Rationale Statement

Previous to this course, I had only one experience with distance learning as a student and never as an instructional designer designing a course. In the course, I had the opportunity to learn what a Course Management System (CMS) was and design my own course. Challenge and frustrating at times, it was a valuable experience that will propel me forward in my anticipative career as an instructional designer. Designing my CMS would not have been possible without the understanding of educational and distance education theory.  A theory is no good without an application and the application is no good without the theory. I think that is exactly what I got out of this course as well as this project.

I really felt that I really agreed with Wedemeyer’s theory of independent study and focused my design and materials on this theory (Simonson, Spaldino, Albright and Zvacek, 2012). As Wetemeyer believed, “Learning takes place through student activity (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, Zvacek 2012, page 44).” I used this concept to sculpt my course strategically into a tool that students could use in order to be as successful as possible. Items that I included such as student assignments and links for students to go and find allow students to be successful but allow students to also take responsibility and ownership of their learning.  Distance learning experiences are valuable when students take the initiative and ownership. These learning activities and the technology that was utilized encourages students to understand this concept and prepare them for the upcoming philosophy course or other distance learning courses that they will be enrolling in.

Simonson, Smaldino, Albright and Zvacek.  2012. Teaching and Learning at a Distance. Pearson, Boston, MA.

Week 7

This week we are asked to reflect on a possible scenario of a training manager converting a face to face training session to a blended or hybrid learning format with assignments and learning resources online. As an educator, I have experienced this transition in a way with some of the training that my school district has tried to disperse so it is interesting to me because I have had this experience. As Winston Churchill once stated, “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” Instructional designers, instructors and students need to remember this while transitioning their content to distance learning. Distance learning had its benefits and of course challenges but if we can work through the limitations it can be rewarding for instructor and student. So challenging, in fact that states are even beginning to pass laws requiring some experience in online education before high school graduation (Watwood, Nugent, and Deihl, 2009)

The following is a guide of items that is necessary when implementing the change that instructional designers/instructors should take into consideration.

	PREPLANNING	COMMUNICATION	PARTICIPANT’S ROLE	HOW WILL IT BENEFIT?	RESOURCES FOR TRANSITION
STUDENT	Online learning obviously comes with some extra preplanning other than buying a textbook. Rather, it is up to the learner to ensure that they have the appropriate software, internet settings, computer setup, etc. “Just as the instructor must take the responsibility for learning about students, learners in the distance education classroom must assume ownership in their learning experience (Albright, et al, 2012).” The student should also orient themselves to the online learning classroom and methods that will be used during the course. Learners need to take responsibility for their own learning, even more so than with the traditional educational settings.	Earlier in this decade, nearly 80 percent of elearning was designed for solo work, which in effect made it little different from correspondence courses(Watwood, Nugent, and Deihl, 2009)” Students will be using Web 2.0 tools to communicate, discussion forums, email, skype, etc. Students should also be aware of “netiquette” and encourage a positive and collaborative learning environment (Albright, et al, 2012).	As mentioned in the previous column, the participant is to contact the instructor and have clear communication as part of their role as a learner in the online setting. However, it is also part of the student’s role to create a positive learning environment, collaborate with other students, and devote enough time to the course to contribute quality work (Albright, et al, 2012). The instructor should provide clear expectations, goals, assignments, etc. to students and it is the student’s responsibility to follow that syllabus (Albright, et al, 2012).	-Prevents “bottle necked” courses that are required but have not enough seats to accommodate the number of students. (Delivering Courses to More Students) - Allows the institution to offer more courses (Delivering Course to More Students) -Allows for flexibility for the student- student can go at their own pace, work a job while in school, complete learning activities when they prefer (some students do not learn/concentrate well in the morning, etc). (WorldWideLearn) -Accessibility- Students can access their digital classroom, lectures, homework, etc from virtually anywhere. (WorldWideLearn) - Money Saving- Some say that online courses save money for students and institutions by not making students physically attend class. (WorldWideLearn) -Students are not exposed to illnesses that other students may have such as H1N1 (Learning On Demand)	TIPS TO SUCCEED 21 THINGS FOR STUDENTS iSEEK
EDUCATOR	“Developing an online course starts at the same place where one develops a face-to face course. One sets the goals for the course, describes the specific learning objectives, defines the tasks necessary to meet those objectives, and then creates applicable assignments around these tasks (Watwood, Nugent, and Deihl, 2009)” Instructors must also think about the unique social aspect of online or distance learning and plan for the differences. Instructors, as well as students need to create a learning environment in which to collaborate (Albright, et al, 2012). Also, because the student is not directly in front of the instructor, the instructor must put an effort forth when the course begins to learn about his students, their experiences and their learning styles in order to make their learning experience a positive one.	Chickering and Gamson state that student and teacher communication are the most important factor in maintaining student motivation (Watwood, Nugent, and Deihl, 2009). Keeping in touch with students allows them to feel as though they are not alone in the educational process and feedback is crucial to the student understanding. Prompt feedback will allow students to learn the instructor’s expectations and gauge their progress in the course and on the topic.	Chickering and Gamson (1987) developed seven principles in which they believed would lead to a successful distance educator. The seven principles are  1. Good Practice Encourages Student-Faculty Contact 2. Good Practice Encourages Cooperation among Students 3. Good Practice Encourages Active Learning 4. Good Practice Gives Prompt Feedback 5. Good Practice Emphasizes Time on Task 6. Good Practice Communicates High Expectations 7. Good Practice Respects Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning steps (Watwood, Nugent, and Deihl, 2009) Because the format of this style of learning requires extra effort to kick off, administrator help and support is a must. There must be some inservices, workshops, or professional development for faculty to attend in order to support the goal of transitioning to distance learning. There also must be support among peers to share experience as shown in the figure below for collaboration and training. Clear learning objectives and goals should be available to the students as well so that they can know where the course is headed and what is expected of them.	Transitioning a course to a distance learning course can be time consuming but educators will benefit from distance learning in a manner that will allow the instructor more flexibility as well as more time to focus on their students and their unique and diverse perspectives. “While the hours invested per week were about the same, Ko and Rossen found that faculty could do those hours at their convenience, day or night, weekday or weekend. (Watwood, Nugent, and Deihl, 2009)”	MERLOT ION FACULTY FOCUS

Are you ready to be a successful online learner? Successful online learners are;

¨  Collaborative

¨  Tech Savvy (If not, willing to learn or find resources to help)

¨  Communicative

¨  Self-Reliant

¨  Open Minded

¨  Appropriate and polite

¨  Efficient

¨  Independent

¨  Honest and ethical

OR

Are you ready to be a successful online instructor? Successful online instructors are;

¨  Dedicated

¨  Communicative

¨  Tech Savvy (If not, willing to learn or find resources to help)

¨  Willing to attend extra professional development

¨  Willing to work with peers to collaborate during and through transition

¨  Able to facilitate discussions and student groups

¨  Able to provide prompt feedback

¨  Articulate

2013. Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Training Online. Retrieved from: http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm

Bart, Mary. 2011. Guidelines for Online Teaching Success. Faculty Focus.

Center for Digital Education. (2012) Delivering Courses to More Students; Blended Technologies Take Distance Learning  to New Levels. E. Republic. 

Covington, D., Petherbridge, D., Warren, S. 2005. Best Practices: A Triangulated Support Approach in Transitioning Faculty to Online Teaching. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration.

Illinois Online Network. 2010. Instructional Strategies for Online Courses. University of Illinois.

Learning on Demand; Online Education in the United States 2009. (2010). Babson Survey Research Group.

Lytle, Ryan. 2013. 5 Tips to Succeed in an Online Course. US News.

Minnesota Department of Education. 2013. What Makes a Successful Online Learner? iSeek Education.

Thorp, A., Jacobson, T. 2013. Learning Online. 21 Things for Students.

Watwood, B., Deihl, W., Nugent, J. 2009. Building from Content to Community; Rethinking the Transition to Online Learning. Center for Teaching Excellence.

What are the Potential Benefits of Online Learning. (2013). Retrieved July 14, 2013, from WorldWideLearn website: http://www.worldwidelearn.com/education-articles/ benefits-of-online-learning.htm

Online Course Evaluation

This week we were asked to evaluate a free online course. I truly didn’t imagine how many free online courses are offered! Much to my delight, I found a course that is offered through The Johns Hopkins University entitled “Food Production, Public Health and the Environment.” Being an Agricultural Education teacher, this topic interested me and was very excited to see that there are such high quality courses over the topic being offered online for free.  The course is offered as an OpenCourseWare or OCW. Learners need not to register or stick to a set schedule for the course. It is all learner directed and all materials are available on the site.

The course is developed for adult learners who are motivated enough and interested enough in the topic to get through the material on their own because of the lack of interaction with an instructor and lack of credits earned. If a learner decides to “take” this course, they are simply doing it for their own understanding of the course, not any credit. With this being said, the target audience of this course are adult learners who are interested in agriculture and want to understand the production system and the possible challenges associated with it.

In evaluating this course, I focused on Bates 12 golden rules for distance education (Albright, et al, 2012) and pulled out a few of the rules that I thought this course really excelled as well as some that it may have struggled in.

·         Good Teaching Matters- The course looks as though it was deliberately put together for the target audience in mind and with the learner needs in mind. I had opened a few other free online courses when looking for one to evaluate and was disappointed at how many were simply a video of a lecture or presentation. This particular course has assignments, discussions, and assessments for the students to participate in even though they will not be receiving credit for any of it. The activities encourage a deeper understanding of the material.

·         Each medium has its own aesthetic- Upon opening the site, I felt motivated to take the course and look through the material and I think it has to do a lot with the aesthetic design of the site. There are varied fonts which offer a clear designation of different categories. “Two font types work the best, for example when one is used for one category and of information and the second is used for background or secondary information (Albright, et al, 2012). Also, visuals such as a chart for the schedule of modules and assignments were given as aids to visual learners.

·         There is no super technology- The course is to be transmitted to the student through a browser with slides and MP3 audio. Technology is being used but the technology is not out of control as if the students would have a hard time keeping up or using the technology. The students can easily see where the assignments, lectures, schedules, etc are and it allows for easy flow of the course because the student can easily use the technology.

·         Team work is essential- Collaboration is a downfall of this course. Because of the nature of the course, it does not allow collaboration between students nor student and teacher. I believe that with collaboration on this topic, students could dig deeper into their understanding and gain some other perspectives from other students. As stated by Beldarrian, “As new technologies emerge, instructional designers and educators have unique opportunities to foster interaction and collaboration among learners, thus creating a true learning community (Beldarrian, 2006).” Although there are not real time interactions and collaboration, the course does offer guest lectures and presentations from experts in the field.

Overall, I think that the course was designed with the students in mind as well as the fact that the course will be given in an online fashion. Attention was given to the specific learning outcomes and assignments and assessments were given as learning aids. The design was intentional in order to keep students motivated and aid in their learning process. The only limitation would be the lack of collaboration but that is only due to the nature of the course.

Albright, Simonson, Smaldino, and Zvacek. Teaching and Learning at a Distance. 2012. Pearson, Boston, MA.

Beldarrain, Y. (2006). Distance education trends: Integrating new technologies to foster student interaction and collaboration. Distance Education, 27(2), 139–153.

Lawrence, B., Walker, P.  Food Production, Public Health and the Environment. 2010. JHSPH OpenCourseWare. http://ocw.jhsph.edu. Creative Commons.

Solutions with Technology

As high school teachers, we try to provide opportunities for students to learn in an interesting manner and opportunities that the student may not have if not in our classroom. For this reason, I choose to research and solve the problems that are presented in scenario 2 in our course applications. In this scenario, students will be exposed to a museum that is located across the county, speak with the curators and hold discussions amongst themselves about the museum. Nothing is more valuable to students than such an authentic learning opportunity and without distance learning tools; it would not be possible for these students to experience the museum. As an instructional designer however, we need to be sure that the lesson as well as the course, are set up systematically in order to be effective. According to the course reading, “A critical part of the process is to consider the components of a successful learning system. These components are the learners, the content, the method and materials, and the environment, including technology (Albright, et al, 2012).” In this particular scenario, we already have the content, the learners and some of the material and methods but we really need to take a closer look at the technology or environment to figure out how best to help the students experience the museum.

In order to convey the “virtual tour” or video of the museum, the teacher could use Skype. “Skype in the Classroom” is used in situations such as this by over 60,000 teachers to convey all sorts of topics to their students (Skype, 2013). Skype can be used on smart phones, desktop computers, laptops, and tablets and can therefore be carried around the museum by a tour guide or employee of the museum in order to show the students in the scenario. Teachers are always working with a tight budget and a positive aspect of this plan is that Skype is completely free of cost. Limitations of this plan would be that the museum must have access to the internet as well as a tablet or smart phone that would allow this plan to take place. However, with planning, these limitations can be alleviated. Students would be able to see the images in the museum as well as hear the tour guide giving explanations and descriptions. After their tour of the museum, the technology could be used to hold the meeting with curators of the museum. Skype allows the callers to both use the video feature so the students can see the curators and the curators can also see the students in their classroom on the other side of the country. The curators would even be able to call on students who raise their hand for a question.

Skype in the Classroom has been used successfully for virtual tours such as this situation, online tutoring, videoconferencing, foreign language learning, student inclusion (ill students), culture lessons, and bringing interactivity and creativeness to lessons (Nosal, 2011).

The scenario also provides another design issue of a discussion tool. The teacher would like the students to be able to discuss what they saw at the museum as an assessment tool. To accomplish this objective, the students and the teacher will use the Web 2.0 tool Conceptboard. Conceptboard allows for collaboration through emails, collaborative screen viewing, document uploads, etc. The teacher will be able to set up a topic and students can join in the discussion on the Conceptboard. The website updates in real time and the teacher is able to moderate the discussion (Conceptboard, 2013). This tool is the ideal tool for the job because supporting documents and files can be uploaded in order to support the discussion. In this situation, that particular feature could come in handy when speaking of famous paintings or items that were seen in the museum; the teacher could upload a picture or supporting documents in order to remind the students. Limitations of this tool are that the site does have a fee to use (Conceptboard, 2013).

2013. Skype in the Classroom. Education.skype.com.

2013. About Conceptboard. Conceptboard.com.

Albright, M., Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., and Zvacek, S. Teaching and Learning at a Distance. 2012. Pearson, Boston, MA.

Nosal, Kasia. 2011. Skype in the Classroom. Edcaedu; The World Wide Education Community. 

Week 1 Application; Distance Learning Defined

Previously to this course, my experience with distance learning has been taking other online classes through Walden as well as some distance learning via webcam in some of my undergraduate college courses. With minimal knowledge of the topic, I have heard a lot of chatter about online high schools, which would be considered distance learning, because I work in a traditional high school. The observations or I would more likely say misconceptions are that the students who drop out of our high school attend the online high school because it’s easier and a last resort for students who can’t handle traditional education. Personally, I think that distance learning has a lot of possible pitfalls and can easily be abused if not used correctly but distance learning can be a great tool for all ages and I believe that it is the future of education. In one way or another, distance learning will be seeping into all of our lives in some way either through cell phone apps or online courses.

With all of that being said my definition of distance learning before starting to read this week’s resources is: “Distance Learning is a form of education that has a varied amount of uses and forms as well as a varied amount of users that use it to advance their understanding of a topic through the use of technology and distance learning is the wave of the future in the field of education.”

After reading this week’s resources, I still do believe that distance learning is going to replace education as we know it today. However, I believe that I understand it a little more clearly and with more depth. As stated in this week’s reading, “Keegan also concluded that distance education is a distinct field of education, parallel to and a complement of conventional education (Simonson, et. Al, 2012).” I really think that this is an all-encompassing explanation to distance learning. Its traditional education with some modifications and because of that, it has unique properties that lends itself to a unique demographic of individuals, presents its own challenges and benefits. I also learned this week that distance learning does not technically necessarily include technology. Of course in this day and age, it usually does but it didn’t start out that way and doesn’t always include the use of internet, computers and electronics. I also think that from reading this week, it is clear that distance learning will continue to morph and change in the coming years to meet the needs of the learners and the resources and technology available.

Previous to this week, I really thought of distance education as only online high schools or webcasts of certain lectures. I am obviously mistaken in this assumption. As mentioned in the reading this week resources on distance education, it clear includes things like higher education and even training for corporate situations (Huett, Moller and Forshay, 2008). I had never considered these situations and their need for online learning before but it is clearly been used for these platforms.

After the reading I will modified my definition to be, “Distance Learning is a form of education that has a varied amount of uses such as in high school, college and even corporate platforms that use it to advance their understanding of a topic through the use of technology and distance learning is the wave of the future in the field of education Distance Learning is future but is not without its challenges but creates opportunities for many.”

I have stated that I think that I think that distance learning is the way of the future. I believe that it will take over in all aspects of education and continue to become more user friendly and common. I also believe that this will lead to more people becoming educated and more people continuing on with their education beyond high school or perhaps into higher education beyond their undergraduate degrees. The development of online apps that cater to distance learning will become more numerous and as technology in our electronics such as cell phones, tablets and computers change, distance learning will fall in suit with it. I also believe that the learners using distance education will become younger and younger. Technologically advanced generations will use this option more than their older generations.

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web (Part 1: Training and development). TechTrends, 52(3), 70–75.

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web (Part 2: Higher education).TechTrends, 52(4), 66-70.

Huett, J., Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Coleman, C. (2008). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web (Part 3: K12).TechTrends, 52(5), 63–6 7.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (5th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.