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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