Online Course Design--Final Thoughts and Wrap-up

    In these uncertain times, teachers are being required to plan for virtual and face-to-face learners at the
same time. Some districts are trying to help teachers with these skills, but there is little campus-level support.  For this reason, the Digital Learning Workshop is designed to help teachers acquire those tools necessary for delivering online instruction to their students. Communication is a key component of any course, whether it be online, face-to-face, or a combination of the two. Google classroom is an LMS that lends itself nicely for such communication. I will be able to communicate directly with my learners, keeping them updated on changes, upcoming deadlines, and the addition of new learning modules.  In turn, learners can communicate with me via private message or the classroom stream.

      I designed the modules to be self-paced so learners can access and complete the modules when they have time. However, I have given a deadline for learners to complete the modules so I can go in award professional development credits promptly. This becomes important for those teachers who have to accumulate professional development credits to renew their teaching certificates on a regular basis.   

       Google Classroom is set up to send out notifications to learners who are enrolled in the course, so when I add modules to the Digital Learning Workshop (DLW) or make changes to the existing modules, learners automatically receive an email, provided they have not disabled notifications. Because learners do have the ability to turn off their notifications for this course, I will also send a separate email informing my learners of important additions to the DLW, so they will not miss opportunities for further professional learning. 

      The pre-course and post-course surveys that my learners complete will drive the creation of future courses. Therefore, instead of creating arbitrary learning modules on tools I THINK my learners need to know how to use, I will be using my learners' responses to customize the digital learning on my campus. One thing I will do differently in creating these courses will be to incorporate more opportunities for discussion and collaboration among content and teachers.  Furthermore, as campuses continue to move toward hybrid or online learning, it will be on me, other digital learning specialists, and administrators to stay abreast of the latest digital learning trends and instructional practices to ensure that our learners receive quality professional learning that will help them continue to be successful in their classrooms.

         Finally, in order for me to continually improve each module and course that I design, learners will complete surveys that will evaluate their effectiveness, as well as offer suggestions for improvement. As I look to improve the existing courses and create new ones, my skills will continue to improve as well. Whether I end up as an assistant principal or a digital learning specialist, my goal is the same: to support teachers by equipping them to teach their students to the best of their ability. To do this, I must listen to my teachers as well as continue to research digital tools that will help them accomplish this. 

Can F2F classes go digital?

 

      For this week's assignment, we were tasked with looking at courses in our schools that could be redesigned to be online courses. If this pandemic has taught me anything, it is that any class can be converted to an online format.  In fact, teachers are doing this every day to accommodate their virtual learners. For many students, virtual learning is their new reality for many different reasons, and our teachers are stepping up and accommodating them brilliantly. AVID and College and Career Reading are two such courses that can be designed for online learning. 

           AVID is a college and career readiness program that is geared toward the academic middle. This class requires students to be enrolled in at least one course of rigor (Pre-AP, AP or Advanced). This class supports students by helping them with organization and time management skills, writing and critical reading skills, and interpersonal skills. One major piece of all AVID classes is AVID tutorials. Tutors are hired to come into the class twice a week and facilitate a sort of Socratic seminar to help them with their academic classes. Students come prepared with a Tutorial Request Form (TRF) which helps students organize their thinking and drill down to the part of the problem that is confusing or troublesome. This class is a challenge to turn into an online course, but it can be done using interactive tools such as Google meets for virtual tutorials and Google Sites or Slides to build digital notebooks. Most assignments, including the TRF, can be digitized using various apps and tools. Furthermore, due the COVID pandemic, hundreds of colleges and universities have developed virtual tours of their campuses, which allows students to their favorite colleges from the comfort of their own homes.  Moreover, guest speakers can join our class via Zoom or Google Meet, and the students can type questions into the chat, or click the raise hand button to ask questions. 

         College and Career Readiness is a class that prepares 8th graders for college by helping students discover their interests and passions and introducing them to the many high school endorsements and tracks they choose from. These endorsements have been developed to help students gain experience in their areas of interest, thereby paving the way for entry into their chosen college or career path. This class is one that can easily be turned into an online course. Edpuzzle makes it easy to turn any video into a lesson. PearDeck can also be used to turn slides into interactive and collaborative lessons. Every unit can be taught exclusively online, while the teacher facilitates via web conference on a daily or weekly basis. In this instance, the teacher becomes not only a facilitator, but also a valuable resource that students can utilize when they need clarification on lessons and concepts. Teachers can also utilize apps such as Screencastify to record how-to videos or visual aides, and other apps such as Quizlet and Gimkit that can help students learn vocabulary and other facts through the various interactive games and challenges that these kinds of apps have to offer.  Furthermore, there are dozens of  free quality apps and extensions  that teachers can utilize, as well as many more that can be paid for by the district for educational use. In today’s digital world, there are many ways for any class to be redesigned for use as an online course. 

Asynchronous Learning for Teachers

          With the exception of their own lessons, the resources my learners need to successfully complete each module are housed within the course in Google Classroom. Learners will complete and submit each assignment in Google Classroom.  While the modules are self-paced and fall on completely online on the continuum outlined by Bates (2015), I set a deadline for turning assignments so I could award them PD credit in a timely manner. Most teachers do not like to simply complete arbitrary assignments that they will soon forget in order to earn their professional development credits. The most engaging professional learning courses for me have been the ones in which the end product of the course was something I could take back to my class and use immediately.

        My overarching goal for this course is to give my learners the opportunity to use their own curriculum to complete some of the assignments. Most of the modules have a tutorial assignment to familiarize learners with the app, followed by another assignment that requires them to utilize their skills to digitize one of their lessons.  This piece, I believe, is the key to making the modules in Digital Learning Workshop more meaningful to my learners. They will learn new skills while building lessons and activities that they can take back to their classrooms and teach, as well as share with their fellow content teachers. My learners are much more likely to engage with the assignments in each module if they get  to experience the ways that the tools and apps taught within Google Classroom can apply to their subject areas.  I also planned some collaborative pieces, such as the lesson share Padlet and the Flipgrid reflections.  My hope is that these collaborative reflections will inspire conversations among content teachers that will lead to more lesson sharing and more consistent curriculum delivery.  

      As more OERs become available to learners, I envision the role of the teacher as more of a facilitator (Bates, 2015).  I think school districts need to look into the possibility of starting an online school in order to relieve some of the burden currently placed on most of our teachers. Since virtual teaching is most likely here to stay, it makes sense to open a school that houses the virtual teaching format. Virtual students deserve to have teachers who understand the ins and outs of virtual teaching and can provide a much more robust online curriculum. As one who must teach virtually as well as face to face, I have learned that it is difficult to cater to both face-to-face students and virtual students at the same time. In order to streamline lesson planning, I have designed most of my lessons to cater to  my virtual students. However, my f2f students have really appreciated the shorter lectures and longer work time in class. 

Bates, A.W. (2015) Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning (Chapters 8-10). Retrieved from

https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/

The Digital Learning Workshop-Making Adjustments

      The Digital Learning Workshop is coming along nicely. It is hard for me to believe that this course is almost complete. I was really nervous about it when I started this class. How was I going to design a 5-week course in such a short amount of time???? How would I chunk the information, and how would

I build the assignments in a manner that my learners would be able understand and complete them? Is it too late to change classes (kidding, not kidding)? These are just a few of the questions that went through my head as I began thinking about this course. HOWEVER, once I wrapped my brain around what I wanted this course to be, and I did A LOT of research. It finally began to flow. 

     One thing that has worked to my advantage is my process:  I tend to build and experiment as I outline. I do this with my writing, and I do this with projects.  I guess it goes back to me being a constructivist at heart. I am also one who needs to see the project I am outlining so I can add the details and resources that goes into tackling an endeavor such as this class. Creating this course has been an eye-opening experience for me; I have taken many online courses but have never built one before. I was reminded of  something I have said many times in the coaching world:  It is one thing to participate in a sport, but it is quite another to coach it. A coach has to break down the skills needed to play a sport, chunk the learning into sections so her athletes don't go into cognitive overload, and differentiate the teaching of those skills based on the skill level of her athetes. 

    That saying has played a huge role as I began putting my course together in Google Classroom. For example, as I was outlining the last half of my course this week, I realized that the assigment I was writing for my Google Sites module was too long. Consequently, I chunked it into two assignments.  As I was designing another module last week, I realized that the skills I was wanting to teach really needed to be broken into two separate modules, so I had to cut a big chunk and go in a slightly different direction. Moreover, once I roll this course out and  I get some feedback from my learners, I will undoubtedly go back and refine certain pieces to make it better for the next round of learners! 

     In summary, building this professional learning modules has made me appreciate the time and effort that goes into creating online courses (or any course for that matter).  Building this course has stretched my thinking and helped me grow as an educator by making me look at teaching through a completely different lens. Not only will this experience make me a better teacher, but it will also help be become a more effective administrator. 

Digital Learning Workshop-Learning by Doing

          The course I have designed  stems from my Professional Learning Plan I created in another class. With the exception of the initial web conference, it is 100% online and asynchronous. Since this pandemic has forced school districts to rethink their approach to meaningful lesson delivery, developing a Digital Learning Workshop seemed the best way to help teachers and staff develop the skills necessary to thrive in a blended environment. I have developed 5 modules for this course, with plans to add more as I continue to gather information on teachers' digital learning needs. Most modules are chunked into 2 assignments.  The first learning activity is basically a tutorial of a Google app such as Google Docs. In the second activity, teachers will apply their new skills to transform one of their lessons into an activity that both face-to-face students and virtual students can complete. I have incorporated a variety of tutorial videos for learners to watch as they work through the initial assignments. These videos are also there for them to review as they begin building their digital lessons.  Their assessments will the completion of each lesson, and will be graded based their inclusion of a set of required skills. In a way, they are formative since they will be required to use a standard set of skills within the activities. 

       As I read Chapter 6 of our book, Bates (2015) explains the difference between technology and media. I found it helpful because it helped me recognize that I am using technology to provide my learners with modules that will help them differentiate their lessons and teaching methods through the use of various media platforms. Furthermore, Bates said it best when he said, "we need to know how best to design and apply media (rather than technology) to facilitate learning (Bates, 2015)." This statement resonated with me, since my big goal for this year has been to go paperless. I have experimented with many different digital learning apps and extensions in order to find ones that work well for me and my studentse in order to utilize our Chromebook technology on a greater scale. This is the very reason I utilized apps such as Padlet and Flipgrid for the module reflection pieces. I want my learners to experience different ways to give and receive feedback, so they can take those apps back to their classrooms and incorporate them into their own lessons. 

            Since learners will be creating their own e-portfolio with Google Sites in Module 4, I would say that activities for my course fall somewhere between constructivist and connnectivist (Bates, 2015). I know that teachers are busy and don't want to waste their time doing busy work. Therefore, I want my learners to actively engage with the material to not only create something they can use with their

classes, but also share their with fellow teachers in their respective content areas. Sharing lessons is a great way for teachers to collaborate with their teams to build a pool of activities that all can use. For example, one teacher may create a Google Slides presentation introduce a unit, while another teacher creates a HyperDoc that contains links to videos, websites, and a variety of activities that will help their students gain a deeper understanding of that unit. 

             As I have continued to build this course, I have made several adjustments to ensure that I have chunked the learning into meaningful increments that do not overwhelm learners with too much information at once. For example, once I began outlining Module 2 Google Slides and Peardeck, I have recognized that, in order to teach both apps properly, I need to chunk the information further by creating a separate module for PearDeck. I have no doubt that I will continue to make adjustments as I progress through the remaining modules in the course. Furthermore, because a lot of teachers are still not comfortable with my LMS, I felt it necessary to build a tutorial on Google Classroom. I want my learners to be comfortable using Google Classroom as they work through the other modules, especially those who may come from a district that uses another LMS like Schoology or Canvas. 

Bates, A.W. (2015). Teaching in a digital age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning. Retrieved January 30, 2021from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/