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| Summaries |
| Synthesis |
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Class Summaries
Face-to-face
Thursday, March 1, 2001
Group Discussion Activity:
Norm broke the class into groups of three to four and had each group work on the same task. Our task was to examine and discuss personal CMC based learning experiences and focus on the following themes
- Activities that we have experience with…
- Tools that we used….
- Advantages/Disadvantages
After 15 minutes of discussion, each
group shared highlights from their discussions...
Click on the picture to get the full version.
Interesting bits from our discussion….
- 'CMC' - one group thought this represented Country Music Channel. They mediated through low tempo music with descriptively sad undertones about their depressing and obviously missing and tragic components of their current realities (J just kidding )
- Some people have dabbled with this medium but most have not experienced a whole unit or course in a public education context with CMC learning. Issues of worthiness, cost and time were highly salient from all groups. We were concerned with the potential of a school acquiring let say Webct, and inappropriately using it. For example, Teacher X taking his/her students to the lab to work in a Webct environment with only each other. This would be a severe misuse of the resources, time and learning. We concluded that these tools are designed to connect people who are distributed in a geographical sense.
- We talked about 'video' within the CMC learning context. What value does video play in a learning context ? We agreed that in some situations CMC video tools, would be the best. For example, 'simulations' or 'experiments' that are too dangerous in a school setting could be observed in a CMC setting. The issue of 'timeliness' came up. How would the value of real time be better than a video recording of the event and viewed at a later date. We agreed that video has a place in CMC setting and that to conclude we closed by saying it 'depends' on the context, variables, goals of the learning experience, etc… It should be a topic of research within the academic and educational setting….
Creating Online Groups & Communities
We had a rather brief discussion about the topic of creating an online community and related it to our current course - EDER 677 Telecommunications in Education.
Issues/Ideas/Connections that were raised -
- Text book lays out format for establishing an online course - appears that our course is very similar to those guidelines as described in Palloff and Pratt.
- Norm mentioned that audio group 'loves' the discussion forum
- 14 weeks of discussion is too much. We should have more variety. Eg - this weeks 'Collaboration Challenge'
- Redundancy when meeting for 3 hours, once a week, then meeting again throughout the week. Question - How do you minimize this ? What value do people bring to each experience ( meeting face to face/audio and discussing/sharing in webct) ?
Blackboard Demo
We all reconvened in the 8th floor computer lab in the Educational Tower. Norm had to leave early, something about facilitating an audio class, and therefore our time was cut short by 1 hour.
Norm introduced us to Blackboard - which is a CMC company out of Seattle.
Interesting points…
- It is free
- Mount Royal choose this CMC tool after embarking on a thorough committee driven process (somewhat like a needs assessment/evaluation of available CMC tools)
- Appears to be quite user /instructor friendly
- Many of the instructors at Mount Royal are using Blackboard to supplement/support their face to face courses. They are not using it in an absolute 'distributed' learning model approach.
Gord
Audio Conference Class Summary
Thursday, March 1, 2001
7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
I.Housekeeping
Items From Throughout The Class
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When
it is your week to moderate, send the link for your Summary Web Site to
Norm.He will post this link to the
course WebCT site.
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Brigitte
commented that the quantity of postings has decreased.Norm
shared his enthusiasm regarding the upcoming weeks.
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Norm
and Bill are in the process of preparing some feedback.Final
evaluation will take place on the March 31 weekend.
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Proposals
are now past due.The submission
of proposals will allow Bill and Norm to provide some useful feedback.Final
projects will be shared with both classes on the evening of April 12.
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At
the end of the course, Norm and Bill will provide all students with a complete
list of links from all the postings from the course.
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Alternate
Formats For Weekly Moderation
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It
was suggested that perhaps the moderation activities and discussion forum
postings could take a break in the middle of the course to allow students
to collaborate on assignments and projects.It
was also suggested that each week be represented by a different activity
rather than following the same post-reply-post-reply-post-reply format
each week.
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Interesting
Read on This Week's Topic
(From
WebCT)
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The
Online Report on Pedagogical Techniques for Computer-Mediated Communication
A
report by Morten Flate Paulsen based on a group brainstorm from the ICDE-95
On-line World Conference in distance education.
Available:http://home2.dph.no/~morten/cmcped.htm |
II.Group
Discussion Activity:Synchronous
vs. Asynchronous CMC Tools
Each
group compared and contrasted synchronous and asynchronous CMC by examining
the advantages and disadvantages.Examples
of both were discussed.The following
table provides a brief summary:
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The exchange of
information is immediate.
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Can be confusing
without guidelines & organization.
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Communication can
take place during a 24 hour, 7 days a week time frame.
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The exchange of
information is often delayed.
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A transcript of
exchanges are available to the learners.
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Weak typists are
penalized.Strong typists sometimes
dominate conversations.
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Learners have time
to prepare thoughtful responses.
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The large quantity
of information can sometimes overpower and frustrate learners.
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Interesting
Quote:"In asynchronous programs
such as e-mail buddy programs, initially you see a lot of excitement, but
if there isn't any purpose, if it isn't either linked to the curriculum
or with a goal for the students to keep going, the connection can die out
really quickly."(Norm)
III.Class
Activity
Norm
spent 10 minutes providing an overview of several course development tools
that are currently available.These
are all represented by links on the Module 8 Page on our own WebCT:
·FirstClass
Communication System
·Learning
Space (IBM Lotus)
·Top
Class
·The
Learning Manager
·Blackboard
CourseInfo
·WebCT
We
then examined Blackboard CourseInfo more closely by logging into a course
that Norm set up at that site.Here
are some of the characteristics of the Blackboard CourseInfo course development
tool that were noted during our exploration:
·Customized
navigation area that remains fairly consistent.
·Announcement
homepage concept.
·Administrative
functions for fee payments, scheduling, and communication of grades.
·User
friendly frames and tools. (i.e. Student Homepage Maker)
·Diagnostic
tools for instructor evaluation.
·Digital
management system.
·Many
communication options including a "Virtual Classroom."
·Archived
Interactions.
TIP
OF THE CLASS:One can use the Blackboard
software to develop a course and then store the course on the Blackboard.com
server all for free!
