1. Think about an example of a ‘good practice’ you have experienced with regard to online learning, either as a learner or an instructor. Jot down notes, use a journal, or draw a concept map to describe the story of your experience with this example of good practice.
I was able to be one of the first adaptors of Articulate software at RRU – fancy voice-over-powerpoint funtionality. To the students whose courses I was facilitating, this was very new for them. They appreciated the opportunity to interact for the first time in more than just a discussion group format. These days, so soon after, our toolkit has grown to include so many interactive ways to deliver content or provoke discussion, but at the time it was very new.
It was hard to do. I wasn’t yet familiar enough with the course content that I could just put up a slide and speak to it – I had “inherited” the course, and so I had to script it out to make sure I covered all the essential points. And if I made a mistake halfway through talking, I had to start over. Some of the slides had nearly 20 minutes worth of content, so this initial process was frustrating …. but in the end it was very much worth the effort, since it was so well received by the learners.
2. Now, relate this example to other experiences you’ve had. You can use some of the following sentence starters to help you: •This reminds me of . . . . •I remember when . . . •This situation is just like . . . •It makes me feel that . . . •This compares to . . . •This is different from . . .
I am not accustomed to having such a positive reaction result so quickly from something I felt so trepidatious about. This was different from working on the admin side of the house, where rules and regulations are clear cut, solid, and well understood. Safe, as it were. The combination of risk taking AND creativity was very outside the box for me. But what a delightful reward in the response!
Now consider your example again and answer the following questions:
•Why was this a good practice for you? With this safe beginning after taking a risk, the road was paved for future risk taking being worth the effort, if it could really make a difference in the experience for the learners.
•What are some of key principles that underlie the experience you had? Er… not sure how to answer this one…
I think this experience echoed the development of learning technologies’ development in recent years. It is an artificial construct to put adult humans into a learning environment where the only means of communicating and learning is by reading and writing, no listening, no demos, no body language, no team brainstorming where everyone talks at once. Enhancing those humble beginnings of online learning was just beginning at the time I took my risk in making use of Articulate. I was one of only three instructors at RRU who was doing it at the time, I remember. And now, after being away from distributed learning for a long 2.5 years, it’s been remarkable to me to see how far the technology has come along, to add in opportunities, like that one had been, to interact more like the humans we are.
•How can you use these principles to create and/or facilitate a successful online learning experience for your own learners? How will I use this learning to facilitate successful online experiences in the future? I guess my takeaway from this rumination is that it really paid off to take a risk that first time. I must not stay with the “older” technologies I have grown comfortable with, but instead must push myself into new discomfort to play with and embrace all the new tools available to me as well.
