Karrie Cox

January 31, 2014

EdTech 513

Week 2 Assignment Discussion Board

After reading Chapter 1, reflect upon your own experiences with online courses. List three recommendations you would include for designing good online courseware, including a brief discussion of why these are important considerations.

My first online course was for an english class at a community college.   The courseware was primitive as we had to send our assignments with an email link on the class website.  This was great.  The rules of engagement were to complete the assignment by the due date and email any questions or comments.  I imagine a lot of programming went into creating the course or using a commercial software such as DreamWeaver.  Even then, the course had to be tailored for college level students, reflect sound instructional design and follow the standards for college curriculum and be accredited.  

Clark & Mayer (2011, p.22) provide three main considerations for developing effective e-Courseware, "the goal of your training, prior knowledge of your learners, and the environment in which you will develop and deploy your training".

Is the goal of the courseware to be the primary learning resource to facilitate classroom sessions? Or will the courseware be to supplement classroom learning?  The goal is to leverage digital media to connect with your learners where the instructional design is for them (Who),  that educates (Why)  the lesson(s) (What), and follow curriculum standards in order to enhance learning that inspires (How).

What time has taught us is that e-Learning Courseware makes the learning process fun, engaging, and effective.  Having electronic courseware available lets the instructor focus on other valuable activities, such as discussions, role-play, projects and answering questions.  It is flipped teaching  (2014) as everything is provided virtually and to be completed within our own pace within a set timeframe.

Audience

Knowing the targeted learner group and remember that there will be a variety of learners that need to achieve the end goal.  

Course format

This would cover the framework, educational goals, the tasks needed to be completed.  

According to Robert Gagné (Culatta, 2013) there are nine events that provide a framework for an effective learning process:

1. Gain attention; i.e. storytelling, demonstration, a problem.
2. Provide a learning objective: what and why
3. Stimulate recall of prior knowledge: tests, scaffolding.
4. Present the material: sequence the lessons with increasing difficulty (start at A and end at Z).  Learners have the opportunity to skip parts if they already have prior knowledge to complete the skill.
5. Provide guidance for learning: learn to learn gaining metacognitive skills to help with future performance.
6. Elicit performance: let the learner do something with the newly acquired knowledge (assignment)
7. Provide feedback (guidance)
8. Assess performance (grades, achievement scores)
9. Enhance retention and transfer

Choose the most appropriate media to communicate a concept

Somewhere in my educational endeavors I made this chart to help remind me of types of graphic support to use in an e-Courseware with multimedia. It incorporates engaging text, graphics, animations and interactive quizzes to satisfy all learning styles.  Graphis to support content type:

References

Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2011). e-Learning and science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning (3rd ed.). San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

Culatta, R. (n.d.). Conditions of Learning (Robert Gagne). Conditions of Learning. Retrieved February 1, 2014, from http://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/conditions-learning.html

Flip teaching. (2014, January 28). Wikipedia. Retrieved February 1, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_teaching

Roblyer, M. D., & Doering, A. H. (2013). Integrating educational technology into teaching (6th ed.). Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon Publishers.