Friday, April 07, 2006

my reflecting pool

I was surprised how many people were in the course that had online teaching experience and how many actually were there because they support online fauclty and wanted to pick up additional information to help them in designing faculty development activities. The course was intended for new online fauclty and i was not expecting experienced online instructional designers in the course.

I was surprised at the small number of participants that participated regularly in the online activities compared to the total number of participants - only about 20% or so.

I was surprised that some of my activities were not participated in at all.

I was surprised how many people did the journaling activity, even though no one else could see it but me. I loved reading their journals!

It was a LOT of work. Doing the interviews, the Breeze presentations, and the elluminate events - which i did AFTER the course went live - took a LOT of time. I did at 4 all nighters during that 3 week period.

using moodle for course management was extreamly challenging. There are no course management tools to speak of , so following and keeping up with things was very difficult

best intentions

so i had every intention of blogging through the delivery of the workshop...but ... well... it didn't happen. The workshop is now over and i have been meaning to reflect on the experience a bit.

By the end there were a total of 77 participants from all of the USA in the workshop. Wow! It is one of the hardest and most rewarding experiences i have had in my professional life. I LOVED every minute of the exhausting experience.
  • I wrote a manual - updating my thoughts and approaches to online course development.
  • I designed a course in Moodle. First time in another CMS.
  • I blogged for the first time. : )
  • I interviewed online faculty and posted the interviews with their online courses creating podcasts for faculty development purposes - an online course for observation with author /instructional designer commentary.
  • I created 3 Breeze presentations - audio annotated powerpoint presentations.
  • I conducted 2 live synchronous webinars using elluminate.
This was a very satisfying experience. I innovated, i stretched, i did new things, i met and interacted with new people from all over the country... it was a total blast.