Teaching Without Walls: Life Beyond the Lecture: Webinar Reflections: Reframing Visual Arts Instruc...

Teaching Without Walls: Life Beyond the Lecture: Webinar Reflections: Reframing Visual Arts Instruc...: Wow!  That's all I could think after last week's exhilarating webinar, Reframing Visual Arts Instruction with VoiceThread .  This was the se...

Reflection #2- Administration and Evaluation

This course has alerted to a variety of factors involved in the administration and evaluation of online programs. In particular, the articles on scalability provided me a much more comprehensive sense of the various factors (and tradeoffs) involved in growing online initiatives. Expanding online initiatives for example may result in limiting instructor interaction with students. In previous classes we have learned about the centrality of “social presence” and ways that the instructor needs to create community among participants. It does seem important to create highly interactive learning environments where participants feel vested and willing to take risks. That degree of interaction can be compromised in large programs that cannot sustain a small student instructor ratio. Of course, one of the central benefits to scaled-up programs is increased profitability, higher enrollments, and the ability to expand what may be a high-quality initiative for a larger group of learners. Those goals might be a central part of institutions’ strategic planning that are premised on developing online initiatives that are not just localized but broad in scope and create a greater impact. This notion of balance between connecting with individual learners and expanding programs to reach more learners, (but having less personalized contact) strikes me as a central dilemma many institutions need to deal with when thinking about administering and developing their online programs.

Reflection #1: Administration and Evaluation

So far I have been thinking tentatively about an evaluation plan for my e-learning initiative. I haven't yet determined the exact scope of my initiative. Part of this initiative is a new online course that I am developing within my universities educational technology program. This course is entitled “Educational Innovations” and focuses on school change and professional development. The course has a strong emphasis on using Web 2.0 tools and understanding how Web 2.0 can prompt teachers’ professional development. This course will probably comprise the focus of my evaluation plan. However the course itself is situated within a larger program that will likely become increasingly online with several of the core courses being offered in a fully online or hybrid format. In that sense I'm interested in developing an evaluation plan that has a broader scope focusing on the whole program.
From the group activity we completed this past week I became increasingly aware of the importance of beginning with a set of clearly identified goals and using these goals to give shape to the evaluation plan. Though this makes sense I suspect that a common pitfall of many initiatives is that the evaluation plan is actually performed ad hoc without being clearly derived from the learning goals of the program. So, I'll need to give thought to the essential goals of my initiative especially as they pertain to online teaching and learning. Overall I would like for students to gain confidence, efficacy, and an increasing disposition to use a variety of Web 2.0 tools to fuel their own professional development. The evaluation plan will need to emphasize the process of students exploring a variety of tools as they become more globally connected in their discussions of teaching and professional development. I know I will need to give more coherent shape to these notions so they can be crafted as measurable evaluation questions. In that regard I'm learning that the role of the evaluator and role of a researcher is very similar: to systematically collect evidence around a clear set of goals/questions and then to analyze that data in terms of the original questions. The framework identified in the Sanders & Sullins (2006) is very helpful in identifying a technical process for developing these questions and embedding them in a systematic data collection plan.

Reflection #2

Part I
I do plan on implementing the e-learning initiative that I developed for this course. Currently at my institution we are working on developing several elective courses that students could complete as they complete degrees in either educational technology or curriculum and instruction. This course would be intended as an elective for students who have a special interest in educational innovation, school reform, and/or professional development for teachers. Some specific challenges that would be involved in actually implementing this course would be to ensure that the course content is consistent with the broader program in which students are enrolled. We would want concepts to overlap among courses and within the overall program so as to make sure that the course goals fit into the larger program goals. I think that type of alignment is possible but we would need to take a careful look at overall program goals (especially if there are students from different programs who enroll in this course).
I also think that, as is the case with any new initiative, successful implementation would require the collaboration of several colleagues, both academic faculty and technology specialists. Since the course is designed as a partially online experience it would be important to involve support personnel to make sure that faculty who are new to online teaching would have access to the technical support and resources that would be required.

Part II
I did find the templates helpful in this course. One of the reasons they were helpful is that when planning online initiatives they serve as a reminder to be very explicit, detailed, and sequential in the design of all activities. Having a template serves as a reminder and a prompt to include all of the different steps and components that are necessary to ensure optimal student learning.
One recommendation that I have is to continue to incorporate the notion of “enduring understandings” throughout the course. There was focus on this notion in the first template that was completed; however the notion of enduring understandings wasn't as prominent as the course developed and we completed our broad plan and session directions. I think it would be helpful to focus heavily on that concept (enduring understandings, big ideas) throughout the course and to make sure that all the templates include specific reference to these. In that way I think students would be made even more aware of the importance of having a coherent design based on a set of understandings around which there's been careful reflection and revision throughout the course.

Reflection #1: Instructional Design

For my e-learning initiative I am interested in developing the framework for a graduate course that would focus on the relationship between information and communications technology (ICT) and educational /school reform. This course would be designed for practicing teachers and educational technology specialists in K-12 settings. In particular I want to develop a course that prompts students to examine the particular contributions that ICT can make towards larger school reform by considering the following essential questions: 1) what kinds of learning environments and educational technologies are best for supporting innovative educational technology programs; 2) what kinds of curriculum, pedagogy, and assessments underlie effective reform efforts and 2) what are the characteristics of professional development programs that help sustain lasting and robust school reform?

I bring some knowledge (at fairly novice level) of some asynchronous and synchronous tools that can help engage students in these questions. Most of these tools I have become exposed to in the context of this program at JHU. I plan to conduct this initiative in a “blended” format meaning some meetings will take place in person and others will take place online. I plan for the live sessions to be conducted with a web-based conferencing platform I’ve been using, similar to Adobeconnect, that enables live video and audio conferencing. I would plan to have regular meetings with participants using this platform I’d plan to use some common asynchronous tools such as Voicethread. I'm impressed by the multimedia flexibility of voice thread and its user-friendliness. I would enable students to post reflections and collaborate with each other using voice thread while still providing other text-based forms of asynchronous communication such as blogs and wikis. Another tool I am intrigued by and gaining some familiarity with (although there is much to learn!) is Second Life. Second Life is a virtual 3-D environment that allows users to create an avatar and interact within an environment with other individuals. I see how Second Life environments can be used to support innovative professional development for educators by having visited some amazing Second Life site such as the ISTE site. I might plan to use Second Life throughout the course in order to help create a social space where participants can interact and gain access to additional resources related to educational technology and professional development. These resources would be selectively chosen to help students understand the relationship between ICT , professional development, and school reform.