Thursday 4 October 2012

Week 10 Reflection


Elements of a successful online learning were covered this week particularly from the perspective of the teacher in what she/he has to do to move students to achieve learning outcomes successfully. The reading by Hobgood (????) clearly explained the online teacher’s role in reference to his own experience, making it very practical. I can easily relate myself to the reading in that what was said was very true. The following are some of the elements that a teacher online needs to know of and implement in his/her course.

·        Supporting students
·        Planning
·        A realistic workload
·        A learning community
·        Building a comfort zone
·        The instructor’s role in maintaining communication
·        Teaching presence
·        Use a variety of activities (synchronous and asynchronous)
·        Etc, etc, etc.

There is a lot that is being said regarding the above on the internet that teachers can fall back on to support and enhance their online teaching. 

My reflection
I don’t have much to reflect here because I feel that Hobgood has said it all. The challenges encountered were similar to the ones I went through also and I like his ideas of how to combat the issues. The reading was also very easy to comprehend.
However, there are two issues I’d like to raise in regards to students’ postings.
11. Teaching presence is emphasized as one of the best practices of online learning, but if you have 200 students, you will not certainly respond to each and every student, will you? How will we then choose which ones to respond to and when to respond?
22. How do we grade the postings? Everyone is required to answer a question given and to comment also on colleagues postings; how are these graded – according to the number of postings posted which may not be of quality? Students need to know how they will be graded. 

I do believe that the role of the online teacher is as important as the traditional teacher but in very different ways. The success of any learning depends on the teacher. 

Happy learning everyone!

No comments:

Post a Comment