In the Winter 2013 term, I’m teaching two graduate courses in addition to the preservice instructional technology courses that I’ve been teaching. The first course, Research in Education, is a required course in the master’s program and taught mostly face-to-face with some blended elements. The second one, E-learning and Education, is an online course using both asynchronous and synchronous video conferencing. in addition, we are experimenting with a host of other technologies including social media.
Tonight, we had our first session using Blackboard Collaborate in the E-Learning course with the five students who could make it. As expected, we had some technology troubleshooting (one student couldn’t hear anyone and we couldn’t hear her at first; another student couldn’t get her video working). There were also issues of trying to go through the syllabus — not easy because there are multiple modalities through which students can ask questions and respond (emoticons, checkmarks for yes/x’s for no, video facial expressions and gestures, audio, text chat both public and private). The literature talks about cognitive overload, and today, I got a first hand experience of the frustrations of trying to teach this way.
It’s not that I haven’t taught online before. I have, and this course is adapted from an asynchronous delivery one that I know well. The synchronous sessions are supposed to enhance the asynchronous discussions. This part , using both kinds of technologies for teaching (vs research team meetings) is new. The technology is not new. I’ve been using some form of videoconferencing for about a decade (polycom, OISE green room, blue room, gold room, the one with hexagons whose name now eludes me, elluminate, Macromedia Breeze, Adobe Connect, Skype, etc). I didn’t think it was going to be this hard to teach this way.
Partly, I think it is because my students are online learning newbies and I’m having to help them understand a kind of discussion-based online learning that is so common at OISE but maybe not everywhere else. Maybe students expected more of a module set up with a quiz at the end or a lecture with me reading PowerPoint slides. The other part is sociocultural in that at places like OISE, most online courses have enrolled students who have already taken a few online courses before and they help acculturate the newbie students.
In any case, I need to make a number of big changes to make this blended delivery work. This is one of the research studies I am conducting with my colleagues who are also trying out this combined mode of delivery.
I’ll blog about the other two research projects currently under way soon.
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