The End is The Beginning

It is the end of semester and I have just submitted my last assignment. The 522 – Online Teaching for Adult Learners was one of my most favorite classes in the EdTech program. I finally got to learn what I was looking forward to during the past two years – how to create real online courses, rich media tutorials, screencasts, how to effectively use web 2.0 tools in the classroom, and how to implement the online course into the learning management system. I really enjoyed every assignment during this course and found out that this is something that I really want to do in the future. I am already in the process of creating my own online courses and this course helped me to understand the most important aspects of online teaching. It gave me the base for growing my knowledge and technical skills which I will need in the future as I build online courses.

I really interesting and surprising was the comparison of online courses. During this assignment I found out that even if a course looks great on the first sight, it may be completely useless if it is not designed well. I believe that it is one reason why some people still don’t trust online education. Many of the online courses are poorly designed. I wish that the evaluation of online courses was mandatory at every school. Every online program should have a rubric in place, such as the Quality Matters. It would greatly improve the quality of online programs and therefore the knowledge of students.

It was awesome to discover that I really enjoy creating lessons in the LMS. I had no problems with Moodle and really had a lot of fun creating my lesson about Social Media for Trainers.

This course really gave me a lot to build on. The end of this course is the real beginning of my career as an instructional designer and online teacher.

Creating a Lesson in Moodle

For the last few weeks, I was working on an assignment of creating a Moodle lesson. I really enjoyed this experience. Creating lessons was one of the reasons I started to study at Boise State University. I was surprised how easy it was to setup the course. Even thought I created lessons in Moodle before, I have not worked in Moodle 2.0. I really like the new features of this version of Moodle – especially the ability to change the theme. I have not encountered any problems while working on uploading the lesson to Moodle. The hardest part of the whole assignment was to come up with the lesson title and think of the objectives for the lesson. Other than that, it was a great experience and I look forward to create more lessons in the near future!

Online Learning Tools

In Module 3, we learned about the different online learning tools. It was very interesting to read about all the tools available in online education! Thanks to the Internet, teacher and instructors have so many options that it is often too hard to only choose the right tool. It may become very time consuming to learn how to use all the tools available. Teachers should first make a research to see if the tool they want to introduce to students is worth the time needed to learn how to use the tool and to create content with it. I think students will find most of the tools attractive and fun, but teachers should not overuse technology even if it looks “cool” to students. More important is to think if the tool will help students to learn the content.

I researched the screencasting software called “Adobe Captivate”. During my research, I found out that screencasting tools in general have many more advantages than disadvantages. They are very popular among teachers and students and most of the screencasting tools are very easy to learn. I have chosen Adobe Captivate since I would like to master this tool myself. I only learned the basics so far and I would like to become advanced in using this tools. I would like to be involved in software training and Adobe Captivate is one of the best tools to create interactive tutorials for software training. The presentation I created (using Prezi), can be found here: http://prezi.com/yeosnik3klu3/adobe-captivate/

I also enjoyed watching my classmates’ presentations. So far, I knew about all the introduced tools, but I hope that I will learn about some new ones which I could use when I create my online courses.

Online Teaching for Adult Learners – Module 1

Define online teaching and learning.

Online education is an educational process where instruction occurs via the Internet. There are two forms of online education: synchronous and asynchronous. In synchronous online session, students and the teacher are present online at the same time. During asynchronous online education, students and the teacher access the course content whenever they choose to.

What is andragogy and how does andragogy relate to online teaching and learning?

Andragogy is a theory of adult learning. Andragogy is based on six assumptions:
The need to know – adult learners need to know why they should learn something.
The learners’ self-concept – adults are responsible for their own learning, they are self-directing learners.
The role of the learners’ experiences – adults should use their experiences in their learning.
Readiness to learn – adults are ready to learn when they can relate the learning to the real life situations.
Orientation to learning – adults are life-centered and motivated if the learning will help them to solve real problems.
Motivation – adult learners are motivated by the the vision of better jobs or promotions, higher salaries, increased job satisfaction, self-esteem, quality of life, etc.

Since adults usually have a very busy life, online education is the best way for them to learn. It is very convenient and fits their busy schedules. According to the assumptions of andragogy, adult learners become successful in online education if it is engaging, provides space for collaboration, and self-direction.