The journey to crafting an engaging and liberating course begins. We sketched what a GREAT online course would look like and I have turned that into a poem to eDesign. First we played with Course Sites – then we had the #WBLT session… then back to Course Sites for more tinkering. It IS FUN!! And it is means that we have started the journey to our first low stakes formative assessment: storyboarding our VMLE – in Course Sites.
JUMPERS FOR
GOALPOSTS: WHO ARE WE DESIGNING FOR?
Functionality:
Orientation
Clear
pathways
For novice
And
Or
expert
Online…
blended?
Sociability:
Belonging/bonding/blogging
FB it – dammit!
Tweet: Always?
Assessment and
Feedback
Assessment
Locus
Tasks
Aims & LOs
Feedback – enabled:
Haec Dragones Sunt!!
Self.
Testing!
Support and Contact
Up
to
date.
Resources
Praxis
Diverse
OER
Oh - those videos…
History
Evolve or die.
Pedagogy:
Active
Interactive
Flipping
Dialogic!
PBL
Constructivist
Experiential
experimental.
Can we design … a football match?
Magical!
Key considerations:
Evaluating needs – including: what is
my MLE? What does it offer? Who are my students – what are their strengths and
needs? What is this course?
Organising materials.
Defining goals.
Selecting instructional mode and
techniques.
Content sequence.
Assessment and Feedback.
Student feedback.
Tip: See also: http://www.digitalpedagogylab.com/6-principles-of-critical-pedagogical-course-design/
- six considerations – below - my italics!
6 Principles of Critical Pedagogical Course Design
Every Digital Pedagogy Lab Course keeps in mind the
following:
Content is #1: Content does not equate to learning, but should instead
form the foundation for inquiry, discussion, dissension, and the production
(not, never, no-way-no-how the consumption) of knowledge. Content is a
proposal; no one should ever be quizzed on content. Content is not there to
digest or memorize, it’s there to inspect, laugh about, jump off from.
To this end, we keep content as minimal as possible, and
include always the spur toward dialogue. Not reading, not memorizing, not
passing tests. Joining in. Content needs to be the ground upon which we meet,
not the basis for what we learn.
Narrative structure: All courses are compositions, and as such they should
tell a story. In this, I am referring both literally and also more generally to
the idea of story. I believe that teaching should utilize anecdote,
storytelling, performance in specific moments, but I also believe that any
course should follow a narrative arc. An online course cannot be a series of
handouts followed by a quiz. The course should begin one place and end
someplace decidedly elsewhere… someplace learner and teacher mutually discover.
The best courses are as engaging as the best stories, and they don’t neglect
aesthetic considerations.
Open-ended questions: Yes or no questions are for computers, not people. If
the answer to a classroom question is “yes” or “no”, it may as well be
rhetorical for all the good it does. Pedagogically, open-ended questions
are one of the simplest, least threatening ways to abdicate
authority. If we are truly curious about what learners think, then we need
to leave lots of room for their reasoning, musing, and questioning. And
sometimes the best answers are questions.
It’s also important to use questions to spin off from
content. Never ask for regurgitation of information. Why would we want it? Don’t we
already know that particular answer? Can we let discussions grow out of content
instead of asking participants to remind us of what we’ve said?
Actual work, no busy: Activity in a course should never be empty. Just as
the answers to questions should not merely (blandly, boringly) repeat what’s
been said already, neither should the work in a course require nothing more than
an understanding of content. Learning isn’t an act of recall, so activities
that support learning shouldn’t aim to demonstrate recall.
No assessments: I was recently asked by a colleague about a course
Digital Pedagogy Lab will offer in Fall 2016, “What’s the method of
assessment?” I responded, “Completion, whatever that means.” A course
should be challenging enough that just getting through it is an accomplishment
(and compelling enough that learners want to get to the end of the story). Jesse
wrote that “there is no authority in the course except insofar as
everyone is an authority.” The notion that teachers, above learners themselves,
have more authority over assessment is absurd.
Business casual: Something happens when we go to write our very first
page inside the LMS. We suddenly become the very old, white, male, tight-lipped
scholar who can’t use contractions or ellipses or emoticons or ironic
parentheticals or risky language (or run-on sentences). Even those of us who
are not grammar guardians become hypervigilant about sounding like the stony,
unapproachable expert. Most teachers sound nothing like themselves when they
write online; and yet voice sets the tone in an online course. Perfect grammar
shakes no one’s hand, gives no hugs.
NOW – JUST HAVE TO CONVINVE THE #WBLT DREAM TEAM OF THE NO
ASSESSMENTS BIT!!
So – I’ve had a
go at setting up my course sites course:
Congratulations! You
created your course and are almost finished! Now, it's time to let your
students know about your course! Below are a few ways to get them started.
1.
Have
them visit your CourseSites Instructor Home Page at:
https://sinfiels.coursesites.com
https://sinfiels.coursesites.com
2.
Have
them enroll, request enrollment or login directly from the Course Home Page at:
https://www.coursesites.com/s/_Beco2016
https://www.coursesites.com/s/_Beco2016
3.
Invite,
Enroll, or Create students from within the course.
View Tutorial Download Instructor Guide
View Tutorial Download Instructor Guide
Big buzzy moments
I managed to get into Course
Sites - and after applying a colour scheme, changed the name of the
site to include my name so that the tutors can find it (never forget simple
ways to make life easier). Invited the tutors to be students on my course then
wrestled with a teaching style/course structure.
Guess which one I chose:
Activity:
hands-on, fieldwork, PBL – with conversations and live chat
Case Study:
develops knowledge through cases – enabling brainstorming, blogging and the
application of theory.
Conference session:
allowing collaboration in a web environment.
Constructivism: facilitating
the construction of learning – with groups, sharing, knowledge-base and
reflection.
Expedition-based:
active/exploratory – with base camp, storytelling and My Trip Journal.
Experiential:
knowledge created through concrete experiences – hands-on plus reflection.
Round table, our blogs and my reactions.
Well – I have chosen
Experiential ATM – though really I’m leaning towards Expedition-based… So watch
this space.
E-Designer
tip: Looking for inspiration from the Connected Courses site: http://connectedcourses.net/thecourse/
