Author: Joy Ann LaJeret

My week started out with a fever, chills and eventually a cold and cough. It is not easy to think clearly when your head is stuffy and has cobwebs in it! Ah, the cold and flu session is upon us this autumn quarter. My pressing problem this week was how to polish up my ePortfolio, which is one of my objectives for the internship. After listening to the people in the Women’s Center and speaking with Ann, we decided there is little to do technically. However, I did need to write a hard copy of a resume and include it in the ePortfolio.

This is where things got a bit difficult. It is a challenge to write what you have accomplished not using the word “I.” Then there is the laborious process of trying to clean up all the mistakes in grammar and spelling and layout. Since I went from the tenth grade to college, with a few years in between, I still struggle with these writing issues. In fact during the years I was a student at the various universities, I hired a company to scan my papers for errors and type them. They did this for an interesting sum of money, which I had at the time. Today, I am left to process my own work and I struggle with this task.

Two years ago, I took an online course at Cascadia Community College in order to update my skills using Microsoft Word and the other applications. I spent the most time developing my skills to use Word at the advanced level to process my various papers. Robin tells me that Microsoft Word doesn’t correct all grammar mistakes. Great! I do not have the money to hire someone to proof read my documents. The women’s Center states that your ePortfolio and resume should be perfect. As luck would have it…I am not.

My next task was to address the issue of assessment and how I will use it in the course. This week Charlene approved my objectives. Robin stopped by my office to give me two books addressing assessment, both instructor and student self-assessment and online discussions. Luckily I addressed this in my meeting with Charlene on Wednesday (before going home and crashing). Charlene gave me an instructors guide that dealt with presenting discussion questions for the course and ill-structured problems. The book gave many examples of each. I am now plowing through the reading material and the newest edition of the textbook which came to my home on Friday. I am very glad I like carrots…because I am going to need the eye protection they supposedly give the person eating them.

My next project is writing the syllabus and trying to figure out a time line for placing content in Bb Vista. Robin and I are meeting next week to work out some of the bugs of putting course material in Bb Vista. I should be able to get the shell up and running, because I now have the chapter names from the new edition. Incidentally, I did go see the BC library expert on copyright law to find out how to cite Microsoft clip art images. As General Robin (I see her as one and am still trying to decide how many stars she has) says, “…Onward!”

Retrieved image from Microsoft Online.

I began this week rested and optimistic. I went to class on Monday and my hybrid course continued crystallizing in my mind’s eye. On Wednesday when I met with Charlene, I handed her the first attempt to write the needed learning outcomes. She didn’t seem too impressed; but it was just a first attempt to comprehend what was needed. After I emailed them to Robin my mentor, she gave me a few lessons on writing them that I found absolutely helpful. It was very hard to look at fifty learning outcomes and condense them into 5-6. Also, I did not get the textbook soon enough to read it before classes started. This hindered my knowledge of what the textbook was offering to the learner and the instructors on campus. Most of the outcomes were based on the textbook’s chapter readings and tasks.

After I met with Charlene on Wednesday, I attended the training on how to use Bb Vista and found I had learned far more than I thought. This fact reinforced my confidence and I began tackling both the learning outcomes and my ePortfolio. I needed a tutorial to place in the website. So, I downloaded Camtasia and made my first two minute and fifty-four second recording. I began to edit my website with a renewed belief in myself and have ironed out a lot of problems. The road blocks that had bothered me last week didn’t even come close to slowing me down this week.

The next chore on my plate was creating an Elluminate/Collaborate session for my meeting with Robin on Tuesday of next week. It was relatively easy to do, since I used the application in my first course for my certification. When we meet to iron out the issues we have on Bb Vista, we will visit the Elluminate/Collaborate session to see if it works. I bought a new laptop and will have to take it over to the N building to have it hooked up for accessing the wireless system at Bellevue College. Other than that, I think it is good to go.

My next task is to begin loading chapter and module information in the Bb Vista shell. When it comes time to load content for the course some of the tasks will already be done. To insure that the pictures I use in Bb Vista are not under copyright law, I have contacted a friend of mine from North Carolina. She used to work with me at T-Mobile in Coal Creek. She is taking a series of Criminal Justice pictures and will release them to me with unlimited restrictions along with her permission to use those photos on Bb Vista and my website. My grand-daughter is a photographer too. I was going to ask her if she could do these pictures for me; but she starts school in November.

My next step will be putting a request in to the techs at Bellevue College, in order to get the sizing of the pictures for the applications and modules in Bb Vista. I want to create something that has not been used before and is easily recognizable in the Criminal Justice field. I am rather excited to have this project under way. Tasha is a great photographer and artist and has her own website. I highly recommend her work to anyone who wants to buy her creations. She is a painter and can draw a mean picture as well.

This week, I will be going on a job interview to possibly work weekends in a flower shop to support myself while in this internship. My unemployment benefits have been exhausted. I have until the end of the winter quarter before I finish this last phase of my learning experience, with the possibility of extending my internship into spring quarter. I do not know where all of this will lead me. I am just taking it step by step and savoring the moment.

I am including two videos I think tell the story of how I accomplished the task of writing outcomes and putting information into my website ePortfolio. It explains why people with ePortfolios are ahead of the game.

This week was a week of frustrating, time-consuming meetings and training. Simply stated, there are not enough hours in a day to get everything done. So, I am hoping to approach Congress and ask that our days in a month be extended to 36. I want a few more hours in these days, too. Oh that’s right; I keep forgetting, Congress doesn’t seem to get much done either!

The week began with the third class of the quarter at 5:30 PM on Monday and seemed to get busier with each passing hour during the week. I suppose that every instructor and student has weeks and days like this in the beginning of the quarter. For example, the CJ class instructor was supposed to have a quiz ready on Chapter One, Wednesday. Unfortunately, he went to copy the test twice during our class hours and both times had problems. The class never did take that test. He took the situation rather calmly, in comparison to me. I was supposed to give a presentation with my group while he was making copies. I found my mouth was dry and my knees were shaking when I opened my mouth to give my part of the presentation! I can sing and play in front of a few hundred people, but froze in front of 33 students! What is happening to me?

I met with my mentor on Thursday and we were both mentally frazzled by that late date in the week. At this point, I was driven to contemplate grabbing a student’s teddy bear (her boy friend had just asked her to attend an important social event and gave her the stuffed bear to soften her up a bit), crawl under a table in the library and assume the fetal position. With this state of mind, I told her my plans for the next two weeks:  searching for the “big idea” and writing objectives. At the end of this meeting, Robin looked up at me and said,”…my brain has just stopped working.” Next week just has to be better. 

When I met with Charlene on Wednesday, before going to Bb Vista training and the CJ class. She handed me a list of objectives (learning outcomes) that had been previously written by Bellevue College. The 50 objectives were requirements that were supposed to be met in the Intro to CJ course. My job is to create a “big Idea” and condense the objectives down into 5 or 6. I looked at those 50 learning outcomes and wondered if I could say with confidence that they could be accomplished in 12 weeks or one-quarter, much less 12 years!  Since objective writing is not my strongest skill, I cannot explain how 50 objectives reduced me to tears! I laughed so hard there were tears in my eyes when I contemplated the magnitude of the task.

Between my meeting with Charlene and the class on Wednesday, I took my first class on how to use the shell of Bb Vista and upload files into the system. I walked out of the hour class realizing I didn’t understand most of what had been taught to me. Referring back to my notes, I thought I was reading a foreign language! I was so frustrated and wondered how I would ever place content in the system once I managed to get the design worked out. There was no “hands on” training during the class, which I really needed. Luckily my mentor Robin suggested we sit down during our next meeting with a laptop and go through some of the basics of using Bb Vista.

I am still shaking my head at the idea that I am as tech savvy, as some instructors think I am. When I look through the back door end of Bb Vista, I feel totally inadequate. Added to this feeling is the realization that my university education, after nine years of taking courses in the area of law and criminology, still didn’t completely prepare me to take on the challenge of teaching in a community college, online. In fact, I have been out long enough to see the distance between where my studies ended and how some things have changed.

The basics are there in the storage area of my brain; but when I look at the skill level of the people teaching in that department, I wonder if I will ever be considered for a position. My fears of inadequacy tend to dissipate when I think about how much I have learned and how much I have updated my skills through the years. I can only hope employers will look at my academic history and desire to teach through the lenses of what was accomplished during the years I worked to develop myself in the work force.

Looking in on my alma mater…the University of Minnesota for some ideas on how to relax, I ran across this video. I love being a life long learner! Go Gophers! What a great way to burn off frustration and tension!

I am happy to present a short video on how hybrid courses improve peer-to-peer learning. The point of my internship is to create a class where the focus is off the instructor and lecturing and on self-directed and peer-to-peer learning. This concept promotes student acceptance of responsibility for their own learning experiences and seeks to direct them toward finding their own  academic path while in college. When the instructor becomes a facilitator instead of a lecturing instructor, the focus shifts. It becomes a learning process for everyone, including the instructor. The learning becomes each student’s responsibility, individually and in a group of peers with the guidance of the instructor. Most importantly the students do not have to “power down” in this environment and can continue to build on their technological skills and abilities.

My eLearning Certificate arrived last Friday. One year of work has been completed. The next step was to use the skills I had learned. I contacted Robin and was told to interview with the department chair (Charlene)  of the Criminal Justice department. After meeting with Charlene, it became very clear to me that she would be the best person to work with. She is very intelligent and grounded. I liked her modern ideas and the passion she has for all things academic, including teaching. She agreed to take me on and help me set up a hybrid course, “Introduction to Criminal Justice.”

The internship program coordinator (Michael) helped me set the 5 credit program up with Bellevue College. It will last through the end of Winter Quarter 2012. Michael was extremely helpful in reviewing my ePortfolio and directing the writing of my objectives for the internship. Robin, my instructor during the eLearning program, is my mentor. We met a week ago to begin the process of placing the hybrid course online

By the first week of Fall Quarter 2011 (week beginning September 19^th), I had attended two classes. The instructor (Mike), for the Criminal Justice course I am observing, is a criminal defense attorney for the state of Washington. He is highly knowledgeable and a good instructor. His syllabus was very detailed. The second night, he quizzed the students on the contents (I only managed to get 80% correct). From the very beginning of the first class he motivated the students to discuss the chapter contents and participate in the discussions. No small feat with circa 33 students in his class.

By the second day of the quarter, I received my instructor’s copy of the course textbook. After my weekly meeting with Charlene, I began to see the beginnings of a syllabus forming in my mind. It will be placed online in Blackboard Vista (Bb) Bellevue College’s learning management system (LMS). I want to find a common theme that threads its way through the syllabi I have received from Mike and Charlene. Charlene offered to help me get the syllabus the online instructor is using for that course for comparative purposes. Between the three of them, I should have a clear idea on how to put the information in the syllabus using my own style. I think I have the “Big Idea” or the take away idea of the course.

I will be attending a class on Wednesday of next week (September 28^th) that will give me the basic skills I need to put information into Bb. Once I understand how to operate the system and use it, I will begin to load the file. I can hardly wait to take the class. The first module will be the Intro to Course CJ 101 or the Getting Started module. I hope to place a Camtasia video in that module to help the students navigate in Bb. I want to think about using a rubric and will need to create one that fits what the students will be asked to do.

I hope to place my biographical information in the introduction portion of Bb. I will encourage the students to do the same. Having that information where it can be re-visited is often helpful in understanding where a student is at academically and where they hope to go with their studies. Also, it helps other students make contact with each other and establish what they might have in common. I have found adding a picture is very helpful. Students seem to respond better to those students who have included a picture, especially in the beginning of the course.

Finally, I hope to place all my contact information in Bb. Since I do not have an office, I hope to use Elluminate as the synchronous application for one on one or even group discussions and meetings. In closing…I hope you enjoy my definition of peer-to-peer learning and what it means to be a “teacher” in the following Walt Disney video (it appears Goofy doesn’t have an office either). No matter how old we get or how advanced we become academically, we still harbor a happy somewhat rebellious child within.

While on break I decided to go to the movie my husband wanted to see, Apollo 18. The movie was obviously not done by a professor or scientist. But, it did cause me to think and research the idea behind the movie. There is a belief by some scientists that there is some form of microbial life on the moon . And that is what was portrayed in the movie. I thought it might be quite possible for astronauts to become infected with a form of virus. In fact when the Apollo 11 astronauts return to earth they were quarantined and apparently suffered some psychological problems as well. In the movie of the supposedly secret Apollo 18 mission, the astronauts not only were contaminated by something in the moon rocks (microbial life), but suffered psychological problems. The movie seemed to imply it was some type of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder brought on by the infestation or virus.

While the movie wasn’t a great movie, it did ask some questions that need to be answered. Did NASA conduct super secret missions to the moon? Does NASA or any other military entity carry on super secret missions when it comes to protecting the United States against any enemy (real or imagined)? Should “…we the people…,” be informed?  Does NASA and the military carry secrecy a bit too far? I have some opinions on these questions. Yes, it is likely there were secret elements of the missions that NASA and the military did not want the general public to know. If we have the right to know as citizen’s of the US, I think it is not always feasible to do so until it is safe to release the information. Ten years and maybe twenty in some cases would most probably be enough time to begin the declassification process. All military agencies and departments carry secrecy too far in my opinion. It certainly serves to hide a lot of embarrassing mistakes in judgement, among other things.

I have watched hours of You Tube video, from various sources, of the moon’s surface and would have to say, Neil Armstrong’s claim that there is alien life on the dark side of the moon (who have warned us off the moon) might be less than solid eye-witness information. Yet, these statements have caused me to search for the answers to that question of whether Neil Armstrong was actually telling the truth and/or was observing a real event. After,watching many videos and reading countless blogs, I have decided that I endorse most of the Ancient Alien Theory out there. However, I do not accept alien visitation on earth today or alien encounters with humans in the past 50-100 years. My scientific mind leaves the door open to the possibilities when everything is said and done, however. I think we are far too primitive and violent a species for intelligent life forms that may be speeding past our world at break neck speeds to get in contact with.  I wouldn’t if I were them interact with us as a species!

I will continue to sort through the information on the internet about unidentified flying objects, ancient alien theory and alien encounters. I think it is a vast and interesting field. My curiosity began with the first publications I read back in the early 1970’s and will continue in the future. I am amazed we have actually developed a theory regarding the phenomena. I hope it continues to develop. I do not find the theory inconsistent with the idea of a God. I am watching the developments researchers are making while searching for the and/or a god particle.

I am including an interview with Dr. Michio Kaku. I did find his idea that aliens might be predators a bit laughable. There has been some thought given to an alien attack. I am very glad, from Kaku’s comments, that we will not be “take out” to these life forms. Dr. Kaku is a theoretical physicist and consultant for the new series Curiosity. They will be talking about these issues in the new series. There was a National Geographic video regarding this type of scenario which was supposedly aired earlier this year. Finally, to those who think Dr Michio Kaku is a New World Order proponent, I say prove it!

I have read the last of the course discussions. Appropriately, I have posted a video on online class size and whether it matters how big the class is. I think as I read the closing posts by circa 37 students, the thought struck my mind, that this class was too large to give the students as much attention as they may have gotten in a smaller class. This is not to say the instructor did not give them enough attention or feedback. I found the feedback they did receive to be quite a bit less than I have received in my online classes to-date. I think there is room for more research on the subject.

So, the course is finished and my observations have ended as well. I feel an emptiness, an aloneness I cannot explain. I have learned a lot about how to teach an online course; and what I might do differently if it were mine. However, this instructor is a seasoned teacher, instructor, facilitator and professor. I am not yet an expert. I am trying to apply Web 2.0 technologies to a course that is very traditional. The lack of some of the technologies I would have liked to use, does not diminish the effectiveness of the course. In the end, the most disturbing issue is that of class size. I would hope any class I was able to teach would be between 15-20 students. I found the number of papers, emails and discussions were just over the top! I wonder if a test or experiment could help determine how effect the class was and/or would have been had it been smaller with more student instructor interaction and feedback.

During the time this course was unfolding, I found myself trying to secure an internship at Bellevue College where I would like to teach. Since the college doesn’t want their faculty to teach online without classroom experience, I did not think I would find one. I under estimated the faculty of this institution. Not only did I get to observe an ongoing class as it unfolded online; but, I am going to do my internship on campus with the help of Robin my instructor and the chair of the Criminal Justice Department. I am going to put up a Hybrid Course in Criminal Justice. The very thought of the task frightens me. I find myself asking if I am capable of doing this task! I have found the answer by soul-searching and came to the conclusion that all my education and job training has led me to this task and project. If I am not prepared, I would certainly be highly surprised. I have had the best instructors and professors in the university system. My instructors at BC are top-notch.

I am reminded of my university studies when I was writing my pre-dissertation thesis in the field of international politics and on national defense issues. I learned that your paper and research project are only as good as the people who give of their time and talent to help you succeed at the task. Alone we would not accomplish as much as we do when we have the support of others. This interdependent relationship with others helps us accomplish any task we set our minds to. I certainly observed this in the discussion phase of the online course I participated in. We are social beings and in the words of a famous writer, Hemingway, “…no man is an island.” Incidentally John Donne (1572-1631) a Jacobean poet and preacher actually wrote a poem that inspired Hemingway to write those words in his book.

I have now earned my certification in eLearning and my course of study has ended. Even as the program ends my educating is continuing in my internship at Bellevue College. I am looking forward to these “new beginnings.” I have loved the journey and will continue it at least one more time…

I will continue to educate myself. I am moving into my chosen field of Criminal Justice. The next parting video is graphic and tells a story I want to share with you. It is one I see in various forms and have for more years than I care to remember. Maybe after watching this video (even thought the spelling is not perfect) you too will understand why I chose to study that field. This video is 8 minutes and 42 seconds long. Please if you can, watch all of it. Every week, I have to tell the women that call me, we have no room in our shelters and no place for them to rest or hide. The purpose of choosing this video is to show the effect DV has on the victims, especially the children. As to the message about guns…well that is up to each of us to decide in our minds and hearts. This video represents my journey as a woman, scholar and advocate. It is not just their journey or my journey, it is our journey as a people.

I am going to celebrate my anniversary tomorrow, Sunday the 7th of August, so I am writing this blog even though I am ill. Tomorrow, hopefully, I will not be as sick as I was these past few days. I am sleeping on a rubber or foam mattress that seems to have developed a peculiar smell that is making me very ill. Each episode is getting worse. After some research on the topic it seems I am not alone. Other people are getting ill from several brands of foam mattresses. Apparently today, many of these beds are made from petroleum-based chemicals, foams and flame retardants. These are not stable compounds and inhaling them hour after hour can cause damage to the immune and nervous system. My bed is seven years old. I began to notice the problems after I had chemical treatments due to an illness and developing asthma, about a year and a half ago.

Reading the assignments and discussions in the course, the students are expressing deeper thought patterns. At this point in the course there is supposed to be a shift as the learners or students move toward self-directed learning while sharing in the learning experiences of fellow learners. So far I have not observed this behavior. The course seems to moving along at the same pace with about the same format. I would like to think, I could change this pattern a bit by turning the discussions into an upside down inside out” Q & A session. Since the students have been reading and discussing course content for several weeks and the official end of the term is in circa 5 days, I would like to play a game called “…stump the expert,” posed by Boettcher and Conrad. The idea is to require the students to reflect on the course and come up with questions they would like answered by an expert in the field or from their instructor regarding the course content on any subject to date.

The idea is to have the students develop questions that make them pause, think and reflect on the knowledge they have gained. But more importantly have them reflect on the knowledge or concepts they did not understand or may have missed or something not covered they may want to learn more about. This exercise aids in the critical thinking and problem solving skills of the students. Adding an expert speaker or creating an event with an expert in the field may move them toward a deeper investigation of the field they are being introduced to. It may add newer insights and answer questions they may still have about that field of study.

During a introduction to sociology course, my instructor brought a FBI agent into the class to talk to us about the agency and the work they were doing. It was the reason I eventually pursued a sociology degree in my bachelors program. It was the reason, I chose a criminology emphasis of study in that field. To this day, I have not forgotten the instructor, the class or what that agent told us. He opened a whole new world for me.

Therefore, I believe experts may be able to add interest to the course when it is close to wrapping up. The expert should be able to bring new and current ideas to the students in the course. It could lend a new perspective to the course and its content in the present. The students would be able to research the topic the expert will speak on before the event; what the expert is doing in the field; and answer some of the questions they may have on the topic or topics in the course.

Although this has nothing to do with the topic of the course, the video is an example of how you could use an expert in your course. This of course is a video, but it could be interactive as well. The students could ask questions if it was presented in a forum such as Skype or Elluminate. Or in a hybrid course, this could be one of the days everyone meets in a classroom. Finding experts with the knowledge needed in most courses of study should not be too difficult and may be worth their weight in gold.

Dur to the importance of the subject matter, I am including this video at the beginning of my blog. It is something I find to be important when addressing the letting go of power and self-directing the learning of students.

The course I am observing is going along about the same as it was in the early phases. The students are highly involved, at least those most involved. The second project has been handed in and graded, for those that have completed this task. Since the course is half way through, it seems most of the students and the instructor have established a strong connection with a certain amount of trust. However, I am experiencing a need to deeply think about the progress of the course, at this point due to a difference in thinking about what I would do versus what the instructor has done in the design of the course.

It seems to me, the course discussion is more of a forum to sort through the materials given in the course and reflect on how it applies to their own personal circumstances and past experiences. This is something I would want to encourage in any course I set up. But my problem is, I am having trouble with the projects that are required. The instructor is giving them three projects to complete during the course. I would want to give them only one…a capstone project.  At this point the students should be moving from exploring and researching ideas to integrating knowledge and using this knowledge to solve ill-structured problems. To me there is a disconnect between each project and the students are not given the freedom to do papers or individual research based on their interests and are losing some of the academic freedom they should be developing at this point.  The only feedback from peers and the instructor, on the project, seems to be after it is written and turned in.

Instead of three projects, I think I would have set the course up as a process of first proposing the theme they want to write about in their finally project. Writing a draft of the proposal in the second phase of the theme development; and after that, having other students and the instructor comment on it and how it could be approved. Finally, the finished version would be presented as a capstone project completed at the end of the quarter. When this happens in the late middle and early end of the course the instructor’s position shifts from being the primary facilitator of the course to that of supporting the work of their students in the last phases of the project. The purpose is to shift the responsibility of learning in the course to the students and points them in the direction of self-directed learning, which will be reflected in their final project.

This leads to the subtle shift of responsibility from the instructor to the learner; and it can help the instructor let go of power and empower the students. They are becoming the experts in their project and taking on the responsibility of arriving at their research goal as they work to present the project. At this point, they have incorporated or are incorporating the knowledge and key concepts they have learned during the quarter in order to write or create their final project paper, blog or presentation. The instructor is helping them by empowering them and coaching them in each phase of the project; but giving them the primary role in the construction of the project, in these later phases. The questions the instructor raises during the phases of the project are formative assessment and will help the student in the process if done properly and/or effectively. Also, their peers are giving their input and this feedback helps both the person working on the project and the peers who may rethink their own work in the process. In essence the student is developing critical thinking skills during these phases and their final project is a product of how those skills are developing and being used.

Why is this idea of letting go of power so important? It helps the student grow beyond the master or actually surpass the work of the instructor in their own area of interest. It is a way of challenging the learner to think critically about solving the ill-structured problems. They will be confronted many ill-structured and complex problems in their work and with in their lifetime. Boettcher and Conrad explain in their Online Teaching Survival Guide, that simulating real life disasters, through role-playing and scenarios prepares pilots, firefighters, police etc, to automatically respond to these crises. We might add that those skills will help our students in every aspect of their lives when they have these skills at their disposal. After all, isn’t that the very reason we are educating them?

I am including a few links that might be helpful rsources and a short video with Judith Boettcher presenting one of her concepts.

http://danielschristian.com/learning-ecosystems/2011/02/24/evidence-of-learning-online-assessment-beyond-the-paper-judith-boettcher/

http://www.mesacc.edu/~johnson/DLMGRSRC.HTM

The course I am observing is now nearing the middle of the term.  The discussions are well established and the quantity and quality has begun to improve. Some of the early research project assignments are turned in. Their papers on establishing the independent and dependent variables, for a project that reqires them to set up a research experiment, are very interesting and thought-provoking. I am staying a little behind the course to allow the late posting students to post, before I read the discussions. Next week I will be reading the posts on modules 3 & 4. I have read the course material and have briefly read some of the discussions in these two modules. I am carefully reading the emails and find that these are very thought-provoking as well.

I have begun to feel very isolated from my teammates and the instructor for this part of the eLearning certification; although, the instructor and I do meet about every two weeks. I miss the input of my classmates and the comments that were made to my blogs. At this point, my blogs are not being read and my blog following has almost completely abandoned me. To top this off, lurking has always been a form of hell to me. I read the discussions posted by the students in the class and want to participate. In fact, I find myself wanting to be a student in this stimulating and interesting course. I can best describe observing the course as a sort of out-of-body experience. I am looking down onto the course; but cannot participate. I am watching it unfold before my eyes. Yet, when there are comments that stimulate my interest, I cannot comment. Like a spirit in the cyber world, I hover above the course without being seen or heard.

Last weeks question of how much material should be in the course goes unanswered to some extent. I have spent the last two weeks trying to figure out how much content is enough or too much. I found an article called, “Student Workload in the Online Course: Balancing on a Rule-of-Thumb” written in 2005. From this article I have learned that often the question asked is how one aligns online and hybrid courses with classroom or “on the ground (OG) standards. It seems difficult to know how much work is appropriate. They state in the article that for an eight week course the out of class study time is about 16.5 to 24 hours. In the end the online course has both elements of OG and online best practices per Boettcher and Conrad.

The article states that the hybrid course contains the following elements:

• Assign 1 hour of textbook reading.
• Assume that the student spends an additional ½ hour studying your notes on
  the reading and exploring the links to illustrative material you provide in
  these notes.
• Assign 2 discussion topics with a triple-layered response requirement
  ** which require a total of 3 hours to read and to compose and
  post responses (1/2 hour per layer in each topic).
• Require the students to complete a ½ hour self-assessment to review their
  understanding of concepts from the lecture and reading.
• Stipulate that groups meet online to work on an iterative deliverable for an
  ongoing class project. For example, discussing and producing an outline for a
  final document requires 1 hour of each group member’s time.
• Assign written homework from the text for an additional 1 hour of
  work.

The remaining half-hour is “wiggle-room.” Based on your familiarity with your
institution’s typical student and of the content and activities you have
assigned, you can either require an additional activity (journaling, for
instance), or you can decide that one or more of the assignments above will
likely take a bit more time for the average student. You could designate the ½
hour to those assignments.

With this in mind it appears that asking the question how much material is necessary, for a three credit course with about twelve to fifteen hours of study per week for thirteen weeks, is not an exact science and will take some adjusting to get it right. Most of the articles and text books I have read, state that a group of your peers should review your course before it is posted online to help you get a feel for the things that might need to be tweaked or changed. This might take some of the unknown elements out of the process for a new instructor.

As I looked through the material provided by the instructor in the course I am observing, I was asking myself, if I were a student in the class, whether I would be able to discern what was to be learned, read and put to use in the course based on the instructor’s instructions and comments in the discussion threads. I decided I could.  It was probably a bit much when it came to the materials posted; but as a student I could handle the material with about 20 hours or more of study time, discussion contributions and working on the assigned projects. Knowing me, I would also being doing online research to clarify what I was learning and to get material for the discussion thread, beyond what is in the course materials.  With this in mind, in conclusion, to find out how the work load was going for the students, I would poll them through the questionnaires I would create in Google. This would give me a good idea of where they are and how much time they were spending on the studies.

I think I would consider writing some sort of wrap up of the discussions, even though it would mean more work, depending on the class size, to help the students bring together the ideas and concepts contained in the question bundles and answers in the discussion threads. I find I have a tendency to continue to think about discussions, even after we move on to the next set of questions. It sort of remains a bit of unfinished business in my memory banks. I like closure; but not so much that I stop thinking about the question and all that question helps me understand and inspires me to want to learn more about.

I am re-reading Boettcher and Conrad as we move through the modules and Fenton and Watkins book, Fluency in Distance Learning. Also, I am researching the internet for more information on the subjects I am writing about in this research project. One thing I do know is the instructor in this online course I am viewing is moving through the course with the finesse of an expert. He/she is stimulating the discussion on the material he/she has presented with apparent ease and the students are participating with a depth that is a bit amazing to me, since this is a course that gives an over view of the field of study and not a specific area of concentration.

I am including a video on Hybrid Teaching and what it has to offer. It is a European concept and was best known as “blended or hybrid learning.” As the graduate student teacher in this video states, “…it is the best of both worlds.” There are several different ways to construct the course. A periodic workshop model seems to be the most interesting application and design, but I have been experiencing the two meeting course to date. Another point the student makes is that “…hybrid courses help to keep the course content current.” I think this might be one of the cornerstones of this type of teaching. Also, I am including a website about how to keep the unmotivated or apathetic learner motivated which was posted by an instructor at the University of Wisconsin, Thomas Reeves in his article, “My Experience Teaching Apathetic Students at a School with Open Admissions.” Forty-two percent of his students were in the bottom half of their high school class. The second video deals with designing a hybrid course and preparation. That means asking the right questions to start the designing phase. After listening to Dr. Caulfields’s videos, I have ordered her book: How to Design and Teach a Hybrid Course: Achieving Student-Centered Learning Through Blended Classroom, Online and Experimental Courses, before I start designing my course. I should get it in a week or so.