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.
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