Harry Taylor

Establishing good communication is the bedrock of online teaching.  Good planning is a necessity.  Determining netiquette, civility, courtesy, etc. , then developing guidelines to suit your class leads to proper management of the communication process.

With the ever increasing numbers of communication tools, the first step is to evaluate the tools available and choose carefully the ones most appropriate to the goals for the class.  The formative assessments froquently throughout the class are beneficial because immediate change can be implemented if necessary with the sumative assessment at the end of the course providing an overall evaluative of the communication tools used in the course.

The most important things I saw were (1) that moving F2F content to online is not simply a transfer but a transformation of content making it suitable for online teaching, and (2) the four "O"s of course design.

As a facilitator, we do wear 4 pairs of shoes and all of them a focused on a learner centered environment. To provide proper guidance to the learner, we should always be clear and concise in our communications in order to guide them through the learning process successfully.  It is important that we encourage them to "buy into" our program from the syllabus to the assessments.

Whether using synchronous, asynchronous format or a combination of the two approaches, four important components need to be present.  Thorough organization, detailed communication, clear and defined guidelines and a consistent teaching pattern all lead to a successful learning outcome.

The entire process first involves a serious time of  introspection and reflection about our own teaching style or styles.  Next, we are confronted by a vast array of technological tools available for our use.  Then we look at our class content and the student population that will inhabitate our class.  We have to decide which tools will be best suited for our instructional needs to deliver the content to meet the desired outcome for our students. Then we embark on our journey, realizing that we will face that inevitable cycle of STOP, START, CONTINUE which will, hopefully, modify our instruction into… >>>

This segment stressed the importance  of having multiple evaluations of the course from beginning to end to "close the loop', to use output from the course to make changes in the system inputs.

Assessment is the vehicle to improved learning and teaching.  Criteria of assessment should be clear and concise.  The  rubric gives us the tool to be specific and detailed in the expectation of a project or an assignment. It also shows the learner specifically where he succeded or came short of the objectives of the lesson.

Communication seems to be the key to this module.  Beginning with a dynamic syllabus that can be modified and change as the cirection of the class can dictate  Communication can be managed effectively by the instructor utilizing both and technology and the students themselves. Finally, the scaffolding continues to be growing by building new knowledge and skills on prior knowledge and skills and experiences'

Since I have never taught onlne, this course was like an unplowed field for me, so it was time to hitch up my mule and start plowing.  The entire unit from building the roadmap to creating, testing and implementing the modules and to the learning-objects database was all fascinating.  In my particular arena, the probability of using online instruction is zero, but the information is still valuable.  As a learning system, "Moodle" was a totally alien term until recently.  Now I want to dig into it.  Education, I believe, is an ever evolving, growing organism.  The idea of chunking within… >>>