Week 11

I felt a big change this week in the discussion and am trying to figure out if it was because of the readings, the discussion forum question, the time in the semester, or perhaps an unintended consequence of the group projects. Whatever the reason, the discussion seemed much more free-flowing than before--there were lots of posts but in contrast to the earlier sessions when we had lots of posts, these were much shorter and more pointed, and also people asked questions of each other (the biggest change and the most important one, I think). In addition, there was a much greater use of first names. It felt like people really knew each other and were having a conversation. I am wondering if that is partly a result of the group projects, which were a way to get to know people through what they created rather than just through their words. If so, perhaps I should move them earlier in the semester, or think of some kind of group project to replace some of the earlier work. It also may be that people just feel more in control of the topic, less concerned about what they don't know.

And a reminder to myself about two new things I learned: pipl.com for researching yourself and the term "sky drive" for online storage.

Week 10: Meta-analyses

I suppose I should not be surprised that people found meta-analyses difficult (since I do) and I am pleased that everyone struggled through them, but next time I would like to provide a lot more guidance on the things to look out for and the problematic aspects of each study. It shouldn't be about the struggle but about understanding the results.

I also need to think about how to help people read the case studies more critically, given that some students may not have done research, may not have read a lot of research studies--and if they have, the studies were about face-to-face classrooms not online classrooms and there is a difference in how you study them. Again, I need to come up with a list of items to focus. The key issues are 1) are the populations being studied self-selecting and what does that mean; (2) is there attrition from pre- to post and what does that mean; (3) is the model specified and if not, does this make a difference; and probably more.

Week 9: Finishing the lessons

I was so pleased and excited to see the curriculum units that people created. There went way beyond my expectations, both in terms of completeness and complexity. Some great examples of Web 2.0 tool use, including some at least partially developed their ideas (like the history game and the use of animation and sound to teach tones in Chinese--this is the first time I've actually understood that!), as well as great uses of Ning (which has caught on so quickly and which, with a deft hand, can be used almost as well as Moodle for an entire curriculum), very creative use of other people's resources (simulations in physics and games in Greek history), and tools that I didn't know existed (WizIQ). Every one had many good ideas embedded in it, plus there was a lot of good instructional design theory thrown in.

What they all--and we--lack was one environment that would embrace all the tools, making it so much easier to use them.

I had deliberately said that people should work in pairs because of past experience with the difficulties of coordinating larger groups in a short period of time, but the psychology of it led to larger groups. In addition, I saw the same problem that the high school kids have, which is that you have more problems if you don't get your entire group organized early (in other words, stragglers make it more difficult). That said, curriculum units, in the end, everyone seems to have managed well, although the smaller groups seem to have created slightly more coherent curriculum, probably because they did not have to split the work in the same way (i.e., they could work together more easily). I am therefore still inclined not to encourage larger groups, just because it adds to the burden.

One of the students wrote in her blog about what she has learned about working in groups from working in a big international company. That made me think that we could have benefited from her experience if I had thought about it beforehand--but I didn't put it all together. And that reminded me that one of the IB online teachers has each student lead one discussion forum each week, posing their own question for other students to answer. Some version of that might be possible--for instance, if a student had experience in some area that he/she felt would benefit other students. Perhaps the way to do this would be to solicit volunteers, not forcing people but allowed those who have experience the opportunity to pass it along.

Lots to think about.

Week 7

This was the week to find partners for the curriculum design project. I think there must be a better way to do that than using the discussion forum--perhaps the wiki. The different time zones and different schedules made it take longer and added confusion. It also turned out to be difficult to keep it to pairs. I think pairs would be easier on everyone, so we will have to watch and see how the larger groups do.

I also had no idea how many Web 2.0 tools there are out there. Next time, I think I will take a week to explore those tools from a pedagogical perspective.

One of the advantages of teaching (or taking) an online course is that you can be anywhere in the world. This is where I am:

Week 6: Intense week

This was a very intense week, not only because I fell behind last week but because there was so much discussion this week on the topic of student-student interaction. This in turn led to a whole lot of discussion about discussions. I probably made an error in having this week's discussion forum open to all (i.e., not two groups) but I did that because in previous weeks, the discussion in the smaller groups seemed uneven, to the detriment of people who posted early. However, this turned out to be a topic that everyone could relate to so the posts came hard and fast.

No one, least of all me, is happy with the Moodle discussion forum. It is very hard to follow, I think actually harder than Blackboard because of the way the forums are broken up. I am not sure what to do about this--I think it will take some in-depth analysis of what has actually happened in the different forums for me to decide if I think they are working or not.

What I see in the blogs this week, though is that all the discussion and examining of different aspects of virtual schools over the past couple of weeks has led many students to change their views about the schools they looked at. This is what I had hoped would happen. As the distinctions between the types of schools are becoming clearer, I see much more accurate use of terminology, as well as less excitement and at the same time less being taken in by the glitch of some of the schools' presentations of themselves. Now the challenge is to figure out the potential strengths of these schools and how we build on them.

Week 5 Reflection

Now I know what it feels like to fall behind. I had to go to Washington on Wednesday and didn't have time to read all the final posts on Tuesday or the blogs for last week, then had three days of intense conference with only a chance to do basic email, was held over an extra night by the snow--and now I'm SO far behind reading everything. I expect to catch up Sunday, but still, it's definitely bad news to fall behind.

The TPI discussion was interesting, with lots of good posts about what I think is not probably a very good instrument. It is also interesting that there is much more continuing reference to buzz words than there ever was in my f2f class, I think because the visits to the websites are more frequent.

I am wondering if the Moodle discussion forum is any better than the Blackboard forum. It does not seem a good format for encouraging deeper threads because you don't see the responses easily--it takes work to go through them all. On the other hand, it makes the initial posts much clearer than in Blackboard, where the levels get mixed up. It also may be the format of the questions and my prompt--when they are big, you get everyone posting but when they are narrower, you get more of a discussion. I also like having the posts come into my email box so I know what's going on but find I have to log onto Moodle for the context if they are not initial posts.

I am also trying to figure out if the two groups works better than one group.

Two ideas came up this week that I need to think about. One was that it would be nice if the students could teach a week of the class. It reminded me that in one of the IB classes, the students manage a topical discussion forum, with a different student posting the discussion question each week. The discussion question do not necessarily relate to the subject of the week, just to the overall topic. That might work.

The other thread through many of the posts was about communication. There were calls for more video (i.e., lectures), which might work for the very first introduction but which I wouldn't want to use at other times since I am philosophically opposed to lecturing. But what about using Facebook? I wonder what that would be like and how it would add to the class.

Another great idea: http://www.archive.org/web/web.php for looking back at older versions of a school's website. Will definitely integrate that next time.

Week 4 Reflection

There was lots of interesting discussion this week and also a lot of frustration at not being able to really look at online courses. I feel the pain, but it also brought a bit of reality to the table because the curriculum that people saw was not very impressive. These schools sometimes present themselves well on the surface, but when you go a bit deeper... On the other hand, the frustration led to a lot of productive discussion about better ways to design curriculum.

I was a little surprised that more people didn't look at the courses from a classic instructional design perspective--I had assumed that many of the people in this course would be coming from that background (either through MSTU or through C&T) and that I would see references to backward design or some other theories of curriculum design, but that wasn't the case. It may be that the sample courses are too truncated for that to be possible. It did bring home to me that with the self-paced courses, with the teacher checking in a couple of times a week online or once a week on the phone, it is very hard to see what exactly is happening in the course, or more specifically, what role the teacher plays. Does the teacher simply check in? Answer questions? Pose questions? In the f2f version of this class, I had teachers come and talk, but I don't know how to resolve that here. Perhaps I should do some interview and videotape them, although that is never as good as a f2f discussion. But we are really lack the voice of the online teacher in the discussion of instructional design.

I am also frustrated because I have seen what I consider better designed courses but there is no easy way for the class to see them. I have hesitated to do anything synchronous because students in this class are all over the world, but I think I am going to try to organize a couple of guided tours of VHS courses. This might also address the suggestions during the week that online courses need more of a "teacher presence" (video lessons, posted lectures, etc.). I need to think through how to do this but I would like to try having students in a synchronous discussion.

During the week, various people mentioned some tools that I have never heard of and am interested in trying, so this might be an opportunity for that as well. Someone also suggested that if I wanted people to read other people's blogs, then I should require everyone to sign up to follow each blog. I find the blogs invaluable because they are my only window in what people are thinking as individuals, as opposed to what they are thinking about their findings for the week.

Week 3 Reflection

I found the blog posts this week particularly interesting and I hope that students are reading each other's blogs. From the comments, it looks like some are, but perhaps I need to build this in more explicitly next time.

Looking at the different schools seems to be triggering lots of interesting questions for us to think about. I was also surprised to see the hybrid models (Sam and Alejandro found two interesting ones) where the online learning is supported by on-site activities. This seems to be a growing movement--not just for social or sports activities, which many online charters with full-time online students have build in, but for in-school learning time. We are going to have to be careful with the use of the term hybrid, because this is the reverse of the general use of the term, which is that f2f learning is supplement by online learning.

Important questions were raised about funding streams, particularly since some online state schools now seem to be charging and since many charters list prices--so how does this work? Another question was about attendance policies--should there be an online equivalent to seat time and if so, what is it? Next time I should find some explicit and recent readings or information on both of these, which were discussed by the speakers I brought into the f2f class but are not explicitly covered in the online course.

Week 2 reflection

This was a low-key week for me after the intensity of the first week. Because there was no discussion forum, I felt very out of touch, although I could see the wikis growing and had quite lot of email correspondence--but that was mostly with people trying to catch up, so those who were well established were working away out there on their own. Partly because of this, I am very glad that I included the weekly reflections: I had thought that they would be useful for the students to look back on but hadn't somehow realized how useful they would be for me to "hear" what was going on in people's minds.

I also found that since I didn't have a discussion forum to use to show my "teacher presence," I was writing comments on the blogs. In fact, my own feelings and some of the blog comments leads me to want to think so more about how to have presence as a teacher but still allow for lots of autonomy.

I was also struck by a couple of unexpected additions: someone decided to annotate the Google spreadsheet with quotes from the school's website that explain the placement of the school, and then others followed up on this. I hadn't thought of doing asking for this but it is very helpful, and I am going to add it next week.

Another innovation was the use of Wordle to analyze the words used. Great idea, and another tool to introduce. I think next time around it would be really interesting for everyone to create Wordle images, to have us put them all into one wiki page, and then use them as data.

I was interested that there are some placements on the Google spreadsheet that seem not to portray a school accurately from what I know of it. The good thing about this is that it points to the difference between how a school portrays itself and how it actually is--and the goal here was to take a close look at how the schools portray themselves. I think the problem is going to be finding out if what they say is true without being a teacher or student in the school. I need to think about how to do this.

The poll on how to set up the discussion forums was split between having many separate discussion threads and letting each discussion evolve. So for now, I will let it evolve, but I need to specific how to write the headers.

Addition to Week 1 reflection

I forgot to note that although I generally like how Moodle works, including how easy it is for me to update the weekly descriptions, I am SO tired of not being able to get onto the Moodle site. Even when there is no one else there, it hangs and hangs.

My Week 1 reflection

I'm a little late with my Week 1 reflection (!) but I wasn't think I would write one. Now I think I should.

I found the first week really interesting and alot of fun but also a bit of a scramble. I feel I learned a lot about the people in the class very quickly and love the different backgrounds that I see--people's experiences are much wider and more varied than in my f2f classrooms.

I did find a couple of unexpected things: First, I research high school courses, where the kids often write as little as possible so I was surprised (and pleased) by how much people wrote in the discussion forums. Second, although I wanted to get off to a quick start, I didn't want to overload people with new tools in the first week but I think I may have done one too many for some people. I will try to figure out a way to go a bit slower next time. And third, I absolutely did not expect the two groups in the discussion forums to structure the discussion so differently. Next time I will be more explicit about what I expect (if I can figure that out--the poll results are split between letting the discussions evolve and having threads).

I think I will also slow down the first week because the scramble came from all the adds and drops, plus the few "missing" students who for various reasons were not posting. TC allows almost two weeks for adding and dropping, so we had a couple of drops, which meant that the class (which had been closed) opened up and we got some new students. These new people are great additions but getting them organized was a scramble for me and undoubtedly for them, in part because Moodle is not integrated with ClassWeb so I had to keep checking who was registered and then getting the Moodle people to add them--a two-step process that I hope will not happen once TC actually goes over to Moodle. So that is another reason to start a bit slower next time. The other reason to start slower is that there are a few people who haven't gotten on board with the assignments and I don't know where they are or what is going on. In a f2f class, I could ask, but in this case, it feels like a black hole out there.

That said, I think the most important thing I have taken away from this week is that I realize that I am going to learn more from the students in this class than I do from the students in my f2f class. That is partly because many have a lot of online learning experience, but also because I can see the results of your thinking in a way that I can't in a f2f classroom. This is supposed to be one of the advantages of asynchronous learning and it really does seem to be true.