Weekly Agendas

One of the strategies I've decided to use for the course -- one that I always use in my face-to-face courses and really like -- is the weekly agenda. I like having a one-page document, or checklist, that spells out what needs to be done. The weekly agendas are pithy on purpose...the details are elsewhere (pointed to from the agenda). This means that learners have to click to other parts of the course to get the details, but it also means that multiple agendas can refer to the same assignment, and that assignment only needs to reside in one location (as opposed to being copied and pasted multiple times...which is then a nightmare if I need to make a change to the assignment).

What is a "Hands-on/Minds-on" activity?

I think of Hands-on/Minds-on assignments as similar to the type of learning activities I would ask students to participate in during an on-campus class session. In other words, they are activities that are designed to help you process the readings (hence the "minds-on" part), and practice the application and creation know-how and skills (the "hands-on" part) that are needed for the Culminating Projects. These activities are designed to be completed in 1-2 weeks, so they are short-term assignments.

The reason for this category of activity in IT 5130 is because one of the issues I struggle with as an online educator is finding the workload balance (I've been exploring this issue for awhile, see my article on workload reduction strategies to see where I started). I tend to feel overwhelmed by the workload in online courses, as do learners. I want the coursework to be challenging and reflect high expectations, as graduate-level coursework should. But, at the same time, I want learners to have a good, relatively stress-free experience that recognizes their full personal and professional lives. So, one of the angles I took when I started to think about redesigning this course was what I would do if I was teaching the course on-campus. Now, I don't mean to suggest that what I do on-campus is ideal or the gold-standard for comparison purposes. But, I don't tend to feel overwhelmed when teaching on-campus...so, I thought there might be something for me to explore there. It is because of this analysis that I determined to try this distinction between short-term activities (Hands-on/Minds-on) and the multi-week activities (Culminating Projects).

Groupwork

I know that many of the folks who will take IT 5130 have been involved in a lot of complex teamwork activities. For this course, I'm going to focus on individual activities, with a lot of encouraged sharing and required peer review of the three Cumulative Projects. I'm pretty fond of groupwork for online learning communities for a number of instructional reasons. But, time to give them a break.

What I hope...

When I took Instructional Message Design a gazillion years ago, the required text was Fleming and Levie's classic -- but out of print -- text, Instructional Message Design. Chapter after chapter of principles...really dense material, but incredibly valuable. That course -- above any other course -- made me a better instructional designer. Them I taught the course for a number of years, face-to-face. And, with the same results. Students would share afterwards how valuable -- although very challanging -- the course was to their work. That is what I want for the learners in this course, for them to complete the course believing that the experience -- and the readings and work completed -- has made them better instructional designers.

It begins...

It has been a month since my father died, and it is a month out from when the course starts. So, I think I am ready to start going through all of my notes for this course and plan the experience.

A few months ago I had an interesting conversation with Raymond Wlodkowski (well-known author of texts on enhancing adults motivation to learn, and diversity in the classroom) regarding my application of his motivational framework to online courses. This sort of spun off into a discussion about course structure, and how structured to be. I tend to be very structured with online courses (which lead to me creating a 22 page syllabus for my on-campus Adult Education and Learning course...yikes!). At this point, I believe I have been too structured, too complex, too cluttered. So, with this course I want to be minimalist, natural, organic. I'm not sure it is possible for me to do that, but what gives me hope is that I used to teach that way...before teaching online.

Here is the flaw in my thinking about online course design, I believe. The courses I create are for graduate students (or, at least, post-undergraduate). But, my thinking has been that the audience for online programs and courses are not as self-directed as they need to be, that the demands on their time cause a distraction from engaging in the coursework. And, therefore, that I needed to provide layers of structure, and deadlines, and directions in order to scaffold the missing self-direction and wave a red flag to garner attention.

But, here's the reality. Adult learners are self-directed, are motivated. They just may not be self-direct and motivated to do what I want them to do. This has everything to do with relevance (and, of course, their need to balance the many demands on their time and energy). If the learning activity isn't relevant to them, then they are less engaged in the activity. If they do see the relevance, and can find the time and energy to make it happen, then they will engage. My job is to create learning activities that have the potential of being seen as relevant and, thus, engaging. I can't force this to happen with layers of structure, and deadlines, and directions. There is no magic number or size of red flags I can wave to make this happen.

So, throughout this design process, I am going to keep reflecting on what I used to do when teaching face-to-face in a classroom -- what my attitude about the learning-teaching exchange was, what I valued in terms of flow and structure -- and see if I can come up with an approach that reflects a valuing of adult learners' intrinsic motivation to engage. My approach will be as minimalist as appropriate (without leading everyone to confusion), and I will try to create learning opportunities for students that are inviting and not forced.

Let's see what happens...