Welcome to Week 4 of the New Online Teacher Group

Last week, we considered challenges in the online environment. This week will focus on developing survival strategies in relation to those challenges. When teachers first assume their roles in the online environment, the challenges can sometimes seem overwhelming.
Let’s begin this week with a scenario that highlights this situation.
.
Luz's Story
Luz, a new part-time college teacher, was contacted by the department Chair a few weeks prior to a new semester, and asked to teach an online history course. Luz had never taught this course before, but her academic preparation included world history, so she felt familiar with the thinking of the discipline. Despite Luz's anxiety about this assignment, she agreed to do so. She felt concerned about future work prospects should she refuse the assignment. As well, she recognized the advantage of developing skills related to online teaching. Luz had some limited experience using the Blackboard course management tool, but she was not familiar with the Discussions Tool.

Before long, she found herself working very long hours 7 days a week. Students seemed unclear in relation to course expectations. They expected immediate responses when they e-mailed her. The weekly discussion postings took hours to read and review.

Hmm..., how will you reduce the stress that may be associated with this new experience?
How do you hope to maintain a work-life balance when the demands on your time may seem never ending?
Think about one survival strategy you might use, and post it to the Wiki page on Survival Strategies. The strategy could be a personal description of coping mechanisms, or it could relate to steps you might take as the teacher to create a manageable workload.

Hopefully, as a group, you will be able to generate ideas that will be helpful to everyone.

Week 4 Learning Tasks

Learning Tasks this week include the following:

1. Post your survival strategy to the Wiki page called Survival Strategies .
   
   
2. Begin preparing for your 10 minute Elluminate Live conferencing presentation on a topic of your choice.
   
   How this works:
   
   Contact me when you are ready to do your presentation. We will schedule a time to meet. Send me the participant link to the session. I will post this link to the rest of the group (with your permission), and we will attend your session. This experience is meant as a practice run to help you become more comfortable in this environment. You are not expected to be an expert in live conferencing facilitation. My hope is that all of you who will be teaching online, will communicate with your students through this medium.

Have a good week everyone. Remember that next week is Intersession and the Festival of Learning. On March 1 and 2, there will be a variety of guest speakers and workshops related to teaching and learning. I do hope you will be able to participate.

Welcome to Week 3 of the New Online Teacher Course

Let's begin this week with a story.
Kim Lee, a colleague of yours, is a teacher who is new to online facilitation. She feels confident as an experienced teacher, but her transition to the online environment has presented some unique challenges. Currently, she is feeling anxious and somewhat discouraged. She requests a meeting with you for the purpose of exploring strategies to address some of these challenges.
How will you begin to assist her?

Welcome to Week 3.
Last week, we examined various ways to communicate online, with an emphasis on creating a learning community. This week, we will focus on some of the issues related to online facilitation. We will also briefly explore the creation of inter-active learning tasks to promote student engagement.

What burning questions, concerns do you have regarding working with students online?

Week 3 Learning Tasks

1. Case Study
   Go to the course Wiki and view the case study entitled "Lack of Participation."
   Read the Scenario and post your analysis to the Wiki page.
   Hopefully, as a group, you will be able to generate ideas that may ultimately be helpful to you when you are teaching online.
   
2. Blog Reflection
   Complete your Blog reflection related to your learning experience thus far in this course, as described in the post for Week 2. Please send me the link to your blog, if you have not already done so. I am trying to compile a blog list for everyone to view.
   
3. Interactivity
   Think about 1 inter-active strategy/activity that you will use with your online students. Post this idea to the Wiki site under the heading "Interactivity."
   

Elluminate Workshop
The workshop next week will examine Elluminate from the moderator perspective. Please contact Jimi Rockley (jrockley@georgebrown.ca) to request an Elluminate account.
An account is required in order to participate in the workshop. Please also bring your headsets with you.

Welcome to Week 2 of the New Online Teacher Course.

The theme for this week is online communication. Last week we had a general introduction and overview related to the online environment in terms of the online learner and e-learning trends. This week we will address ways to establish social presence and communication with online students.
Let's start this week with a story.

Scenario: Online Communication

This is Maria's first experience teaching an online course. She misses the live cues from students, and the spontaneity of classroom interaction. While some of the students are participating in the Discussion Group, most seem to be inactive. What's more she is has no sense of whether the students are actually learning anything. She is not sure what the problem is, but to her, there seems to be a general lack of energy and enthusiasm for the course. She is becoming increasingly anxious about this situation. How might Maria make connections with her students, and help her students to connect with each other?

What is Social Presence?
An underlying theme for this week, is the notion of social presence online.Social presence may be defined as:"The ability to portray one's self as a “real” person in the online environment." *As you work your way through this week, think about the following questions:

• How important is social presence?


• Do students care about social presence, or do they just want to get working on their course materials?


• What strategies would you use to establish social presence?
  
  View this short video on how one of your colleagues (Lina Medaglia, Liberal Arts and Science), addresses this question. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syWSv9cBTxM
  
  *Social Presence Quote -Source: Pallof_Pratt_Presence. pdffrom Jossey-Bass Conference, Oct 2008

Learning Tasks for Week 2 include the following:

1. Letter to Students
   Contribute to the development of a letter to new online students. Go to the Wikispaces site and add your thoughts to the letter. Include I key idea or piece of advice etc related to their learning in this environment. Hopefully,as everyone contributes, you will have a substantial portion of a letter that you could post to your online students. You are encouraged to work together to fashion the wording. This may require some editing and additions to each other’s work.
   
2. Reflection
   By the end of week 2, post a reflection to the blog that you were asked to create (in week 1) related to your learning experience thus far in this course. You may want to include thoughts related to the following questions: Did you have any aha moments? Did anything surprise you or help to validate what you already know?Are there elements of the course that you could use in your work with your online students? What issues emerge for you? What remains unclear to you? I will create a page with links to all of your blogs so that you can easily view them.
   
3. Discovery Learning
   Create an account in Wordle
   http://www.wordle.net
   This site creates an image of key concepts in your course. Just copy and paste text that reflects key themes and then paste it into wordle. It creates an interesting image. Can you think of any possible uses with your students?
   Or, if you would rather search for another tool that might engage your students, feel free to do so, and share your findings with us.
   Post your link to your Wordle, or alternate resource, into the Discussions tab in the course Wiki.
   
4. Social Presence using Twitter OPTIONAL ACTIVITY
   View the following link on the use of Twitter for establishing social presence online.http://www.patricklowenthal.com/publications/Using_Twitter_to_Enhance_Social_Presence.pdf
   Create a Twitter account and send me an e-mail when you have done so. http://www.twitter.com
   You can then follow me on Twitter . Just do a search within Twitter for slesch. Or, you may want to search for others to follow. I can also follow you if you send me an invitation. In this way, you can evaluate whether this media might be a useful way to connect with your online students.
   
   I hope you enjoy these activities.
   Cheers,
   Shirley

Introduction

Welcome to Week one of the New Online Teacher Course. We are very pleased to be working with you.
I believe this session is about choice. Your choice is to explore those aspects of the online environment that are of particular interest to you, and to make new discoveries. In so doing, I hope you have the opportunity to:

• broaden your e-learning skill- set


• share your discoveries and reflections with your colleagues who are also new to teaching online


• have some fun along the way

This site will be used for posting course information and activities. Be sure to check here often.
To begin, view this short video with Terry Anderson, the Canada Research Chair for Distance Learning at Athabaska University. I hope you share his approach to learning in this environment.

A Key Theme for Week 1 is the changing nature of both learners , technology and the intersection between technology and learning. These ideas will be explored further in our Elluminate sessions next week. Since collaborative learning appears as a recurring thread throughout these discussions, some of this week’s learning tasks are directed at providing online collaborative learning opportunities for you. They are also designed to foster a beginning sense of connection and community within this course.

They include the following:

1. 1. Blog
   Current learners are often described as users of social media tools.. Create a Blog and send me the link – This blog will be used in week 2 for writing reflections related to your experiences in the course. A common blogging site is: http://www.blogger.com/


2. Introductions in Wiki
   Wikis are sites that enable collaborative learning. Everyone can post to the site, and even edit another's work. Go the course Wiki ( http://newonlineteacher.wikispaces.com/ and do the following:
   Introduce yourself in the Discussion Group by telling us something about yourself that you feel comfortable sharing with the group. Tell us how you think this course might be useful for you in your work with students. Describe one teaching competency that you think is especially important when teachng online
   You will receive an e-mail invitation to join this site. This will enable you to post to this area.


3. Discovery Learning
   Find a resource such as a free online tool, video, article etc related to trends in e-learning and share it with the group. Post the link or description in your Introduction.
   In relation to tools, you may want to draw from the top 100 e-learning tools as identified by Jane Hart at:http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100-2010.html


4. Elluminate Live Conferencing
   Meet with the group in Elluminate at one of the scheduled sessions this week.
   Session times are:
   Monday, Feb 7/11 from 5-6PM
   Thursday, Feb/11 11AM-12Noon
   Instructions for accessing the session were provided in a previous e-mail to you.


5. Google Docs
   Google docs is a site that again enables joint collaboration on a document. In this instance, the task is to jointly create a PowerPoint. Create a slide in Google Docs that illustrates your response to the question, “Who are the Learners?” You will receive an e-mail invitation to join the Google Docs site to enable you to participate. Include any media you would like to use. Have fun with this activity.