Project Reflection

I enjoyed working on the project with my partner developing a sample online physics course. There is a broad range of rich multimedia content for our topic that included animations, videos, documents and simulations. We started using a wiki to brainstorm about the project. After a few days of independent brainstorming, we collaborated synchronously using Skype. Wikis can only be edited by one person at a time. This did not pose a problem for us, since there was only two of us. If there were more members of the team, then we could have looked at Google Docs, Etherpad, or some other multi-user word processor.

During our first Skype call, we edited the wiki to convert the brainstorming into a "to do" list and we discussed who was responsible for each item. As we worked on the project, we added and subtracted from the "to do" list. Sometimes, we would add an item without who would be responsible. It was a friendly way to ask the other person to do a task without being bossy. We continued the cycle of independent work culminating with a synchronous call. I liked the independent work because I looked forward to seeing what my partner added on a daily basis. We would also leave comments and questions directly in the lesson wiki. In the end, we had four Skype calls with a total time of 9.75 hours. I'm not sure that I would have been anymore productive in a f2f setting.

Week 7 Reflections

What did you think about, or worry about, as you began to grapple with creating a unit for an online course?

I am more enthusiastic than worried about the project. The partner finding process was unstructured, but I found a partner with the same interests. We have already Skyped and started a wiki for collaboration. My only concern is addressing the breadth of best practices for online teaching. We have read a great deal on the attributes of what makes an online course engaging - frequent communication, structured interactions, teacher online training, and student online tool training. We will not have an opportunity to actually use the course, so we will not get feedback to improve the course. Lastly, if I were doing this for real, I would work with a small group of students to design it and try ideas.

Week 6 Reflections

Has your view of the schools you chose to research changed from the first week you looked at them? If so, how?

My views of Virtual Virginia (link, wiki) and Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School (link, wiki) have been consistent. They are medium-quality schools (compared to other wiki entries) and suffer from a dearth of available information. VV and PVCS both use asynchronous learning, and teachers assist students in a supportive role. Both schools use curriculum developed by third-parties and the sample courses were disappointing. I believe that schools need to develop their own online curriculum and have teachers assist the instructional designers to continually improve them. Technology is evolving rapidly and courses need to adapt to use the most popular and productive social networking technologies. The class forum discussions this week highlighted that managing online discussions is tricky. Online discussions are challenging to organize well, maintain organization, keep on track, and grade. This makes me worry about the teachers at VV and PVCS with respect to how well they are trained to manage their online classrooms - even in a supportive role. VV was more encouraging than PVCS with professional development. Before teaching an online class, teachers take a seven-week online training course, and a week-long f2f workshop.

Miscellaneous
I have a wish list of two items after this week. The first is that there is a new generation of open source discussion software that is highly configurable. The second is that there are better online courses and that the first few lessons can be taken for free. I think about Amazon.com, which lets people preview the table of contents and some of the book before purchase.