Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Reflection on 5377
Well, I'm not officially a Phd student yet, but I am working toward that goal.
I took 5377--Grantwriting to get a feel for the program and for the faculty involved in teaching the classes. I have been involved in other courses (although they were training courses and not academic) where there was almost no communication with the instructor and very little communication with the students. It felt very lonely. I have to say that I am very impressed with TTU.
I have had contact with two professors thus far, Dr. Rich Rice and Dr. Locke Carter. I've learned alot from Dr. Rice, not only class content, but also strategies for online content delivery. From Dr. Carter, I have gotten a sense of the type of advising that will be offered to guide me through the program.
Dr. Rice challenged us to use technology not only to learn the material but to communicate. I have had to learn how to use MOO, Camtasia, MovieMaker, advanced features of powerpoint and instant messaging in order to fulfill the course requirements. What I like best is that these are all skills which I will be able to put to use for my own teaching. Dr. Rice forced the students to go out and learn how to best deliver the content of our assignments and he modeled the strategies in delivering the content of the class himself. He used videos for instruction which I liked for several reasons. The videos provided the consistency for contact between the instructor and the student. I'm not sure what his goals for the videos were exactly, but I can say that the videos allowed me to feel that connection with the instructor through the video-lecture/presentation. He used the videos to present information just like he would have during a f2f class. He integrated powerpoint slides to focus on the key ideas of his lecture which usually pointed back to the information provided in the textbook. He used the students' comments, blog, video and audio, to create a sense of discussion in the class. I have to admit that the weeks when no video was offered the feeling of consistency began to suffer. With the videos, I was able to prepare for the next class meeting, get an idea of what other students were doing, and keep the class in the foreground of my mind. With so many things going on, it was good to have something that I could go to at any time of the day to refocus on the class.
The website for the class was very important to me. It is very thorough, centralizes all the course information, and leads in many different directions. Almost every class day entry has several links to more information. Sometimes it was fairly obvious that the information was a link and at other times it was not. I found that I had to read with the mouse following the words on the screen so that I would not lose a link. Very few links were dead-ends and most lead to invaluable information.
The blog was also a new experience but very rewarding. I liked the blog prompts which we were given each week, especially those which asked us to reflect on our process. It seemed to me that the ones which were most difficult for me were those which were questions from the book. Those seemed to ask for very specific responses and did not give the opportunity for further reflection. I was glad to see Lennie and Wayne use the blog more freely and write about other things which were not in a prompt. I was not sure exactly how acceptable this was so I refrained from doing that. I am struggling right now trying to figure out a way that I can use the blog method of discussion in my class but design it for more interaction.
I think that I gained alot by writing the blog responses but I also would have liked to interact with my classmates more. That is one aspect of the course which I wanted more of. I was able to interact with some of my classmates through IM. I think I had a couple of IM sessions with Pete, Wayne and Sultan. I had one with Lennie. But that was all. Even though some of the blog prompts asked us to look at what our classmates were doing (2 I think), I am wondering how else interaction can be generated without necessarily overburdening everyone.
I like the ideas of the teams but they were not used until late in the class when the workshopping began. Even with the workshopping, we were working in isolation and not really having conversation which is what is required with interaction. Going back and forth once is really not enough, I think, to create that sense of communication. But the question is, how can that be accomplished....
I took 5377--Grantwriting to get a feel for the program and for the faculty involved in teaching the classes. I have been involved in other courses (although they were training courses and not academic) where there was almost no communication with the instructor and very little communication with the students. It felt very lonely. I have to say that I am very impressed with TTU.
I have had contact with two professors thus far, Dr. Rich Rice and Dr. Locke Carter. I've learned alot from Dr. Rice, not only class content, but also strategies for online content delivery. From Dr. Carter, I have gotten a sense of the type of advising that will be offered to guide me through the program.
Dr. Rice challenged us to use technology not only to learn the material but to communicate. I have had to learn how to use MOO, Camtasia, MovieMaker, advanced features of powerpoint and instant messaging in order to fulfill the course requirements. What I like best is that these are all skills which I will be able to put to use for my own teaching. Dr. Rice forced the students to go out and learn how to best deliver the content of our assignments and he modeled the strategies in delivering the content of the class himself. He used videos for instruction which I liked for several reasons. The videos provided the consistency for contact between the instructor and the student. I'm not sure what his goals for the videos were exactly, but I can say that the videos allowed me to feel that connection with the instructor through the video-lecture/presentation. He used the videos to present information just like he would have during a f2f class. He integrated powerpoint slides to focus on the key ideas of his lecture which usually pointed back to the information provided in the textbook. He used the students' comments, blog, video and audio, to create a sense of discussion in the class. I have to admit that the weeks when no video was offered the feeling of consistency began to suffer. With the videos, I was able to prepare for the next class meeting, get an idea of what other students were doing, and keep the class in the foreground of my mind. With so many things going on, it was good to have something that I could go to at any time of the day to refocus on the class.
The website for the class was very important to me. It is very thorough, centralizes all the course information, and leads in many different directions. Almost every class day entry has several links to more information. Sometimes it was fairly obvious that the information was a link and at other times it was not. I found that I had to read with the mouse following the words on the screen so that I would not lose a link. Very few links were dead-ends and most lead to invaluable information.
The blog was also a new experience but very rewarding. I liked the blog prompts which we were given each week, especially those which asked us to reflect on our process. It seemed to me that the ones which were most difficult for me were those which were questions from the book. Those seemed to ask for very specific responses and did not give the opportunity for further reflection. I was glad to see Lennie and Wayne use the blog more freely and write about other things which were not in a prompt. I was not sure exactly how acceptable this was so I refrained from doing that. I am struggling right now trying to figure out a way that I can use the blog method of discussion in my class but design it for more interaction.
I think that I gained alot by writing the blog responses but I also would have liked to interact with my classmates more. That is one aspect of the course which I wanted more of. I was able to interact with some of my classmates through IM. I think I had a couple of IM sessions with Pete, Wayne and Sultan. I had one with Lennie. But that was all. Even though some of the blog prompts asked us to look at what our classmates were doing (2 I think), I am wondering how else interaction can be generated without necessarily overburdening everyone.
I like the ideas of the teams but they were not used until late in the class when the workshopping began. Even with the workshopping, we were working in isolation and not really having conversation which is what is required with interaction. Going back and forth once is really not enough, I think, to create that sense of communication. But the question is, how can that be accomplished....
# posted by Prof Santoy @ 3:52 PM 
