Emily Moore

Teachers should always be evaluating and analyzing their course, gathering formative assessments, and making revisions in order to best support their learners. Professional development can help teachers keep their knowledge fresh and up to date, which can help with time management and overall a better instructor of the course. 

When communicating, instructors need to be transparent. They need to be clear and concise with expectations, model professional writing, and provide both public and private feedback.

Prioritizing teaching and life is basically developing a work-life balance. To do this, managing your time is essential. To manage your time, you need to be "organized, disciplined, distinguish between work and personal life, and yet be flexible."

This is definitely an area that I feel confident in: workload management. This module described the importance of time management (scheduling) and work load management. It is helpful to think as the instructor as a point person- someone who can deleted information, respond to information, or forward information. 

This module really made me think about my role as an educator. It is not always just about the content. Its about knowing your students and their needs, and helping them avoid pitfalls so that they can find success.

It is important to know the technology skills of your students before starting your course, and then choosing technology that will help enhance learniing and the material. 

Communication is key. It must be clear, professional, and appropriate. This can be challenging as the course is not F2F, but that makes it more important. Instructors can model the type of communication they expect, as well as provide students with tips and feedback to become better communicators. 

A huge part of being an on-line instructor is support! Students may not know how to be the best on-line learners, and instructors can help students identify their strengths and weaknesses, and support them in knowing how to be successful. 

"Effective online facilitation should engage, guide, and motivate learners, and provide a safe and conducive environment for learning." I couldn't agree with this statement more. This statement is the challenge of e-learning! We want the space to be a safe space, that will motivate and guide our learners. This section also really brought home the importance of using a rubric to share guidelines and expectations and then to provide feedback with evaluation. 

I really like how they explained how different generations might approach an on-line course. Also, I liked when they talked about how successful e-learners must be self-motivated and have good time management. I think creating a time management activity at the start of the course could be beneficial for some of my high schoolers.