MedievalHist

Hey Potcerters, as someone who already uses Moodle for my F2F classes I like the idea of a topic/weekly interactive syllabus as the basis for my course, in the same way the Lisa and John do, although I like how Pilar’s course just displayed the current week’s  (or in her case two weeks) information. I wonder if this can be done automatically in Moodle, or does it have to be done manually?

The class tours, which I love (there is nothing more useful than real working examples), plus the chapter on course design did seem to help me focus my thought on at least some of what I want in my course.

Weekly Material: Short PowerPoint presentations (maybe 2-3 of 10 minutes for each week) , probably with camtasia voice overs.  Possibly supplemented with publicly available online lectures, which would be optional for those that were having difficulty or had a deeper interest in the week’s topic.  Also, a brief webpage with a overview of the subject, with some short embedded audio files or possibly Prezi presentations.

Online research: Maybe I would supplement this with some weekly online research where the students post some quotes or images relevant to the week’s topic along with their commentary on it.  Hopefully this would be similar to when students bring in images to the class like this (Geocentric Model of the Universe):

and then we discuss them.

Primary Sources: I like Jill’s use of student commentary/critiques/commendation on projects she posts to a website.  Now her students medium is more visual than mine but I would like my student’s to comment on  each others work. So I would like to have a number of short primary source assignments (possibly every other week) with answers and the comments on others answers done on a discussion board.  Also I would like to have the students evaluate each others’ work and for that to count as part of the grade for each assignment.

Testing: Self assessment tests every few weeks with automated immediate feedback, where credit is obtained for just completing  the assignment.

Combine this with a number (probably 4-5 per semester) of high-stakes multiple choice tests.  Time limited to reduce the use of notes/books, and also with random question/answer order.

Writing Assignment: one or two longer assignments involving primary sources and web research (hopefully which they have been posting over the course of the semester), possibly with students working collaboratively, which also might involve using a site like diigo.

A Written Final, which I would like to time limit but I am not sure how I would work it exactly.  I wonder if I could have them log in at their own convenience get the assignment and have say 3 hours to upload their completed work.  The subjects they would write on would be randomized out of a list (which would be available a week out)  so there would not be any way one person could go earlier and let the rest know which subjects were on the test.

Well as I approach this weeks information here is where I am starting from:  I used blackboard for 4-5 years to supplement my F2F history courses and a little over a year ago I fully switched over to Moodle as it became more supported by the districts in which I teach.  I really do like the flexibility that Moodle offers in comparison to blackboard and I find the Q&A forum type to be invaluable with certain types of online assignments.  So I already had a good idea where I was heading on Lisa’s flow chart but I went over it anyway.

Having looked over the getting started chart and taken the beginner’s questionnaire (and scored a 17 on it) I feel like I am emphasizing lecture and large group discussions a little too much in my F2F classes. Some of the pedagogical goals I have for the class are:

1) While I currently have about 7 assignments that use primary sources in my average history class I want to modify the type of assignment that I do with them. Rather than just giving everyone the same document and having them provide some straight forward answers and analysis, I would like to assign a number of different sources or give them choices (maybe I will have them signup for them) and in addition to having them discuss the sources I would have them do web research on the background of their document and present their findings to their fellow classmates (possibly on a discussion board)

2) Make sure that they understand some of the connections between a variety of historical events. I would normally do this through PowerPoint assisted lectures combined with some Socratic questioning in a F2F class but I am not as sure if/how I will modify this for an online class. Should I just truncate/split/modify my PowerPoint presentations and do a voice over with something like Camtasia? I am not entirely sure at this point.

3) Especially during the first few semesters I want to do some web polls (I hope Moodle can accommodate this, but I bet it can) to gauge student familiarity and access with a variety of technologies to better modify the class.

4) Being glowingly accessible for both my online and F2F students with some form of online chat/IM system. I am leery of using a synchronous communication system for a required element of the class because it seems to me that one of the great advantages of online classes is to do the work when you want to and not according to a fixed schedule.

Well now that I have created a blog for myself I guess I will have to write on it (actually I was planning on using my blog from last year but since WordPress charges for embedding media I had to redo it through MiraCosta).

First let me introduce myself.  My name is Eric Gregory and I am an associate faulty member at MiraCosta in the history department (hey Lisa).  I have an M.A. from the University of Chicago and was in the Ph.D. program at UCLA but for the past 8 years I have been teaching at MiraCosta and a variety of other community colleges mostly in the San Diego area.  Now I have relocated to the Inland Empire (which while truly inland from the southern California coast, is not much of an empire), and I hope to cut down on my commuting one day.

While I am interested in moving into online teaching.  Like a number of you I have had some experience online, I have taught a number of hybrid classes and for the past 4 years I have supplemented my in person classes with optional online elements but the thought of teaching an entirely online class is somewhat disconcerting.  I am quite technologically savvy, I assembled the computer I am typing this post on, and probably the 5 to 6 computers I have used before it, so it is not the idea of using new software or modes of communication which is intimidating.  Rather it is the challenge of how to replicate, or more accurately provide something different but of comparable richness, the classroom environment in an online setting.

Actually here is a picture of my current setup:

Anyway I look forward to learning with and from all of you over the next few semesters.