Week’s
Summary
This week, we worked on our Course Outline Rough Draft
and the initial steps for our Module Development Assignment. For the Course
Outline Rough Draft, we worked on our detailed course navigation, blogs, and
discussions for our developed course. For the initial steps of our Module
Development Assignment, we set up our course website. The main focus this week
was about engaging the online learner. In my developed course, I aim to help
the student develop a sense of connection and meaning to the course.
Item
of Interest
Watching the Importance of Relevance Video, I
understand now how crucial it is to show students the purpose of assignments in
a course. Also, I can see how knowing the purpose of assignments in a course
can increase student engagement within the course. Thankfully, I had many
professors at Athens State University explain the importance of the assignments
in their online course. Not only did those professors make me want to
participate in their online course. I was excited to participate in their
online course discussion boards. Their online assignments were enjoyable. I studied
harder for their online tests. Most importantly, I learned a substantial amount
of material from their online course.
Due to lack of student online engagement, online
dropouts are occurring in college. I found an article by Miriam Clifford. She
proposes ways to engage students and prevent online drop-outs. I like how the
article gives many great ideas for student engagement. The article can be found
at http://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/15-ways-to-engage-students-online-and-prevent-drop-outs/.
Problem
or Concern
I am concerned about the way to engage my students in
my public speaking course. Since most students dread public speaking, I feel
like I have a challenge of trying to get them to even tolerate the course. I
wonder if my passion for public speaking will be enough to spark some
motivation for them to enjoy public speaking. I have some ideas in mind on how
to engage my students. However, I am open to any suggestions on how to increase
student engagement in the course of public speaking.
Jovana,
ReplyDeleteI always enjoy the extra articles you post, thanks for those!
I would definitely be one of those people that you would have to spark motivation for public speaking in. With that being said, I think that a lot of student motivation comes from the passion of the teacher. Some of my favorite classes are those in which the instructor was very passionate about the topic, even when I wasn't. If you display your passion throughout your course and provide enough opportunities for the content to relate to the students, then I think you will be able to keep your students engaged. Students get excited about a topic when they know their teacher is excited about.
Hope this helps! Good luck!