Linda+Cooper

Pre-Course Wiki Assignment

Essential things I need to communicate to my students online include: the syllabus, readings and resources, assignments, announcements, feedback from instructor, feedback from other students. Essential things students will need to communicate to me include to me include: their reflections, questions, interactions with other students, assignments.

To show that they have learned course material, my students need to be able to relate the course material to previously learned information or experiences and/or other course material and to demonstrate this to me as per syllabus requirements (assignments). They need to effectively apply this new learning to a real life situation in a way that is meaningful to them.

I would like to build a virtual learning community with the class in which students feel they are stakeholders and are motivated to contribute to the ongoing conversation (rather than simply completing a weekly assignment).

I am concerned about losing the spontaneity, and sometimes passion, of face to face conversation - also the loss of cues that are not apparent online which may contribute to communication (although these also sometimes hinder communication).

My good and bad experiences with LMS are both system and human related. System experiences include some years ago losing all student conversations for the term when Blackboard went down. Also some years ago, courses each term only remained available a term or so afterwards. Bad experiences related to behavior include students not reading all they should have and 'responding' online by reading only one or two other student responses and bouncing off of that.

Good experiences include students who are hesitant to speak in class yet have wonderful thoughts to contribute are able to do this online. Students can also reflect on comments for a longer time and come back to add more. Also good - students can include links to resources in multiple formats when they communicate online. I also think it is a good thing for students - especially teacher education students - to become facile with online teaching and learning.

My main concern - what I want to learn - is how to construct the learning experiences that students will participate in on the weeks that we are not face to face. I have asked students to write weekly reflections on their readings for the past 10 years. These reflections were emailed to me and then linked and shared with all students before class. All reflections then became the basis of class discussion when we met. I did not construct discussion questions for the students to address at home - I asked them to write about what was most important to them from the readings. In class discussion grew from the students responding to each other's online reflections. I am unsure how to translate this into an online class session.