Donald,
we have to assess the courses to make sure we are offering what we need to provide to the students. We need to challenge them and providing material in a variety of ways. Thanks!
I have posted instructional/explanatory videos created by the Lead Faculty member at my school. I post these in the announcements and refer students to them. Many students find them very helpful!
Other students prefer to listen to the live chat archives or to review the assigned reading. I find that giving students different options (to target different learning styles) is a great way to make sure each student is engaged and has the necessary tools to succeed.
-Erin
We are constantly looking at the courses to ensure that they doing what we want them to do. We seek only to ensure that the students learn the material in an effective and efficient manner. It is a challenge worth doing.
Donald L. Buresh
Sarah,
These additional resources will help many students understand the assignment or project or content better. It's a way to address more students' learning styles. Thanks for your input.
I have videos and links to articles and web pages that I provide for different units in my classes - these are to provide information for the assignments or some perspective on what we're doing for an assignment. I emphasize that these items are good to cite as sources in their assignments if the information is helpful.
To help manage which of these are actually useful I have been informally tracking which ones actually get cited as sources. It isn't a perfect method but it does help to see which ones are actually being looked and and used so I can apply that as a measure of which ones are helpful enough to place in the classroom.
Lindsay,
We are constantly changing our courses for sure. It's good you can keep some information to reuse. Thanks for your input on this forum.
With my course having changed at least 5 times since I started teaching it, I find that I keep my lecture slides, and supporting documents in topic-organized folders. By knowing exactly where I can find these materials allows me to access them when it is needed during the course revision process.
I do find I struggle with providing too much information and too many resources for "if you have questions".
By using a FAQ discussion board or document, I think I can minimize this in the next session.
Katherine,
Good job. We have to start early - especially in those courses that do not meet for many weeks. Making sure students have access when they need it is essential. Thanks.
I begin by checking at the start of each course, which is only five weeks long, each of my elements especially weblinks. Then as each week's curriculum is released I re-validate the access is still available to students and that there are not any newer or more pertinent elements to replace those that I have flagged already.
Robert,
I think many students like the videos and recorded guest speakers as long as they are not too long. I try to keep everything 10 minutes or under.
Thanks!
I'm working on adding more technology to my lectures such as video, interesting slides, and finding a way to have a guest speaker. It would be wonderful to have for example the Director of Health for Tampa or another major position, or one of my hospital administrators speak to aspects of our assignments or on a special topic.
Thus far the most dynamic aspect added to my courses are the cases. Students are always asking for more but there is only so much time in a chat. A case is given and the students discuss ways to approach it....as an administrator or planner who is important to consult, what do we know from the case and what do we need to find out, etc. Again, there are no final answers but there is some resolution to the situation as it is based in fact.
Kristina,
For me accounting was difficult in a F2F class. ;-) Not my best subject. I can only believe that the videos you are developing and using are so beneficial to the students. You may even want to let the students use Jing or another screen capture program to teach others something about accounting and then you can keep them an develop a "library" of videos for future classes. I do that with my class and give participation points to the students. Keep up the good work.
For certain online platforms, I have created video tutorials that support the curriculum and how to complete similar accounting assignments. Accounting is a challenge to facilitate online and I have found this extra support as the needed reinforcement.
Emily ,
Love the welcome video idea. It's good for students to put a face with an email address. Nice job!
I have not developed a dynamic course element directly but one institution that I teach for requires instructors to record a welcome video. It is a couple of minutes long and I explain the in's and out's of the class. I think that this is a fabulous idea as students can see what I am "like."
Molly,
Glad you are implementing some dynamic features in your class. I think you and your students will both benefit. Thanks for your input.
I'm glad the topic of Dynamic Course Elements was discussed in this section as just this morning I was trying to figure out how I could record some videos using YouTube and posted them on my site.
Our instituition has implemented a new learning path platform, and I found in the last week it will be beneficial for my students to have some quick examples on different topics.
I have never included "dynamic course elements" in my course, but plan on working on it this week. I wouldn't have thought about placing them all in one place as I was thinking about posting them in annoucnements. After reading the lesson today in this class, It makes since to have them all in one folder within the discussion board.
I'm excited to get started!
Molly
