Two Courses, One Reflection
Posted on December 8th, 2008 by mkrill
Rewind…
Last fall (2007), I participated in a graduate course entitled, Teaching in the 21st Century: The Need for Change. This course was totally online ~ my first experience with a totally online course. I learned plenty about shifting practice in teaching, but most importantly (for me) I learned a lot about myself and how I learn.
I have always been a good student. I do the work and generally perform fine on assessments. However, this course was different in that I was expected to set my own pace for working through the material, while meeting established deadlines along the way. It was also my responsibility to determine what was important from the readings and video lectures. An online course puts the bulk of responsibility on the student.
Once I realized that I’m a bit of a procrastinator and often save the bulk of work for a one time session, I was able to keep moving and get the work done. This will be an important thing to remember as more online courses become a reality for younger students. We will have to teach them to manage their time better!
I learned that reflection is the most important part of the coursework. The readings were important and so were the discussions, but the time taken to compose responses to readings and discussions was more time than I think I have ever invested in learning.
In an online course, no one is telling you to ‘remember this’ or ‘this will be on the test’. It’s up to the student to pay careful attention and make critical decisions about what is important.
This particular class ended with a research paper. Now, I had not completed a research paper in many years (too many to mention:). I gathered the recommended number of resources ~ print, online, etc. and sat down to write the paper. I wrote the paper in one day, although I had probably been forming it in my mind for a couple of weeks. I had worked hard throughout the course to stay on top of posting reflections and discussions, but when it came to the paper, I was not nearly as motivated. I was more just working to ‘get it done’.
Fast Forward…
This fall (2008) , I have been participating in a face to face course, Web 2.0 and Interactive E-Learning. This course has been a great chance to explore online tools for learning. It might seem odd for this type of course to be face to face, but it has really been helpful to work through how AND when to use/not use many of the tools.
This course had us keeping a blog to reflect and once again, I found myself thinking hard to write thoughtful posts and to really synthesize the weekly readings into meaning for myself. Even thought this course was face to face, the majority of the learning happened on student time. We were expected to read the readings in advance and post a reflection and/or comment on another student’s post.
The end project for this course was not a paper, but an online portfolio to showcase the sites we had discussed. Well, I can tell you what, I spent at least 10 more hours on this project than I did on the research paper last fall. Preparing the site forced me to revisit many of the readings and websites and to make decisions about how to best portray those sites on my site. And, I now have a great resource site to use and share with others.
Conclusions…
I can’t say where my research paper is, but I will never forget where to find the online portfolio. I can continue adding to the site to keep it current and to include more content as it becomes relevant for use in education. I take more pride in the online site project because it will be viewed my more folks than me and the instructor. It’s a living project!
It seems that whether a course is an online course or a face to face course, it will be a better learning experience for the student when:
1) it includes much opportunity for individual reflection
2) there is communication among the course members
3) a culminating project (if there is one) is meaningful, useful and editable.
At least that’s what works for me!
Filed under: Reflecting... and tagged elearning, gradclass, learning, reflection
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Hello Michelle
Very interesting. It is so true that many people do not realize how much they procrastinate until they are taking an online course that is pretty much set by the user. I’m just beginning to facilitate the “need for change” course for our district. I’m already seeing some issues with procratination both on my part and the participants. It will definitly take some skill in time management; this is also a skill that many teachers (including myself) take for granit and assume students know how to do – even at the high school level.
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