The first week 3 video, Toyota GT86, was about a new model of Toyota which literally breaks/drives out of the boring, emotionless, muted colored, digital world--through a glass enclosure dome to the vibrantly colored real world where everything is exciting and desirable.
Compare this to eLearning. Do our students want a boring, emotionless, muted colored, text-based course or would they rather "break through" to a vibrantly colored learning environment which includes audio and video interactions with their teacher and classmates? In Steve Kolowich's article, The Human Element, he suggests that student retention and success rates can be improved by professors using video and audio of themselves to teach and interact with their online students. The article goes on to say,
"For Hersh, engagement goes hand-in-hand with audio-visual communication.
The more that exchanges occurring within an online learning environment
resemble those that occur in classrooms, he says, the more that
students will feel connected to their professors and classmates, and the
more likely they will be to stay in a program."
My personal experience leads me to agree. In my own online Business Management course, I simulate my face-to-face classroom in several ways, but my favorite example is to use VoiceThread (www.voicethread.com) in place of the text based discussion board several times during the semester. I receive consistent student feedback which states that seeing and hearing their fellow students' comments makes it feel "more like a classroom," and they like it because it adds variety to their online experience.
I believe as we increase human interaction in eLearning, we are better able to reach the human on the other end of the digital chalk board and bring color to their educational world.
As week 2 draws to a close I am a little surprised how far I have come on this adventure through the MOOC: eLearning and Digital Cultures. At the end of last week, I thought I had
a grasp on this whole MOOC thing. And then this week I found several new resources
that I hadn’t even noticed before.I’ve also
seen several people on the course who say that they are taking it for the
second time around--I can see why.
So, Week 2 in review-
New for me this week:
I (learned how to and) created aGoogle map for everyone to add their name and location to. If you haven't added yours yet, go to: http://bit.ly/1cQI5oy to add your marker! It would be pretty exciting to see where everyone is from.
I signed up for tweetdeck so that I could participate in my
first ever tweetchat.
Learned two new colloquialisms (through
twitter, no less).
“Bob’s
your uncle!”
“Put the butter on the
spinach!”
Perhaps the most exciting thing that happened to me this week was when my Tweet concerning the amazing "community" present in EDCmooc was read by Dr. Sinclair during the Google Hangout. :) Then when I tweeted my excitement over hearing my tweet read, she read that tweet as well. Pretty heady stuff for a first-gen college grad who grew up on a little farm. I have ancestors who came from Scotland and have always wanted to go there...today I did--digitally. . I can't help but be struck by how much a Massive Open
Online Course, with over 22,000 students can be affecting me so personally.
A shining jewel which surfaced in this weeks strolling through the MOOC was a reference to Amy Burvall's blog post entitled, Why We Need Digital Vikings, which can be found at:http://bit.ly/ULle31. This post was witty and creative in it's prescription on how-to explore the internet with the courage of a Viking.
I have made a video with my reflections on week 2 and more of my thoughts on this week's videos and reading. I've been thinking a lot about the video Sight and other's reactions to it. I find it most interesting that once the woman lost her agency and was controlled by the man, I assumed she was part of his imagination--not real--like the art on his blank apartment walls. Yet others voiced a concern over a loss of agency. My "take away" from this is not a debate over who interpreted this video correctly, but rather that we students in EDCmooc come from many different age, education and cultural backgrounds from around the globe and of course we will interpret things differently. This is an opportunity to benefit from others' Sight.
