Week 4 reflections

The week 4 was a little stressful at the level of mental work. There were lot many things going on in the life and I was little tensed for the final paper preparation. I read the guidelines 2-3 times. Initially, when I read it for the first time, it looked a lot of work and then with consecutive readings, it starting making more sense to me. But still there are a lot of things those have to be taken care of while preparing the final paper and then the rubrics!  I have started working on the same and will try to meet the guidelines.

There were many interesting readings, video and the podcast. The podcast had some problem. It stopped after a while but then I could listen the whole lecture. This provides and interesting insight into the universal course design which can be accesses successfully by the major chunk of the population including persons defined as disabled under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 or the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. These lectures also helped me understand that Universal design and accessibility are not synonymous and clarified any confusion between the two terms.  The course and the design of the web  designed such that it can be accesses by the people with disabilities or without disabilities.

This week also helped in getting understanding of  what is the best way of carrying out assessment -9 Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning, explains Assessment is not an end in itself but a vehicle for educational improvement. Its effective practice, then, begins with and enacts a vision of the kinds of learning we most value for students and strive to help them achieve.

While brainstorming on Accessibility issue and my role in team, I thought of taking the role of the content specialist and the technologists. I saw that role has already been taken up by anyone else in my group. I decided that I can still take up the role of a technologist as an assistant to the lead. In that case, I will be able to learn as well as fulfill my desire of playing a role of technologist. 

This week, I acted funny and foolish. In the Forum: 4:4 Assessing Collaborative Projects, I misinterpreted the whole question. I took it to be a general group grading in term of a classroom scenario. Then I realized that this particularly ask about the group work we did  the last week. So, I changed my response.

Top three characteristics of an online learner

Top three characteristics of an online learner are:

Self-Motivation:  This is one of the most important traits of an online learner. The learners have to be independent and self-derived in order attain the goals. Students must understand what is expected out of them and they should meet instructor’s expectations as well as the objectives set for the program.

In case the students lack self-discipline and time-management skills, the instructors and people around, have a great role to play. Instructor can engage them in conversation and ask them about the difficulties they face while studying. They can write journals and the reflections would help them learn and motivate to move on. As an instructor I would try to show my students that I’m a human being behind their computer screen. I also recognize their emotions, needs and humanity. I would like to share my ideas with them and then, invite them to share their views with me.

Good reader and communicator: An online learner has to show good skills in reading and communication because this is required to convey thoughts, ideas and share concerns. Also, in order to understand and apply learned material to write assignment and writing to other classmates and instructor, students have to be good in reading and communication.

In order to enhance these skills, students need support from instructor, family members, peers  and online resources(dictionary, spell check). They may take a small course in editing and reading also. Local libraries sometimes also have small programs in reading and communication skills. They may get a support group in library or nearby community center.

Organization of time and daily routine: Usually online learners have so much going on in their lives other than taking the online course. The organization of time and space is absolutely necessary in order to meet deadlines for the assignments, discussions and reading. They need to organize study space, and then they need to find time to actually study.

Students those don’t have good organizational skills might learn it over the time. I learnt it by the time my first week in this course was over.  They need support of family members, friends and other loved ones. Students also need to communicate to themselves and people around,  that this ’particular hour’  is my study hour and they don’t want any disturbance. Finding help from classmates, getting an idea how they organize their time, can be helpful.

One aspect of online delivery, which can surpass that of a face-to-face classroom, is of flexibility of time, convenience of studying from home while at the same time having cultural diverse group interactions.

An aspect of learning in a social context is the development of “ learning communities”( Vygotsky, 1978) centered around student-to-student interactions and the exchange of ideas(discussion boards, email, chat). Another one can be for learners those are seeking help in libraries or other support group in their locality(community center)

Savneet Singh

Hello everyone,  

This is Savneet Singh, from a beautiful city Bellevue, Washington. It is spring time and you can see nature at its best all over the place. I am nature lover, in fact, mother earth lover. I enjoy reading and writing about the health, environment & life related stuff, and doing volunteer work. I practice yoga and meditation with the sunrise. Whenever I get time, I go for trailing, walking or hiking. 

My classroom is going to be my  pentagonal laptop desk kept besides my bed.

I hold Post Graduate degree in Education as well as in Ecology & Environment. My M.Ed program gave me an in-depth and comprehensive insight of philosophical, psychological, social and economic aspects of education. I also hold a Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education (B.El.Ed.). This program gave me a chance to enhance my critical thinking, writing, verbal and quantitative reasoning skills. The M.Sc in Ecology & Environment helped me in getting chummy with nature.

 I started my career as a subject expert for an educational software company. But, I couldn't work there for a long, because I met an accident and had to stay home for some time. After that incidence, I started teaching at a primary school. Since then, I have yearned to move ahead in computer aided learning. I’ve 5 years of professional teaching experience. I taught Science, English and Environment to primary and  7^th to 10^th grade  students. I played the role of the head of Environment department and had an independent decision-making authority. Teaching students coming from rural areas, low income families and minority section helped me in adding patience, endurance and fortitude.  

During these 5 years, computer aided teaching was an integral part of my day to day lesson planning. I used Power-point presentations, graphs, excel sheets and animated DVD’s. I loved to see the sparkling eyes of my student while enjoying an interactive and animated presentation or the DVD, more than any traditional classroom lecture, which I might have delivered on the same topic. Through my experience, I came to know that kind of computer program, online activity or game should be age appropriate and should precisely fit in the context and needs of the students.

 I’m glad to say that, I am a national scholarship holder(India), given to only 0.1% students, those get merit in Secondary school exams.

This course will enhance my pre-existing skills in the field of education as well as in web-development and help in learning ropes of e-learning.

  

Developing a Rubric

Rubrics are the tools which help to measure the degree to which learners are acquiring knowledge, skills and attitude, that was intended. Rubrics provide us with a way to evaluate and provide feedback on learning process. Rubrics also give details of the practical and conceptual outcomes of the process and the product. Instructors record the learners’ progress and report the feedback through rubrics. They can further be used in collaborative learning environment where fellow leaners are involved in the creation of the rubrics(We are going to do this for our final papers)

My proposed course is ABCs of Chemistry and the target audience is learners from a variety of the science and health-related fields, proficient in 10th grade reading and math. I’ll use rubrics to lay the guidelines to develop a new course. Rubrics are a tool for the evaluation of the existing course and revise them as per the suggestions. Rubrics help in identifying what kind of technology tools are just the right match for a given online course.  I also see rubrics useful in reflecting upon student to student and student to instructor interaction strategies. Rubrics also provide an evidence on how ‘web-based tools can play in the active learning process and  interactive assessment’.( Byers, C. (2002). Interactive assessment and course transformation using web-based tools. Retrieved from http://technologysource.org/article/interactive_assessment_and_course_transformation_using_webbased_tools/) 

Web content accessibility

The accessibility issue I’ll like to take is alternative modes of presenting information (auditory, visual, text) and color blindness.  I plan to use following alternative techniques to present the information:

Providing text equivalent for every non-text items- As the mouse is rolled over the graphic, animation, charts, image or map, the Internet explore shows the text box describing the information conveyed.  The assistive technology devices (screen readers and Braille displays) can read the text associated with the image. For the detailed text explanation of charts and graphs, there can be a linked page.

Transcription of audio and video content- This technique is useful for people with vision and hearing impairments. The transcript can be synchronous, i.e. plays with the audio or video content, also called as captions, or can be, what is known as audio descriptions. It only displays important information from the video or audio of a multimedia presentation. The transcripts may or may not be the part of the same webpage.

Use of context and markup to convey any information when color is used: Cognizance of the combinations of foreground and background colors by choosing highly contrastive colors for the foreground and background. It is also very important because people with different types of color deficits or for people who are using monochrome displays need to have sufficient contrast.

I will take up the role of a content specialist and I would like to be the part technology team. The reason is that I’m not a pure technologist, so I better be assisting a technologist. 

References:

Wendy Chisholm, T. R. &. D. C. (1999). Web content accessibility guidelines 1.0. Retrieved from http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/.

Beyers, C. (2002) Interactive Assessment and Course Transformation Using Web-Based Tools http://technologysource.org/article/interactive_assessment_and_course_transformation_using_webbased_tools/ 

Developing a Rubric

While I was going through the website-Rubistar.com given in the course material of week 4, I synthesized that an instructor or evaluator must follow some steps to develop the rubrics. The first and foremost important task is to define the learning outcome or objective of the product/course/lesson. The instructor/evaluator should define possible highest performance to the lowest performance levels that students would possibly demonstrate. Make sure that each level should be directly observable. To describe each level, as high quality, average, and low, evaluator must have at least three samples of each level. The samples will help to evaluate the students’ performance.

Assign numerical or qualitative, or a combination of both, score for each level, from highest to lowest, or vice versa.

Once each level is determined, give the descriptions on how to use this. Ask students to give the feedback. This will make sure that each level is clearly understood by the students and what each level represents in relation to scores assigned. This kind of feedback ensures that students clearly understand how they are being evaluated and the standards that they are being held accountable to achieve. Rubrics are a great way  to  help students self- diagnose strengths and weaknesses of their own work and  they become part of the "self assessment" process.

Good Practice for Assessing Students

I just finished reading - 9 Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning  from the course material of week 4. This paper gives a deeper insight of what are the best practices of assessing the learning. The paper starts with a universal fact that assessment is not in end itself but it is a vehicle for educational improvement. I remember when we were in school and, after we had our final exam done, we used to say- I’ll never see these books again. But the truth is that those books laid foundation for the next year and assessment made that foundation even stronger.

Assessment is not mere demonstration of some crammed facts, spitted out on paper in form of one word answers, choosing right answer of filling the blanks. It is much more than that. Assessment should find the level multidimensional and integrated performance over the time. For focused and clear assessment, it should have a clear goal so that what are the expected outcomes of the learning can be described and achieved.  assessment can also help instructors and the curriculum developers to see what are the best teaching practices and the environment for learning. Episodic assessment such as having half yearly or the final exams may not be a good practice for the learning outcomes. The assessment which is continuous and ongoing and take various tools into consideration will assess the learners on the basis of improvement they have shown over a period of time.

Consider, a 6^th grade student who has to appear for traditional final exams in the school next week, but couldn’t study because of prevailing home conditions - a sick father and full time working mom. If he couldn’t do better in exam, then generalizing that he is not good at studies is purely wrong.

The other fact which this paper reveals is that it shouldn’t be the instructor/teacher who is solely responsible for the assessment of students but student-affairs educators, librarians, administrators, and students can also  play an important role in overall assessment of a learner.

I really liked the ideas presented in this paper as they throw light on what  assessment basically is. In India, most of the schools judge students’ performance by looking at the mark sheet obtained at the end of the year. But, I am happy to find that things are changing and continuous and comprehensive assessment is being practiced by many schools now a days.

Authentic Assessment vs traditional assessment

In this post, I'll try to answer the question raised in Lecture 4. The questions were-What do you think? How will you deal with the issue of assessment? What impact will it have on whatever instructional strategies you select to facilitate learners' accomplishment of learning objectives?

I believe that  authentic assessment examines student performance on worthy intellectual tasks. Projects, case studies, observations and reporting are kind of this. They ‘directly examine student’s  performance on worthy intellectual tasks’ . But this kind of assessment is good for document-based historical inquiry, literature review, research, theoretical based reading and learning, providing an engaging oral analysis of a recent political event; collaborating with others on a debate, etc. I think that traditional ways of assessment like quiz, multiple choice questions, fill in the blanks and similar tools are good if instructor needs to evaluate student problem-posing and problem-solving in mathematics, experimental research in science and some kind of medical exams. Assessing students only on the authentic or the traditional assessment methods can be unfair. There has to be a balance of these two assessment methods in order to best judge the learning outcomes.

Authentic assessments may provide ‘valid indicators or predictors of academic performance’. Authentic assessment also has the advantage of providing parents and community members with directly observable products and understandable evidence concerning their students' performance. The traditional way of assessment is still used in many areas of learning because of the convenience and low cost.

The instructor has to choose the assessment methods very carefully so that the  academic achievement of learners doesn’t only come in terms of writing ‘right’ answers. The impact of the method choose by an instructor can help learners improve overall performance and if student can craft polished, thorough and justifiable answers, performances or products. 

References

Wiggins, Grant (1990). The case for authentic assessment. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 2(2). Retrieved April 25, 2012 from http://PAREonline.net/getvn.asp?v=2&n=2 . This paper has been viewed 184,219 times since 11/13/1999

Polls in online courses

While I submitted my poll yesterday night,  a thought came into  my mind that polls can be a great tool for students to make choices. Polls are also  called as virtual show of hands and let all students see aggregate totals of how the class thinks on  a particular issue. Poll results help in shaping the opinion and sometimes realizing the limitation of their own choices. At a point of discussion which has become very crucial, poll activates interactivity among the classmates. Polls should provoke research and deeper thinking.
Asynchronous polls are available for learners to vote over a period of time before submitting the votes. Asynchronous polls let learners visit and vote on their own schedule. Synchronous polls have learners pick from a list of alternatives and then see results of the voting. It helps  learners to make real time choices.
For using the poll, instructor has to take into account a few things. The first thing is to make sure that learners know how to vote. The language should be clear and straight. Make sure  test questions can be interpreted as intended. Test the questions with someone and refine if necessary. The polls should display the totals only. The students may hesitate to vote if they feel others can know how they individually voted.
I liked voting for the  Thread Rules Survey because it will help us in finding the best practices related to the thread management. The poll will throw a light on the best practices among the all those were suggested by all class members. Further debating on the each issue would polish the poll result .

Use of videos for teaching online courses

I started this week’s reading material with Merrill on Instructional Design video available in course material area of week 4. I got a feeling that  vodcast or using videos encourage the learners to view the learning material and grasp the application of concepts, rules and procedure in action. The video can be found or uploaded on Youtube, teacherTube, google videos, MIT world, Yahoo, MSNBC video and BBC video nation. There are certain other tools and websites having online free videos on reports, news and procedures.

How are videos helpful-There are several thousand videos available on web that have some relevancy to the teaching and learning of the subject matter that one might want to take up. One may find many videos on a particular topic. Course developers need to consider indexing or rating of the  ones that look relevant. Instructor might want to develop her/his own video or customize and reuse existing ones after obtaining the required permissions.  Learners may be given some questions to answer for reflection and discussion at the end.  Short 5-8 minutes videos are best for most of the topics. For the educational use of the videos,  fair use of  copyright guidelines should be followed carefully.

How can videos be used in online learning-The instructor can also ask learners to give feedback on the videos included in the course material. This would help to determine which ones were more effective and why. In such case, the instructor will have a ranking of the available videos from the learners from previous quarters/semesters. This kind of ranking will increase satisfaction among the students and also address the issue on video quality, length, and appropriateness.

Week 3 -What I learnt

Week 3

This week was comparatively lighter. I liked the idea presented in Lecture3 , “Today's course providers are only limited by their imaginations and their own and their students' access to appropriate software and hardware .”  One can make course as much as interactive as one wants to. I read in an article that, the more time you input in the course design, the more you save while teaching it. It is very true! A carefully and well-designed online course can create a shared understanding of concepts important to the learning culture and provided opportunities to reinforce them also the instructor has less burden. In such case the goal of designing the course is fulfilled.

I liked the ideas presented by Justin in Forum: 3:5 Reflections about Participation. He had a very good idea of having a chat once in a week so as to clarify the concerns and issues of the students. This idea is very important for learners who are of ages below 20 perhaps. The learners of this age tend to have apprehensions and issues. Learners who are older might have achieved the maturity level, they might be working and have family responsibly so they know how to deal with issues, stress and workload. They kind of organize their time and other matters in the life. But it ’does not’ that learners above 20 don’t have issues. They need instructor’s attention and help as well.

The reading on accessibility issue was very good. It had all the details of the issues along with the solutions. The solutions seem very much practical and to the point. The article ‘ Be successful in online learning’ evoked the question - what  are the  characteristics of an online learner. After reading this article I found that I need to develop the organizational skills in terms of planning my daily routine. Sometimes, it becomes hard to write even one line with my little boy, who has endless questions. If I am trying to write something or a good idea or phrase has come in my mind and I’m about to put it on paper, he would come and say something or urges to go out, I tend to forget what was going on in my mind.  I am trying to work on his daily sleep routine so that I can find sometime for myself.

Working in groups can bring the sense of heightened teamwork and camaraderie. I felt  the same working on the Mini project2. The Brain synch  team has 4 experienced people and I can learn a lot from them. I liked the ideas presented by Linda, Brian and Chinyere. The editing work done by Gary was outstanding. The final draft looked like perfect piece to me and I didn’t see any kind of changes I would make. I did all the research in the beginning and assembled the ideas with references. Linda, as a synthesizer organized them well. A little input and a few changes here and there further improved the draft. The editor’s polish made it to the final submission. All the team members were very helpful and co-operative. No issue like conflict in deciding the core issue and division of work came up in the team. Overall it was a nice experience working with the team members.

Brainstorming-A creative way generate ideas

In the coming week, Forum: 4:1 Course Design Team Decisions, requires teams to brainstorm. Brainstorming is a common kind of creative activity that can be used in e-learning. This activity helps in generating lots of new ideas. Questions like-“if, how,  What if” help learners to think out of the box.  The leader poses a problem for which participants suggest solutions. The goal is to generate new and unique ideas. In this kind of exercises no ideas are correct or incorrect. Thus, all the ideas are acceptable.  Instructors  make sure that learners understand the basic rule of the brainstorming-there is no bad ideas. Emphasis should be laid that participants do not criticize idea but can add better ideas.

Brainstorming is an important aspect of team work, problem solving and creative thinking. This is also useful anywhere learners need to solve problems in an original way. Brainstorming can take different forms.  The instructor can use the brainstorming in form of chat and discussion form. Learners can continue to add ideas in the forum. At the end of the time allotted to complete the brainstorming activity, instructor can grade participants based on the ideas they contributed.

Reflections about Participation

While discussing the role of the instructor in today’s  Forum: 3:5 Reflections about Participation, I came across the idea of prompting. Prompting is asking a question about the reading material. Some questions in lectures or  in the welcome page of weeks prompt learners to think. One example is “@ Things to Think About: how will you deal with broken links to referenced assignments and readings in your online course?”(Week 4 course material page). This kind of prompting helps   to increase students' interest, confidence and self-esteem. Prompting involves helping those who fall behind to get back into the discussion and comprehension and academic abilities.

Also, the feedback from  the instructor  help  students to identify the source of difficulties and the misconceptions students have about a topic.

I also came across an interesting article (http://www.ieplexus.com/company-news/5379-students-crave-social-media-in-online-education/) which talks about the social networking tools for teaching online course. Students want social media in their classes. Today’s students are generally are engaged in  social networks that utilizing them in an online class is essentially as normal as talking. The instructor has an inherent advantage in terms of creating interactivity and engagement with that tool.

Also the http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/ says clearly indicates that we should always remain current. So integrating these networking tools can help in making learning experience better and effective. 

Mini project grades

 I  got grades for my Mini project 2. When I saw the Anne's rubric at the end, a  table showing  the basis on which the grading was done, I was surprised. The  grading method is so intense. There are grades for each and every aspect. If you miss any, you lose your grades.

Thank you Anne for giving us clear, detailed and specific instructions right in the beginning of mini project. I'll take care of your instructions for the final paper. It clearly shows that how clearly communicated expectations are help instructor and learner. Also, I liked that the reading material is available to students in several formats, allowing students to select the best.

I came across, Shneiderman's "Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design", while I was doing some research for my group project. I thought, I shall copy and paste them. I'll keep these ones in mind while I would design my  own course.

These rules were obtained from the text Designing the User Interface by Ben Shneiderman. Shneiderman proposed this collection of principles that are derived heuristically from experience and applicable in most interactive systems after being properly refined, extended, and interpreted.

To improve the usability of an application it is important to have a well designed interface. Shneiderman's "Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design" are a guide to good interaction design.

1 Strive for consistency.
Consistent sequences of actions should be required in similar situations; identical terminology should be used in prompts, menus, and help screens; and consistent commands should be employed throughout.

2 Enable frequent users to use shortcuts.
As the frequency of use increases, so do the user's desires to reduce the number of interactions and to increase the pace of interaction. Abbreviations, function keys, hidden commands, and macro facilities are very helpful to an expert user.

3 Offer informative feedback.
For every operator action, there should be some system feedback. For frequent and minor actions, the response can be modest, while for infrequent and major actions, the response should be more substantial.

4 Design dialog to yield closure.
Sequences of actions should be organized into groups with a beginning, middle, and end. The informative feedback at the completion of a group of actions gives the operators the satisfaction of accomplishment, a sense of relief, the signal to drop contingency plans and options from their minds, and an indication that the way is clear to prepare for the next group of actions.

5 Offer simple error handling.
As much as possible, design the system so the user cannot make a serious error. If an error is made, the system should be able to detect the error and offer simple, comprehensible mechanisms for handling the error.

6 Permit easy reversal of actions.
This feature relieves anxiety, since the user knows that errors can be undone; it thus encourages exploration of unfamiliar options. The units of reversibility may be a single action, a data entry, or a complete group of actions.

7 Support internal locus of control.
Experienced operators strongly desire the sense that they are in charge of the system and that the system responds to their actions. Design the system to make users the initiators of actions rather than the responders.

8 Reduce short-term memory load.
The limitation of human information processing in short-term memory requires that displays be kept simple, multiple page displays be consolidated, window-motion frequency be reduced, and sufficient training time be allotted for codes, mnemonics, and sequences of actions. 

Reference: http://faculty.washington.edu/jtenenbg/courses/360/f04/sessions/schneidermanGoldenRules.html

Training Employees Online

One of the  American Management Association (AMA) survey reported that over 30% of job applicants tested by major US corporations lacks the skills  required for  job profiles.  This clearly shows that the business environment needs employees with strong skill set. I think the way to deal with this problem is to facilitate ongoing training and lifelong learning. If a business/company wants to challenge its employees and increase their productivity, then training and development is absolutely important. If the company/business has skilled work force, it will provide greater productivity. The training can be onsite training with trainers/professionals or it can be online, flexible and convenient, available anywhere, self-paced, with no need to plan around a class time.

The initial steps for training -

The first step is to identify what are the areas where training is needs and in what way the training/course will be fruitful for the company/business.

The next step is to choose the appropriate course and its duration to meet those needs.

Thirdly, establish specifications and requirements for corporate certification. You can choose a fast paced online course or it can be formal with trainer participation.

Online medium has as much potential to encourage content exploration, reflection, and participation than a face-to-face class.

Online certification programs, such as the WDC, may provide a path to quickly increase the current low supply of workforce educators by offering effective, flexible, and inclusive professional development opportunities to workforce educators.( Sharon P. Pitt, Edmund Vitale Jr., and Diane L. Foucar-Szocki "Training Professional Workforce Educators Online." The Technology Source, March/April 2002.http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=947.)

Learning in a Social Context

While writing the answer for Learning in a Social Context for my  week 3 Forum: 3:3 Readings on Characteristics of the Online Learner and Training Professional Workforce Educators Online, I remembered the paper we did on same topic in graduation. I think that Russian teacher and psychologist Lev Vygotsky is the first person in the history of education who brought the world’s attention to the ways in which social environments influence this learning process. He talked about various ways in which a teacher influences shaping the social interactions. After Vygotsky proposed his theory, the world got attracts towards tis issue.

There are few ways in which teachers can guide and enriching interaction in classroom and online. Some of the ways  teachers develop communities of learning are:

Scaffolding: “Scaffolding” means providing just enough support, depending on the needs of the student, to move students’ skills and understanding. It is not guided learning.

Project Methods: Making groups, assigning a topic and final product should be a presentation. Work is carried out through a division of labor. Students first research a topic, in order to share their expertise with their classmates, and finally perform a consequential task requiring that all students have mastered the content generated by each group (Brown & Campione, 1996a)

The job of  a teacher is acting as an expert, model, guide, and facilitator of these social interactions. A teacher will with create and design a learning environment so that students interact with each other.

Collaborative Learning and Group Work: This should be an integral part of  any classroom or online learning environment.  Daily tasks that foster more student-to-student collaboration can build on the range of strengths and abilities.

References:

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hammond,  Linda Darling. Learning From Others: Learning in a Social Context. Stanford University School of Education.

photo credit-VCCS.edu

The Roles of E-Learning Facilitators’- Ed Hootstein

In the given reading ‘ Wearing Four Pairs of Shoes: The Roles of E-Learning Facilitators’,  Ed Hootstein highlights that e-learning facilitators have four different roles- instructor, social director, program manager, and technical assistant. Initially, I thought that, I will be most comfortable in the instructor’s shoes because that is what I have done till date. But, I strongly feel that I have also been playing the role of social director for my high school students. Thus, I can say that I will be most comfortable in the nice blend of these two roles. As an instructor, my work was to create an environment  where students could learn by doing. I used to teach chemistry to grade 10 students. They had lectures as well as laboratory classes. While doing experiments, my students and I often ‘participated together as partners in learning activities’. The experiments and their results were coupled with comments and what, how and why questions so as to stimulate their thought process. Demonstration and experimentation had very important role in my classes. Thus, as an instructor, I always tried to help learners connect content with prior knowledge; help them complete assignments and suggesting ideas or strategies for learning(Ed Hootstein).

As a social director, I helped students to learn through collaborative projects, case studies, didactic learning partnership exchanges, and one-on-one exchanges (p, 2).  The projects, presentations and discussion were held each month so that students could recognize problems, find their common interests, and share experiences. This kind of interaction helped them to identify misconceptions and find correct answers.

Chemistry is embedded everywhere in our lives. Chemistry teachers or as a matter of fact, science teachers should help learners get familiar with the type of language suited for the subject. Chemistry   vocabulary has new words and terminologies those have different meaning. For example, terms like alcohol, energy, reaction, burning, suspension, purification, and solution have   different common place meanings than specific chemical meanings. While taking chemistry classes it is very important that students can relate this subject to their day to day lives so that learning becomes more meaningful.  Therefore, learners should be exposed to small-group problem-solving sessions, collaborative and investigative learning  experience and interaction among learners. Thus, in my case a facilitator has to wear a combination of instructor and a social director role.

I personally think that the technology and the learning resources we are using also need some revision.  Web-based learning resources (WBLRs) are thought to be powerful tools for enhancing teaching and learning processes in school education. But, WBLRs are still considered as an area of technical and software experts rather than an easy to use tool for teachers and students (Nam & Smith-Jackson, 2007). The technical usability puts more strain on the  cognitive process, and as a result, the  learning process itself lags behind.

Thus, learners should get an environment that enables them to focus on learning materials without making an effort to figure out how to access the technological environment in first place. So, teachers take learning new technology as a burden

Reference: Nam, C. S., & Smith-Jackson, T. L. (2007). Web-based learning environment: A theory-based design process for development and evaluation. Journal of Information Technology Education, 6, 23- 44. Retrieved from: http://www.jite.org/documents/Vol6/JITEv6p023-043Nam145.pdf

he fear or the laziness of teachers that Michael referred to, may be because of variety of reasons, such as time consumed in learning, using and then teaching technology to students, already tight schedules, heavy workload and lack of institutional support. Sometimes the equipment and the software used are different in each class which makes the teacher’s work even tougher. So, I also understand the frustration of an instructor that Lisha referred to.

I think that instructors should learn the latest technological tools before introducing it to the class. Moreover, technical and institutional support in terms of equipment and technology issues is very important. These things will help an instructor to create a supporting teaching and learning atmosphere.

Reference:http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eqm0223.pdf