Yamanaka Tamaki: seat at theater (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Since the semester began my days have been a blur of office work, proofreading and translations, and my online course. Note these are three separate categories: proofreading and translating has always been a side gig (only it used to be in addition to teaching) and now the online course is a side gig too. Although… if you were to go by the financial compensation, I’m not sure if it qualifies as an actual job or a hobby. The main reason I’ve hung on to it for now is that my office job isn’t permanent and maybe more importantly, I couldn’t imagine not doing any teaching. Period.
I finally have a bit of time to blog without feeling like there is something else I really should be doing (or at least feeling too much like there is something else… you get the idea) so I thought I would tell you what it’s like to run an online course that’s in its tenth iteration. More specifically, what this involves on part of the instructor.
First things first – the course needs a thorough overhaul. Its glory days (when it won an award) are long gone and it is scary how quickly material dates. By this I mean, for instance, the visuals I did back in 2013 (and which it must be said had a distinctly amateurish air even then) really need to go. We’ll see if and when this is going to happen: my feeling is that if I continue to teach next year and if it’s online, the course will need to be revamped.
Regardless, you might think that if all the material is up there, there isn’t much for the instructor to do. A quick reminder for those who may be new to the blog – this is a 4-month course run entirely in Moodle apart from the introductory two weeks and the final exam, which take place in a classroom environment. The course comprises 8 units, all of which take roughly 10 days, plus a revision unit at the end. If you’re thinking, no, she cannot do math, don’t forget the 2 offline weeks plus another 10-day orientation period online.
Moodle
At the start of the semester, I copy the course materials from last year into a new course. I always forget exactly how to do this; it’s not terribly complicated but it’s been a year since I last did it and it could be a tad more intuitive. What actually gets copied (in my case) is everything but the student interactions. Specifically, this means that a forum, for example, will be copied but it won’t have any contributions, including the opening post(s), which are generally mine.
Each unit is made visible to the students when the last one is over (which, I can’t resist saying, means it’s not a self-paste course – those who saw that tweet yesterday will know what I mean 😛 ). Fast finishers need to wait. It’s easier on the instructor insofar as I don’t need to go through all the units at once in September. Before I unhide each one, I read all the materials again and adapt anything that needs adapting. I realize this is vague. For instance, last year there was quite a bit of adaptation because the course was delivered in blended format, so several chapters had to be hidden and as a result the text in the remaining ones had to be rendered coherent overall and not as if something was obviously missing in between. This year a lot of the stuff that was left out has gone back in.
There’s usually something new in most units, like two years ago I redid all the screencasts which had previously been on Present.me – which I have no idea if anyone uses anymore – using Screencastomatic and uploaded them to YouTube (which I should’ve done in the first place) and added subtitles/captions – what’s it called if it’s in the same language but doesn’t include stuff like *door closes* or *phone rings*? Incidentally, that *will* happen as you’re recording, but I digress. This year I made some new visuals in Canva – okay, one so far and am planning to make more for the next unit – and I created punctuation quizzes using the cloze test question type. I was very excited about this because I learned how to do it on a course in June and … well, I was mainly excited by the fact that I was able to still figure it out in November.
I then check if the external links all still work and make sure that any activity that requires student interaction is set up properly, like add opening posts to forum discussions, links to new Padlet walls, and instructions to new wikis. Then when I’m sure we’re good to go, I add the deadline to the course calendar. I usually set one day aside when I have a couple of hours and do this for each unit.
In the meantime, while the students are working on the unit before the one I’m finishing up (the last one they can see), I keep an eye on what is going on – the pace they’re progressing at, if there’s someone who hasn’t logged on for a while and needs to be contacted, and deal with any questions. Ideally, I will also be grading and giving feedback, and have written a post about how this can be done more quickly and effectively.
Mahara
When the course is run online as opposed to blended delivery, there’s a learning journal component as well. I have written about this previously and continue to get a lot of help from my assistant moderators (usually graduate students). What I do here in terms of setting things up is limited to the beginning of the course when we need a new group that everyone can join and share their journals in a safe environment. We could argue whether the journals should be private or not; right now the course is designed so that they can be read and commented on by anyone in the group. I’m free to read student reflections and respond if I want to, or if I think a post needs responding to – not always the same thing.
This isn’t mandatory if you run a Moodle course, obviously, but I have been using it for communication with the assistant mods. I like the option of having a private group and getting feedback on whether the mods have seen a post – normally this isn’t a problem as they are very prompt to respond – but the puppet master in me likes to think she’s got it all under control. Like the Mahara component, this requires less time as the course progresses, and mostly involves letting the mods know if an activity is coming up I’m hoping they’ll contribute to. This is defined beforehand, so the mods know at the start of the semester how much work they’ll be required to do. Of course, other questions crop up, usually to do with particular students and issues they might have experienced, and how the mods should respond.
That’s more or less it. I’m happy to be able to say that even in the tenth semester I still very much enjoy running the course and there’s always a rush of excitement when people start joining, getting to know the environment and finding their way around. As opposed to almost 5 years ago, a lot more instructors use Moodle at the institution now and so the students will generally be familiar with it, but mostly as a content repository and/or a place to submit assignments. I *am* looking forward to designing something quite new though.
Do you find that there’s a point at which an online course needs a makeover and what does that depend on?
After Octopus 