Thursday, August 27, 2015

ONTL 7201 Initial Blog Barb Anderson 8-28-15



ONTL 7201 Initial Blog
Barbara J. Anderson
8-28-15

     I am excited to have arrived at the final course of the Certificate Program and to be able to put my course design completed in ONTL 7101 into action.  The design and execution of my plans will provide a much better online biology course for my students to be more successful.  I am expecting this course to be a lot of fun because I will be actively engaged in building a real course rather than just talking about the theory.

     I don’t have a lot of experience designing web content as the online course that I have been teaching was written by another instructor.  Writing blog entries in each course and developing an expanding portfolio have given me some experience in designing web content.  Teaching an online course using Blackboard for the last eight years has and will be a big help with a basic knowledge of items such as editing, posting, repositioning items, building quizzes/tests, making announcements, using and editing the grade center, etc.  All of GSU’s ONTL courses in the Certificate Program have shown me best practices and give good examples of course design and execution.  With each course I have gained additional experience in the online environment.  In ONTL 6201 the ability to design a powerpoint, upload it, and execute a presentation in Collaborate will be invaluable going forward in the design process.

     There will be aspects about this course that I will find challenging and frustrating.  Using new BB tools will probably cause some anxiety until I have practiced and I become familiar with their use.  I am unsure of how easy it is to make adaptations for keeping the course accessible like closed captioning for the hearing impaired, screen readers for the visually impaired, etc.  I have tried including videos via links and embedding them.  This is a challenging technique for me so I hope that this task becomes easier with more practice.  I am concerned about the consistency and availability of the BB LMS itself.  From my experience it is not always dependable and reliable.  My biggest challenge will be – will I be able to execute my design plan completely and successfully.  One of my biggest concerns with my content modules is the ability and ease of incorporating our publisher’s technology Launchpad/Learning Curve and SimUText interactive labs into the content of the course.  I will be discussing the feasibility of incorporating these items with both companies.  Since this course is really the first of the four to use almost no discussion board posts the change in the online community might be significant. Acting as peer reviewers or buddies will still help establish/maintain these important bonds during student-student interaction.  I am somewhat concerned about being able to give adequate feedback to my classmates so that all of us can improve our courses.

     I have been teaching for a long time.  One of the things that keeps me excited and motivates me is using a new book or resource where new activities need to be developed to engage students.  Developing new materials keeps the course fresh and both the instructor and students more engaged.  I am comfortable and confident about spending the time to execute the design that I worked hard on in ONTL 7101.  While I am excited about putting my course modules into action I am nostalgic at the same time to almost be done with this series of courses and the online community of students and faculty that has developed.  I am looking forward to learning how to execute and implement my course design in this class.



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