Course Outline Assignment- Engagement

Week's Summary

This week along with continued work on our course outline assignment rough drafts, we learned about how important it is to get the students engaged in the materials we are teaching. Keeping the students engrossed is directly related to how they will learn the information we are presenting. The primary indicators of engagement in an online course (which most of us are creating for the course outline assignment) learning environment are the amount of interaction between students and the attribute of that interaction. This goes on into relevance, which we also learned about in this module. What is relevance? Making an assignment relevant is when you make the material significant to the students. It is essential to inform the students why they are doing a certain activity. It's never good when the students just feel like your course consists of busy work they are doing for no reason. The effect of significance is that students will be more interested in the material. The more likely they are to pay attention the more likely they are to retain the information being taught for the future. There are three forms of relevance: past, current, and future. Past relevance might strike the interest in one or two students, but probably not the whole group. This is when students want to know why a certain occurrence occurred. Current relevance is material that will immediately affect the students. Learning specific information that will be used in the near future but probably forgotten. Future relevance is material that will affect students in the future. This is the utmost rate of relevance because students are more likely to remember information they will need again at some point in the future. Relevance and engaging information go hand in hand. If the information is relevant the students will inevitably be more engaged in learning.

Item of Interest

This week my item of interest is actually how to make my information I am teaching about athletic training relevant and engaging to the students. I am trying to come up with ways to make the assessments I am using be engaging to the students. I think them having to record themselves taping and then watch 2 of their fellows tape and give feedback to them will help. The course I am teaching is important, but I want to make this class really interesting for my students where they want to pursue it as a career after I’ve taught them the basics. There’s so much that goes into being an athletic trainer. People who enjoy being around sporting events and love traveling would be really interested in this career, I think.

Problem or Concern

I don't really have a problem or concern this week, other trying to make my course engaging and interesting for the students. I want them to enjoy learning how to be an athletic trainer. I don't want it to seem too difficult or overwhelming to do the assignments or assessments for the course. If anyone has any suggestions for this, then feel free to give me any advice! All advice is appreciated! J

Community and Collaboration

Week's Summary

This week along with our continued work on the course outline assignment, we learned about collaboration. Collaboration is a great way to get the students involved and working together. We also learned about the importance of discussion boards. The problem with current discussion boards is that they are boring, require minimal interaction, and have timing problems. There are five steps you should follow when creating your discussion boards for the course outline assignment. Step 1 is you need to know the purpose of the discussion board you are creating. Discussion boards are made to create interaction between students. The question you have to ask yourself as the instructor is "How do you want them to interact?” There are several different types of discussion boards including: reflection, debate, and analysis. The second step is the literacy element. Meaning where are the students getting their information from to post about. This can include their textbooks, literacy sources, and non-literacy sources. All are beneficial to the students. Step 3 is the experiential element. Which involves opinionated discussions, make the discussions relevant, and adults prefer them. Step 4 is when the instructor determines the type of question they are asking the students to discuss; either being reflective or one that requires more evidence. The final step 5 is when the instructor constructs the discussion question. The step should include: a purpose, question, example, instructions, and due dates. If you follow these steps when creating your discussion boards for your students they should turn out great! There are some best practices instructors should follow as well. The best practices ask these questions: "How many discussions should I have in my course?” "Should I interact inside my discussions?” and "How do I get students to take the discussion seriously?” You should ask yourself these questions when creating your discussion boards.

Item of Interest

I think discussion boards will be very valuable in my course outline because the students can interact with each other. They can ask questions and give feedback on how far they are coming with their taping skills and knowledge of all the ligaments. As the instructor, I can read the discussions and comment on their discussions. So not only are they working with each other but also with me. I plan on having them post a video of them taping another person’s ankle, wrist, finger, etc. periodically so I can see the progress they have made/need to work on, and they can get immediate feedback from me. Discussion boards will be very beneficial I believe.

Concern or Problem

One of my concerns with discussion boards was if the students would actually participate with them. The only way to insure they participate is to give the discussion boards some point value towards their final grade. The idea of the discussion boards is for them to help each other out, but I know students more than likely won't do anything that isn't required.

Course Outline Assignment - Design

Week's Summary

This week’s focus was on the design portion of the ADDIE model. The design phase will help us with the development of our course outline assignment. During this phase curriculum developers design assessments, choose the course format, and create an instructional strategy. When designing assessments the instructor must consider the goals, learners, context, and assessments. The course format is the medium by which the course is presented to the learners. My course format for the course design assignment is a blended course. The class will meet every other week. The instructional strategy is the collection of lectures, readings, discussions, projects, worksheets, assessments, and activities to help the students learn the content. There are 5 major learning components of the overall instructional strategy: pre-instructional activities (use motivation), content presentation (concise content/examples), learner participation (practice and feedback), assessment (final assessments/practice assessments/attitude assessments), and follow-through activities (review/internalization). All of these points will be in our end product for the course outline assignment.

Item of Interest

I was worried about how I am going to be able to make my class be skilled in learning the different tape jobs that an athletic trainer needs to know. I think I can accomplish this by using a video and a web conferencing section of the class. There is Blackboard Collaborate, which could be very useful. I also will provide many example videos to show them how to preform each specific tape job and the different steps for each of them. There are also several apps or websites that can be useful. Most everyone has a smartphone where they can download these apps. One is called todaysmeet.com, which is kind of like a discussion board where everyone can go to (which I provide them the correct link so they can access my class discussion). There are also different ways we will be able to communicate if they are having trouble or have questions.

Concern or Problem

One concern of mine is how I can assess the student’s progress other than the face-to-face meetings. I want to include weekly assessments to monitor the progress of each student. Maybe each week that they are suppose to be practicing taping they must record themselves preforming the tape job on someone and send it to me to see if they need to work on a certain technique/step.

ED 308 - Course Outline Assignment – Analysis

Week’s Summary

This week we were assigned to start creating our Course Outline that we will develop throughout the ED 308 course. This week’s focus was on the analysis process. We had to choose a topic we would want to cover, determine how long the course will last, and whether or not the course was blended, hybrid, or online.

Item of Interest

The course I am designing is an introduction course in which I am teaching students how to become an Athletic Trainer.  There is one prerequisite. The students need to have taken an anatomy class. Any level of undergraduate student can take it. I thought a good way to get information about the students prior knowledge on anything that pertains to Athletic training (CPR certified, know the bones in the body, etc.) was for them to take this survey I made. The questions asked will help me understand why the students chose to take this course. It will also help me decide where a good starting point will be.

Problem/Concern

My concern right now is about my topic. I don’t know if this is something that can be taught in a blended course. I just need some opinions on whether or not you think this is a good enough topic I can make a course outline for the ED 308 assignment. If you think it is a good topic, why? Or if you disagree, Why?

Blog Reflection #4

There would be a major impact on students if a project ended by just ceasing work without any of the things that were talked about in chapter 9. I say this because there would not be any wrap up for the students. The students, and maybe the teachers, would not really know if the objectives that the students were suppose to accomplish were ever achieved. Teachers need to give students feedback on what they worked on so everyone can justify or discuss their thinking on what the students learned. Also, it validates the reasons why the students had to do the assignment. It also benefits the teachers. Because in the chapter 9 it talked about how the teacher is the coach in this environment, he/she is often involved in the biggest struggles and problems. It is easy for the teacher to lose sight of the learning that has taken place. After every online student summit teachers exclaim later in the teacher forum how much their students learned and how much joy it was to hear the students share. It also is good to listen to the students perspectives because the teacher can listen to what the student says and then ask himself/herself "Did the student have the outcome I was planning for? Did the students have frustrations that I can prevent? Were these frustrations important for their learning process? This helps students and teachers have ongoing improvements. These ongoing improvements help teachers know what they need to work on (scaffold) with their students. It also is a great assessment tool that all teachers need to know how to do before the 1st day of school. Personal reflection, celebration, and feedback are an essential for students. If a teacher instructs his/her students to do any type of work then the teacher needs to take time out of his/her busy day to look over and provide feedback for each of his/her students.

Blog Reflection #3

There are many reasons for giving students choices in their learning. If a student is interested in what they are working on, then they are more apt to have authentic learning. In all the classes that I have observed since I have graduated high school, I have noticed that most students preform better showing what they know in different ways/forms. For example, instead of making a student write a paper a teacher can allow their students to create some type of presentation such as a prezi, powerpoint, or something along those lines. Students can also create a movie or write a song about what all the student has learned. Giving students choices leads to more student engagement. As a teacher, student engagement is one thing we strive for our students to have. Having different choices in their learning also makes students better problem solvers. This will make students enjoy school more and help them in becoming lifelong learners. These choices will help teachers cut down on lectures and allow students to be more creative in their learning in school. 
As a teacher, we should make sure that students have these choices and that differential instruction is a good thing for a teacher to have in their classroom.

Chapter 6 Guided Question

As a future teacher leader I can use Twitter in my classroom so that I am “visible” online while contributing meaningful content in conjunction with others around the world. I can participate in online chats on Twitter that enhance my teaching in the classroom. I can connect with educators around the world and collaborate and learn best practices used in education. This will allow me to continue to grow as a learner and hopefully help others in their learning. Twitter also allows documentation for my administrators and parents for what is being taught in my room throughout the school year. Twitter is effective for developing PLNs and becoming more knowledgeable in areas that one may need to work on. Twitter is an excellent way to stay current with education practices today. I know teachers that use Twitter on a daily basis “tweeting” about what is happening that day on their classroom. I also know that most of the teachers that use Twitter follow professional educators and incorporate their learning into their classroom. It is a win-win situation for everyone involved.