EDLD 5368 Reflections

Educators must learn how to design and implement online learning. Today's students have grown up with technology being an integral part of their lives. Following generations will most likely have such technologies even further integrated into their learning process. In order to remain relevant educators must strive to stay on top of evolving technologies. Online learning allows students to have nearly limitless exposure to course material. As the quality of online course design continues to improve it's effectiveness will follow suit. Many of the hurdles found in current online education will likely be overcome in the future. An educator who can properly design an online course can open new worlds to their students. The resources available online cannot be duplicated in a library or classroom. It also allows students create and share more freely than ever before.

The course I designed as part of the coursework for EDLD 5368 will be useful in training Lamar University faculty. Many of the faculty members fear working with technology. I believe that most of them can be eased into using it. I’ve found that if you can help them understand how similar the technologies can be to what they already do it makes their use much less intimidating. Once they begin to use technologies to make their current functions more efficient and effective it becomes easier for them to adopt new technologies.

I currently implement online learning on a daily basis. I work for Lamar University’s Center for Distance Education as an instructional designer. I support faculty in developing materials that will be effective in online education. I also support the students in make the best out of their online environment. We make all of our training materials available online. In the future we will create massive amounts of We are developing video content to improve the ability of university faculty to learn independently. We are also working on a online certification program. The process will walk faculty through becoming proficient in online education. The instruction will range from a base understanding of how the Blackboard LMS functions to how to use media creation devices such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.

The biggest question I face is how to support students who have difficulties grasping a specific topic. Online learning can make it difficult to support problem students to the level they need. At the college level these students are normally seen as simply unqualified to be taking the class. I have never worked in K-12 education but I imagine this issue is of much greater concern at this level of education. It is not acceptable to just leave students behind.

The things I learned in this class will help be lead faculty toward properly structuring their courses. Many faculty members believe they can simply force their on-campus class into the online mold. This is ineffective at best. The course must be designed with online education in mind.