Reflecting on Learning

"The only limit to our realization of

tomorrow will be our doubts of today."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

I have come to the end of the class. I am deeply saddened. Why is it, I only enjoying a class when I am banging my head on a wall to accomplish the tasks at hand? I suppose it is the same personal traits that make me cry while watching commercials. I enjoyed my classmates and some of them will continue on to the next course on assessment with me. But my biggest problem will be saying goodbye to Jen as my instructor. She has challenged me and prodded me to achieve throughout the course. I am going to miss her.

I have tried to think of what things I might do better in my own course. Then I realized that one cannot mess with perfection. I loved the set up of the modules and the way Jen recreated the course as we went along, based on our common class needs. I enjoyed the challenges of reading the Boettcher material and applying it. And, I think I am a fan of Backward Design. I get the concept one hundred percent.

Since I like video, I might have included a few more of them along the way. I would try to get the group to present a bit more light hearted material as well. Having fun and laughing can go a long way to relieve stress and may help bind people together in a more cohesive group. But I suppose so does beer and wine and especially food.

The one thing I learned and pondered the most was, how much thought and designing goes into the creation of an online course. Each step an instructor takes during the course is also time consuming and thought provoking. Learning the different technologies are equally time consuming and yet, are very rewarding. The finished product is what matters in the end. If my learners have taken away as much information as the students in this class have, it has been a successful endeavor and one worth being extremely proud of.

I hope I will be as good an instructor as Jen and Norma have been. I want to develop the skills that help make my courses exciting, instructive and fun. Learning doesn't have to be difficult if one enjoys the final product and takes the time to laugh along the way. I am including the presentation I created at the end of this blog. I am also including one that still has me laughing. At the end of the video, the spirits are beginning to affect the students that were in the class…but it is the way college and university students have been behaving after finals for probably centuries.

So, I am saying goodbye to my classmates and Jen. Hello new learning opportunities this coming quarter at Bellevue College. My neighbors might frown on the explosion of fireworks at the end of this quarter. So, I just have to think of a new way to celebrate. Anyone for a good pub with music and cold beer? Ahhh...low calorie beer that is.

Putting it all Together

The course is slowly coming to an end. We have learned many new skills and developed the ability to put together an online course from beginning to end. We have read and absorbed the ten best practices for teaching on line as Boettcher and Conrad taught us in the readings. We have worked together to put information into the Diigo communications place we selected as students. We have commented on the presentations of our classmates and thought deeply about the material presented to us.

Finally, we have thought about and decided on a project or presentation. A presentation that will put all of the information we have gleaned over the past several weeks, into a polished, interesting video or Voice Thread, etc. Based on my classmates’ presentations in Diigo lately, I can safely say “we,” when talking about what we have done and learned.

Once our instructor Jen told us we would need to present 7 of the best practices of Boettcher in a video with a voice application, I thought deeply about the skills I would need to learn to do this. I started with a program named Jing. I asked the instructor for help, only to be told it was something I needed to explore on my own as part of this assignment. Wonderful! I download Jing and started to learn how it works.

My biggest problem was figuring out how to capture the screen and talk as I went through my substitute for a LMS system, Wikispaces. Several hours later, when I was still figuring out how to use Jing…I found myself contemplating using virtual anger applications, e.g. virtual pie throwing (like some videos I found on You Tube did) to vent on my unknowing, unsuspecting instructor. At this point, my husband (quietly sitting next to me working on his income taxes) in his uneducated wisdom told me…"now you know how your students will feel about you when they attempt their projects at the end of the course." Well, with that comment I found myself quickly reversing my negative thoughts and diving into the application with gusto, while wondering how someone who is not college or university educated gets right to the point before I do!

Alas, I managed to figure out how the application works and posted a video to You Tube. Two problems presented themselves: 1) how to bring the voice up on the microphone during the presentation; and 2) trying to figure out why my wide screen Windows 7 Touch Screen computer put only half a picture on the video. Sigh…once again, I began to resent technology and knew I had much to learn in the remaining week. Thankfully I have gotten acrylic nails so I cannot bite them while doing this project!

Jen has taught me during this course to take deep breaths and count virtual sheep in my mind, while I try to chill. Lately, while working on the project and taking deep breaths, I find myself counting virtual bottles of low calorie beer. Oh well, this too will pass. All this stress while starting a demanding new full time job; losing one pound a week on Weight Watchers; working on the Eastside Domestic Violence crisis line from 7-12 PM Sunday evenings; going to gigs and practicing with my band; fighting the state UI office, who unfairly ruled I quit a job that nearly took away my ability to work at my Bellevue College job or any other job for that matter. Okay, why wasn’t I born independently wealthy? Better yet, why did I go for a Political Science Ph.d, instead of going full time to law school and becoming an employment law attorney?

So stay tuned blog readers…my presentation will appear in my next blog. Until then, I have had my hair colored again and it turned out horrible and had it cut and it looks awful. That is what I get for asking for a Lisa Rinna look and hair cut. Luckily I can wear a wig during our last class for this course scheduled on the 22nd of March. I will be the one taking all the deep breaths and counting quietly, with my eyes closed in a gray or platinum wig.

Great video on how to use You Tube in your course.

Meeting Online Course Quality Standards

This week we learned how to view and incorporate Quality Standards for online course design.  There are many different ways to approach this requirement.  I was particularly impressed with peer reviews from the institution your may be teaching in.  At some future date, I hope to enter into a one-on-one independent study with someone familiar with online course design.  I want to develop my course from beginning to end with the help of the instructor.   Whether I will be given this opportunity remains to be seen.  However, I think it is an important component of this certification process.   

One reason I would want this to be my last component of the eLearning Certificate, is the need for critical feedback from an online instructor or instructors.  I am including a video at the end of this blog post that shows how well this feedback has worked for course designing instructors.  I don’t believe you can teach online without knowing how your course meets state and even federal guidelines.  If I am going to take the time to construct an online course, I want to know it is giving my learners their monies worth.  I want to know it is a quality incorporated design.

Students in community and technical colleges are often given a set of skills to apply to the outside work world.  For example, my husband went to a local technical college to learn CNC (Computer Numeric Control) skills.  He was interested in making parts by programming and designing parts using the computer.  He received very high marks for completing the course and had years of experience at Boeing, in experimental aircraft as a flight test sheet metal mechanic.  During the years he worked for Boeing he had to read blueprints and often craft parts that would work, from the engineers design.

The sad part of this experience was he was unable to find a job in that field because he did not have the experience required at the time, in the CNC field.  So, instead of using these new skills, at which he excelled (even to the point of correcting the mistakes in his textbook), he never worked in that the CNC field and lost the edge on his skills.  In fact, needing to work he accepted a job driving a truck for a tent manufacturer.  When they finally put him in to a fabric cutting position, five years later, using the computer, the military withdrew their contract and he was laid off.  He was doing that job for only six months and was excelling.  Today one year later, he is working in a warehouse as a temporary worker.

My point is this, giving my student the skills to do the job they hope to do in the future is not the end of the learning process.  Not only do I want the students to learn the skills, understand the concepts; but I hope they will learn how to get the job they are being educated to do.  If this means they may have to accept an internship in that area, so be it.  This should be available to them.  Lack of experience is the biggest hurdle many students face, once out of the learning program.

Designing the learning program is critical.  So is building into the design a way to help learners get the job they want.   Anything less is a waste of the federal, state and local community’s money, not to mention the learner’s money!  The big question for the instructor or designer is: How can my class help this learner secure the position they are seeking?  What skills do they need and how can I help them get these skills?  It may be we as designers may need to re-educate the colleges and institutions that hire us.  No learner or student should, after spending thousands of dollars at an institution, be left with an eduation that doesn't help them secure the employment they have trained or been educated for.

The Video is from Chemeteka Community College in Salem, Oregon.

This video has been added for terminology and fun!

Authentic Learning Activity

This week’s assignment asked us to produce a Learning Activity.  Also, we were asked to create a new self check form.  Certainly these activities made me stop and think through everything I have read and learned so far.  I do not care for the idea of grading students; because I am far more concerned with engaging them in the material and helping them participate within the boundaries of their class discussions. Also to reinforce their learning in that module, I would like to incorporate an activity that would further reinforce their thinking on the subject.  At this point I do not know what I would request they do to accomplish this.  I am setting this aside for a later date.

Japan has established a college called the “Silver College,” for their aging population.  It is a unique and forward looking learning institution; if this learning concept was applied to the older generation in the United Stated it would be an interesting project; but is it needed?  Today we incorporate our seniors into the higher education population and in fact, try to encourage them to participate by allowing them to pay less than most students pay in community colleges.  This economic break for seniors changes in the university system, however.  They are asked to pay full price one again, when they try to enter into higher degree programs in most American universities.

The bottom line in all of this may lie in the redefining of what a physical number has to do with the older population’s ability to be contributing citizens in their families and communities, not to mention in their countries.  For example, I believe most of our Supreme Court Justices fall into the category of senior citizens and a large population exist in Congress.  Also, what percentage of the population can afford to enter our universities and take up undergraduate or even graduate studies?  Why should we encourage them to do so?  Do our seniors have the right to define how they will live out their lives? Do they have a right to seek higher education, even if they cannot pay for it?  Do they have the right to grants and scholarships?  Do they have the power and will to redefine “quality of life?”

I have experienced the bias thinking of employers in the workplace regarding age.  Unfortunately, discrimination really knows no age limits.  It is a sad state of affairs and our youth have every reason to be just involved as our seniors in stopping discrimination in the workplace, when it comes to age.  Questions like those I have proposed in my learning Module 2 need to be addressed as well.  Because our educational system is changing, we all need to re-think our educational practices in higher learning institutions, especially in today’s economy.  How can we best serve all age groups and prepare them for the realities they face when they have completed their studies or may have just set them aside for a while, when their life long careers goals are changing?

Please see the link to my Wikispaces:   http://joysclasswiki.wikispaces.com/Module+2

THE WISDOM YEARS - Silver College from UNUChannel on Vimeo.

Evidence of Understanding

I have searched the internet for videos lasting three minutes or less on understanding understandings.  I could not find one that was short enough.  What I did find was some video that seemed to explain why, after completing my doctoral studies and finding myself homeless in Washington State, I could not get a job that paid me enough to rent an apartment here.  At first I was desperate and afraid.  Eventually, I was just plain angry.  Here I was a highly educated woman just slightly over forty and without anyway to prove I had skills that were transferable.  In fact, that was not even a term being used at the time, in the late eighties.  And worse yet, I was homeless and sleeping in my car.

Not only did I have problems with sharing apartments with others; but often I was thrown out because of some reason the renter felt was a problem; like one alcoholic woman I lived with.  She just set my clothes out on the door step.  I came home at 2:00AM from working my shift on Fort Lewis to find my things outside her door in the middle of the night.  I didn’t even have a blanket to wrap around myself.  I ended up knocking on the barracks door of someone I knew from working security at the clubs on fort.  I had a blanket and pillow for the night.  It was late October.  That was the year I slept in my car on Fort Lewis in their primitive camp areas until late November.  This was in the early 1990s. 

So where is all this going?  Well, while we sit around and debate how to assess students and figure out if they have learned the course objectives…we are still not facing the fact that they might be unemployed with thousands of dollars worth of debt after graduating.  Those loan companies don’t give a rats @$#%$& whether the student learned the objectives or not.    Most employers don’t seem to care how much education you have and how many skills you may have acquired and/or whether they are transferable or not.  I spent many a cold night sleeping in my car, in this state, learning that simple fact.

I would rather assess how much the learner is learning that will help them in obtaining a job in this economy.  I would much rather have these learners actively participating in the learning and assessment phases of their college courses.  I want to know they will be able to do what I could not…find a job that paid them enough to pay for their student loans.  I want to know when they leave the college I am teaching in, they can afford to live in an apartment and pay for life’s necessities, for example health insurance.  I am much less concerned whether I am properly assessing what they have learned; I am more concerned as to whether they feel like they have learned the concepts and can apply their knowledge in a way that will get them hired at a decent wage.

I am one of those students who feel that my education was an economic waste to a point.  It did not help me secure a good job; it did not get me an apartment; it did not help me pay my thousands of dollars in student loans.  Nor did it help me fight the discrimination I faced daily.  However, it did give me the strength to carry on when things seemed hopeless.  It kept me from starving to death; and more importantly, no matter how many times people treated me like a loser, I held my head high and knew I was not.  I had graduated and did so with honors, which I might add, without having to cheat.

My assessment course is coming up.  I will be spending a whole quarter working on the concepts of understanding understandings.  There will be time enough to develop my rubics and put my thoughts to work for future learners in my class…which I will teach come hell or high water.  I have walked through those trials and valleys, it is time to reap the rewards and pass them to the next generation of learners.

In sum, it is time for educators to make college and higher learning relevant to their students.  It is not about us, it is about them.  We are the facilitators of their learning.  We must prepare them for the world they will find themselves in when they leave the protected walls of our colleges and universities.  Without jobs, whether or not they learned in college those things we thought were important for them to learn, they cannot succeed.  In the end our colleges and universities will have failed them and all they will be left with is the debt, overwhelming debt for years to come.

I hope you all have the time to watch this video.

Instructure Canvas: A Learning Management System

In this module we were suppose to explore and find out how to use a Learning Management System.  After looking around, Jen came up with this one.  I registered, logged in and had a look around.  It was so simple, my first thought was it probably has a lot of problems I can’t see.  So, I want to build my course on this system to fully understand how it operates.  I want to know for certain that it can be used easily.  So far, my understanding is, you can upload files into it, including pictures.  So I uploaded my Module 1 slide presentation. While I was impressed so far, I do not know its limitations; but building a course on it will certainly let me see what it has and does not have for bandwidth and accessibility.

This week has been just a bit crazy trying to get my work done, going on an interview and then getting the full time job rather unexpectedly.  There is much to explore in Jen’s course and I do not have the time to see and do everything I want to.  Each week we are presented with topics like this one that intrigue me and make me want to dig in and…”just get ‘er done…” as Larry the Cable Guy would say.

The importance of a learning module cannot be taken lightly.  It is the first thing one must do to get the course out to the public, whether it is a closed system like Blackboard or an open system like Instructure Canvas.  Since I like using Google, Diigo and Wiki spaces, I can see the open Learning Management System will lend itself to everything I could hope to accomplish.  I hope to revisit this blog in the future…once I have actually used it.

Finally as I wrote in our class Diigo application, incorporating the ten best practices of Boettcher is essential and I have listed some of my ideas below:

As to incorporating the ten best practices, the possibility of a synchronous session for first introductions, Canvas introductions, profiles in Canvas and a open area to go to for informal discussion, like a student lounge would be ideal. I do not know if this is available on Canvas. Creating a supportive community would be easy if using Wikispace and Canvas and Diigo, much like we have in this Essentials of eLearning class. There is a place for lectures, as seen in my Wikispace. In my presentation on Wikispace, I have used a power point presentation to post expectations (I would still need to make it module specific though). Also, a variety of activities could be done on Voice Thread, in Diigo, on Wikispaces and in glogster or in a Google or other Blog.

Links for feedback like the form we did in this course, will be ideal for feedback. Also, feedback to the students on their Diigo discussions and on Voice Thread, Wikispaces and in the online form or by voice and video would be good tools to incorporate, as well. Glogster and blogs serve the purpose of evaluating and/or assessing the progress of the students as they share what they are learning. Also, our list shows even more ways the learners can get creative and be heard in their own way. Including current events into the program is an essential element in my opinion and helps stimulate creative thinking and makes the course content relevant too. Core concepts and personal learning are tied together and they should not be forgotten and will not, as I assemble my LMS content. Finally a wrap up project seems the best way to address cumulative thinking in learners.

Understanding Understandings: A Visit to Backward Design

Like any other morning I woke up and made coffee. I was going to enjoy it while I read my assignment for Module 4. A few minutes later, when I poured myself a hot steamy cup of Starbucks and sat down in front of my computer with the textbook written by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, I felt myself relaxing. As I opened my textbook, I was checking my email on line. Having been thoroughly distracted by my email, I heard a swooshing sound and felt myself suddenly being pulled into my computer! I was startled, shocked and terrified. Before I could respond, I was hurling through what appeared to be a Black Hole, into cyberspace or what seemed to be space at a horrendous speed. Suddenly I stopped abruptly and landed on my backside in a backward position. As I looked around me, I could not figure out where I was. Everything appeared to be transparent with low grade color. As I stared at my surroundings, people began walking past me. It was at that moment I realized they looked like holograms! When I tried to speak with them (picking myself off the ground and brushing off that part of me that was still smarting a little) they ignored me. I could not read the signs on the billboards or understand what anyone was saying, as they strolled by me (without noticing me, I might add). As I watched, I thought…how odd these people seem to be walking backward.

Then into my line of vision came a person carrying books and walking quickly while looking at a watch around her neck. She certainly looked like a professor, even if she was transparent. I began following her. She walked toward a building that looked like it was part of a college, even though it was, also, transparent like the rest of this world. I continued to silently walk behind her (in my best ninja catlike form). As she walked into what appeared to be a classroom, with great trepidation, I said out loud , “Are you able to understand me?” She cocked her head in my direction, just a little bit, and said, “You are a bit forward, are you not?” I looked at her and asked, “You think I am forward?” She just looked back at me with a slight smile on her lips. I wondered why she seemed amused and continued, “I am lost and don’t know how to get back.” “Where are you going?” she inquired. “I want to go back,” I stated exasperated. I quickly added, “…where I came from.” She justed stared at me. Concentrating on me, she asked, “Where did you come from.” “I don’t know,” I replied. “Well,” she said thoughtfully, and then added “…I can’t help you.”

So there I was. I found myself somewhere in a cyberspace virtual world, not understanding the language, not know where I came from or how I got where I was. I was impaled on the horns of a real dilemma. I was thirsty; hungry (for potato salad, I might add) and feeling very alone. I asked her, “Where am I?” She answered thoughtfully; “you are in Backward Design. “ “May I ask your name? “ I asked. She smiled and said, “of course; I am Rosseforp Nej. “ “Oh!” I replied. Then as though I had been hit by a ton of bricks, I suddenly understood why I couldn’t understand…everything here was Backward. “I have to ask the right questions to get where I am going,” I stated. She smiled and said, “Exactly, you must ask the essential questions.” Thinking about what she had just said I asked, “If I get to the Big Idea by asking the right questions, will I be able to understand understanding?” She was moving about the room adjusting something I did not quite understand, she looked at me and said bluntly, “of course.”

Suddenly I had that aha moment! I said, “I must live forward; but to get where I want to go I have to move backward, correct?” “Yes,” she said looking directly at me. Okay, I got it! I looked at her again and realized she was manipulating hologram objects on a huge computer. She was actually touching and moving hologram objects! “So,” I said thoughtfully, “…to get back where I started from, I must move backward or I cannot go forward.” She was smiling, as I threw a quick glance her way. Pondering this I thought, if one is lost in a cyber-world because you have spent too much time there, one must ask the right questions; get the big idea or overall open ended concept and go backward to move forward. By solving this problem, I can pass her assessment test and finish my morning coffee before it gets cold, I said quietly to myself. “Thank you very much Rd Nej, “I told her, while silently saying Dr. Jen under my breath.

Taking a very big breath of air and calling forth my courage, I stepped back with one long stride; and suddenly I felt myself swirling through the vortex. I felt a chill of anticipation as I hit the bottom of my chair in my office, with a load thud!. There was my coffee, sitting on my desk waiting for me!