Saturday, May 22, 2010

5 Video Blog Post Feedbacks

Karen @ wondergemprinciplesofdistanceed.blogspot.com

Cyndy @ shelcy316.blogspot.com

Laurie @ lkortecc.blogspot.com

Debra @ debrahanks.blogspot.com

Kellie @ kscott317.blogspot.com

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Assessing Collaborative Learning

Palloff and Pratt discuss several principles to follow in assessing collaborative learning. Besides the instructor ensuring that the expectations are clearly stated, it can be helpful to have the students participate in the grading expectation creation (Palloff and Pratt, 2005). Student involvement in grading criterion encourages ownership of the learning process where the student feels empowered and more in control of their destiny.

Mod 3 Questions Answered

In collaborative learning students are typically assessed using a rubric designed to evaluate the assignment both individually and as a group. If a student does not want to participate, the instructor will hopefully be made aware of this by the other students and should closely monitor the group to check on this behavior. If warranted the student should be rearranged so that they are no longer associated with the same class. Secondly, the instructor may have to make adjustments to the grading rubric if their isn't sufficient time to allow the other members to catch up with the rest of the class.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Storyboard outline

This is the link to my storyboard @ Google docs:

http://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AXPsNToFbxQTZGRmdzdmZnBfMGhmcXpnNWd4&hl=en

Very basic, many revisions needed.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Elements of Distance Education Diffusion

The area that I think Distance Education (D.E.) has made the greatest impact is global diversity. I am amazed at the speed in which news and information can now travel. When I went on my first Navy deployment in 1982 it took as long as 6 weeks to get news from home. I had an aunt pass away and I finally found out a month later when my father sent me a telegram! The only way to communicate with him was using the ship's radio and talking to a Ham radio operator who linked the call (only after my father agreed to accept a collect call)! Now we email and use cell phones practically anywhere in the world.
The world has gotten smaller, and I for one think it's a good thing. We are all in this together and D.E. is one way we can hopefully start to accept ourselves as ONE race: Human. The tools that help us conduct D.E. globally and specifically are: the World Wide Web; smaller, more advanced electronic devices; collaborating sites; and, institutions like colleges that not only encourage online collaborating, but insist on it.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

The need to for Distance Education (D.E.) to evolve is made clear by all five authors (Moller, Huett, Foshay, Coleman, and Simonson) and that is that as students expect instruction to include electronic technology, educators need to learn how to effectively incorporate meaningful uses of it. If a student simply observes streaming video or clip art pasted to an overhead projection it is not going to make them feel that the instructor has truly grasped the power of this technology. On the other hand, as the authors point out, students also want what they are paying for. In other words, if an instructor is primarily using electronic media and not lecturing or otherwise personally engaging with he students, especially in a classroom setting, the students may feel like the instructor is not doing their job.

These are all valid points and I agree wholeheartedly with the need to provide training and education for instructors to learn how to use the electronic sources properly in the classroom and that the institutions, both brick and electronic, need to adjust and grow to fit the changing student paradigm that has come with he new technologies.

The Evolution of Distance Education: Implications for Instructional Design on the Potential of the Web by Moller, Foshay, and Huett; Volume 52 #3, pages 70-75, Volume 52 #4, pages 66-70, Volume 52 #5, 63-67.