Reflection on the Online Teaching for Adult Learners Course

I created a concept map on the dimensions of online learning leading to persistence earlier in this course. Now I have updated that concept map to include the critical features of the online learning environment. I started by searching for a quote that would summarize my learning and my thoughts on the topic: “Knowledge is constructed actively by learners within a socio-cultural context.” (Bose, 2010). With that belief in mind, I tried to relate it to some of the things we have learned this semester

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about what makes for good online instruction. The real difference between the two sides of this concept map is the move from the theoretical to the practical. For me, the right side represents some of the ways in which online instructors can activate what they know about andragogy, contextualization, and self-directed learning. Online (and blended) instructors need to be even more purposeful than face-to-face instructors when it comes to creating an environment that values the experience that adult learners bring to the class, respects the adult learners' need for choice and control, and plays to adult learners' need to connect and to see the relevance of what they are doing in the class.

For part two of this blog reflection, we were asked to explain how this course has impacted our current or future work. I feel fortunate in that this course has directly affected two large projects under my direction. The first is one that I was going to have to do anyway. The "Social Media in the Common Core" online course I developed for an earlier assignment was the subject of my previous post (see below). The second project that has a direct relationship with this course came as a surprise. I was in a meeting recently with some people from my office and from a large school district in our county. The discussion turned to the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program. An issue that some students were having with the AVID elective courses was finding time in their schedule without losing opportunities for taking courses which will help them meet college entrance requirements in California. I asked about the possibility of an online alternative to these face-to-face elective courses. By the end of the meeting I had a new project in my lap! So I am now leading a small consortium of school districts in the creation of online AVID courses. This is a great project with a lot of potential to impact students in Riverside County and beyond. I do not believe this would have come about if this course had not raised my confidence in being able to put together a quality online learning experience.

Bose, S. (2010). Learning Collaboratively with Web 2.0 Technologies: Putting into Action Social Constructivism. Online Submission.

Reflection on Online Lesson Creation

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For me, getting this assignment to create an online lesson was a blessing in disguise. In my regular job I was going to have to take a face-to-face workshop about social media in the Common Core that I had done a few times and turn it into an online min-course anyway. So this assignment gave me the kickstart I needed to get that work done that I was going to have to do anyway. So I started transforming the content of my day-long face-to-face workshop into a three-week online professional development experience.

One of the concepts that I struggled quite a bit with from the beginning was trying to decide how much content was the right amount for this short online course. I had a full day's worth (7 hours) of content for the face-to-face course ready to go. But not all of that content translates well into an online course. So I decided to chink the content into three sections, or modules, and prepare approximately two hours worth of content for each module. Not that I care so much about the seat time. I am more interested in the mastery of the content. But having an approximate target helped me organize the content.

I have some experience creating online courses for adults. But I had never created one that was going to be reviewed by my peers and evaluated my my instructor. I found the readings and the evaluation criteria posted by Dr. Ching to be of great value as references for the mini course I was creating. More than once, I thought I was ready to submit this assignment only to review the criteria again and realize that I had not addressed something important. In the end, there turned out to be two great benefits of doing this assignment at this time. First, as I already mentioned, I was going to have to do this anyway to have this online course ready to go in September. Second, it was a great opportunity to actually put to use immediately all of the things we had been learning during this summer course. It is always important for my learning to have some timely, practical application for something I have been studying.