E-learning, tasks for week 4

Find at least one good and one bad example case of course design and reflect your opinions of these courses in your personal Weblog.

I am sorry, but the question for me sounds a bit lopsided. There are at least two variables we have to know. In order to answer this question, we need to define “a good course” (or a bad one) and know whom are we talking about (good for who?).

I am returning to one of my earlier-stated principle: we shouldn’t be learning because of learning (or even not because of facts and concepts, diplomas and knowledge). We should be learning for inspiration and for certain higher level wisdom. What good will it do for us, if we overload our heads with tons of facts and theories?

So back to the initial question: a bad course doesn’t give me anything to think about and to apply in my work and this is probably partly due to the bad design of it. Contrary to a good course that makes me think, inspires me to actually do something new or make things better. If I happen to need “dry” information, I can always find it from the web, in a few seconds.

Unfortunately I don’t have any good examples of IMKE courses yet. But in general I am thrilled about the structure of different online course we have had, since they provide a certain freedom to do schoolwork when there’s time.  

As a group define what are the criteria for a good online course and reflect it in your group space (whatever you choose this to be), but make this group space visible to other groups by posting a link to your personal Weblogs.

http://tallinnuniversityprojects.pbworks.com/Online-Course-Criteria

Reading and reflection
1. Reflect and summarize on course readings in your personal Weblog: Explain, what are the components of course design!

These incredibly distant, dreary and futile theories are already making me angry, although I am very acquiescent and modest person.

Someone did some heavy research on how learning is facilitated and came up with the following: 

“Making errors is a natural consequence of problem solving.”

Another professor figured out that “learning is facilitated when learners are engaged in solving real-world problems.”

No comments!

When establishing a course, the design components you usually have to think about are fine   intro, purpose or objectives, structure, interaction, motivation, feedback, involvement and assessement. But can easily skip one or even more of them, as long as all of these finally end up in one thing: inspiration.

Learning something useless (just for learning or diploma) is not only wasting your time, but also deadening your mind and spirit. 

2. What was the most important thing you learned this week? What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week’s activities raised for you? How is it related with the self-development plan in your personal learning contract?

This week I learned that we have a pretty effective groupwork ongoing. We managed to establish a list of course criterias from zero in almost no time.

I don’t have the self-development plan nor the learning contract yet, since I know exactly what I would like to achieve with this course. But I am thinking of establishing myself a learning contract by the end of this course!  The “self-development” part would be then finding motivation and usefulness of this! I am working on it.

3. Was there something you didn’t quite understand and want to know more about it?

“Learning is facilitated when the instruction demonstrates what is to be learned rather than merely telling information about what is to be learned.”

I read this statement five times, very slowly. And then went through the following chapter. And still didn’t quite catch the idea here.

4. What is your evaluation of this week’s groupwork? (What went well and what did not? How did groupwork influence fulfilling your personal learning contract?)

I think we have started our groupwork and established group interaction really well. Considering the different backgrounds and status quos we have.

5. Describe what has changed in your personal learning environment and in group environment?

I have gained some more experience on working with wikis. I still hate PBworks, but I think we could become friends at some point. It just takes time.