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Designing
Your Online
Classroom How do we stop
asking ourselves "How am I going to teach
this topic" and instead ask ourselves
"What are my students going to
learn…?" (Michael
Lindeman) Moderating and
Facilitating Online teaching requires good
moderating and facilitating skills. According to
Gregg Kearsley (Online education: Learning and
teaching in cyberspace, Wadsworth: 2000),
"moderating involves encouraging students to
participate in discussion forums and conferences,
ensuring that certain students don't dominate,
keeping discussions focused on the topic at hand,
bringing out multiple perspectives, and
summarizing/synthesizing the highlights of
discussion. Facilitating means providing
information that will help students complete their
assignments, suggesting ideas or strategies for
them to pursue in their course work, and getting
students to reflect on their response and work"
(pp. 84-85). We don't ask for much, do
we?? Kearsey goes on to say that
the role of an online moderator and facilitator
significantly changes the teacher's role and
workload. "It requires the teacher to pay more
attention to the social dynamics and patterns of
interaction in the class....There is much less
emphasis on presenting information and more on
helping students find information" (p.
85). Read: As you read, think about how
you will teach your discipline online. What special
challenges does your discipline present to a
moderator/facilitator in an online
discussion? A.
Now that you've got a good idea of how
to introduce your course to your
students, and have identified learning
outcomes, it's time to design teaching
strategies and learning activities to
meet those outcomes. What do you want
students to know, do, or feel/think
about a topic? During the first
week of this 2-week unit, design at
least two detailed teaching
strategies and accompanying learning
activities to meet specific learning
objectives for your course/module.
Specify what learning objective is to
be met, what you as instructor will do,
what the students will do, and how
learning will be evaluated. Use the
following questions to guide
you: Post your
teaching strategies and learning
activities in the
forum
for Unit 4A
for ("Teaching and Learning
Activities"). ST.
PETERSBURG COLLEGE, a
community college in Florida,
has set up a sample online
course on its Web page. The
course,which covers the basics
of taking an online course at
the college, is brief and free
to the public:
http://chronicle.com/free/2002/01/2002012301u.htm
FOR MORE
about distance education in
academe in the Chronicle of
Higher Ed, go to:
http://chronicle.com/distance There
are lots of examples of
Web-based courses on the Net.
If you'd like to see some of
my other online courses, go
to: http://www.sonoma.edu/users/n/nolan/n400/
(undergrad nursing research
course) http://www.sonoma.edu/users/n/nolan/n505/
(graduate nursing course in
ethics) Each of
these courses has too many
students to manage an online
discussion in one section.
Hence I've divided each course
into two WebCT sections (Nurs
400A and Nurs 400B, and Nurs
505A and Nurs 505B). I am
fortunate to have an outside
expert who is paid to help
facilitate the discussions in
each of these courses. If
you'd like to see the
discussion areas, you can
self-register for them in
WebCT by going to the SSU home
page, clicking on Information
Technology, then on myWebCT,
and finally on Add course.
Scroll to Nursing, and then to
any of the sections
above.
Some
specifics about
feedback: Feedback
should be constructive and
respectful. Point out the
positive along with your
suggestions for improvement
or further enhancement.
We're
looking for thoughtful and
focused commentary that
will help improve the
learning activities. In
your comments, try to go
beyond "good job," or
"looks fun." As
always with these discussions, everyone
needs to moderate input so that
feedback is fairly equally distributed
among all participants. Home Contents Syllabus Intro 1 2 3 4 5 6 Group Summary Assignments WebCT Instructors |
