What am I doing here?

1.2 Reflection: Personal Learning Goal

Considering the online learning self-assessment you took this week, and thinking about your reasons for taking this course, what is your highest priority learning goal for this course?

What are some specific skills, strategies or tools you are hoping to learn more about? Don't forget to make your blog public and email your instructor the link!

I feel comfortable using the Internet and taking an online course. My main goal for this course is to start preparing myself to teach online courses. I want to learn the nuts and bolts of the skills I need to be an effective online instructor as well as learning about where to find the opportunities to teach online classes. In my ideal scenario, I would like to keep teaching at my current job as I enjoy the personal interaction with students. However, as online learning is a growing field, I would like to be able to take on the responsibility of teaching an extra class or two each year that I could manage either in the evenings or over the summer months.

I want to learn the specific skills that will enable me to plan and manage online classes using different delivery systems such as haiku and blackboard. I feel fairly comfortable with some of the skills, but I want to know specifics of both teaching within a set framework as well as preparing my own curriculum for an online class. I want feel comfortable that I can find and develop strategies that will allow me to give real assessment as to students academic progress and learning. I worry that giving valid evaluations of student work will be difficult without traditional methods to ensure that students are learning and progressing. It seems to me that some students could use online learning as an opportunity to rely on other people more than they could in a traditional learning environment. I hope to learn about tools that an online teacher can use to regulate and ensure that students are doing their own work and developing their own skills and knowledge.

First image from: http://bogglishhuderon.blogspot.com/2011/11/sloan-c-and-state-of-online-learning-at.html

Second image from: http://www.rueeducation.com/Home/Total-Learning-Systems/Online-Learning.aspx