Things to consider in Planning an Online Class

The development of my hybrid or blended Social Studies class for 7th grade students is still a work in progress.  I am certainly glad that I am planning this course for use next year.  I will have the time to prefect the videos which I am making and locate additional supplemental materials.  I also will be able to create graphic organizers to offer support to my students as they watching content-high videos.

Content-high tasks are common in face-to-face instruction and require little of the student.  In Supporting Learning with Technology: Essential Classroom Practice, Egbert states that content-high tasks offer little support and are often left incomplete.  Process-high tasks are another story.  With process-high tasks require more of the student but still lacks the interpersonal qualities of a f2f meeting with the nonverbal feedback and cues.  Egbert stress that eLearning tasks must be designed to incorporate opportunities for interaction.

I also found that the benefits from eLearning which Egbert delineates confirm mine, the novice.
I have always believed that when students have some control over their work they are more motivated to complete the task.  Egbert takes the idea of control and adds the element of flexibility to it.  So, not only do students have control of the task, but also of the pace and time they choose to complete the tasks.

Additional responsibility or the demonstration of responsibility is also greater in an online environment.   Often during regular ff2f classroom instruction students are comfortable with allowing the teacher to assume responsibility for seeing that assignments are turned in a timely manner, often encouraging and cajoling students to do what is required; eLearning requires the student to be an active learner, not a passive receptacle. 

Other areas Egbert discussed were exposure, interaction, anonymity/equity, and convenience.  All had brief descriptions and were worthy of my consideration as I work through the preparation of my class.

This particular chapter is worth more than a once read and done!  I will return to study, in more depth, Egbert's discussion of the portfolio as an assessment tool.