The always evolving course

One thing that I have learned this module that every single faculty spoke about in the audio clips, was how they always looked for ways to make there class better. In the martial arts world they say every movement is important but when you see the same movement repeated over and over you can bet its very imortant.

Every one of the teachers in Exempler courses for observation talked about they way analzye their course, sometimes when its over sometimes during, to see what worked and what did not work. What content and activities sparked a lot of student activity and what sparked very little. Since the online course by its nature has to be engaging, all the teachers we learned about in module two saught to remove any non-engaging content.

When Professor Pickett asked Beth Harris how long did it take her to create her course, Beth said I dont know because I am not done yet. I wonder if this is just a unique attitude of those using online learning. Because I have experienced, and I am sure we all, a f2f teacher who has those twenty year old lecture notes that they still use, and when you try to ask him an off topic question, or a intutitive question he looks like a deer frozen in the headlights? Will those teachers fit in well teaching online? Will those teachers give online learning a bad rep?

My initial thoughts concerning online teaching was that it would be less work, but the deeper I dive into this class the less that seesm to be, that is, if you want to be an exceptional teacher. Do you?

A teacher I met at my College told me of a practice she uses, where mid semester she polls the students direclty to see how they like the class, what they dislike, etc. And she will change the course midstream if there are some items that are not inspiring the students to learn and build and create. I liked this idea. Showing the students that they have a voice in their learning process.  When I did my undergrad work ten years ago this thought never crossed my mind. I did what they told me. That was the role of student. But the roles are evolving. And if a teacher can pull out of a student much more effort by doing little things like asking them for input and acting on that input, than I see this as a great idea.

Beth even said that in her course she asks the students what they think the best way would be for them to be assessed on the work they are doing.

Now on the other side of the coin, if you ask for input I could see the class whining that there is too much work, the essays are too hard, the readings are too long. At some I am the teacher and you as the student will have to make some sacrifices in my course to learn and achieve success. That is life. Nothing is easy that is worth doing.

Anyone worth anything is always asking themselves how they can do it better
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