Wow! “8 million blogs of reflective writing and personal journals”...before there were blogs, did people really write this much? This was one of the first thoughts I had as I read Chapter 9 of Dr. Dawley’s book, The Tools for Successful Online Teaching. Whether people actually wrote that much before the blogosphere explosion or not, the frequency of using blogs in education has certainly increased. As I learn more about the benefits of blogging, I agree that the nature of building on one’s post can help students construct higher order thinking skills over time as mentioned on page 206 of the text. However, I think this is more likely to take place if the focus of learning is not on the technology, but on the writing process as the author points out.
Although they require a certain amount of comfort with computers, blogs and wikis support a simple pedagogical approach of viewing the student as an expert and a collaborator through encouraging self-expression. Techniques that have been used in the classroom, but now take on new meaning as educators use these tools to promote ongoing construction of knowledge that centers on the students more strongly than ever.
As with any media, there are usually some adopted methods to using it. Before reading this chapter, I admit I had no idea what the methods for blogging were. Then I was introduced to the process of scouring, filtering and posting. As one who blogs very little, but reads a variety of them, I had never given thought to these steps. However, I can see how they can introduce other higher order thinking activities for students.
In our other text, I was pleased with how Ko & Rossen make the resource investigation in chapter 2 more of an exploratory exercise with simplified yet powerful questions that can yield a significant amount of information if asked. A good deal of the information gathered is already a part of a contextual analysis described in several other course design models. Often, the perspectives of the Instructional Technologist, designer or Instructor can be valuable in this exercise. For instance, my background as a designer and trainer provides me insight into several facets of these resource inquiries.
The “profiles” of readiness are helpful and prompted me to reflect on places I’ve worked that match some of the characteristics from the scenarios in the text. These scenarios also present themselves as developmental stages of online readiness as I’m sure that over time, some institutions have gone through all three states or stages of readiness described. The authors do a fine job of guiding the reader through some viable solutions for these different scenarios. Therefore, once you analyze where your institution falls and recognize your resources and limitations, you have a better understanding about how to work within those parameters.
Three words with unplanned alliteration describe both the journal articles that I read: pragmatic, powerful and persuasive.
I’ve been curious as to why rubrics are so popular in higher education and now in online teaching. The rubric article from the Journal of Effective Teaching by Ternus, Palmer and Faulk, illuminated the need, purpose and development of a rubric through research outcomes and a specific example. Yet, the aforementioned was a residual effect from learning about how to evaluate the construction, content, processes and outcomes as indicators of online course quality. I found their rubric to be a great baseline tool for online course evaluation. I wish the authors had expanded more on how the rubric could be used to evaluate the outcomes, even if this area needed re-examining because of the challenges mentioned around understanding the discipline and subject area.
The Lane journal article about course management systems was not only a fresh perspective for me, it was also inspiring. Thus, it was my favorite of this module’s readings. It gave me many new points to consider as I learn more about the challenges of integrating pedagogy/andragogy with technological tools. This article focused on the inherent pedagogies of some CMSs. Yet, a CMS is more than just a tool. It is a course delivery method, growing immensely in usage and popularity, which many educators must use to facilitate learning. It is very unfortunate, however, that the Web-based interface offered by some CMS developers has the potential power to undermine a movement toward constructivist (or other) pedagogies and increased teaching creativity online. I am inspired to continue to think of ways to inform and empower educators to do what I am learning to do while obtaining my MET; customize and combine emerging technology with valuable teaching philosophy to produce the best learning outcomes.
