Reflection Blog #4
Coming into this course, my biggest ambition was to determine ways that online classes could successful for multilingual students. My initial thoughts were that, in order for online classes to be successful with this demographic, they must be extremely structured and follow a clear routine. My belief was that teachers should avoid tasks that are complex and should be wary of ceding control. While I still believe that tasks need to have expectations clearly expressed, I have learned that students in an online learning environment are most successful when they are gradually given increased control over activities and assignments. This is, in many ways, in line with general teaching theory, where teachers are encouraged to talk less to provide students with opportunities to engage with one another in tasks that involve deeper engagement with materials, such as critiquing, analyzing, and evaluating. I continue to have reservations about how successful my students will be in an online learning environment, but I now believe that the best way to optimize their chances for success are to find ways of applying the concepts from Engaging the Online Learner in ways that provide careful scaffolding, detailed instructions and rubrics, and representative examples. My hope for future classes is to make activities as engaging as possible, capitalizing on the strengths of an online environment without succumbing to its weaknesses. Taking this class was, for me, not too overwhelming. I certainly spent more than 12 hours on the course readings and tasks, but the experience was rewarding and I feel much more prepared to teach my upcoming online classes in the summer/fall. A warm thank you to Matt Jones for facilitating this learning experience!
0 Comments
When it comes to an “Aha” moment in this course, the closest I have come to that experience was the realization that online courses can, and should, endeavor to encourage a sense of community and autonomy. Online courses are often criticized as leaving students feeling isolated. Additionally, they are regularly conflated with correspondence courses where teachers post lectures and students take tests and write papers. This course has demonstrated not only that these stereotypes can be false, but also that they must be false if our online courses are well designed. As I work to prepare my courses, I plan to follow the approach outlined in Engaging the Online Learner, working to foster a classroom community early on and then allowing students to grow and learn within that community.
As written above, the text emphasizes collaboration and community building as hallmarks of an effective online class. I have been reticent to release control of my class in order to allow students to create their own learning communities. I have been afraid that they would not put in sufficient effort or that they might not be able to understand the complex directions. I plan to change this in my first fully online course. I expect it to be a significant challenge, especially because the course will take place in a summer session. However, I see this course design as foundational in changing perceptions of online courses and in providing my students with the most rewarding and engaging learning experience. I still have questions about how to move through the stages, especially with a six-week course, as well as how to ensure that the activities are clear for my multilingual students, who are taking my class specifically because they have difficulties with reading and writing. I believe I have a good sense of what needs to happen in my course, and will only be able to work towards my goal through actual classroom practice. For this week’s reflection post, I would like to focus on the following online elements: entire class discussion and group discussion. While these two activities are seemingly very similar, in practice they were extremely different learning experiences.
The entire class discussion forum was on the verge of being overwhelming. I am not sure how many total posts there were, but with around fifty people posting and commenting, keeping close tabs on every conversation soon felt untenable. This was, perhaps surprisingly, not frustrating to me as a learner. Instead of trying to read every thread, I skimmed and scanned the forum looking for the conversations that most interested me and to which I felt I had the most to contribute. It was something like flipping through channels on a television. Some channels I skipped right over. Others I lingered on for a few moments. Still others drew me in, luring me to check back in even after my obligations were completed. The chance to explore and reflect on so much content was beneficial to me. The biggest challenge, as noted earlier, was the sheer volume of posts, but I did not feel the need to read everything, and was therefore not really negatively impacted. I would definitely use this element in my classroom without any change (other than the topic). That said, the prompt seemed key. The open-endedness seemed absolutely essential for the forum to flourish. As an EMLS instructor, my challenge is to consider how this online element could be successful in my teaching context, where students are often reluctant to write. I think the key, as noted above, is asking the right questions. In an EMLS reading class, I could have students share a captivating quote from the novel they are reading. They could post the sentence and explain why they chose it and what thoughts it inspires. In my context especially, this would need to be clearly modeled. I would likely provide a sample in the instructions and then require students post before viewing their peers’ responses. This would encourage a wide variety of responses, making the thread more interesting to read. The group forums were a bit of a mixed bag for me. I had a bit of difficulty with the OEI Rubric group discussion forum. While it included specific instructions, I had difficulty understanding the expectations. Also, it seemed as though we needed to work together as a group to decide what to discuss before discussing it, which I found problematic in an asynchronous environment as the participants in the course have a wide variety of schedules. This created a fair amount of inertia to overcome. Also, I noticed that at least one peer interpreted the instructions differently than I had. All of this left me feeling confused about how to approach the assignment. Finally, only three people out of our group of five participated in that particular forum, and one of those only posted once. Interestingly, the Week 3 discussion group went much better for me. I had a better understanding of the expectations and the group participation was stronger. This provides me with two takeaways. First, the clarity of directions is absolutely key in an effective group discussion. Also, it is important to make groups large enough so that, even if a couple of people do not participate, the discussion can still thrive. Knowing my student population, I probably would not put them in groups of fewer than five, but would try to keep group sizes at seven or eight. Of course, this would greatly depend on the specific course and group of students in question. All in all, I have enjoyed experiencing so many elements and considering how I could use them in my own classroom and I look forward to exploring them further. As I reflect on the first week of this course, am was most struck by the robust forum posts by many of my peers. While deviating from the 100 word limit will probably make them more difficult to grade, I appreciated the thoughtful exploration of a topic that is incredibly nuanced and complex.
I am often frustrated by discussions of online education. There are those who dismiss it out of hand, conflating online education with lazy teachers and unmotivated students together exchanging money for meaningless certificates. At the other extreme are teachers who see online teaching as a panacea for all of education's ills, with little regard for the difficulties of implementation and a naivete towards the problems that confront instructors and students. What I saw in the forums represented the best of these conversations. There was a recognition of the benefits of both online and face-to-face learning and the conversation seemed rooted in the basic questions of what we are trying to accomplish as educators. This is clearly a cohort that desires that students engage with the content, one another, and the world at large. Numerous issues with online education were brought up, but the conversation was one of imagination and possibility, not resignation. I am looking forward to next week. |
AuthorI am currently taking a class about best practices in online teaching. This is a blog to share my reflections. ArchivesCategories |