Lucas Carr

The biggest take away for me from this module was the information provided in the Creating Rubrics section.  I believe that rubrics are a necessary part of the learning environment as they create a mutual understanding between the teacher and students in regards to learning expectations.  Once they are provided, explained, and agreed upon, rubrics can almost serve as a learning contract for students.  I will use the information from this section to develop rubrics for online communication expectations.  The categories presented in this section create a well balanced evaluation of student communication.

In this module I learned the differences between generations as applied to technological use.  In an online course setting if these differences are not identified and addressed the communication process can suffer greatly.  This could be in I2S, S2I, and even S2S communication depending on the course.  I will use this to seek out and identify these potential differences at the beginning of courses, as part of beginning of class biography assignments.  This will help to ensure there are no generational communication barriers throughout the course.

I learned that creating a pattern of communication is an essential.  This pattern should include I2S, S2I, and S2S communications.  By creating this pattern helps everyone involved to have a clear vision of how communication should be included.

I will use this knowledge to guide creating policies and rubrics for expected communication in my courses.

Chosen technology communication tools should be evaluated both formatively and summatively.  This should also include input from both students and the teacher.  I plan to use this to ensure that I (and my students) are evaluating the tools used in courses throughout the course term and at the end of the course.  This way communication has the best opportunity to be of high quality.

A main idea I picked up from this module was that the teacher can use social presence to increase student engagement.  There are several methods to create social presence in an online course setting.  I plan to build these methods into creating framework for future courses.  I believe that including creating social presence into the pattern of teaching would further enhance student learning and make it easier for teachers to conduct online courses.  I believe this shows that setting and keeping routines is the key to success in online courses.

When creating an e-learning environment where the teacher is to serve as a facilitator there are three key areas:

• Focus should be placed on students rather than the technology used
• Learning activities should be authentic problem-based experiences
• High quality feedback must be provided

I will use this information to help develop future syllabi, and in structuring courses.  I believe these three pieces should be considered through each phase of online courses.

From this module I learned how developing a pattern of teaching in online courses can greatly enchance both teaching and learning.  Once a pattern of teaching is established students become comfortable with how the course is presented and know what to expect in course content.  The teacher also benefits as this will minimize communication that is centered around issues, allowing more time for focusing on student learning.

From this module I learned that selecting technology tools should be done by matching them to the teacher's teaching styles, but these tools should alighn with critical thinking and problem solving activities to ensure they are student-centered.

Online courses should be reviewed to improve student learning, improve curriculum, guide professional development, ensure high quality, and decide how personnel is included.

From this module I picked up some options for creating formative assessment.  These are typically strategies that I use in traditional classrooms, but it was nice to see what options are typically applied to online courses.  I had not seen the term "muddiest-point papers" before, and feel I would use that option quite often for segments of a module.