Technology in Education: Notes from the Closet

This winter I am working toward adding a new credential to my learning: Quality Matter's  Teaching Online Certificate . This well-established and highly respected organization has put together a series of workshops that focuses on best practices of online teaching. I plan to reflect on each workshop as I complete them as a way to model metacognition. This post is 7 of 8. When I scheduled my QM workshops I chose to take the Gauging Your Technology Skills workshop last. I was confident in my technology skills and thought it might be easier to end on a lighter note. For me, this was a great choice. In this workshop we took some skills self-evaluations to understand where our weaknesses were. While there were no areas of 'weakness,' there are always areas that need additional attention. In my case, that area would be using the internal analytics and features of the Learning Management Systems I use in my work and graduate courses: D2L, Canvas, and Blackboard. While I know how t...

This winter I am working toward adding a new credential to my learning: Quality Matter's  Teaching Online Certificate . This well-established and highly respected organization has put together a series of workshops that focuses on best practices of online teaching. I plan to reflect on each workshop as I complete them as a way to model metacognition. This post is 6 of 8. In the Evaluating Your Institutional Policies workshop we had the opportunity to explore both public-facing and internal policies our institutions have in place. As someone new to Triton College, this was extremely helpful for me. Many of these policies don’t directly relate to my position as Director of Distance Learning so having a dedicated block of time to explore these will allow me to reflect on suggestions I’d like to make for our online learning programs. Having an opportunity to explore classroom behavior, academic integrity, learner privacy, copyright, and accessibility policies as well as others helped s...

This winter I am working toward adding a new credential to my learning: Quality Matter's  Teaching Online Certificate . This well-established and highly respected organization has put together a series of workshops that focuses on best practices of online teaching. I plan to reflect on each workshop as I complete them as a way to model metacognition. This post is 5 of 8. This week the focus shifted to assessment. The first conversation revolved around academic honesty- a topic that has been discussed since assignments have been given! We talked about reasons why some students might cheat. One literature review on academic dishonesty cited poor time management, academic pressures, and low-stakes assignments as some of the reasons students go this route. Best practices seem to fall in three buckets: Inform & Educate Protect & Prevent Practice & Support I'm a firm believer in being honest and transparent with my graduate students in hope that they will be honest and t...

This winter I am working toward adding a new credential to my learning: Quality Matter's  Teaching Online Certificate . This well-established and highly respected organization has put together a series of workshops that focuses on best practices of online teaching. I plan to reflect on each workshop as I complete them as a way to model metacognition. This post is 4 of 8. This week the focus shifted to learning theories. Often, learning theories are covered in preservice education and then not touched on regularly once 'in the field.' It was nice to revisit and reflect on these. In a Behaviorism-based classroom information is transferred from the teacher to the student. Students learn through positive reinforcement if a desired response elicits a reward or a punishment and tend to act accordingly. This occurs through observations and the motivation is extrinsic, relying on verbal praise and rewards. In a Cognitive Constructivism classroom  (also referred to as Cognitivism) ...

This winter I am working toward adding a new credential to my learning: Quality Matter's  Teaching Online Certificate . This well-established and highly respected organization has put together a series of workshops that focuses on best practices of online teaching. I plan to reflect on each workshop as I complete them as a way to model metacognition. This post is 3 of 8.  In this workshop I spent time thinking about how I create presence for students in my online graduate courses. We expect our students to make a commitment to engage in our courses- we need to make a commitment to them, as well, to be present even when we aren't face-to-face.  The overarching theme of this workshop centers on the Community of Inquiry framework which states that effective online courses contain three types of entangled interactions: Social Presence- how students connect with the class community. Cognitive Presence- how students are able to construct and infer meaning from course content t...

This winter I am working toward adding a new credential to my learning: Quality Matter's  Teaching Online Certificate . This well-established and highly respected organization has put together a series of workshops that focuses on best practices of online teaching. I plan to reflect on each workshop as I complete them as a way to model metacognition. This post is 1 of 8.  The second workshop I participated in was EYCD- Evaluating Your Course Design. This workshop was a two-day synchronous session (the first workshop was an asynchronous weeklong commitment). The audience was very small- only three participants. This was both slightly awkward but also an advantage. Having such a small group meant we had the opportunity to ask detailed questions of the facilitator. It also forced me to pay attention the entire time! Often, its very easy to become distracted when there is a larger crowd and your camera can be off.  An additional bonus was the use of a new video conferencing p...