ETEC 551 – Activity #4 – Group – Afifa Alawi & Van Phan
Online
learning and online classes are expanding every year. In order to make online teaching
successful, the content of online courses should be organized in ways that
students can find all required learning materials conveniently, without any confusion
or distraction. In Phylise Banner interview from Penn State regarding
“Competencies for Online Teaching Success”, she repeatedly mentioned the word
“hierarchy” and how online education should be organized simply in that
structure. She indicates that an online course instructor should build an online environment
and arrange contents so that students can easily find learning materials. Like a house with many rooms, each room has
its own purpose which means that materials should be organized in folders for
each week of instruction. Material for each week of instruction should be found
in that week’s particular folder. The
most important question that Banner want online instructors to be aware of is
in the term of hierarchy, “how am I going to help students guide themselves”?
When a student walks into the house, he/she should know which room to go to for
assignments, schedule, help, etc. The house symbolize as a structure so the
student can self- guide themselves. For any materials that are not organized in
a particular room, like a book in the living room, it’s an opportunity for the
student to “explore” the book themselves. We (Afifa and Van) chose this
particular video because we believe that when a course is not face to face,
it’s highly important that course materials, assignments, schedule, and links are
organized and accessible; that’s what makes online education successful. When
there is a lot of clicking around, back and forth from one page to another,
it’s time consuming and it would raise more questions than answers. Among other
videos, we choose this one because it’s important to know where to start in
order and where to go before students can learn on what to do and how to do it.
In our (Afifa, Van) classes where our teachers were organized and course materials were arranged in proper folders, we could easily locate learning materials without any frustration. On the other hand we had online classes where learning materials were not arranged properly. It was so difficult and time consuming to locate online learning materials for that particular class. Since online education is growing rapidly there are numerous sources available for educators to support and manage their online course materials. For example, Follett Software Company (Rivero, 2011)helps schools and educators across country to build user-friendly online environments.
Sources:
Rivero, V. (2011). Solution providers improving student achievement. Internet@schools, 18(5), 9-11.