LESSON LEARNED AND FUTURE PRACTICE

This reflection marks the end of ONL 192 journey. I can point out three important key issues Things I struggled with during the course, lesson learnt and future practices

Time is one of the struggle among things that I really struggled to beat. I have to plan and replan for me to be able to achieve what was needed of the course, the course is intensive and extensive, had to fix my timetable, I was supposed to attend meeting, I have to read blogs, I have to read  articles for me to understand topics and have inputs to to the group. Sometimes tasks were assigned on individual basis, so I had to make sure I complete it so that I dont lets down mu team.

There were so many new tool I had to make sure I familiarize myself with them in order to approach the topic, make presentations, brainstorm the course and sharing to the larger community.

The course take time and energy, happy that was able to go until the end, Along the way I was able to conquer a lot of skills, knowledge and wider attributes such as the effective deployment of various online collaborative tools such as Padlet, Zoom, Coggle, Prezi, Slack,  among others in learning and teaching.  

Tools for collaborative learning deserves special attention for effective networked online and collaborative learning.

I also learned about the importance of testing new tools  to for every topic, but relevant one. We should not sound monotonous through the courses, I learned about effective design and implementation of online and blended course, values of open course to student, teachers, and society at large, how to access open educational Resources, effective engagement of students in a learning process

Other thing learned apart from the course content is, taking initiative in collaborative learning, proper communication(we used wattsap group as a way of maintaining communication on timely basis), caring, taking away shame and shyness, respecting each ones idea, using bogs as a way of sharing our thoughts and reflections on topics, openness and trust to each other, and many others

The expedition for ONL 192 was so interesting and joyous. It was characterized by worldwide participants with brilliant experience. I have many skills to take with me towards effective teaching  and learning at my institution. 

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DESIGN FOR ONLINE AND BLENDED LEARNING

Another amazing topic of the ONL 192 iteration is design for online and blended learning, for me topic was core and import,  I gained many skill and knowledge on how to design an online and blended course.   One of the important components to consider is how an online and blended learning approach will address emotional engagement for learning. Emotional under this context comprise, hope, pride anger, shame, boredom and hopelessness. All these are significantly related to academic achievement, student motivation, learning strategies, self regulations and value appraisal (Perkin eta al., 2010)

During the discussion in our group every one shared his/her experience regarding the designing of online course. Some have experience in design, facilitating online and blended but few of us have no experience at all… It was a very nice and practical session, one of us brought a course which was under design we used it as case, we gave our comments and input especially the part of emotion engagement

Emotional engagement in the online learning

Emotional engagement is a student’s involvement in and enthusiasm for online learning. When students are emotionally engaged, they want to participate in school, and they enjoy that participation more. There are strategies that can be used for increasing student’s engagement in online context such as increasing positive motivations and decreasing negative emotions of students: increasing intrinsic motivation, self efficacy and self regulations of students, improving cognition, and increasing higher order of thinking.

Pntaraki and Burkhoder, (2018) pointed out the following emotional strategies and techniques to employ for online and blended leaning

          I.            The use of anticipated or self referential feedback

       II.            The effect of culture emotions

    III.            Creating courses with high task  value

    IV.            Cognitive strategies

       V.            Behavioral strategies

    VI.            Collecting and analyzing students’ engagement data.

Instructional Design standard for better E learning

In designing blended and online course we need to consider for major components namely; course purpose, objective purposes content, methods to be employed and learner who is a main stake holder of that particular course. Therefore, (Chatia, B., 2018) pointed out the following standards with are essentials for an effective blended and online course

•  Identify the purpose of the course 
• Framing instructional objective
• Aligning content with objectives
• Deciding on strategies to facilitate learning
• providing practices with feedback
• Engaging interactivity
• Learning assessment

Design online and blended topic together with previous one covered in this iteration provides a better way and effective implementation  of an online course for my students which will significantly add me with potential pedagogical approaches.

References

Chetia, B. (2018), Instructional Design standards for Better E learning. Availale at https://blog.commlabindia.com/ (Accessed: 07/12/ 2019)

Pentaraki, A. and Burkholder, G. J. (2018) ‘Emerging Evidence Regarding the Roles of Emotional, Behavioural, and Cognitive Aspects of Student Engagement in the Online Classroom’, European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, pp. 1–21