Part B – Establishing Social and Emotional Connections in an Online Environment

Needs Analysis

As a small college in a rural area attracting students is challenging, even to quality programming. In addition the area is still recovering from the loss of the major area industry several years ago. For my program which is a cohort model that was initially established to serve the now closed industry, it is particularly evident. Enrollment is very cyclical, and can vary from 60% capacity to over subscribed in any given year. In a climate of limited funding it is necessary to find a way to supplement the cohort during low enrollment years with flexible courses that employ a blended or online model to attract and facilitate part-time learners. I will be implementing this model in the near future.

The Pilot Course

The course chosen as a pilot is an applied technical course on the hardware and software associated with industrial controls systems. The skills learned in this section are growing in demand locally. This module is the third course in the second year of the program, and the cohort students must pass all previous modules to access this one.

Target Demographic

The intent of the blended/online delivery is to facilitate entry into the program for local learners who may have obtained the prerequisite knowledge through other methods, (electricians or engineers). Typically they are employed, but looking to upgrade their skills. Being fully employed they are unable to access the course in its present form of a Monday to Friday in classroom format. There have been numerous calls from interested members of the community inquiring about taking this course as a standalone piece.

Format/Technologies

My preference would be to deliver this course using a blended delivery model. As in any subject there is a necessary theory component and this is the information I propose to deliver online. In the blended model the learner would still be required to physically attend the college to complete practical assignments, but this could be done at the convenience of the learner, allowing them to book lab time around their work schedule.

Simulation software does exist that would allow learners to access virtual models of the hardware and software. In an ideal scenario learners would be able to access both the simulation software remotely and the physical equipment in the lab, moving reasonably seamlessly between the two as their home and work life allows.

Support

The college is already delivering programs over a very wide geographical area and has a history of delivering programs utilizing various distributed learning methods (paper based, interactive television, and internet). The implementation would be done on the colleges existing distributed learning platform, Blackboard Learn. The IT infrastructure is already in place, and there is experience in supporting both faculty and new students in the technology.

The most significant investment will be in time. Existing resources will need to be migrated to online content. Additional technologies will need to be investigated to enhance the learning experience and hopefully mitigate the high dropout rate associated with typical online programming of this nature. Running this blended/online model in conjunction with the current cohort section will hopefully allow a combination of online contact through user forums and e-mails as well as in person interactions for both cohort and remote users.

So I really didn’t like the format of Freemind, and Bubblus looked a lot better and seemed fairly easy to use, but wanted me to sign up in order to save or link to my mind map. I will spend more time on various types of mind-mapping software but for now I went back to good old Power-Point (something I never thought I would hear myself say!).

For me the Ally article on the Impact of Education highlighted several things, one of which is that we really are coming full circle. Early Education was really Indigenous Ways of Knowing. It was truly constructivist as education was learner centred, it had to be for an individuals survival. It had personal meaning as it was contextualized by the learners worldview. Learning was by doing, and problem solving skills were developed in real world applications.

Technology changed the world as well as education. The industrial revolution required workers to be educated efficiently, one instructor to a class instead of an individual. The success of this type of behaviourist construction was evident as factory workers demonstrated their skills repetitively.

Computer technology allowed us to move into the cognitive realm. multi-media and web resources allowed us to expend more effort per learner with the same effort by the instructor.

While it may seem counter-intuitive future technology may make the indigenization of curriculum easier. Truly distributed learning with the use of intelligent agents will allow each learner to pursue their area of interest with a return to the one-on-one interaction, albeit through e-mail, chat, forums and skype, that characterized constructivist learning.

Hello all!  I am new to WordPress and blogging, so I’ll ask for forgiveness in advance for any “newbie” mistakes.

I’m currently teaching an applied technology course in a community college on Vancouver Island. Our Learning Management system here is Blackboard, and while I use it to provide resources and ways to submit assignments it’s mostly a passive use. So far I’ve only digitized current course content and communication is only one direction at a time.

Personally I’ve taken a completely online course that I found a real struggle to do, and a blended course that was f2f with an online discussion forum that was a better experience, but still left me thinking there has got to be a better way. My purpose here is to start that search for a better way.

Teaching in a technology course I am very comfortable with technology on it’s own (computers and various software packages).  My comfort level in an online environment is a total different ball game. I don’t “instachat” or “snapgram” or any other of those newfangled social media apps, I don’t even have Facebook. My goal here is to become more familiar and comfortable in that online/social media environment, and to begin exploring the real possibilities I think are available to provide my students with a better learning experience. Hopefully along the way I’ll pick up some knowledge of learning tools to help me create better, more interactive, content.