Week Eight Journal Reflection

This was a good week and not because it is the last week of the course. This was a really great course and I learned so much. I really enjoyed taking this class and I feel I learned so much that will help me become a good online instructor. This course covered a lot of information and sometimes very time consuming, but it was well worth all the time that I spent. I really felt that I was able to complete all the tasks for the course with great success. I thought the class discussions that we had were excellent. It was good to learn about the different assessment tools that can be used in an online course and how the assessment process provides the instructor with a view of how well students are doing.

We covered the following eight modules:

Module 1: Why is Assessment Important?

Module 2: Emerging Practices of Online Assessment

Module 3: Perfect E-Storm

Module 4: Variety of Assessment Tools

Module 5: Taxonomy of Assessment

Module 6: Cybercoaching - an Emerging Model

Module 7: Summative Assessment

Module 8: Discourse Analysis

Week Seven Journal Reflection

This was a busy week. It was good to learn about the different software for grading purposes. I know if you teach an online course there is grading that is built right into the course management system. For face-to-face courses it is good to know about the different software that can be used for grading. Majority of my time this week was spent working on the final project. I really enjoyed working on this project. I thought it was good learning experience to try and incorporate four assessment tools into a course. It was good to research each of the four different assessment tools. I chose to focus on surveys, discussion board, wikis, and tests/quizzes. I want to create a course that prepares students to be more successful and gain experience in taking online courses. The course would be a demonstration of what to expect when taking an online course. The course would be an introduction to developing the skills necessary to succeed in an online course.

Week Six Journal Reflection

I thought this was a very good week. This week was about cybercoaching. The article that we read about cybercoaching was very interesting. I never really knew about cybercoaching before and now I know that it is how to provide feedback and assessment in a course. I also found it interesting how the article focuses on instructors and students can use technology for interaction between them. I thought the class discussion that we had on cybercoaching was really good. There were a lot good ideas on how we can use cybercoaching when teaching. I also liked how we needed to compare an article with the cybercoaching article. To me that really got me thinking of how I could use cybercoaching. It was a real learning experience looking at how others view cybercoaching.

In the discussion this week we needed to come up with highlights or techniques will you apply to our online course assessment.

This what I came up with:
• Survey tool for a pre-course survey and post-course survey
• Wikis for group work or collaboration
• Google docs for group projects or papers
• Blogs for weekly journaling
• Discussion board for weekly discussions

In this module we also needed to create a pre-course survey. I never really created a pre-course survey, but have taken them before. Creating the survey was a good learning experience. I also enjoyed what the other classmates came up with.

Again I thought that this module was a good learning experience for me. I am learning so much good information throughout this course.

Week Five Journal Reflection

Module five was about taxonomy of assessment. This week I learned about Bloom's taxonomy. I have heard about Bloom's taxonomy before, but never really used it. This was a challenge this week. This week we needed to read a taxonomy of assessment case study. I needed to match 3-4 assessment activities to one of the six categories of Bloom’s taxonomy: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Having never used Bloom's taxonomy I was not sure if I completing the assignment correctly, but after completing this assignment I have learned more about how to incorporate learning objectives with learning activities. The six different levels are important for students to gain knowledge and comprehension in a topic. It was difficult to create the learning objectives using the six categories, but once I took the time to create the learning objectives it was well worth the learning experience.

Week Four Journal Reflection

Module four was about the different assessment tools that can be used in either face-to-face classes or online classes. I really enjoyed learning about the different assessment tools that are available for instructors to use. This week we got work in groups. Each of the team members focused on one assessment tool. I chose to focus on Adobe Connect, Sandra focused on ePals, and Laura focused on SurveyMonkey. Our focus was on how we could use each of the assessment tools to focus on cross cultural exchanges and learning projects that encourage a global perspective. I felt that my two other team members and myself worked great together as a group. We met in the chatroom a couple of times to discuss our project and that worked out great. We did have some challenges when trying to find a time to meet, but it all worked out in the end. I felt this was a good week because being in an online course while having group work can be challenging.

Week Three Journal Reflection

Module three was on the Perfect E-Storm. This was an article that we read by Dr.Curtis Bonk. There were 30 emerging educational technologies that are used with online learning. I found the Perfect E-Storm article that Bonk wrote very interesting. I really enjoyed reading this article and found a lot that what we do at our college to be right on track. There were a couple of key points from the article that I found interesting. One thing that I found to be true from the article is that most online courses, programs, and resources still lack sufficient interactivity and collaboration needed to effectively engage online learners. I know at my college we are always looking at ways to improve the interactivity and collaborations needs to engage the online students. Some instructors are very willing to use new technology to engage their learners, but some aren't so willing. After reading about the 30 emerging educational technologies I was really amazed at how much we are using or trying to use at our college. I know our college is on the right track when it comes to technology, but it is sometimes hard to get people to use the technology.

Also in the module we created a concept map. The idea of a concept map is to help aid course design by connecting learning objectives to assessments. It was good learn about concept maps and how they can be useful to determine student learning. As part of the concept map idea we were supposed to read a concept mapping case study. I found this article to be very interesting. After reading through the article to me it seemed like Andersen Consulting put a lot of time and effort into their work. It may be hard for people in education to spend that much time, when sometimes going through a simple concept map would work.

Week Two Journal Reflection

Module two was on emerging practices of online assessment. The information from this module was very informative. One of things that was covered in this module was student-centered learning. Student-centered learning is when the focus of learning is on the needs of the students. In this module we completed a reading interactive inventory learning object to see if the focus on the way that we teach is student-centered or teacher-centered. After completing the survey I found that I was student-centered.

The required readings for this module focused on blogs. I found the readings to be very informative. One of the readings was the Benefits of Cooperative Learning in Weblog networks. I found this article very interesting. There were some really good points made in the article. We needed to post to the discussion board on advantages and disadvantages in using blogs for educational purposes. There can be many advantages and disadvantages. So far I think the class is having a very thorough discussion on the advantages and disadvantages.

I have created a blog before for another class that I took, but for this course I will be posting weekly journal reflections to this blog. I really have not created a detailed blog, so this will be a good learning experience for me. In the future I hope to teach online and learning how to set up a blog and learning about the advantages and disadvantages of using a blog in education will help me in the future.