Amy’s Blog

Questioning My Progress

July 22, 2008

The last two weeks have flown by!  I can’t believe there are roughly three more weeks left of this course. 

One of the questions Professor Pickett posed to us this module was “what has challenged you the most in this course?”  To answer that question, it is hard to pinpoint one thing.  In Professor Pickett’s course expectations she stated that creating an online course would take 100 + hours.  Isn’t that the truth!  I find myself continuously doing research for my course content and activities, exploring Moodle, trying to make my ideas work on Moodle, in addition to keeping up with the enlightening discussion threads, yet I feel as though my progress is minimal considering the amount of time I am putting in.  Personally this is a challenge and a discomfort to me.  I have often been confident in my learning as a student however, this course has made me more critical and analytical of the progress, or lack of progress, I am making as a scholar and an educator.  Does anyone else feel this way?

Creating an online course has been a great yet frustrating learning experience.  Great …because it is such an amazing skill to know how to create an online course.  Even if I do not teach the course I am creating fully online, it is a great resource to incorporate into my face to face classroom.  Throughout the discussion thread this week my classmates and I noted that all of the planning we have done for our online course and conversing about different icebreakers and learning activities, we have become inspired and enlightened to incorporate new activities into our classrooms that we would not have considered a few months ago.  We have also explored a number of new technology based tools such as Diigo, Web 2.0, Wikis, Moodle, etc.  These experiences has diversified our palette as teachers and enriched the way we plan to teach come September.

On the contrary, creating an online course has been quite frustrating as well.  Personally I am a hands on visual learner.  I had noted in an earlier blog entry that I find myself being huetagogynous.  Although this is a great trait, it also comes with some drawbacks.  To learn in an environment where I set my learning goals and method of learning is ideal, however I do not hold the answer to every question, especially in course design and trying to teach myself within a scheduled timeframe is difficult.  I think what is most frustrating is when you have a vision and are unsure how to execute that vision.  For example, last module we were required to outline our course content and activities for each learning module in our course.  This module we were required to create these activities on our course.  This task was easier said than done.  Creating the “just right” resources and activity displays to present the content in, is a challenge in itself.  I attempted to create a quiz; however I am unsure if it successfully works.  I think up until this point I have been pleased with my planning progress, however executing my plans seems to be another story.

Click Here To View My Course Content

(It is still a work in progress!)

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