Session 3: Planning the Content and Developing Your Activities

1. Session 3: Planning the Content and Developing Your Activities

2. Agenda • Hands on, getting set up in BB • Diversifying your Activities • Elevator talks • Finding Inspiration • Discussion Questions • Open Educational Resources (OERs) • Group and Team Projects, Chad Mueller & Jason Carter • Sample Media Showcase: Adobe Connect by Katie Clayton

3. Hands-on Activity • Setting up your weekly and course folders • LDA 3 worksheet, content and task analysis • LDA 4 worksheet, planning your content

4. Diversifying your Activities Some Variety is key • Getting stuck in a “rut” when you’re planning learning activities for your course can be frustrating. However, there are simple processes you can work through to help the learning activities take shape. • We know that students need to be engaged. They need a diversity of instructional strategies, which can then be used to incorporate a variety of learning activities (e.g. specific assignments), so that these activities don’t become rote or focus too much on a single level of learning. • Think of Bloom’s Taxonomy, we don’t want most activities to fall into any one category of learning: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. Yet, we don’t want to switch up learning activities for the sake of it either.

5. Elevator talks • 3 minutes to share an instructional strategy/activity for use in an online course

6. Finding inspiration • Where do you find inspiration? • Colleagues, books, online resources, conferences? • Why should it be any different for planning an online course? Some things to consider • Online guest speakers (synchronous, asynchronous, videotaped) • YouTube videos, a number of leaders in the field have recorded talks • Bonk and Dennen (2007)have created a useful chart that breaks activities into four categories.

7. Bonk & Dennen, 2007

8. Discussion Questions: Not Just a Space Filler! Why Discussion Questions? • Access to resources beyond the classroom • Enable asynchronous participation • Accommodates multiple learning styles • Provide additional opportunities for interaction/reflection with the content

9. How does discussion/interactionpromote learning? • Creates interactive learning community • Of learners, of learners and instructor(s) • On and beyond the campus classroom • Achieves scaffolding of student knowledge • Enhances engagement with the subject matter • Encourages/teaches teamwork • Enhances feedback – amount, timeliness • Emphasizes time on task • Increases social skills • Increases levels of student course satisfaction • Increases student persistence in distance programs

10. Interaction promotes learning because …. • Students are more active; they must • complete assigned readings • reflect on and process concepts in the readings, present own viewpoints/ideas • be exposed to diverse perspectives • interpret peers’ postings, compare with own viewpoints

11. Richardson, Sadaf & Ertmer (2012)

12. Planning for DQs (more on mgmt. next session!) • Clearly define your expectations for discussion in general (participation rubric) and for specific DQs. • Students should know they need to be formal, but not as formal as a “final paper”. • Netiquette is a must. Be prepared to intervene. • Employ the Socratic method • Design high level questions that (1) constructs knowledge from prior learning and experiences, (2) incorporates the course readings, (3) that does not have one correct answer. Online student perspectives of online discussions: cultural, gender? My suggestions: • Participation in DQs should count toward final grade • Model responses • Provide detailed feedback for at least initial DQ • Don’t plan to respond to each student response each week—you’ll kill yourself. Instead, respond to threads.

13. What are Open Educational Resources? Open Educational Resources (OERs), stem from the concept of learning objects or, more precisely, reusable learning objects. The philosophy behind OERs is that education and educational materials should be free and openly licensed to allow for open education. UNESCO defines them as, “teaching, learning and research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain and have been released under an open license that permits access, use, repurposing, reuse and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions” (Atkins, Brown & Hammond, 2007) Ultimately, an OER can consist of anything from a full course (e.g. Organizational behavior) to a simple page with a quiz or information on a particular topic (e.g. What is an independent variable?). How can OERs help me develop an online course? You may find there is no need to reinvent the wheel. If you are looking for a way to easily explain an abstract concept look to OERs; you may find someone has already created the kind of content you need, and provided you with a great resource to incorporate into your own course.

14. Where to find OERs • Use Google’s Advanced Search which will allow you to look specifically for results that have a creative common license • Open Courseware Consortiumwww.ocwconsortium.org/ • De Oracle at UMUC, resources for OERs and benefits of OERs www.deoracle.org/online-pedagogy/emerging-technologies/open-educational-resources.html • Connexions.com www.cnx.org • OER Commonswww.oercommons.org/ • Merlotwww.merlot.org • Jorum www.jorum.ac.uk

15. “In a Rut” Decision Tree Richardson, 2013

16. For next session (Oct 14) • Review Paloff & Pratt, 2011, chap 1 and 2; • Review Ko & Rosen, 2004, chap 11 and 12.: • Plan to conduct peer reviews on syllabus to date and course layouts • LDA 4 worksheet due next session

17. Media Showcase: Adobe Connect by Katie Clayton