Observing other courses-Module 2

Rob Piorkowski
Elementary French I

The French course has a very thorough lay out, assignments, and course information documents. The course uses some audio recording tools and Professor Piorkowski has included guides to familiarize the students with the tools. He is very thorough telling the students exactly what he wants, how to accomplish it and where to go to find the information, all key concepts pointed it in the readings and video in module 2. 

He assumes nothing and gives the students all the information they would need if they knew nothing at all, including an "essential strategies document"  that runs through any and every problem the student might encounter in there use of the web and how to solve it. Professor Picket argues this is a good thing. And I do think information is a very good. If the teacher knows of a problem that a bunch of students had in her course last term that took time to solve, where the student had to contact the professor and the professor had to search for an answer than reply back, why not talk about the problem and solution ahead of time. The smoother the class runs the more involved the students will be with discussions, diving deeper. 

But at the same time there is a line to be drawn. When is there too much information? Professor Pickett seems to argue the more the better. But Jason Scorza argues that information is necessary but warns to not go too far by saturating the student, “it is not necessary to present overly elaborate guidelines which…leave the students confused or intimidated.”

You can tell Professor Piorkowski spent a lot of time building his course. My first thought when I became involved in the online teaching world is that it would save time. You build your course once, and you can use it over and over again, making minor changes. You can work from anywhere. But now I am not sure. Reading the course material it seems like it will be more work. In the article Do online students dream of electric teachers, Jason Scorza mentioned how daunting it can be as an online teacher just reading all the discussion posts, than says imagine having four online course worth of discussion posts to read.

Just to go off on a tangent, when technology was first brought into the business world we were told it will take over many of the tasks that people used to do, making our life easier. But it has not. What more technology has done in the world of business is allow the worker to accomplish more work. This might not best the best thing since the political talk show host Thom Hartmann recently mentioned that the middle class wages have increased only 1% from 1980-2008

And while the course seems to be teaching the French language he breaks up the monotony by talking about other topics in the French culture to further immerse the student in the world of France. For example he has a discussion set up around an article called understanding France, where the students can dig deeper into what the Country is like, what they think of our culture, and what our culture thinks of theirs. 

Bill Pelz

Developmental Psychology

I really enjoyed view Bill Peltz course. He use every one of the tips you write speak about in your article a series of unfortunate online events and your what works presentations, like;

Assume nothing-supply the students with plenty of information(what you want, what you expect, grading rubrics, examples, where to go, what to do, what to read, where to answer, where to start, at what pace, how to contribute, what not to  do) -keep pattern for each module the same-showing your presence in the course but not being there all the time-organize the course into chunks-encourage a sense of community.

I really enjoyed two items specifically that Bill Peltz uses in his course to create a community type atmosphere where the students are working together, kind of in a group format, and learning from each other.

1. He has the student find an authentic website full of resources and write a paper about the site. The student will than lead a group discussion about the site he has chosen.

2. He has the student read the text and again, lead a discussion. Each student gets a chance to lead the discussion, and Professor Peltz specifically states in his course information documents that he will not participate in these discussions.  So he is instructing and guiding, supplying rules, and showing examples of exactly what he wants but he is leaving the discussion up to a social learning process by having the students debate the issues. This is a cool concept for me. As the Instructor is sparking the learning and the students are running with the flame, and who knows where they will go.  

Bob Burgess in analyzing the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates philosophy on learning says, “Through his method of powerfully questioning his students, he seeks to guide them to discover the subject matter rather than simply telling them what they need to know.” This idea also goes back to our first article Minds on Fire where the Cartesian model of education is being questioned for a new model, or in Socrates case an old way.

This Socrates quote was inspired by visitng Professor Pelz bio page in our course under resources. At the bottom there is a link to a website to learn more about Professor Pelz current activity, http://www.technoheutagogy.com/ . At the top of the page he has a Socrates quote about education. So remembering about Socrates from my undergrad work I googled Socrates and learning to see what the wise old Greek had to say.

All the modules in Professor Pelz course are organized identical, with information on assignments, and assignment requirements, than the assignments below, creating very nice chunks of organized class work. He also posts the assignments requirements for a second time, in a second location inside the module, creating redundancy that helps because you don’t have to go back out of the location where you are working to find the documents to see your instructions. 


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