Week 11 Reflection

After reading Haavind, I began to think more about the different methods to promote collaboration and discussion among online students. Although I don’t agree with all of the techniques, I think they are definitely useful and gives teachers new ideas to try. Specifically, I was intrigued by instructor’s facilitative intervention into learner dialogue’s (pg. 14) to increase learner’s engagement. Public praise, constructive criticism, offering resources and probe are a few practical approaches that Havvind discusses in order to focus and deepen online dialogue among learners. In cases where learners start to wander off-topic, appropriate negative evaluation where the instructor points out that the contents are divergent will be useful. The instructor needs to be careful about the appropriate “negativity” so it will be constructive instead of being disruptive and effecting the overall interaction. This week's readings hasn’t really change my views of online education much, but definitely gave me new ideas to enhance discussions and collaborations among learners.

Week 10 Reflection

What did you learn this week that struck you as particularly important in learning about virtual schools? Has your thinking changed as a result of what you learned this week?

This week’s readings of the research studies and meta-analysis that compared online and f2f learning made me realize the different factors that make a successful online course. On the other hand, the comparisons also pointed out the weaknesses of the two teaching models. Even though there are many difficulties of research in virtual learning because there are too many variables (ie. population, curriculum, sampling) which could affect the research data, we should use the data as a basis for more focused studies that can contribute to the success of online learning. My thinking hasn't really changed as a result, but I definitely feel that there is much more to learn in order to create the most positive learning outcome. What is important is not the medium, as it is unlikely to affect learning per se, but the way the medium is used.

Week 9 Reflection

Now that you have seen what other people did in creating their units, is there anything that you might do differently if you were to redesign your own?

After reviewing everyones units, there are many idea and tools I want to try and tweak.
Overall, the curriculum units presented a multitude of new ideas and have been very effective and thought-provoking, and I’m most impressed with the different web 2.0 tools that many groups included in their lesson. If we were given more time, I would have explored many more new web 2.0 software such as Museum Box, Voicethread or Canvas to enrich the presentation and teaching and learning experience. Many of them, such as Museum Box, was incredibly innovative and suited for our unit!

My partner Adrienne and I chose Powerpoint since the course was going to be put in practice and Powerpoint was very accessible and straight-forward. Powerpoint isn’t as interactive and visually appealing as the other 2.0 tools, but it outlined our weekly objective, assignment and discussion topics clearly and was easy to follow/navigate. The video-conference on Skype also encouraged the students to participate and share their thoughts and promoted understanding of the content. Other than these slight differences, I think our unit comprehensively covered the topic and used Skype/Powerpoint to promote fun and engaging discussion and student interest. More than anything, designing the unit with Adrienne was a rewarding and fun experience.