Week 9: The Last Word - Take 2

This week's discussion was a slightly different take on The Last Word discussion we had a couple of weeks before. In this one each person posted a quote from the reading that they found to be of value, and then each of the other people in the group posted a 250 word or less response. Then the initial poster got to put in a 25o word final say about why they chose that quote, what the group's response was, and what he or she still thought about the topic. I enjoyed the bigger limit on the word count because it felt like people were able to describe their thoughts more clearly. It was enough to say what they were thinking clearly but without boring everyone else by going on and on. Some people did step outside the initial setup by posting little comments to others, and this did not seem to distract from the overall conversation. I admit, I did this to give out some Karma points, and I noticed some others did as well, adding in little comments to say they liked what someone else had posted.

I think my best post this week came in response to the quote Jennifer McCarty picked about remedial instruction. It is still something I am thinking about:

"The content itself is rarely the problem and moving forward in a unit or session would create more work for the instructor in the long run if the student does not understand it in the beginning. Being able to humble yourself as the teacher and say you missed your mark and need to present the material in a different mode shows your commitment to students learning the information. This also will develop a deeper relationship between you and the students. I think the big key in this situation is being able to use the previous lesson or learning experience in the new or alternate presentation by referring to it, and not ignoring it as if it was a failure. You will still have the respect of your students and you can monitor if they may have learned any of the previous lesson from the new format. Ultimately if they do it would mean you have doubled up on the learning experiences?"

I think this was my best contribution because it takes a lot to say you just did not teach something well enough the first time and should work on still giving the students the material in the next lesson. I have been thinking about the costs involved in going back and making a whole new section for learners to catch up if they did not understand it the first time. The book suggested using different material, and I am not sure how feasible this would be. So it is something I am looking forward to learning more about…

Week 8: Reading Discussion

This week’s discussion centered around what we thought was the most valuable part of the assigned reading for the week (Horton’s chapters 6 and 7). The thing that we all talked the most about was the make-up of the lessons for our eLearning design. I started off the discussion sharing the example Horton used about having lessons be self-contained, such as recipe cards. He said to picture throwing them all up in the air and picking one up. You still have a whole lesson, and it is not dependant on a sequence and can be used to prepare the dish all on its own.

Joni came back and said that it might help to think of the learning section as a meal, where different lessons are like different dishes. My response was, "That is a wonderful idea! Not only to put the project together, but to be able to use a meal made up of different dishes and ingredients as an example as I have the kids work on different topics and then put them all together. Thanks for that! I had started thinking about the recipe idea in terms of groups of recipes like breads and having pumpkin bread, zucchini bread, etc. But I like the idea of the meal because the components can be a lot more varied but all important parts.”

This was my best contribution in the discussion because it took what I had found in the reading and put it into a more real example that I can put into use in my work. The EdWeb I am doing will consist of many different parts, so the recipe idea really seemed to fit, but thinking of them as parts of a whole meal has really encouraged me and given me some good ideas for working on the EdWeb project. I think it will also be a good visual example to give my students, as I would like to have them work on the different parts and eventually put together everything they have learned as a class. It seemed like this week the reading really helped the people who posted get excited about this project. I am looking forward to seeing what develops from it all…

Week 7: Informal Learning Discussion

This week’s discussion centered around the topic of informal learning. During the first part of the week, everyone in the class answered 5 different questions, and then during the 2nd half we had a discussion on what we found out about informal learning from those answers. The 5 questions were about what we talk about at home, what topics we would like to see covered in the class, what questions should be asked in this course to relate to our own lives, what is interesting about us outside of class, and what we might know more about than the instructors.

My best contribution came in the 2nd part of the week when we got into the discussion and how our answers related to eLearning. We had been just talking about things that are important to informal learners, such as how the learning will benefit them and how they can fit it into their busy lives. Motivation is one of the biggest factors that I noticed in the answers to the short questions. Many people said that the questions they wanted answered included something along the lines of “how will this benefit me?” or “what career opportunities will this afford me?” Then Joni asked how we can take what we have learned and apply it to the Web Conference that we are doing as groups. I answered:

“Joni, I think it's very important to remember what we learn here when planning the Web conference. These are not people signing up for a whole course, but they do hope to learn from it if they are going to the trouble of signing up and logging in. The top thing I see is to make it interesting and relative to them, or else what is the point? And using short segments will keep us from losing interest as these are probably busy people like us with other things going on. My EdWeb will be for students at the school I teach at, so it will not be informal, but I think that I will still need to use some of the same aspects, like making it interesting and using the shorter segments to keep the kids involved.”

This is an idea I can take back to my group as we work on our Web Conference, deciding what information to include and how to develop the discussions there. We had been thinking of doing several lessons, but one thing I know we have to do is be considerate of the amount of time these learners have available. The fact that they will be visiting 7 different topics is also something to pay attention to. They will not have a lot of time to devote to one particular topic if they are interested in more. This will be very useful in determining how much we should put out there, so I am glad we had the discussion and were able to focus on informal learning this week.