Learning Module 5: Blog Reflection

            Overall, I found this week’s blogging helpful and enlightening because I am constantly on the hunt for ways I can improve or be more efficient with my work. I truly believe that continual education, both informal and formal, is the best way students and professionals can rejuvenate their creative minds and develop areas that need to be developed. This week’s blogging is a prime example of how sharing information on best practices can shed light on different criterion we can incorporate in our own course without having to experience the pitfalls of utilizing criteria that were less effective in student satisfaction and engagement. For example, two of my classmates mention “the Community of Inquiry [as a set of criteria that] brings a basis for the actual functional e-learning course” (Fisher, 2013), which was an idea I never put a lot of thought into. Even though I listed some aspects of the Community of Inquiry on my list of best criteria, I felt interactions among classmates and instructor was more important—as well as more influential with it comes to the experiential aspect of a student’s learning.

            Janet Canning explains this notion of student interaction best by saying, “Students are engaged on a daily basis with interacting with social networking sites… [so] it is natural then for students to want to engage in interaction.” Therefore, it is not only crucial to create an engaging environment for students and instructors to interact, but research has shown that online learners “need to feel motivated and satisfied in an e-learning course” (Sakoonphong, 2013) in order for learners to be successful.  Interestingly, I realized these interactions among students and facilitators and satisfaction and motivation in an online class have a symbiotic relationship because these connections are what learners need to achieve the outcomes design for a course—as well as attain the level of satisfaction in a course to either recommend the course or take another e-learning class.

Learning Module 5

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“The task of the instructional developer is to create online environments that bring together information, instruction, and learning elements to promote and scaffold learning” (Koszalka, 2004). Information is defined as fundamental facts and/or data, instruction as information carefully selected, organized, and place in a specific order to outline procedures and activities, and learning as student engagement and active synthesis of the knowledge presented in the course Koszalka (2004). Additionally, it is an instructional designer’s [as well as the facilitator(s) of the course] responsibility to incorporate all of these three elements into a course because a strategically designed course will increase students’ overall perception of the class. Once students’ perceptions are high those views increases their satisfaction of an online course, which will make them more inclined to recommend online classes to others and more likely to take another online course themselves.

All these elements of online learning support students’ motivation and satisfaction within an online and/or hybrid course, and so my criteria for an effective or successful e-learning course are: 1) Provide clear and concise rules and expectations for the class, 2) Outline procedure(s) to complete assignments, 3) Provide adequate interactions between students and instructors—as well as among student, 4) “Ensure assessment is congruent with intended processes and outcomes” (Garrison, 2003), 5) Scaffold learning and align the objectives of lesson to the goals of the class.

From my own experience working at a Community College, I have seen first-hand how poorly designed online and/or blended courses can decrease students’ success rates, which correlates to their fulfillment in the course, which influences their future decisions about whether or not to enroll in another online course. Students’ taking online courses like the flexibility and freedom online learning provides, so that means they do not want to spend a great of time trying to figure what to do or how to do it, they are looking for clear and concise instructions on how to complete assignments, detailed expectations of the course; most importantly, they want appropriate amounts of interaction among classmates and instructor. Above all students want interactions between instructor and students to be prompt, timely, and instructors to convey they are the expert in their field of study by the way they design their course.

References:

Garrison, D. R. (2003). E-Learning In The 21st Century: A Framework For Research and Practice. New York: Routledge.

Koszalka, T. A., & Ganesan, R. (2004). Designing online courses: a taxonomy to guide strategic use of features available in course management systems (CMS) in distance education. Distance Education, 25(2), 243-256.