Good Start Materials

Most of my materials have already been mounted and revised within the CMS. I can grant access to those who wish to review them as needed. Below are a few of the "Good Start" materials within my course. Click on the link to view the document in full screen or select the download option to make all embedded links active.

ETEC 648 Good Start Material

Assignment 4

Due to the amount of revisions that I anticipate making throughout the next four weeks, I feel that I will need to postpone my delivery to the 2^nd week of March. This should give me ample time to prepare and test the course units, identify a target group for whom to deliver the course and still allow me time to gather and assess student feedback. My main goal is to have multiple resources available in multiple formats and implement an assignment that isn’t heavily reliant on technology, which accommodates different learning styles, yet fulfills the learning objectives.

My course delivery will demonstrate a good start of the course units and will manage and motivate students via online discussion. I have group projects scheduled within the course, however they will not be included within the units administered. I may request that my students access the course and review the syllabus, technology checklist and orientation materials and participate in a getting acquainted activity prior to officially opening the course.

I intend on delivering these “Good Start” materials by March 7^th. Ideally, I would deliver the materials two weeks prior to the first lesson because of all of the technology requirements. In this case, I have alternative means of obtaining the technology in place due to the cost of the software, so one week should be sufficient time to become familiarized with the course and its requirements. This will also give me a little time to profile my students and make any last minute adjustments.

Included in my good start materials are: A general class description, expectations for my students, a welcome page, the syllabus, a 10-week interaction schedule, links to additional resources, a student survey, a technology checklist and a brief discussion requirement. I will also add an mp3 file and an accompanying transcription describing the course layout and steps needed to navigate through the site. I have held off on this for now until I finalize my layout.

On March 7^th I will send out emails asking the students to access the course and complete all of the orientation topics by March 14^th. This will leave the students with a week to complete the sample lesson and submit their assignments to be evaluated. Most of the orientation topics are text and web resources intended to give the student an idea of what they can expect from the course as well as what is expected from them.

I have also included a brief survey for the students to complete prior to the first week of instruction.  Included within the survey are a technology checklist and a few questions designed to provide me with a general idea of what each student’s experience and comfort levels are as they relate to the course content. The last activity within the good start topics is a class discussion forum where students will post information on themselves in an effort to get acquainted with their fellow classmates and offer further useful feedback.

The only real way to know if the orientation materials have served their purpose and that we’re off to a promising start is by analyzing the student feedback. I will look closely to see where we are as far as skill level (both technical and musical), interest level, and background experience. If the students meet the standard proficiency requirements and have a genuine interest in the course, then I don’t foresee any irresolvable complications. I believe that obtaining the technology will pose the biggest obstacle and I’m currently looking into an alternate means of achieving this without sacrificing my course objectives.

My primary goals for the coarse are to maximize communication between student and instructor and make this an enjoyable learning experience. Music is about creativity and it is very difficult to be creative in an uninspiring work environment. For this reason I will grant my students a little more leeway with assignments than the typical online course. As an instructor it is my job to be particularly attentive to my students so that I can maximize their potential through this course.  

Session 3: Course Evaluation

I chose to evaluate a course that is very similar to the course that I will deliver. It is a music production course offered through Berklee Music, which features the same software that I will be utilizing. I selected the ECP rubric to assess the course because I feel that out of those reviewed; the ECP’s criteria are the most comprehensive. I evaluated all of the elements listed within the rubric and will discuss those that impacted the course the most as well as how this evaluation has influenced my approach to course design.

The first element that I examined was course design. The content of this course is extremely well organized and navigating through the class couldn’t be easier.  A side navigation bar is constantly accessible which allows you to access nearly any portion of the course directly no matter where you are in the site. There are also tabs along the top that give the student access to important information such as announcements, the class discussion forum and the course homepage. All references to anything located elsewhere in the course are displayed as active links to that respective source. Though the course objectives are not prevalent on the home page, there are sets of specific goals for each unit, which give the student a good idea of what to expect in the lesson to follow. The goals seem to be a bit general, but I think that if they were more specific that they could overwhelm some students. I would give this course an “accomplished” rating in goals and objectives and “exemplary” in content presentation.

Next I reviewed the interaction and collaboration components of the course. The interaction expectancies are clearly defined and the discussions posted were meaningful, but not very extensive. I was unable to see any form of synchronous communication in place, but the activities that required asynchronous communication were definitely designed to build a sense of community among the learners. Each exercise had a discussion forum posted at its conclusion and they are displayed in a way where all posts are openly viewable. I like this layout because you can see how the discussion transpired unlike in other forums where you have to select each post individually to expand it. This may preserve some student anonymity, but detracts from a sense of community involvement. The instructor initiated all posts, however no feedback was ever provided to the students within the forum. As for the guidelines, there were general rules in place for forum discussion, but most of it was common knowledge. There was no mention of how theses discussion posts would weigh into the class participation grading. For this reason I would give the rating of “promising” for interaction logistics in his course.

The next element evaluated was assessment. Though the assessments in this course seem to follow the goals and objectives, there is no clear rubric provided. There was not mention anywhere of the significance of the quizzes as far as grading. The only forms of assessment within the course were quizzes and assignments. Self-assessment activities were nonexistent besides the small amount of individual feedback provided in the class discussions. As a result I would issue a rating of “promising” for the self-assessment component.

The only remaining criterion that wasn’t met under the learner support element was supportive software. The main issue was that there were no links to sites where you could obtain the software required for the course. There was also no additional information on choosing or obtaining the necessary hardware. I am under the assumption that this was done purposely due to the college policy. Since the school is a specialty school for music only, they probably don’t want their faculty soliciting or promoting vendors because of their ties to the music industry. Nonetheless, I would give this area a rating of incomplete.

All in all, the entire course site was well designed and packed full of valuable learning resources. I really like the user-friendly layout and will attempt to modify my course to follow this template. There were many aspects of the course that I admired and I wish I had evaluated it prior to my course design. There were also a few areas that needed some attention and raised awareness of possible insufficiencies within my site. The most salient of these would be accommodations for disabilities. Without actually testing the site with voice recognition software, there is no real way to know if it is truly compliant. I am hesitant to say that is, especially due to the amount of embedded audio samples within exercises and uncaptioned tutorial videos. It would be far too much work for me to add captioning to my videos at this point, so I will do my best to provide text equivalents to all unreadable media files. This evaluating exercise was great practical experience, but it made me realize how much work I have left!

Session 2 Assignment

The QM rubric is based on 8 primary standards.  Each of these standards is comprised of several criteria, by which to evaluate the design of online courses. I see this rubric as an extensive checklist designed to cover all aspects of online course design. It is based on a point system where the criteria are either satisfied fully or not at all (there is no partial credit issued). The rubric places emphasis on a term “alignment” which is described as the product of each of the course components being directly related to and supporting the learning objectives. This rubric utilizes a distinct approach and is in my opinion the most comprehensive amongst those reviewed.

The ECP rubric is comprised of four broad categories including: Course Design, Interaction and Collaboration, Assessment, and Learner Support. Each of these categories is broken down into specific criteria, which are rated on a four level scale ranging from exemplary to incomplete. There are a total of 17 groups of criteria that are assessed under the four main categories. These criteria groups are very elaborate and like the QM rubric, they weigh heavily on their correlation with the course objectives.

The Chico rubric is based on 6 main categories each comprised of several criteria (25 in total), which are rated on a three level scale ranging from baseline to exemplary. This is the most condensed version of all the rubrics reviewed. The rating system is similar to the ECP rubric, however the criteria are far more vague in description. I feel that this may give the evaluator too much leeway to view the criteria subjectively and could lead to inconsistent evaluations.

I have reviewed my online course unit using both the QM and ECP rubric. The changes that I see most necessary are first 7.1 of the QM rubric, “Students have ready access to the technologies required in the course. This was an issue that I addressed in last weeks discussion as well because I knew it would pose the biggest threat on whether or not I will be able to deliver my course unit to a specific audience. The hardware and software required for this course are not inexpensive by any means nor are they commonly used unless you are in the music business. There are three possible solutions I will have to explore. The first would be to deliver the course to individuals who I knew already possessed the required technology. The second option is to find free trial versions of the software and make them available to my students prior to initiating instruction. The final option would be to revise the course content so that the software is no longer required to complete the tasks.

The second element that I will need to address is listed in the QM rubric 7.1, “The course identifies policies and services for the disabled. I have made a few adaptations to my course to accommodate disabled students including PDF and word document versions of the video tutorials, but I am unsure on whether or not I will need to provide additional resources/alternative medias. I also don’t believe that I’ve adequately identified these alternative medias. I know that the software featured is not accessible for the visually impaired and it really wouldn’t make too much sense to take a course in music production if you are hearing impaired, so this is an area that will need further attention before delivery. Worse case scenario, I would have to adjust the assignments that require the software to cover general topics rather than specific software functions and make them optional exercises. The assigned tasks would then be achievable without the use of additional software and would be available in a format that is recognized by screen reading software. This would completely change the approach of my course all the way up to the learning objectives so I will examine all possible alternatives before going this route.