Creating Collaborative Communities - Week 8

I hereby resolve to

• Try to connect with classmates outside of the course to bounce ideas off one another
• Go over my already built courses with a fine toothed comb to see where items can be improved by collaboration, community and critical thinking
• Build my new courses with collaboration, community and critical thinking in mind
• Maintain and update my “Online Teaching Playbook” as I find resources
• Refer back to my “Online Teaching Playbook” as I redesign and build new courses

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my natural instincts for online discussion facilitation were pretty good. The tools, resources and activities throughout the course allowed me to refine my skills, and gain insight and knowledge from my peers. One of the things I liked the most about this course were the role playing discussions. It was so valuable to see how different people would respond to different situations, and many of these were situations that you might not guess would happen. Even in my time as an online instructor, I have not seen some of these things, but I guess I was just lucky!

I found the community built in this course to be astounding, I don’t know that I have ever felt more connected to my classmates, or my instructors. It felt so natural, as if I had known everyone for much longer than 8 weeks. Ultimately, I am very happy that I took the courses out of order, and was able to establish relationships with students who I will now learn with in Assessment for eLearning.

Using a resolutions list in my reflections has helped me to not only reflect on the week, but set specific, achievable goals for the courses I design and teach based on what I have learned in this course. I can refer back to them often, and see where I need to improve my teaching based on what I promised myself I would do.

Although not a requirement of this course, I created my Online Teaching Playbook, which I think will serve as a very valuable tool as I move forward in online teaching and learning. Gathering resources and articles to remind myself of different considerations was a wonderful experience for me, and something that I have thought about doing for a long time. I am thankful that Dr. Kay encouraged me to explore this because it gave me the drive to do it.

One final thought, as I read through the finals chapters of Making the Move to eLearning, I need to add audio and video files to my portfolio! I’m thinking, either on the Welcome Page, or on the About Me page, where I can tell prospective employers about my accomplishments, rather than have it presented as just text, while showing that I am comfortable and confident using technology.