CED0 550 Week 3

What is the greatest challenge that I have encountered as an online teacher/facilitator and how did I manage it? (If you have not yet taught online what do you think would be the greatest challenge for online teachers/facilitators?)

Because I haven't been in the online teacher/facilitator role yet, I am going to predict what might be the greatest challenge. I predict that finding a way to keep all students actively engaged and on task is going to be the greatest challenge when facilitating the online synchronous class. While reflecting on this challenge, it actually isn't that much different from one of the challenges of face-to-face instruction.

Some things that I feel are really important to consider about synchronous and asynchronous facilitation as I prepare to facilitate my threaded and web conference discussions are. . .

Posing an open-ended, thoughtful, well-written discussion prompt (asynchronous) and trying to think through/prepare for whatever might happen during the synchronous class. Because this is the first time through doing this type of facilitation/instruction, I don't really know what to expect. The key to it all for me will be the reflection piece after I'm done with my facilitator role to really think about what went well and what I'd change/do differently next time.

I choose my particular discussion topic because . . .

I have been asked to get creative in the way my department can offer classes to students, especially those classes that don't typically get enough enrollment each year to run a traditional classroom section. I am going to try to have some students working independently and using an online class format so I chose the topic of "Starting an Online Program" because I'm faced with doing this research right now/over the summer for my job anyway.

One thing that I thought about when developing rubrics for the 2 different discussions is. . .

"Why recreate the wheel?" When looking at the rubric that we are graded with each week for our synchronous class, I thought it looked pretty good and applicable to my topic, etc. Then when meeting with some group members, another example was shared and I REALLY liked it. Instead of wasting time trying to come up with a few synonyms to make the wording a bit different, he said I could use his rubric for one of them that we had to create. I did create one of my own but like his much better! I also thought about modifying the wording a bit and using this rubric for my face-to-face class participation. So many of the things I do in class are hands-on activities/simulations/etc that don't always produce something for me to grade but grading them on their active, thoughtful participation using an objective rubric would be very helpful.