Blog Reflection 2

While I’ve participated in this course, I’ve thought about the online courses I took as an undergraduate and how they didn’t utilize most of the information I’m currently processing. Those online classes weren’t bad, but they certainly didn’t stick with me and they gave me a jilted understanding about the usefulness of eLearning. Also, I’m visualizing what it will be like to teach face-to-face next year and imagining how that teaching will be different from the kind of teaching I’m learning about in this course. I feel anxious whenever I work for this class because I think about how I’ll have to be a different medium of teacher next year. I get incredibly nervous because I’m not sure how to interact with a classroom of students and I’m not sure that I’m enough of a content expert to be confident as an instructor.

I’ve learned a lot about the different online technologies available. I feel more comfortable having discussions about open source technologies, mLearning, and different roles teachers play for their students (scaffolding, constructing presentation of information, discerning course content, etc). My attitude has changed because, since I’d never seen eLearning done well, I didn’t think technology could be an effective medium for educational development before I participated in this course.

I knew online learning had situated course hubs (like Blackboard) and was flexible for student time and location. I wanted to know theory for organizing courses and to have an opportunity to practice being in an instructor-like position. I’ve learned how structuring matters and to organize course content so that students can see themselves building from what they already know to construct new knowledge with an understanding of that information’s application; I will not forget that tomorrow!

I also learned about developing community through technology, which I didn’t think technology capable of prior to this course. I’m afraid I’ll forget things like the names of teaching philosophies and their ideas (like progressive, humanist, etc.); I liked having that language at the forefront of my mind.