I still thought about what teaching next year will be like,
mostly because I decided to dedicate myself to this course while it was here
and then devote myself to designing my face-to-face course afterwards. For as
much as I have thought about, visualized, and worried about upcoming teaching
experiences, I hope I equally finding assurance by thinking back to this course
to as a guide.
I feel like I have a better grasp of designing a course for
its content progression, but now I also know that there’s nothing like actually
getting down and trying to put a course together to see what it looks like when
all of your proposed projects and lecturettes are available and next to each
other.
I knew that the internet had potential as an educational
tool, but wanted to know what that potential was and how to utilize it from an
instructor’s perspective, which I appreciatively learned about during this
course. I also knew that online courses were different from face-to-face
courses, but I didn’t know that both offered benefits and concerns unique to
their environments. I believed that online courses lacked student engagement
and that anything a student learned online simply wouldn’t stick. I’m glad I
got to learn about creating meaningful online communities and providing intrinsically
purposeful content, because it helped changed my perspective of online learning.
I’m also glad that while I got more acquainted with wikis and yodios, I also
have further possibilities I can try to better utilize the technology for the
purpose of the pedagogy as a result of our group discussions.
I will not forget the resources of today’s technology and
how they can be relevant to classroom work. I will not forget that there are
articles, videos, and other online materials that are accessible and could
greatly contribute to students’ learning experiences. Also, I will not forget
to look at course design as many pieces, resources, and concerns coming
together into a constructed whole instead of getting lost at the daunting
immensity of taking on an entire course, design and content, as an object in
itself. I did it once; now I know I can do it again.
