my first week!

I have been so consumed with facilitating the workshop that i have had little time to bolg... the first week is over. It is going great. There are now 51 participants signed up to the course. It is amazing. They are from all over the US. It is such a cool feeling to be connecting with all these amazing people. I am having trouble with course management in moodle... it is hard to keep the discussions straight. there is no way to sort the discussion , to mark items read or unread, to track where you are, to collapse /expand threads... it is really easy to loose a post in there... also, i am just not comfortable with how thing functions. there seem to be no course management tools... i just today found the journals from 9 of the participants, even though i had checked that area religeously every day... it is just not clear when new stuff is posted or where. and tracking is a probelm.

I think students were overwhelmed with the scope of the course. I need to make it clearer that the course is a model and illustration in addition to functioning as a place to interact and do activities... but as it is not for credit or certification and it is for only 3 weeks, participants need to just participate to the extent that they want or are able and to see it as a model full of ideas and suggestions to learn from...

I opened up module 2 yesterday ... very exciting... i had to finish and redo half of the audio commentary files... to change them from mp3 files to wav...i also had to finish the teaching presence presentation today... it is not a great as my ID one... but it is done.

I am having trouble with the fact that the course is not for credit or certification... the motivation and leverage i would have with that would change the dynamics significantly in the course. As it is... i can't really do student led discussion there is no motivation for students to do that... so the result is that it is heavily on me to interract. I am going to try to get the students to interact more with each other in module 2 we shall see.

I am surprised that there are so many support folks vs faculty participating. My assumptions were new faculty with no online experience, and experienced faculty that wanted help, i did not at all envision folks that supported faculty taking the course. it kinda changes things for me and the course...

i am loving this. it is soooooo much fun.

: )