The Pleasures and Perils of Online Instruction: Module 2 Blog Post

Teaching in an online environment will allow me to stay current with the change in education, and compel me to adopt a more learner-centered pedagogy.  The online course is also affording me the opportunity to develop materials for a more learner-centered pedagogy using state-of-the-art tools.  This will benefit my in-classroom teaching as well.

I anticipate two challenges: 1) having all of my time devoted to teaching the course this summer.  I am particularly concerned about the additional grading time that online instruction appears to take (according to the readings).  I strongly dislike grading…2) developing effective asynchronous activities for each lesson.

The quote by Moore and Kearsley, 2012 (cited in Lin, Dyer and Guo) summarizes the time-consuming activities in online teaching that I hadn’t considered:

“Simply making a video podcast presentation or putting lecture PowerPoint material on a Web site is no more teaching than it would be to send the students a book through the mail.  As well as presentations of information, at least as much attention should have been devoted to finding out each individual’s need and motivation for learning, giving each individual the opportunity for testing and practicing new knowledge, and for receiving evaluation of the results of such practice” (p. 136).

2 comments

  1. Hello Irene,
    Thanks for your insightful posting to get us started!

    I can totally relate and appreciate the mention of grading…which does bring us to the place were we can consider what types of activities that you can create that will not be too consuming for grading purposes. And, also let’s brainstorm about peer-to-peer activities that can be of value to learners and take some of the responsibilities from you, as well. Establishing a workflow is so important.

    We’ll also want to pre-plan your asynchronous sessions as much as possible. I’ll bet that we can find some resources out in the world to help. But, you can also use Classroom Assessment Techniques to assist and figure out what the students may want to know more about, what they are struggling with, etc.

    And, thank you for bringing to the forefront more about the types of content that are effective. Ultimately, we will want to provide a variety of content (articles, publishings, videos, presentations, etc) to all learners.

    We can add a few questions to the pre-course technology assessment, as well, if that seems useful.

    All best, Leah

  2. wow nice ! thanks pal . I’ll send you email for learn more . please gimme some time 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.