Before taking CEP 820, I never really appreciated how much time, thought, and detail were needed in designing an online course. From the student perspective, I can now understand and appreciate the designers of all my online courses as I now know how much effort it took to design a course to help me learn the most efficiently. As I designed my very own online course, I had to make sure that my design and pedagogical decisions would be very intentional for my students. First and foremost, I tried to design my course to be easy to navigate by not making anything appear too overwhelming. It was also important to make the objectives clear for each lesson, so that students can easily see the goal and purpose in their learning. Another design choice I made was to accommodate various learners by including a variety of modes of presenting learning material such as through video, PowerPoints, Prezi, online games, etc. I think these will also serve as a way to keep students engaged in the course.
Thinking about my pedagogical decisions for the course, I made sure to include as many best practices that I had time to include. Overall, I noticed that I followed the same pattern in each lesson where students had a chance to first learn, then gain experiences in what they learned, followed by practicing what they learned. Although I would’ve liked to include more of this, I did make sure to include an opportunity for students to collaborate together by offering feedback and exchange ideas through Google Docs. When creating assignments, I assigned students different types of assignments and posted due dates to help students stay timely and organized. One of my lessons offered students a variety of engaging activities to pick from, which is great for giving students a choice in practicing the learning content. I also had an online course communications policy was posted for students to know how to properly communicate with each other in an online setting and to provide information on how to receive help and contact their instructor when needed. To further help students in the learning content, I made sure to provide many examples of what acceptable work should look like as well as rubrics for each major task.
Of course, there were some pitfalls I encountered when designing this course. The time that it took to create my own learning material such as my Powerpoint and Prezi presentations was underestimated. Even the shortest presentations can take multiple hours along with a lot of thought on how to present the information to the appropriate audience. Further, using these presentations, made me realize that not all students will know how to navigate through them. It was important to include captions and even directions in the presentations to clarify some items. It was also challenging to include multiple opportunities for students to interact and exchange ideas. It takes a lot of thought on how you will manage such an activity. This is a practice that I wanted to include more of in my course as I know it could foster more student engagement. Another pitfall I had was creating specific rubrics for each major task I assigned. For me, this was another time consuming item to create for my course. Second of all, I realized that my rubric wasn’t specific enough and could’ve been more detailed in the expectations. Although I know it’s essential to include, I felt it was quite tedious and I felt myself waiting until the last minute to create them, which I shouldn’t have. Overall, I think TIME is the number one pitfall to be aware of! I definitely needed a LOT of it and will need to dedicate more time to adjust it even after CEP 820 is completed.
Link to my online course: https://classroom.google.com/h
Link to my CEP 820 Developer Notebook:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GkpnEnseJcnAzwBYwtKxNfx-l4hNz_jdKuLvb9ocL-I/edit?usp=sharing
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