Ok, this one is very late. The four night classes a week caught up with me….

This week’s reading, videos and comments were very informative as to different tools to use to engage students. I know that I’ll be going back to this week in the future for further review. Here are some of my thoughts:

Reading the Ko & Rosen text for this week I began to think about the usefulness of group activities, discussion, reflective activities, and peer editing and review.

• I’ve used Blackboard for group activities in the past for my f2f Middle East class. I had the class sign up for specific aspects of modernity in the 19th century Middle East like the introduction of city planning, the debate about the role of women in the public sphere, and the conflict between Islam and Modernity. They were given primary sources and then had to use a discussion thread to discuss how to present their group’s aspect of modernity. After reading Ko & Rosen I went back to the old Blackboard course shell and reviewed what I had done and came to realize how many things I could have done to improve the assignment. For example, my guidelines for the students were totally lacking in specifically outlining what I expected their final product to be. I also gave them one grade for the assignment rather than giving them a rubric to guide them as to understanding their group’s final score. I also made the groups too big. I’m going to completely redo this assignment for next semester and reintroduce it in my Middle Eastern history course.
• I found the text’s rules for discussion useful: 1) Coverage – be sure all content areas have discussion coverage. 2) Objective – be sure to have clear critical thinking or instructional objectives 3) Spur-of-the-moment – be responsive.
• I’m really interested in trying out reflective activities. I’m thinking that it might be great to have students keep a journal on Blackboard where they could post summaries of assigned written material, ask reflective questions of the material or try and make connections with other content from the class.
• I’ve never used Peer Editing & Review. I’m really interested in what experiences others have had with this type of approach, using what type of assignments and if anyone has any further resources on this approach…

Lisa and Jim’s presentations on blogs have inspired me to utilize blogs in a future online class or even to experiment with them in a f2f class. I could envision the assignment that I mentioned above for my Middle East class utilizing blogs. For example, rather than have students present their sources and conclusions on modernity in class, they could have a blog post for each piece of evidence and then have a group summary at the end. It would be easy to use the blog to not only present written material, but they could paste in photographs, old newsreels, etc. All of the groups participating could then write a paper on Modernity in the Middle East utilizing evidence from all of the groups. Fun!

I also learned from these presentations to be sure to have a clear goal, to create an effective rubric to grade the finished product so the students are clear in what I’m looking for, and to be sure that students are well instructed as to how to create and use a blog.

Elluminate is cool. I had to watch Jim’s presentation twice. Once to listen to him and another time to watch the running online commentary led by Lisa. I think that Collaborate on Blackboard works the same way. Anyone try these tools?