Well, it is hard to believe but this is my final post for this class. Seems like I have been on a whirlwind tour of some kind. The experience though has been invaluable. I have learned so much and much of it can already be taken back to my job for implementation. This is the sign of a well designed class. My classmates as well have made this experience one I will never forget. As I have mentioned previously, I am so not a fan of group work but this class actually made me enjoy it. I am not sure how he did it, but whatever method Jim used to put together our group was great. We had some bumps in the road but we were all understanding that life happens. Made me realize that this is how I need to live my life as well.
I am on to the next phase in my Grad School career which is finishing up the "course" work so to speak. I have to complete the e-Learning Practicum this summer and the Portfolio class. Once those are complete, I am done with course work. I only need to complete my thesis and I will be a teacher with her Master's in Education. I remember in the '80's watching the movie "The World According to Garp" (which is great by the way - personal bias I am sure) and his children as talking about the students their mother teaches. The youngest son cannot say graduate students so he calls them "gradual students". This is what my family has been calling me for almost two years now. In a way, that little child is actually correct since it should be a gradual process of learning. If we rush things, there is so much which can be missed. Even though this course was only a short eight weeks we really didn't seem to rush it at all. We covered many aspects of assessment and I am sure could have covered many others given time. But then again, even in a semester long course there are still things at the end which could have been covered so it isn't necessarily a matter of time but what you do with that time.
Ending the course with the unit on Discourse Analysis was quite interesting. I especially enjoyed learning about the different types of people we encounter in life or in an online world. How many have you encountered from supporter, informer, and flamer? Believe me, I have met them all and do not enjoy being around a flamer as there is no reasoning with him or her whatsoever. The other aspect I enjoyed learning about was the type of people who call in to CSR centers and how they should be handled. It was quite interesting to think back on my days in retail and see many of the people I have dealt with fall into one or more of the categories. Interesting if you really look at it but as teachers aren't we in the customer service area too? I am sure our parents could easily fall into one of these categories as well if we truly thought about it.
Time to take a final bow and say "Au Revoir". The ride has been grand, educational, and a learning experience I will never forget. Thank you Jim for showing us what a great teacher is all about in so many areas. After obtaining my Master's, my goal is to teach online at the university level. If I can be half the teacher you have been then I will be a success. Here's to pursing that dream and making it a reality!
Monday, March 28, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Assessment in eLearning - Module 7 Reflection
Whew! This is the latest I have made a post to my blog but I never realized how much being a perfectionist could take over your life! Knowing I wanted to put my Final Project in Google Sites, it only seemed to make sense to put it with my ePortfolio since it would need to be there eventually. Once less task to complete, right? Yes and no! the write up was completed a yesterday but today was spent setting up my site just the right way. Now, I realized changing the way it looked today might not have been the best idea but after reading something Dr. O'Connor posted about which templates might look good for ePortfolios I thought it was the right time - WRONG TIME! Only from the stand point time was my enemy today.
What really saved me with my project was doing my Bloom's Taxonomy Table the way I did. I created my objectives, activities, and assessments at the same time. Being a visual learner I needed to see the complete picture to wrap my head around what we were doing with this project. So I thought it would be best for me to put it together this way. In the end, it saved me quite a bit of time. I only needed to refine bit and pieces to it while adding the missing parts such as extended details. This also allowed me to reflect On what I had written and come back to it a day later to see if it was something which needed changing. I believe this lessened the pressure on this part of the project.
Now the presentation part of the project is where I can get too wrapped up and I really did (as usual). I like things to look a uniform way so I needed to make sure my ePortfolio site was uniform. Once that was corrected and the theme changed (see the story about that one in the first paragraph), I set about putting the pages in and formatting those just the right way. For part of the project, I called upon my use of Elluminate but then realized not all of my fellow classmates are familiar with this wonderful project. So I knew I needed to create some detailed explanations for what I was discussing. More time to complete some extras for the project such as creating screenshots, a step sheet, creating some PDF's and of course my favorite creating a Jing to visually and verbally explain what I meant. No wonder I feel exhausted right now.
In the end though, I learned quite a bit about how to make sure to develop student centered activities. When the students are actively involved and engaged in the lessons the greatest learning takes place. I plan to share what I have written with my teaching partners so we can work on developing the decimal skills our fifth graders will need now and in the future.
Like Cinderella, the clock is about ready to strike midnight and this is my signal to call it a night. This coming week is our final week so I shall me making one last post for this class. Until next week, I am heading to the land of slumber! Night all!
What really saved me with my project was doing my Bloom's Taxonomy Table the way I did. I created my objectives, activities, and assessments at the same time. Being a visual learner I needed to see the complete picture to wrap my head around what we were doing with this project. So I thought it would be best for me to put it together this way. In the end, it saved me quite a bit of time. I only needed to refine bit and pieces to it while adding the missing parts such as extended details. This also allowed me to reflect On what I had written and come back to it a day later to see if it was something which needed changing. I believe this lessened the pressure on this part of the project.
Now the presentation part of the project is where I can get too wrapped up and I really did (as usual). I like things to look a uniform way so I needed to make sure my ePortfolio site was uniform. Once that was corrected and the theme changed (see the story about that one in the first paragraph), I set about putting the pages in and formatting those just the right way. For part of the project, I called upon my use of Elluminate but then realized not all of my fellow classmates are familiar with this wonderful project. So I knew I needed to create some detailed explanations for what I was discussing. More time to complete some extras for the project such as creating screenshots, a step sheet, creating some PDF's and of course my favorite creating a Jing to visually and verbally explain what I meant. No wonder I feel exhausted right now.
In the end though, I learned quite a bit about how to make sure to develop student centered activities. When the students are actively involved and engaged in the lessons the greatest learning takes place. I plan to share what I have written with my teaching partners so we can work on developing the decimal skills our fifth graders will need now and in the future.
Like Cinderella, the clock is about ready to strike midnight and this is my signal to call it a night. This coming week is our final week so I shall me making one last post for this class. Until next week, I am heading to the land of slumber! Night all!
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Assessment in eLearning - Module 6 Reflection
Another crazy week in terms of needing to get things completed. This week, I needed to work on the Final Project for this class and make changes to my proposal for the IRB so I can begin my research for my Thesis. Needless to say, I have had some late nights. The IRB paperwork has been corrected, submitted to my advisor who has signed off on it, and now I get to send it back to the IRB. Hopefully by the end of the week I will have full approval to begin my research.
I am sure you asking "What does this have to do with your blogging for Assessment in eLearning?" this week. Well, it really has a lot to do with it since we needed to construct a Pre-Course Survey as one of this week's activities. One of the changes I needed to make to my IRB proposal was to include a survey which I had not yet constructed. I was looking at the various "free" versions of survey software available but nothing made a very favorable impression for what I wanted it to look like. Then I remembered the various surveys I have received from people here at Stout through Qualtrics. I looked into Qualtrics and was quite impressed with what it was capable of doing. When I looked into it, I realized every student and faculty member at Stout is given a Qualtrics account. This is where I created my survey for my thesis and then created the Pre-Course Survey for our assignment. Both turned out much better than I thought they would!
This worked out great since I created a Pre-Course survey for a 5th Grade Math class. In fact, what I did was create a pre-test to assess what students knew about various topics being taught in the coming year. The final two questions asked the students to assess their knowledge of the basic math facts and how they felt about their abilities/skills in math. This type of data would really help drive the instruction in the class while assisting the students as well.
The topics covered within our reading this week - Cybercoaching and Plagiarism can also be addressed with the survey software I used. Depending on how you phrase the questions, the teacher can encourage the students to be reflective when working on math problems. Carefully wording a problem can change whether or not a student is successful in managing to solve it. When we help to develop the students self-confidence through coaching, they in turn will believe they can accomplish many things even if they are a challenge. Plagiarism is addressed since each student is taking the survey online from their own computer and would not be be near another student (at least in the environment where I teach). Also, the questions ask for the answers to be given in various formats thereby helping to reduce plagiarism as well.
Time to end this week's post. Did you remember to "Spring Forward" this morning? If not, you are an hour behind schedule. I think I better check all of the clocks in the house now before the work week begins. See you next week!
I am sure you asking "What does this have to do with your blogging for Assessment in eLearning?" this week. Well, it really has a lot to do with it since we needed to construct a Pre-Course Survey as one of this week's activities. One of the changes I needed to make to my IRB proposal was to include a survey which I had not yet constructed. I was looking at the various "free" versions of survey software available but nothing made a very favorable impression for what I wanted it to look like. Then I remembered the various surveys I have received from people here at Stout through Qualtrics. I looked into Qualtrics and was quite impressed with what it was capable of doing. When I looked into it, I realized every student and faculty member at Stout is given a Qualtrics account. This is where I created my survey for my thesis and then created the Pre-Course Survey for our assignment. Both turned out much better than I thought they would!
This worked out great since I created a Pre-Course survey for a 5th Grade Math class. In fact, what I did was create a pre-test to assess what students knew about various topics being taught in the coming year. The final two questions asked the students to assess their knowledge of the basic math facts and how they felt about their abilities/skills in math. This type of data would really help drive the instruction in the class while assisting the students as well.
The topics covered within our reading this week - Cybercoaching and Plagiarism can also be addressed with the survey software I used. Depending on how you phrase the questions, the teacher can encourage the students to be reflective when working on math problems. Carefully wording a problem can change whether or not a student is successful in managing to solve it. When we help to develop the students self-confidence through coaching, they in turn will believe they can accomplish many things even if they are a challenge. Plagiarism is addressed since each student is taking the survey online from their own computer and would not be be near another student (at least in the environment where I teach). Also, the questions ask for the answers to be given in various formats thereby helping to reduce plagiarism as well.
Time to end this week's post. Did you remember to "Spring Forward" this morning? If not, you are an hour behind schedule. I think I better check all of the clocks in the house now before the work week begins. See you next week!
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Assessment in eLearning - Module 5 Reflection
We have turned the corner and now are on the last half of our class which means we are working towards the final project. Seems like we just finished the mid-term project! Wait - we just did finish it but since this course is only 8 weeks long we have no choice but to start working on it right way in order to get it completed. Dr. Erbe posted for us the details of the final project (here is a brief synopsis from his description):
You will need to choose an online course that you are currently teaching or may teach in the future and begin to plan learning objectives, associated activities and the assessment piece and tech tool you could use for assessment.
So within our final project, we need to include well-written objectives, engaging activities, as well as assessments using tools we have learned about in our class. I think my head is spinning just thinking about it again. However, I really appreciate how we are actually taking this bit by bit or step by step.
For example, this week's assignments and/or discussion topics could be drawn upon what we are using for our final project if we want. If we want?! Considering I can get feedback from my peers to know if I am going in the right direction or am totally out in left field, this is a no brainer for me. I am going to be using information from my final project for these two items. Boy am I glad I did use my topic since the feedback I received help me to know I needed to make some changes along the way.
One thing I realized is well-written objectives take time and thought. These are not something you can simply whip out and hope/pray they work. Chances are if you did not take the time to think these out you will find your students struggling along the way and you the teacher feeling a sense of frustration due to a lack of proper planning. It was actually nice to have to think deeper about my objectives for the final project. I am not saying I throw mine together when working on lessons, but I can certainly tell when I do not devote the proper amount of time necessary to develop well-written ones. This task certainly opened my eyes once again. I also discovered I needed to see the "whole picture" when it came to the final project in order to help with not only the objectives but also the activites.
What I ended up doing was create what might look like a mini lesson plan under my taxonmy table. I had thought of my activities but needed to see these paired up with objectives as well. So, I wrote these objectives too which was great since these needed to be posted in the discussion board for one of the discussion assignments - 2 things done at one time is great thinking! Then knowing I needed to have assessments to go along with each activity/objective I created a tentative listing of my assessments. These will be evaluated to see if any changes need to be made but I feel good about the start I have going and I am certainly starting to see this picture emerge. As a visual learner, this is something which truly helps - seeing the big picture.
Looks like Week 5 is now over and we are on to Week 6. Hard to believe only 3 more weeks left in this class. Until next time - I am signing off for now!
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