Building an online course module is a much larger task than I had originally anticipated. There is much thought that must go into the creation of the module before one can even start to develop it. I think the most important thing one can do as an educator trying to develop a course module for the first time (or heck even the third or fourth!) is to have a clear pedagogical plan in place before you even begin anything digital. It was important for me to know exactly what I wanted to teach and how I wanted to teach it so that when it was time for the information to be transferred into an online environment it would happen in a more seamless manner.
I was a bit overwhelmed when I first started because I wasn’t sure how I should start. The key is organization. I organized my lessons the same way I would if they were going to be taught in a traditional way. Then, I had to sift through multiple CMS’s until I found one that fit the needs of my educational situation. I have middle school students. I wanted something with a clean interface, lots of structure, email and blog features built-in, easy sign up, and the ability to embed or link to many Web 2.0 tools. I chose Haiku because it had all the technologies that fit the needs of my pedagogy.
I learned that there is a lot more involved than simply choosing a CMS and putting your lessons online. If this is the way one is going to teach it is important to have structured policies and procedures in place online just as one would in a typical classroom. I had to be sure to discuss grading policies, communications procedures, readings and technologies, give clear and concise standards and learning outcomes, assess students in multiple ways, and encourage a collaborative environment through discussion forums and private journals. Obviously, there is much to think about! I had to rely heavily on the T-PACK framework so I could develop a system that would marry all of these things together in the correct way because not only is it important to have the module organized is a clear and coherent way, but it is extremely important to organize, what I call, the student learning path within an online course.
I developed each student learning path in my module to be clear and consistent. After all, they are the most important people interacting with the module. I wanted to be sure that they wouldn’t get confused, and would not have difficulty navigating around. First, there is short lesson introduction, followed by a lecture, assignment, discussion forum, and finally and private reflection. Each lesson is designed in the same format, but with a variety of requirements. I think the consistency of the lesson format is beneficial for the age level that I currently work with.
Luckily for me, I never really had a pitfalls, so to speak, while developing my online module. I think trying to be very organized in the beginning was very beneficial to me. I did, however, have a few difficulties in the beginning of the development with Haiku. Not knowing how all of the features of the CMS functioned after I had already started using it made initial development somewhat difficult. Specifically, I kept copying over my discussion forum pages in different lessons because I didn’t realize that if you made a copy of a page to use in another section of the module, every change that was made on the original page occurred across all of the pages. This proved to be minor, but an annoyance nonetheless. Either way, I would like to keep developing my module to cover other standards related to educational technology as well as tweak what I have already started.
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