Project Completion

My Canvas course is complete and can be viewed publicly at https://canvas.instructure.com/courses/971925. However, I never really feel that anything that I create is truly finished. Every time I review it, I think of something I would like to add or change. At some point, I just have to let the mouse go and log off.

I do still need to finalize my course evaluation. I started a Google form, but I haven’t finalized the questions. I hope to finish that task during the Thanksgiving Holidays. It has been started along with shared to the world but needs major revising. In addition, I hope to get a jump start this week on creating my final presentation, so I won’t be rushed at the last minute. I am looking forward to seeing my peers’ presentations and how they have used Canvas.

The major challenge that I have faced lately is mostly time. I had a great conference that I attended in Salt Lake City earlier this week, the Personal Learning Community Institute. However, the travel time to get there and back, along with attending the sessions, took much of my extra time that I usually use for completing course work. I did plan ahead some, so I wouldn’t get too far behind. But, I found myself working all weekend to meet the Sunday night deadline. Now that I have met the deadline, I am ready to enjoy the Thanksgiving break. So, thanks to my instructor for pushing us to complete it prior to the holiday.

In addition, I did make the deadline for completing my job aid for the course. If you write a job aid that truly provides all of the background that an instructor needs to successfully facilitate the course, they can be very lengthy. And my job aid ended up at about thirty pages long. I don’t see how it could have been any shorter without deleting key information that will be needed to facilitate the course. I think that perhaps, more guidance or information in the course in this area could help the students produce better job aids for their course. I reviewed the rubric, Googled for information about job aids, and researched the library databases, but did not find any good resources to help improve my job aid. So, I produced a document that I felt would help me if I were teaching the course and was unfamiliar with some of the concepts.

I will not have time to implement the course as it spans over a seven week timeframe. However, it will be a great course for me to utilize with our staff next semester. I also had another district inquire about facilitating the course content for their district. 

Creating a Transformative Digital Vision Canvas Course Reflection

The Canvas course which I created for CECS 5510 Technology-Based Learning Environments is finally complete. I adjusted the design of my course, so I could meet the course completion timeline. There are many more resources that I could have included in this course; however, I had to prioritize and decide which components were best for a 40 hour course. I also find it hard to announce that the course is complete as I think that improvements can always be made. Each time I review a module, I find myself changing the sentences and linking a new resource that is better than the previous one.

The technology challenges that I have battled are mostly cosmetic ones. Canvas is somewhat limiting on how appealing you can make the course content. I think the more appealing an instructional designer can make the course, the easier it is for participants to navigate within the course. For example, I made buttons to each module on the splash page. I spent entirely too long working on them to display correctly in various browsers. I think it looks much more professional this way, but was too cumbersome when completing. Perhaps in the future, Canvas will add more of these features as a drag and drop option. In addition, I am a firm believer in the use of rubrics. I included thirteen different rubrics in my course. Creating the rubrics were much more difficult than they should have been. For example, each rubric had to be created from scratch. Hopefully, there will be a way to copy a rubric, rename it, and modify it in the future, so you don’t have to continue to recreate the entire rubric each time you want to add a criterion to an existing rubric.

Having three people in a peer review group made peer review more difficult than just having a peer review partner. It is difficult to communicate with everyone and schedule the reviews. For instance, there were a couple of times in which we had to review two courses because it was a little confusing about who was reviewing each other’s work. Also, when you change reviewers, you must go back and review the entire course to understand the navigation and key concepts being built upon throughout the course instead of just reviewing the last 1/4^th of the course. However, on the flip side, having multiple peer reviewers helps ensure that the student is receiving accurate information from multiple resources and may eliminate student assessment error (Bostock, 2000).

I’ve also learned that when designing an online course with a timeline, you must plan and set completion goals, so you are not trying to complete your project at the last minute. I used my project timeline for completing my course and met the deadlines accordingly. Everyone in my peer review group did a great job of meeting the deadlines.

I didn’t know my strengths in this process until I saw everyone’s project presentation. I think that having a background in education and previously being an ELA teacher helps tremendously. It is very natural to me on how to set up the modules and activities, but others struggled with this. I am very happy with my course and look forward to using it myself in the future with other administrators.

Reference

Bostock, S. (2000). Student peer assessment. Learning Technology.

Reflection on Progress of Online Canvas Course

The development of my online class is moving along according to schedule. Although we are nearing the end of the semester, there is still quite a bit of detail to complete. For example, I only have one module left to construct. It is the final module which includes the presentations of the comprehensive digital portfolios. Then, I need to go back through the entire course and fine tune the details.

I enjoy the creativity of building the class; however, it is the detail involved that I find rather tedious and tiresome. But from experience, this is one of the key factors that I find online instructional designers tend to overlook. It is very frustrating as a student, when materials in the online class contradict each other or are too vague for the student to understand the assignment.  Therefore, I want to be sure that the syllabus, the assignment due dates, and instructions all align with the course activities and modules. And, you don’t want the course instructor modifying course content while teaching the course, as trying to create course content and meet the student needs at the same time would be overwhelming and effect the success of the course (Caplan & Graham, 2004).

Time has been the biggest challenge in creating this course. If I had more time, I could develop most of the instructional videos myself. However, in this case, I had to pick and choose which ones I needed to customize and create myself. Although, in some instances, the student is charged with researching and finding customized videos and information. In addition, Canvas is somewhat limited when it comes to formatting the material. I spent too much time trying to create a professional looking line break between activities in each module. I wanted to break the activities into chunks of information, so the material would not look so overwhelming to the participant. However, it still isn’t perfect and views differently depending on the device being used to view the course.

Currently, I am on schedule to meet the timeline for completion. However, I am always thinking of things that would enhance the course, but usually end up abandoning many of the ideas due to time constraints and the scope of the assignment. The course is set up so that each module should be completed within a week’s timeframe. So, I will not be able to implement the course during this timeframe; however, I will be using this course with our administrators next summer. And I have been asked to conduct training for another school district based on the information and materials in the course. So, the evaluation will be conducted after this semester.

Reference

Caplan, D., & Graham, R. (2004). The development of online courses. Theory and practice of online learning, 175.