Eduardo Padilla

It is important to continuously revise and revisit your course materials and procedures. Updating frequently is key to avoid forgetting or being overwhelmed with the amount of revisions required. 

It is important to provide feedback and maintain communication with students because of the nature of online learning. As a facilitator, you must find a balance so you do not overwhelm students and yourself. Feedback should be clear, concise, and effective. 

I learned that it is important to have a team to help manage information while teaching online. I would like to look for ways to get support with technology issues that may arise. I hope to create a plan to help me with starting my online class.

I learned that teaching to reflect on their own goals and revisiting them is essential to helping students keep focused and not fall into pitfalls of procrastination or feeling overwhelmed. The seven principles of good practice are helpful. I hope to share them with my students. It will set a good tone for our class.

Choosing the appropriate communication tools is essential to making your class responsive to the needs of your students. I hope to explore and implement both synchronous and asynchronous communication tools so I can engage with my students and create a community.

Communication is essential to success in an online class as well as a "traditional" classroom setting. As an educator, I realize the imporantce of explicitly teaching effective ways to communicate with each other as well as through modeling. We often take this for granted the older the students you are working with in your classes. Helping student make connections between what they are learning and their personal lives is important. 

I learned that it is important to assess your strengths and weaknesses as an online educator and to also help students assess their own strenths and areas of improvement for online learning. I hope to use a self assessment to gain this necessary information to help generate a plan for helping students. 

I learned of the importance of having a rubric established for assessing the contributions to class discussions. I hope to create rubrics for my class that will help me encourage effective communication and collaboration to help establish positive interdependence amongst the participants.

I found the descriptions of the various generations to be generalizations. I know they aren't meant to be harmful but it is something I try my best to avoid. I try not to generalize because it is often the case that people are unique and possess so many qualities and characteristics that distinguish them from others and those rare combinations make them standout. I did find useful to read about the qualities students need to possess to be successful in an online class. I hope to share this list with my students and coworkers. 

I really liked the idea of having a quiz for a code of conduct. That way students will understand the importance of appropriate communication in a classroom setting and will be expected to conduct themselves in your class. This also provides opportunity to establish norms and consequences.