Group Grid
Personally I think that our group has done a marvelous job in creating our grid for the history of DE. We used all of the readings that were assigned to complete the columns of the grid. All of us used references that we found ourselves outside of the assigned readings to make the grid more of a complete history of DE. I used the grid to order my thoughts after completing the readings. This gave me a good overview of what we were doing for the week and what sources I could use for the assignments each week.
Definition of DE
My definition as stated in my reflections on wave two:
Distance education is any system of teaching and learning that uses technology to offer education to students that are removed from the source of the teaching.
As I said in my wave 3 reflections, I think that this definition is general enough so that it covers most if not all of the possibilities for DE. This definition does not cover blended learning, but I feel that a separate definition for blended learning would be more appropriate.
Course Syllabus
Looking at the table of course objectives in the course syllabus, I think that all of the objectives have been reached. The objective of navigating and using an online environment is the one objective that I feel needs more time than 12 weeks to fully complete. Although I learned and used quite a few of the different environments, I feel that there are quite a few of the technological platforms that I would like to learn more of. Hopefully those platforms will be covered in courses following this one.
All of the other objectives were met to my satisfaction. I do think though that most of the objectives rely heavily on the student and his/her understanding of the course material.
Group Work
I enjoyed the group work but it was frustrating at times when the asynchronous nature of the collaboration meant that contributions and feedback from other members were not available until later in the week. As I used the grid to order my thoughts of the weeks’ readings, I completed the grid early each week.
Other than that I can say that the experience has been very enjoyable. Unfortunately I will not be able to implement similar tactics in the courses that I teach. The courses that I teach require the student to do individual projects similar to MDE’s capstone course.
It was interesting to read the contributions of the other group member and to see their interpretations of the readings. I also saw where I needed to go and read the readings again to clarify some of the information for myself. The non-participation of one group member and the withdrawal of another did not bother me that much, as I used all of the grid headings to order my thoughts and could just slot them into the grid.
Overall I found the group project very useful. As I mentioned the only problem I had was with the asynchronous nature of the collaboration. I do not think that anything can be done to improve this situation as it is part of the nature of DE.
Personally I think that our group has done a marvelous job in creating our grid for the history of DE. We used all of the readings that were assigned to complete the columns of the grid. All of us used references that we found ourselves outside of the assigned readings to make the grid more of a complete history of DE. I used the grid to order my thoughts after completing the readings. This gave me a good overview of what we were doing for the week and what sources I could use for the assignments each week.
Definition of DE
My definition as stated in my reflections on wave two:
Distance education is any system of teaching and learning that uses technology to offer education to students that are removed from the source of the teaching.
As I said in my wave 3 reflections, I think that this definition is general enough so that it covers most if not all of the possibilities for DE. This definition does not cover blended learning, but I feel that a separate definition for blended learning would be more appropriate.
Course Syllabus
Looking at the table of course objectives in the course syllabus, I think that all of the objectives have been reached. The objective of navigating and using an online environment is the one objective that I feel needs more time than 12 weeks to fully complete. Although I learned and used quite a few of the different environments, I feel that there are quite a few of the technological platforms that I would like to learn more of. Hopefully those platforms will be covered in courses following this one.
All of the other objectives were met to my satisfaction. I do think though that most of the objectives rely heavily on the student and his/her understanding of the course material.
Group Work
I enjoyed the group work but it was frustrating at times when the asynchronous nature of the collaboration meant that contributions and feedback from other members were not available until later in the week. As I used the grid to order my thoughts of the weeks’ readings, I completed the grid early each week.
Other than that I can say that the experience has been very enjoyable. Unfortunately I will not be able to implement similar tactics in the courses that I teach. The courses that I teach require the student to do individual projects similar to MDE’s capstone course.
It was interesting to read the contributions of the other group member and to see their interpretations of the readings. I also saw where I needed to go and read the readings again to clarify some of the information for myself. The non-participation of one group member and the withdrawal of another did not bother me that much, as I used all of the grid headings to order my thoughts and could just slot them into the grid.
Overall I found the group project very useful. As I mentioned the only problem I had was with the asynchronous nature of the collaboration. I do not think that anything can be done to improve this situation as it is part of the nature of DE.