Week 15 Final Reflection

Looking back at all the reflections I write in this semester, I still think online schooling has many of its great affordances. It provides students with more opportunities to receive the education they cannot otherwise access, such as in small school districts where the number of students is not enough for hiring new teachers, in rural areas, or for students with special needs to take advanced placement or credit recovery courses. However, when its existence is without doubt positive, how online learning is implemented is still questionable: quality and cost issues might be the most thorny.

Aside from the above, in this semester, the most inspiring lesson I have learned is from reading the literature to reexamine the validity and feasibility of conducting comparative research between f2f and online instruction. Before the discussion, I may not even question the rationale of these studies, but now, I learn to be more cautious in reading such research.

I also like the scheduled asynchronous communication that Rose and Smith (2008) propose. Before this, I only know about the difference between synchronous and asynchronous communication. But, I think the idea of scheduled asynchronous communication not merely serves as a good instructional method, it can also better illustrate and depict many of the interaction and learning activities happening online.

In the past 15 weeks, I followed the somehow a little fast paced step to take the course. I am glad I can finish it, and I think I do have learned a lot!

Week 11 Reflection

This week we look further at the challenges of conducting online learning research. Because student characteristics and teachers instruction are unique and hard to replicate, it is very difficult for us to confirm whether online learning is effective and what kind of learner traits, teacher moves, or instructional design can really contribute to the success of an online program. Even though, I still think the findings of online learning research can still provide educators a great deal of suggestions and pedagogical implications to refine the online learning quality.

Week 10 Reflection

This week's reading made me think about whether it is valid for us to make comparison between f2f and online learning. As Professor Lowes explained on our class discussion board, without the execution of random sampling and the control of many other variables, it is almost impossible for us to conduct a real comparison study between these two modes of learning. Maybe as researchers has pointed out, what's more urgent for us to do in the future is the identification of the factors that contribute to the success of online learning, and then tailor these critical factors to meet the needs of each individual learners in their unique contexts. After all, there is no single case in education that can be perfectly replicated and implanted in another time and space. Maybe what we need is a more adaptable and flexible instructional design to meet the diverse needs of the online learning students.

Week 9 Reflection

After viewing others' instructional designs, I think if I have a chance to do it again, I will choose to use a blog as the course platform, such as Moodle, Ning, or Google Blog instead of a Wiki page. Particularly I like the format of Ning as used by Kristin and Deepa, which provides a clear and structured page layout for students to find the information they need and for instructors to organize the course materials on the week-by-week or unit-by-unit basis. Actually, I used Ning for another group project before, but I remember it's no longer a free tool. I am wondering if Kristin and Deepa have paid for it. However, it is quite a useful tool!

Besides, I will also include an evaluation survey at the end of the course for students to give their feedback on their satisfaction of the course as Adrienne and Tiffany did in their instruction.

Week 7 Reflection

I am going to work with Tricia to design a course helping middle school students learn how to use on-line resources to do research. Broadly speaking, it's a course about technology literacy, but since there is no particular content area in our instruction, I am most concerned about how to make the goal of our instruction specific and communicate it clearly to our audience. To achieve that, I think maybe we need to narrow down and focus on introducing just a couple of websites that are most useful and accessible to our students and can meet their learning needs. I am also concerned about how I will communicate and interact with Tricia since we will not be able to have face-to-face meetings. Well, hope things will be fine and fun!

Week 6 Reflection 2

I didn't change anything on the spreadsheet, but I think in addition to synchronous and asynchronous communication, we can add one more category, scheduled asynchronous communication, to the ways of student-student and student-teacher interaction. I really like the idea of asynchronous communication that Rose and Smith (2008) proposed to further classify asynchronous communication.

Just like our own class, we are asked to post on the discussion forum and our individual blogs by every Sunday and Wednesday. In such a scheduled asynchronous type of communciation, it not only gives us a great deal of latitude to manage our time to read, think about, and respond to the questions and other classmates' postings, but also somehow imposes an ideal amount of pressure on us to keep up with the progress of the course. It's really a good way to design activities in an online course. Compared with purely asynchronous communication, scheduled asynchronous communication better trains students to become independent as well as responsible learners.

Week 6 Reflection 1

I looked back to the spreadsheet but couldn't find anything I wanted to change. I am wondering whether I do need to change something. If not, that means I am not learning after all these weeks. Or, that means I don't really understand what I am reading for this class. Or, I just don't have the ability to reflect.

Getting nothing from reflecting is frustrating!

Week 5 Reflection from TPI Results

My TPI results showed that the most dominant perspective of mine towards teaching is transmission. That means I will think effective teaching requires substantial amount of commitment to the content and subject matter. It’s true! I do think although teachers’ tasks are multifaceted, the most important job for a good teacher is to have a strong knowledge of the subject matter and communicate clearly to let students understand the content.

For me, I used to be a language instructor. So, the most important job of mine is to help students capture and master the language. Although sometimes through the teaching of a new language, I will also convey the values of a different culture. I believe that will somehow affect the way my students see the world, change their perspectives toward themselves or other people. However, I think after all I am still a language teacher. I am not a philosopher. What I need to focus the most in my job is to teach the language well. Changing students’ values, perspectives, and their world views, though important, is not the core of what I should do.

Week 4 Reflection

I think what's really important for the instructional design of online courses is that the instructor has to make the course description very clear and detailed. As a learner, I would expect to see a clearly described syllabus in which the learning goal, assignments, and ways of assessment are thoroughly explained.

Besides, judging from the courses I reviewed on the websites of those online schools, I think it is also important for online instructors to emphasize learners' individual learning styles. Therefore, a variety of activities should be embedded to motivate students and increase participation as well as interaction between students and teachers.

Week 3 Reflection

After learning about online schools for 3 weeks, I think I am getting more and more interested in knowing about students' experiences with online learning, and from teachers' perspective, how online courses are designed and conducted. I think online learning does provide students a different and valuable opportunity to learn some subjects which they may not otherwise be able to access in the traditional face-to-face environment. But, I am also wondering that if students will feel lonely to learn online. Especially for middle school and high school students, learning with peers, seeing, and playing with each other every day at school seem to be a very important part of their lives, and it could be beneficial for their development. But, will these precious human contact experiences be sacrificed because of online learning?

I would like to teach online, anyway.

Week 2 Reflection

If my children would like to take a course through the virtual school, I would make sure that whether their motivation to learn the subject online is genuine or not because I think taking online courses really asks for learners' motivation. I will also judge from my children's ability of self-discipline: whether they can plan and manage their learning. If I find that their motivation to learn the subject is really high and they can take control of their learning, I will very much encourage them to take the online courses. Besides, I will keep track of their learning and ask them to tell me how them feel about their online course, that is, they have to learn how to evaluate their online learning experiences.

Week 1 Reflection

What I learned this week that surprised me is the scarce studies that have been done about online schooling. Though with its rapid growth, until now, it seems to me that we still know very little about how online schooling can be implemented well. I look forward to reading some of the successful cases of online schooling in the following weeks.

The biggest question I am wondering about after this week is that why many online programs are dedicated to remedial purposes. I think many students who cannot perform well in the traditional face-to-face classroom is not because of the way instruction is delivered, but rather the inadequate learning strategies or personal problems. Therefore, simply changing the way instruction is delivered from face-to-face to online mode cannot necessarily solve the problem.

About me

Hi,

My name is Tsanjui. I am from Taiwan. I am doing my doctoral study in the program of Instructional Technology and Media for the second year. If you find my Chinese name hard to pronounce, welcome to just call me Richard. Thanks!

What made me interested in this course?
Online schooling is a fancy idea which may drastically transform the way people used to teach and learn. However, there also seems to be a great deal of challenges that need to be overcome and carefully grappled with in order to make online schooling really successful and effective. I take this course in hopes of getting to know some of the successful cases of online schooling and understand the underlying factors that make the online schooling prosperous.

Experience with online learning:
The experience I have with online learning is mostly in a blended context in which we still have face to face class sessions, but just use some technologies, such as blog, class web, and discussion forum, to enhance the learning process. As a matter of fact, this course is the very first class I have ever taken which is totally "online."