Blog #1

One positive aspect of all activities is the time to reflect.  I greatly appreciate online courses because I always participate.  In f2f classes, I tend to be a listener and not as vocal.  I am usually one of the more quiet ones in class.  Given that my background is not in education, I value the time to reflect, learn from others who have a lot of teaching experience, and add to the discussion to clarify my thoughts.

I enjoyed the research article assignment because we were able to make it more personal by searching within our area of interest, i.e. nursing. Last semester I did a review of the literature of strategies used in online nursing courses.  The article I found for this class, although I had not read it before, echoed the literature I reviewed, particularly that an online instructor must give clear and concise directions and timely feedback.  If I were to do the assignment again, I would search for the use of teaching through inquiry in online nursing courses or engagement theory.  In retrospect, the assignment helped me to reflect more on what I would like to gain from this class which is a deeper understanding and ease with educational theories and online methods of teaching beyond what the research article conveyed.  Although the research findings are essential to online teaching, clarity of directions and instructor availability alone do not lead to great transfer of learning, which is my ultimate goal.

Overall, a negative aspect is that because I lack the experience in instruction, I feel I do not have as much to add to the discussions at times.  I am in awe of the teaching experience of the class as a whole and am grateful to be able to learn from everyone.  Thank you!

As I stated above, if I were to do the research assignment again, I would focus my search on inquiry.  As Mary U. so eloquently stated in her blog, I too would appreciate a deeper understanding of teaching through inquiry.

To improve the research article assignment I would, like the summarizer assignment, have students sign up for different modules.  This might lead to different searches based on what we have learned so far in the course.  It would also disperse the reading to several modules, instead of one, allowing for more time to thoroughly read everyone’s assignments.