This entire Certified Online Instructor experience has really given me some insight into how to design my courses to be taught online. There are some difficulties, and I think that if I change my thinking to more of a discussion based model instead off just regurgitating the material back to me through review questions and non-informative assessments, I will have a better experience as well as the students. Most of the courses I teach require some prerequisites with computers, so every person I interact with in the online classroom should have something to contribute.
Taking this approach should also help me overcome the issue I mentioned in an earlier post with the grading timeline. I should be able to judge the quality of work and not make it about the quantity. I believe that if I make the structure very clear and give good examples of my expectations, the students should be able to hit the ground running with communicating with me and their fellow classmates without hesitation.
Utilizing this model will also allow me to push the students to dive in a little further with their research and really debate their peers on the things they are passionate about. I can play devil's advocate and even see if I can push conversations along where students clearly have a valid or invalid point of view. I think this will be much easier to do in an online environment because it will give students time to really think through their answers and craft them before reacting emotionally in a face to face situation.
All in all, I am excited to be able to revamp some off my course models to better fit this new environment. I am certain I will make my work less stressful after the initial headache, but I do believe it will give me a nice foundation to build upon from this point forward.
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