My first impression going through the second half of the online teaching course at Governors State University was that things was going to get better in the class. The assignments were going to be easier and the worst has passed. I realized quickly that I was not correct; I was face with more and more challenges that made me think for a while, and ask myself, do I really want to do this. I answered myself by saying, not everything in life is easy, and in my lifetime experiences, I have had to do worse than this, so why not keep on and finish what I have started.
I have been thinking each day while in this class, and I have come to realize that this class is more complex than I have anticipated. After going on for the many weeks in the course, I find that everything in the course is meaningful to teaching and learning and everything, every assignment is relevant and applicable to teaching and learning.
The last weeks of the course was a lot more challenging than the first few weeks and that was because the concepts in the course are very new and due to the lack of familiarity with the concepts the assignments and projects were more challenging. In the last weeks, the focus of studies was on instructional strategies, learning theory, the seven principles, thoughts on synchronous activities in the course room using wimba, digital portfolios, a group project using wiki, and locating and evaluating exemplary resources and multimedia that would be good resources for online teaching and learning.
According to the seven principles, in order to promote an optimal learning environment, the seven principles must be present and consideration in the designing of a course must focus on the seven principles. The most effective strategies occur when the instructor applies the seven principles of teaching by encouraging contact, providing information to ensure contact, establishing cooperation and engaging in an exchange relationship, encouragement of active learning, providing prompt feedback, setting time frame for the completion of task, communicate expectations, and respect diversity in the way people learn. Without including the seven teaching principles, teaching in a course room will not flow appropriately resulting in the potential for ongoing conflict and disruption.
The wimba experience was a delight, because not only that it was a first time experience, it was a challenging experience yet a delight to know that I was learning how to use a collaborative tool that can enhance teaching and learning. I also felt that the course gave me the opportunity for the exposure to the tool and an opportunity to work with the tool and evaluate the benefits and applicability for teaching and learning. I would like to admit, that the tool is an excellent source for giving presentations and to provide feedback to learners, but the limitation of the tool is that it cannot support a large group of people, unless the instructor will use the tool just for presentation with opportunity for questions and answers at a later time or limited question and answer session.
It is evident that this tool alone is not sufficient to teach in an online environment and that supplemental support such as a discussion thread, question and answer thread, and even a chat room may help to support the use of the tool and increase the opportunity for ongoing collaboration outside of wimba.
I learned that there are several learning theories that guide teaching and learning and the best learning theory to use is the one that coincides with the learning objectives. The learning theories are behaviorism, constructivism, cognitivism, design-based, and humanism theory. The behaviorism theory states that people will react to a stimulus in a positive or negative way depending on the experience. The constructivism theory states that if people have the information, processing will occur, and interpretation, leading to an outcome that is real to the person.
The cognitivism theory states that people take in information and process it to form meaning and that is their subjective reality of a situation. The design-based theory focuses on the totality of a model, program, process, or practice, blending theory and practice to determine relevance and applicability, with rationale that is evidence-based. The humanism theory states that people do and act in ways to learn and that the instructor is the facilitator to ensure and support learning. Therefore, matching the learning objectives with the learning theory is the most acceptable and appropriate thing to do to achieve learning outcomes.
I learned that instructors could use a variety of instructional strategies to teach and promote learning. The instructional strategies that are available to instructors are mentorship, learning contracts, lecture, self-directed learning, small group work, project, collaborative learning, case study, and forum.
All of these strategies have advantages for promoting and enhancing learning, but deciding on the best teaching strategies has to do with the type of learning objectives. What teaching strategy may work in one situation may not be applicable to all learning situation.
I learned that teachers can use a variety of teaching models to engage students in learning, top-down approach, teacher delivered, and direct instruction approach; direct to social approach; social and student-teacher negotiated model; social and radical; and the bottom-up model, student-centered, radical approach model.
All these approaches are teaching models available to instructors, but the preferred model used to teach is dependent on the teacher, the learning objectives, and the learning styles of the diverse learning community. In the top down approach the teaching is instructor driven, the social, student-teacher negotiated is a shared approach teaching strategy where the teacher and the learners share the responsibility for teaching and learning, and the bottom down teaching strategy is student centered teaching approach, where the student is engage in active learning.
I learned that active learning is more effective than passive learning, because active learning involves the learner as an active participant in teaching and learning. Active learning is the most effective teaching approach because there is evidence in literature that points to the fact that learners remember up to 50% of the lessons learned in the class versus passive learning where there is only a 10% retention rate of learning materials.
I learned that the best way to show people all that you know and all that you do in your personal and professional life is to show case it in an electronic portfolio. An electronic portfolio is a place online at a specific website called “wet paint” that people can visit using the sites URL to view the work completed and work in progress of people, specifically to this course, learners.
The electronic portfolio for this course contains information from the first course in the online teaching certification program, introduction to online teaching, individual work, group work, curriculum vitae, and pages to the second, third, and fourth course in the certification program. To visit my wet paint site to view my portfolio just go to
http://onlineteachinglearning.wetpaint.com/
Lastly, a major project in the course was to complete a group project using the wiki. A wiki is a collaborative tool and in order to complete the project, designing a wiki to meet the assignment requirements was necessary. The project assignment was to complete an annotated bibliography and to design a rubric to evaluate exemplary websites and multimedia resources for teaching and learning.
The task was big due to the lack of knowledge initially, but once the wiki was setup, getting into the different folders to input information was not difficult. The project itself was not easy, but working together as a group allows team members to collaborate and since wiki permits ongoing editing changes with ease, it was much easier to use that tool for collaboration and to complete the assignment.
Although I did not have a lot of experience using all the technology tools in the course, the knowing that these tools exist to enhance learning was more than sufficient to learn in one course.
My entire experience in the course has been positive and I hope to go forward with taking the second course to understand and experience how to facilitate online teaching. I know that way ahead I can foresee some major challenges because usually the further one goes the more complex the situations, but without the personal experience, I will not gain the education, knowledge, skills, and competencies I need to be a successful online instructor.
My last impression is that this journey through the online teaching certification program is only a practice test. The practice test is a test of my stamina, endurance, tenacity,spirit, and will power to successfully progress from one course to the other.
The real test will come when I apply myself in a real life situation as an instructor in an online setting where I will recall all the knowledge gain in this course and other courses to make a positive impact in the lives of students and the learning community.
