Assignment 2 Fall 2007

Assignment 2 Fall 2007 Online Distance Course Report Online Distance Course Report

Albert-Ludwigs University Freiburg Department for Educational Science GER - 79085 Freiburg

Course: Individual Conditions of Learning: Cognition Instructor: Kristina Wieland ([email protected])

COURSE DESCRIPTION This course focuses on the cognitive aspects of learning. It will provide students with an overview of prominent models of information processing and memory as well as knowlege representation. The course will also cover areas such as higher order learning processes and reasoning which include concept learning, problem solving, and metacognition. In applying results of empirical research on learning and cognition to instructional settings in several educational sectors such as schooling, students will learn to evaluate the power of theories of learning and thinking for instruction. Students will also perform literature reviews on specific topics of research on learning and instruction.

TARGET AUDIENCE The audience of the course are Instructional Design Bachelor’s students in their fourth semester. The age of the students ranges usually from 20 two 25 years. The level of computer literacy is very heterogeneous. Some students have basic internet and computer skills, others have already a great experience in the field and are able to develop and program different applications. All students must be able to have internet access, use emails and do basic internet research.

COURSE STRUCTURE The course uses a weekly schedule. New units start every Monday noon and end the following Monday on 11:59am. So, all activities are ran on a week by week basis; some events have a particular day of the week as deadline. This is mostly the case when students are required to comment on fello students comments and works. The course is divided into two modules (Information Processing and Higher-Order Learning/Cognition). Each module contains several units. These units require an average of three hours study time. The students are required to submit two major papers. One during midterm and the second at the end of the course. The duration of the whole course is 13 weeks.

The activities of the course require mostly reading of online articles but also book chapters. There are also videos to watch and online assessments to explore.

All instruction of the course is asynchronous. There are now synchronous chats or discussions scheduled. There is a minimum amount of posts required for each discussion. In previous courses the instructor recognized that students stop to discuss and speak their mind after the instructor posts something, therefore the instructor comments only after the deadline for discussions.

Most of the student work is individual work. The instructor said, that the ratio is approximately 7:1 (individual:collaborative) . However, most individual work is discussed on the courses discussion boards.

STUDENT EVALUATION The students work is mostly evaluated through the quality of discussion board posts and the two papers. The instructor emphasizes on relevance of the postings, on literature references and given examples. It is also important that students comment on other students’ comments and further elaborate them. Students are encouraged to challenge each others statements, if they have relevant prove of their claims. Also the frequency of the posts is evaluated. The papers are graded for structure, relevance and prove of claims.

Students get an individual written feedback on their final assignments. The instructor also writes comments on outstanding messages addressing the student personally, or writes personal comments when a message is faulty. Assignment 2 Fall 2007 Online Distance Course Report

There is no rubric used. Students are supposed to make up their own minds and can find topics within the units that are of particular interest to them. It is important that the students show personal identification and understanding of the given subjects.

COMMUNICATIONS Besides commenting the students posts, the instructor is available via email and (during office hours) via phone. Emails are send out frequently by the instructor, commenting on the course of the week and giving extra information and support.

MEDIA The course is implemented into a Moodle Learning Management System. The instructor also uses HTML and Flash websites that are hot linked in the course. All main media used in the ourse is designed in regard that not every student has a high speed internet connection. Besides the information provided inside the course’s pages there are also several PDF documents ready for download. These are journal articles and summaries provided by the instructor. All assignments that require additional work besides discussion board postings are also available as PDF download. With this the instructor tries to support different learning strategies of the students. Some students seem to be more confident when they have the opportunity to print out assignments and information. Videos are not directly implemented into the course, however there are few limks to videos on other websites of the internet.

CHANGES The course is still undergoing changes. The instructor has taught the course only once in an online setting. Media and strategy selections are made during the course and also after the course based on learner feedback.

CHALLENGES One of the main challenges in the course is the motivation of the students. First the online setting in itself can be distracting and unmotivating and also the content of the course can be challenging. The instructor motivates the students by being very current with replies and feedback. This is sometimes a challenge in itself, since the instructor cannot be in front of her computer at all times. Students are also required to post a minimum of comments on the message board each week. This has proven to be a good measure to keep the students themselves current and on top of the content. The biggest challenge so far was that the group work did not work out for all students. For some it was hard to contact their group members and to get their projects started at the right time. Here the course and the outline of the group work needs revision and a redesign.

STUDENT PERCEPTIONS For the majority of the students this is the first online course they take during their course of study. Some were very confident in this setting, while others have many doubts if hey are fit enough in a technological sense to pass the course. During the first weeks the instructor made sure all students overcame that fear. Some students were not content with the fact that feedback was displayed on the message boards, for the whole class to see. The instructor made sure in this case, that the feedback was not to grade anyone but was given to everybody for the sake of the groups understanding in the complicated subject matter. At the end of the course, the class was still somewhat divided. Some students felt very good about the online format of the class while others did not plan to take a second online class during their studies.

FUTURE PLANS The plan is to make the course more interactive and even more self-paced. The instructor is now in the middle of developing and finding new media for the course. She wants to have more videos, graphics and animations supporting the content. She also wants to present the courses content for each week at the beginning of the semester. This way students have the opportunity to work ahead and get things done according to their own pace. Before that the content for each week was only available on the according Monday. The instructor also wants to improve her way of giving feedback and direct student communication. She wants to give the course a more personal feeling, by being in constant contact with all students. One possibility is to have a smaller amount of students in each course. I want to thank Kristina Wieland for her help and patience during my online interviews with her. Assignment 2 Fall 2007 Online Distance Course Report

Percent Points Points Earned Earned Requirements

10 100% 10.00 Goal: What is the purpose/goals of the distance course/program?

10 100% 10.00 Designation & Sponsor: Describe its official designation (course, curriculum, resource, training event) and sponsoring institution/body.

10 100% 10.00 Audience: Describe the target audience; who are the students?

10 80% 8.00 Student Needs: What motivates individuals to participate? (advancement, compulsory attendance, convenience, etc.)

10 100% 10.00 Modes of Instruction: How are the course(s) structured (self paced, course duration, asynchronous/synchronous, technologies)? 10 70% 7.00 Success: What is the evidence (enrollment statistics, testimonials, awards, number of graduates) of success thus far?

10 100% 10.00 Challenges: What are the major frustrations/problems faced?

10 100% 10.00 Evaluation Procedures: What are the means of evaluating student learning and program/course effectiveness? 10 100% 10.00 Student Perceptions: How is the program perceived by students (e.g., degree of interaction, frequency and quality of feedback, resources availability, personal contact with instructor or participants, etc.)? 10 100% 10.00 Future Plans: What are their future plans for improving the program? 20 90% 18.00 Organization of Article: (see rubric below) 20 80% 16.00 Clarity in Writing: (see rubric below) Total points 140 129.00 earned 92.1% Percent Score (A = 93+, A = 90-92, B+ = 87-89, B = 93=87, B- = 80=83, etc.) 18.43 Points toward course grade = (20 possible pts X Percent Score) Writing Style: - 30% - 20% - 10% - 0% Organi- Random or Lapses in Logical Careful, zation weak focus and organization clear, organization coherence suitable organization Clarity Incorrect Simplistic Acceptable, Precise and and/or and/or effective rich ineffective imprecise language language; wording language variety of and/or sentence sentence structure and structure length.

In many of the parts of this paper you did a thorough job presenting the various issues and findings. I did not see anything about the successes in the course (e.g. what student like, etc), and as a result, I had to deduct points for that. I hope my comments are helpful, and I hope all is well. --Allan