I thought that I would comment first on the section of Ko & Rossen we were to read for this week. I read the section through quickly a first time and then took out my syllabus for my World History I class and referred to it while reading it again. It proved to be a good exercise for preparing this post as I could look over my “Course Objectives” and “Student Learning Outcomes” and reevaluate them for both my f2f classes and a future online World History I class. Revisiting Bloom’s Taxonomy through the book’s links and Verena Robert’s post was very helpful in reworking some of my Course Objectives. I’m also starting to look at some of the links for design rubrics in the book. I finally wanted to bring to everyone’s attention -if you didn’t look at it already- the textbook’s website and their collection of web resources. http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415997263/online-guide.asp  It is a great addition to the POT’s Cool Toolbox.

I decided to use my World History I (to 1500) syllabus as the guiding force for my course design as it fits into Questionnaire and Getting Started Chart from last week. My syllabus is organized chronologically and then geographically (as are most world history textbooks) and I would want to keep that for my first online class as well. Within this organization, some of my course objectives are outlined below. My course objectives are such as they reflect the SLOs of the institutions that I teach at. I have also included some of the possible  methods I could use to engage students in the material.

• Chronology
  • Presentation: Video of a lecture; text
  • Interaction: Discussion; collaboration to create online content (Google docs, video, slide presentation)
  • Assessment: Quiz; Evaluation of discussions & content created from above.
• Ability to interpret primary and secondary sources
  • Presentation: Text; Images; Video
  • Interaction: Discussion; Web-based research
  • Assessment: Writing Assignments; Blog or Journal Entries
• Historical writing
  • I’m still working on this, but some initial thoughts… Historical writing is reflected in the above two objectives. I’m also thinking of revisiting the research paper again in a different way by not emphasizing the writing of a finished product, but the process by which a historian goes about writing a polished work of original research. Any thoughts?
• Approaches to world history. Ex. Using comparison.
  • Again, this one would be reflected in the objectives above. For example, students use/find primary sources related to ancient Chinese and Indian social organization and then compare. Or, students would collaboratively do research on Buddhist images, statues, texts, etc. from around Asia and then make conclusions concerning how different societies adapted Buddhism to their needs.

As for tools that I could use for the above objectives, I’m wanting to improve my skills at creating effective discussion boards and learning how to better grade them. Any suggestions as to resources on this subject?

I also think that I would use Diigo or a similar platform where students could collect primary sources (text, video, images, etc.) and then comment on them in a group setting.

I have also had students over the years comment how they like timelines in their textbooks to better understand how events around the world relate to one another.  Here are some links to timeline tools which might be used to engage students to better understand global chronology: timetoast, Tiki-toki, and here is and example from dipity on the history of the wheel: http://www.dipity.com/StevePro/History-of-The-Wheel/.

Hope I’m on the right track with this post. As always, comments welcome….