Blended Learning Academy: Online Course Design
Blended Learning Academy is a professional learning course intended for teachers on my campus. When I started my program at Lamar, I developed an innovation plan to integrate blended learning in my classroom and across campus. I used this as inspiration for the creation of my online course. To help increase the chance of success for my innovation plan, I know getting teachers on board will be key. This is why I am centering my online course around alternative professional development in order to support teachers through the journey of changing their current learning environments to one that gives students choice, ownership and voice through authentic learning opportunities.
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The resources for the design of this course are below:
Implementation
During the second module of the 5318 course, I developed the 5 modules of my blended learning professional development course. All modules follow the same structure to help provide clarity and each module comes with a quick explanation video so each participant knows what to expect from that module. This course is designed in a way to model how blended learning can be used in their own classrooms while giving each teacher the opportunity to create something that is useful for them and their classroom or team. Since the course is housed in Google Classroom, users must be enrolled to view all of the materials and resources. This video is provided to show a look into the course and what it looks like with a focus on the first two modules. During the development of this course, I have worked with my learning community made up of my cohorts in the ADL program through Lamar University. By asking questions and receiving feedback, I am able to make adjustments as I work through making the modules of this course.
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The introduction videos of each module can be found on my YouTube channel. Use the link to the right to be directed to my channel to view each video there.
Usability Testing and Reflection
The last step of my online course design was to have a stakeholder participate in my online course. I was able to have my co-teacher, Catherine Gilliland, participate in the course and provide feedback. Her feedback was very helpful in realizing some things that I had not noticed whenever I created the course. I created a usability test using a Google Doc which gave her tasks and questions to answer. I was able to go back into the course and make some aspects of it more clear so someone that is looking at it with no context would be able to navigate through the course. This usability test will be a practice that I continue to use moving forward when I am going to be pushing out content to others.
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In the 5318 course, I was able to build an online course that was a cullmination of what I have been learning over the last few semesters in the ADL program at Lamar University. I was able to implement COVA and CSLE as well as blended learning. I used Finke's 3 column table just as it is used in all of the courses in the ADL program. By using all of the knowledge I have gained over the last 8 courses, I was able to build an online program that could be used on my campus to help propel my innovation plan.