Chapter 9 - Assessment and Building a Secretive Quiz

Chapter 9 focuses on assessment for distance education.  Read the chapter and take the below quiz:

The Socrative Quiz is entitled “IT 7210 Chapter 9 – Assessment for Distance Education”; the classroom is: CARROLL1005 and the quiz is: SOC-24933025.

• PDF copy

Socrative was an easy application to use in the building of a quiz. Additionally, for students it is easy to access and follow the quiz process.  The process of building the quiz reinforced the materials in chapter 9.

Play posit - Google Classroom (Assignment #2)

Assignment #2 link is below. The classroom is: IT 7210 – Fall 2016. The search code is a58dac to join the class.

• Playposit - Student view

Linnet Notes - Chapters 6, 7 and 8

Linoit is an interesting tool that allows for the creation of sticky notes. I found it to be user friendly and easy to use.  I can see the benefits of using a tool like this in an distance education course, but it would definitely depend on the age of the students and the content of the course. 

• Linoit - Distance Education Highlights

Playposit

Playposit allows for the teacher to create interactive learning activities for students to use at their own pace.  What I have found nice about the application is that teachers may create learning activities that allow students to progress as they master each stage of the learning activity. If the student is quick and does require additional time to master the activity, they may progress through quicker. If there are students who require a slower pace and need to repeat the activity Playposit allows the student who needs more time to do this, thus allowing the slower students to master the activity and then move on. It appears to be an easy application to use and design activities with, so teachers do not have to spend large portion of their time learning Playposit before designing learning activities for their students. Playposit provides students the ability to engage in the learning activity and make learning more meaningful for the learner. I can see where this application would be beneficial for math, science, reading and social studies.

Assignment 1 - History of Distance Education

Kennedy, J. (2015, October). Beyond Beliefs: Examining Online Self-efficacy and Learner

            Engagement in Distance Education. In E-Learn: World Conference on E-Learning in

Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (Vol. 2015, No. 1, pp.

22-30).

Kennedy evaluated the engagement in an online course during one semester, with a focus on the varying levels of self-efficacy in regards with online learning. The article focused on three groups of students with varying degrees of self-efficacy and how they experienced engagements in an online course in higher education. The study defined self-efficacy as how the students held their own ability and beliefs to complete the required activities and actions for learning in an online course. The research on self-efficacy is limited with regards to online learning and engagement, so the study further focused on student satisfaction and motivation. Furthermore, internet and computer self-efficacy were included in the study with students and online learning. A survey was designed and distributed to the students that focused on the varying levels of self-efficacy with online learning. The survey entailed of five brief questions in the format of open-ended and sought responses on activities that they felt most engaged and most distanced. What activities and actions by the instructor were most beneficial and which ones were either puzzling or not useful to the students. Finally, the last question focused on what surprises the students encountered during the course. Engagement was measured on a four-point rating scale with the four topics being; content/activities, media/technologies, classmate/social presence, and instructor/teaching presence. Kennedy emphasizes in the study that students with a higher self-efficacy with computer, internet and prior online course experiences used more effective learning strategies, had higher motivation, which in turned increased their course satisfaction and their final grade. In Kennedy’s study there is an emphasis that motivation was a strong factor for the student learners in the course and that the studied showed a higher level of motivation for male over female students when it came to internet self-efficacy. It further appeared that prior online learning experience contributed to higher motivation and increased satisfaction with students registered in the course. Kennedy indicated that there was a strong correlation in regards to engagement in the course to motivation, overall satisfaction and the structural design of the course. Kennedy concludes the article noting that there were several limitations in the study and additional research that focuses on the instructional design of online courses in relation to the tools, motivation and engagement would be beneficial.

Chapter 4 - Mapping

For the mapping I have outlined the ways in which distance education, communication, technologies and online learning all work together to create a learning environment for the learner and a platform for the instructor. In chapter 4 Simonson, et al states that, “the key to success in an online classroom is not which technologies are used, but how they are used and what information is communicated using the technologies.” (p.98) This brings to point that it is not the technologies that make distance education successful, but how the technologies are used with the course content. Technology is a tool in the distance education environment that must be used effectively with the course content, so that the learning objectives are meant.