Using Multimedia (7)
I try to create most of my online material. I direct my students to online resources that will supplement my presentations. In chapter 7 of Ko and Rossen's
Teaching Online, A Practical Guide
, they mention that if it is already available online, create a link to save time and effort. (and most importantly...ask permission). I did a little bit of researching and found great resources that I could use in my photography and digital imaging courses. The MERLOT - Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching website is a wonderful resource. I had visited this site about a year ago but I didn't see very many resources for my area. I highly suggest a visit to this site to see what others are offering in your discipline. I will need to end this post so I can see what is new. This is a great Best Practices site.
http://www.merlot.org/merlot/materials.htm?keywords=photography&category=2175. I
Student Activities in the Online Environment (6)
Group acvities can be a good way for students to take charge of their own learning. According to Ko and Rossen (Teaching Online A Practical Guide) an icebreaker would be a good group activity to use in an online environment because it allows students to begin to form a sense of community online.
I searched the internet to see what icebreaker activities are being used in distance learning and I came across an article by Bill Pelz. His article
(My) Three Principles of Effective Online Pedagogy
has a number of icebreaking activities. There is an important quote in the article that sums up why we should put students in charge of their own learning: "A lecture is the best way to get information from the professor's notebook into the student's notebook without passing through either brain." What a great quote!
One activity he suggests, is to have the student facilitate a discussion; the students do most of the work and the role of the educator is to provide structure, direction, supportive and corrective feedback, and evaluation of final product.. To read more about the activities suggested by Pelz I have included the website to the journal article: http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/jaln/v8n3/v8n3_pelz.asp.
I teach an online course that is very popular and our virtual campus wants to add a second section. We do not have any adjuncts in our discipline (except myself) who have either taken or taught an online class. At this point in time, they are very intimidated by the process.
In chapter 12 of Teaching Online A Practical Guide, team teaching was mentioned as a good way to speed up the production of course materials and other benefits such as one instructor handles the luctures while the other publishes backup material and replies to student inquiries on the discussion board.
I thought this would be a good way to teach instructors how to facilitate a blackboard class without all of the mistakes we all make in the beginning.
I researched the internet for articles, but I didn't find very many articles discussing team teaching in an online environment. I did find a good article at
http://www.communitytechnology.org/products/gpr_paper.html titled
Team-Teaching and Team-Learning on a Global Scale:Insiders' Account of a Successful Experiment. This artical discussed using team teaching on a global scale. It is pretty exciting to think you could co-facilitate a class with someone in Russia and Egypt.
I also retrieved information on the internet from a book entitled The Digital University, that talked about using team teaching to mentor new faculty.
http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/vc/Managing_Distance_Learning.docI think mentoring in this mannor is better than a 3 hour workshop looking at an empty blackboard shell taught by someone who has neither taken or taught a blackboard course.
