Week 6 and Feeling the Crunch

(We had Week 5 off.) I'm feeling sorry for all those university students who work full time, many with families, and also attend classes full time. I was at the EDC conference last week (great time), and someone stated that research had shown that most students at her institution (U of Calgary?) are in that situation. Even with only three cats to consider at home, I'm finding it really difficult to keep up with this one course.

Time management and the ways we can support it in online courses has taken on huge proportions in my mind. And it takes extra effort to connect for collaboration (not a bad thing). Our collaboration paper is due this week. What will happen? To be continued . . .

Two Complemetary Events This Week

This is Week 4 of the TOOC. I'm also doing a weeklong Learning Design Challenge with Diane Laurillard—a compressed and focused event. We're using a tool called the Learning Designer that seems to have great potential as a hands-on reminder of design principles for a layperson (non-instructional designer) developing a course. Nice for designers, too. It helps focus attention on the basics.

Meanwhile, in the TOOC, trying to find time to connect with a potential collaborator via Skype. Really enjoyed the Google Hangout session with Virginia Tech instructor John Boyer, AKA the Plaid Avenger. (I like plaid, too ;)). We are also learning about how to use Skype and Google Hangout effectively as educators.

Comparing various Hangout events, I'd give John's two thumbs up. It's really important to have your technical game together for these things. I feel that money invested in a good technical support person is very well spent if you want to be an online educator. Things like using a hard connection instead of wireless and having a good microphone/headset can make a huge difference in the learner experience. These are the details that can support successful adoption of a technology by learners.

Thinking About Less Is More

I'm doing some blogging as part of a University of Saskatchewan TOOC (truly online open course), Introduction to Learning Technologies, from the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness  (January 21–April 15, 2014).

We are blogging, tweeting, posting in Google+, Facebooking, and subscribing to an RSS feed; some are also Skyping on the side, and we get email notices from our facilitator. Some participants have commented on the time it takes to check all of these venues. I can appreciate that since the course is about technologies, maximum exposure is appropriate. At the same time,  I think that in course design I'd want to be really selective in limiting the number of places learners have to go and also take great care in choosing the right tool for a given job.

The TOOC is well organized, but broad in scope. For myself as a full-time learning designer and part-time learner in this TOOC, I need to narrow the scope to a few personal objectives, e.g.:

• learn how to use the Twitter back channels
• connect with peers to practice collaborative writing
• practice making helpful contributions to others' posts

The overarching objective is to gain experience that will help me advise faculty on using social media in course design.

I like the "less is more" approach to design because the Internet is so chaotic and we have so many different ways to access it; it seems to me that one of the most important things to convey as an educator is how to sort things out and focus attention in a way that promotes deeper learning. This is something I hope to explore in future blog posts.