What are the most significant (or surprising) things you learned by participating in this workshop?
- I would like to say that this workshop “woke me up” on the importance of alignment in the construction of my online course. I learned how important relationships and connections are between objectives, activities and outcomes in a well-organized and planned-out online course syllabus.
- The most meaningful takeaway from this workshop has been to never give anything for granted. There are things we may not consider important and/or relevant (thus, needed), but which they are for students; I also learned that we would all benefit so much from discussions with colleagues, within and without our disciplines.
- I learned that I should spend more time thinking and revising the structure and presentation of the courses we are currently delivering online.
- Rethinking my course design helped me to focus on different aspects of the content and even gave me a better idea of what were the most important things to teach, even after the many feedbacks I got from colleagues and the facilitator. The first most significant thing I learned by participating in this workshop is about alignment and the relationship between learning objectives and learning activities and all the Standards related to it (SRS 2.2-2.5).
- Ensuring that all learners can access all course content and activities, together with improving usability, became prioritized tasks in the revision of my course.
- This course helped me make the teaching materials more accessible, for instance, by inserting equivalent textual representations for images, providing alternatives to all images, and changing Word documents using formatting styles.
- Third, I learned that I must make still more effort to constantly engage the students in every way possible in an online course, as with learner to learner activities and more learner to instructor activities, as well as maintain punctual and continuous feedback with the learners, in order that none fall behind.
- I always have to make clear to the learners why they are doing what they are doing, and being asked to do.
Of all the improvements you plan to make, which one do you think will have the most impact on you and your learners? Why?
- I think that a course map as well as a more specific Home page with Start Here will have a great impact on me and my students in order to put up front clear and specific explanations.
- The improvement I consider the most relevant is related to better state communication, technological and digital expectations by making is clear. The impact will have a huge impact on me and my learners because it will facilitate our relationship.
- I would like to introduce a section including my biography, a video presentation on my life and my home in order to establish a relationship with students. Feeling at ease with the teacher and fellow students is essential when approaching a new language and culture.
- Reflecting on SRS 5.3 convinced me of the importance to state a clear instructor’s plan for interacting with learners. This can be achieved by simply adding information about when learners will receive instructor responses to emails and discussion postings, feedback on assignments, and grades, or by adding a statement that learners will receive regular (weekly, daily) announcements that include reminders and information pertinent to the course.
- The design of a course map will be very helpful for me to have everything organized in advance and to give consistency to the whole course, for the students to have everything clearly presented in the “Start Here” module/“Course map/tour”.
- I think that the improvement that will have the most impact on me and on my students is the one related to build a better and clearer communication Learner/Instructor being more “intrusive” in order to build a community.
- I have made some revisions already while taking this workshop and for the little others left, I will make them more gradually before the next semester.
- I am going to improve the Module units by clearly explaining their relevance to the Course Learning Outcomes and Objectives, is probably the improvement that will have the most impact both for me as instructor and for the learners.