Creating an online lesson — in Blackboard, or any LMS (Learning Management System) — can be a daunting task. In this case, I’ve used Blackboard many times as a student and felt that I was familiar with the LMS enough to create the lesson. It turned out that what I see as a student is merely the polished and organized result of the instructor’s hard work.
The first difficulty that I ran into was making sense of the multitude of options that were available to me as an instructor to organize and develop the lesson within the Blackboard system. While many resources were available to me in regards to how to do this, I chose to merely “play” with the system and make changes as I went. I believe the result I came up with is passable, however, I think that with further development of my skills, I could create a much better version visually.
It would have been easy to just put something up and call it finished. However, it was also prudent to keep in mind sound androgogy principles as well as the principles of cognitive, social, and instructor presence. For most of the lesson, I was able to implement the androgogy principles of leaving the pace to the student by giving suggested due dates and sequence, but only using hard due dates for the assessment and discussion board parts. I also tried to provide ample resources, with multiple formats, to help the student feel that they were in charge of the direction and method of their learning. Lastly, the content is directly tied to the GED testing services impact indicators tied to the Social Studies test giving the student an understanding of the purpose for the learning.
I used the principle of instructor presence by trying to facilitate the student learning with ample resources, guided discussion board interactions, and opportunity for the student to discuss the course with the instructor. Social presence was accomplished through discussion board posts where the students were directed to post information and then respond to their peers in the class as well. Finally, cognitive presence was accomplished through the discussion boards, discourse with peers, and creative elements to help concrete the learning in the lesson.
After completing this assignment, I found myself with a more complete understanding of what it takes to create an online course. I have a new level of respect for the instructors who create new courses regularly, and doubly so for those instructors that present a polished and updated course every time it is offered. I also look forward to being able to do the same. I am encouraged with the lesson that I created and find myself excited to delve more deeply into the world of online lesson creation and online teaching.
Shane Ede: My EDTECH Learning Log 