Online Engagement

Considering our class presentation, I realized the importance of creating interactions that are suited to a virtual environment. Many of the activities we incorporated were direct translations from a f2f (face to face) setting. While these may prove to be engaging in person, the limitations of a virtual classroom may render these techniques less effective. The use of breakout rooms (buzz groups) seemed to work very well, however the virtual gallery stroll (slide 13) felt a bit awkward to me.

In this activity we asked students to brainstorm and list words or phrases that would summarize the individual analyses. I feel that the biggest limitation to this activity was the on screen typing mechanism. It seemed awkward, difficult to use, and did not identify the speaker.

Another limitation to this was the difficulty to facilitate and elicit student responses. In a traditional classroom, I find it easier to engage students using nonverbal cues and taking the pulse of the class. In this virtual environment, I felt at a bit of a loss. It is impossible to read silence over a computer screen. In person, I can usually assess whether or not students are reflecting, lost, or indifferent. Silence is just silence online. That might be a good topic for a future post (assessing silence online).

However, listening to the classroom responses after the fact, they seemed to be engaged, it was not a failure. If I had to redesign this activity, I would perhaps create a bank of concepts for students to choose from and then categorize; maybe a drag and drop type activity. It seems to me that ease of use is of paramount importance in e-Learning.

I also found out that having students create learning outcomes on the spot was perhaps a too complicated task to accomplish in the given time allotment. If I were to redesign this activity, I would perhaps have a list of learning outcomes with some that are irrelevant or incorrect and have the students select the correct responses. I understand that this is not achieving the goal of higher order thinking, but perhaps such an activity could prepare the students for an offline assignment where they could display their internalization of the knowledge.

What online interactions have you found to be successful? I am intrigued by the concept of game based learning and came across this site:

http://web.me.com/jen.dewitt/BakedNotFried/Welcome. (Thanks Margaret!)

Teamwork makes the Dream Work

Working on the team presentation has highlighted to me the importance collaborative learning. When the assignment was first given, it was my natural instinct to go at it alone. In the past I have relied on my own hard work and imagination. But in the spirit of this class we took a projectized approach to the presentation, and maximized our resources by doing so. I was amazed at what synergies were created (and still are) when all four of us were focused on accomplishing the same goal. We were able to draw individual strengths from each member and create something that none of us could on our own. I know this sounds like an old tune, however, working together has shown me how important teamwork is especially in a e-Learning 2.0 environment. I hope this will reflect in our work on Wednesday.