Throughout the duration of CEP 820, I have designed an entire instructional unit about Mendelian genetics on Blackboard Coursesites. When I began my initial forays into the world of online course design, I was not fully aware of all of the intricacies of online learning that I would need to explore. My naivety spawned from my experience creating a Weebly page for my current face-to-face biology classroom. Since this Weebly site is simply meant to supplement my classroom instruction, the decision-making process was quite different than what was necessary to create my Blackboard course module. My primary decisions in creating this course module fall into three overarching categories: 1) course structure & design, 2) creating a personal learning environment, and 3) designing assessments.
I chose to use Blackboard Coursesites instead of other content management systems because of the flexibility that it affords for instructors. While many educators tout that blackboard is unnecessarily hierarchical in structure, the availability of features such as discussion boards, wiki pages and a comprehensive gradebook made this opinion of little importance to me (Coopman, 2008). This is why I designed my course on Coursesites. Although I did considerable research before choosing this content management system, I didn’t explore many structural options before beginning to create the shell of my course. Thus, I was not well versed in the differences between learning modules, content folders, blank pages. etc. After discovering better organization systems on the CEP 820 exemplar site, I was forced to revamp my course structure to make it easier to navigate. This meant making the navigation consistent among all lessons and instructional units. I was also careful to design the course in a way that was consistent with good teaching pedagogy and not the plethora of online tools available at my fingertips (Lane, 2009).
One aspect of the course that I focused on during this design process was establishing a pseudo personal learning environment for each student. This was important to me as the instructor because it has been proven that personal learning environments help students to succeed in online classrooms (Sclater, 2008, p.3-4). In order to facilitate a personal learning assignment for each student, I designed a student notebook Google Documents page for students to submit their genetics work. This student notebook also includes detailed rubrics for each lesson and a space for teacher feedback. This withstanding, I believe that my attempts at creating personal learning environments for each student would have been more effective had my unit also included more opportunities for synchronous communication to make the experience more student-centered (Murphy, Rodriguez-Manzanares, & Barbour, 2011). I might have avoided this mistake had I made better use of Google Hangouts, Adobe Connect, chat functions, and other synchronous communication facilitating software.
When I designed the assessments for this course module, I created a traditional unit assessment and an extended project. Many of the questions on the unit assessment were designed to be higher-level so that students could use the internet as a resource instead of a means to cheat on the assessment (Mishra, 2009). Unfortunately, several of the questions remained simple recognition or recall questions. I might have avoided this pitfall had I made my assessments completely project or problem-based. Another way that I assessed student performance throughout the unit was through requiring students to self-assess and reflect. This was facilitated through the student notebook that each student created in Google Docs. In this course module, students are required to write self-reflection statements at the end of each lesson and keep a metacognitive log during the learn activities of the lesson. These features of the student notebook serve as formative assessments that the students encounter multiple times throughout the instructional unit (Glogowski, 2007). Of course, these formative assessments would not be valuable without regular feedback from the instructor. Additionally, several of the assignments throughout the unit were created for students to showcase their work (Campbell, 2008).
Above all else, CEP 820 has taught me that online course design is about creating intentional and meaningful lessons that are grounded in an effective teaching pedagogy. I discovered a few weeks ago that I may be teaching two sections of physics for the first time in my teaching career. The physics department at my school uses blackboard almost religiously, and I now feel well-equipped to use content management systems with my students as well!
Mendelian Genetics Course Module
- Username: guestuser2013
- Password: guestuser2013
MAET Program Coursework - Beth Ottolini 