are imaginary, but I wanted to make sure I could figure out how to change dates around easily. I want to add links to the discussions in the weekly modules (right now the discussions have their own folder). If I can’t do that, I’ll move all the discussions into the modules for easy access. Working on my project this week was fun!