Well, part of this blog is to capture lessons learned - I just learned a huge lesson about the 2-parts of preparation for online teaching - the pedagogical and the technical.
I am facilitating an online course for a local organization that does professional development for K-12 teachers. Our class begins on-line tomorrow. I recently finished a 4-week online training to prepare to facilitate the course which is a graduate course - The course space was released to me last night and I have one day to get it ready to go.
I realized very quickly that the training we received was inadequate in terms of the interface. We spent our training in the student side of the interface and I realize that I have no idea how to configure and administer the course from the back-end. The training I received was mostly about facilitating and grading student assignments, based on given rubrics. Even for someone with lots of experience in online venues, I found it very disconcerting this morning as I tried to figure what to do and how to get the course site up and ready to go. Also, it was not clear who to contact with questions. My only contact with the company had been the person who hired me who was also the trainer, but I didn't suspect they would be around on a Sunday morning - and I was right...
Once again, it hits home how much TIME it takes to prepare well to teach online. Even if the courses are already fully developed, there is a lot to learn about communicating with students, navigation, and administration of the course!!!
Also, let new faculty know who they can contact for technical and pedagogical questions - and when help is available.
Also, how difficult it is to do anything the first time around - for teachers, designers, and students...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment