My Thoughts on Distance Education

It's really funny how our perspectives change so quickly. I have been teaching online courses at the college level for about 4 years. For a long time, I resisted teaching courses online. I really thought that online courses in any science or math field would be ineffective. I truly thought that there was no way to convey important information students needed to learn about the sciences online, especially when it came to the labs. It bothered me for a long time. The idea of online courses for the sciences in colleges and universities tend to be frowned upon by many science faculty (or at least that is my experience). It was not until I was asked by my college to teach one of my biology courses online, that I realized that science education in the online format was "doable".

Biology Word Cloud created on Wordle

Over the years, I have worked to improve my online science courses. I have learned that online science courses take much more time, attention, and patience than my face-to-face courses. All that time and effort, however, are well worth it. I have worked hard to improve all my courses, and my online courses are no exception. In effort to keep improving, I decided to complete a graduate program in online education and instructional design. I thought that the more I understood about instructional design, the better I would be at designing online courses for my students.

This fall, I started that graduate program and I am coming on the end of my journey of my first two courses. One of the courses is Foundations in Distance Learning. The course had an interesting set up. Each module related to a variety of "myths" about online education. Each module was a journey for us to understand and work our way through some of the misconceptions about online education. As I made the journey through these myths, I realized that the hesitation by faculty to offer online courses, especially in colleges and universities, was greater than I had thought. I did not realize the extent of the reach that some of these "myths" had on attitudes toward online instruction.

The biggest thing that surprised me in this foundations course is that a lot of the fear that instructors had were due to of lack of experience or training in online education. The fear seems to be in large part due to misconception and lack of experience in the technology. I guess I knew this going in to the course, but I was honestly surprised that the misconceptions were so widespread. While I will save the discussion on the particular myths I learned about in a later post (as well as the data for backing it up), I will say that a large misconception about online learning seems to be from fear of the unknown (which has a lot of components to  it, as mentioned above... such as training and experience). I think a big part of moving forward in online education, especially in the sciences is to make sure we educate our educators about how to teach material online.

Online Learning Word cloud by V. Holanda

One of the things I will take away from the course, is that online instruction is constantly changing and improving. In order to be an effective online instructor, you must constantly improve your courses and make changes to the course presentation as often as possible. New technologies are always being developed and we have to be willing to adapt to new technologies and apply them when we learn about them.

While my beliefs and attitudes about online education remained the same throughout the course, I will make sure that I spend as much time as possible on continuously improving my courses.

Gamification: A Reflection

In August, I started taking a course called Emerging Web and Mobile Technology for professional development in an Online Teaching and Instructional Design graduate program. When I first learned the course was set up as a game, I laughed. I had never heard of gamification and my first impression was shock. Was this really a graduate level course? I am a college professor and thought that this was just another way to dumb down education. Okay now... don't be too harsh on me for my initial critique of the course set up. I realized that I was wrong after just a few completed "quests" (otherwise known as assignments).

Image from 3D Game Labs
www.3dgamelabs.com

Once I learned a little about gamification, I realized it was a pretty interesting way to set up and run a course. It's funny, after starting the course, I got really competitive about the assignments. I wanted to master all the material as fast as possible. Our course utilized a site called 3D game Labs. I continued to work through the "quests" and worked to get them complete. While I knew it was not a race, I keep on completing assignments every chance I got. I wanted to finish the course and win the game. ;)

A funny thing happened, as it turned out. I realized that I had learned a lot of information without even feeling like I was even trying. It was really a funny experience. I started using the technology in everyday life and in my biology courses I teach at the college without really thinking about it. I started having discussions about various ways to incorporate knew teaching ideas in the classroom without realizing (at least at first) that it was the information that I learned in the course. By using gamification, I was learning while playing a game. It is funny. I really did not realize how much I was getting out of the course until I was standing in front of my students teaching or in my office planning for something to do in my course. While doing the coursework, I felt like I was playing a game and trying to get enough points to get that ultimate grade of an A. I quickly came to realize that the game I had played in the course, actually had me learn many new ways of presenting information and working toward improving my courses. It is really amazing.

Image from S. Prasad @ datasciencecentral.com 

In a nutshell, gamification in education is a way for students to learn information in a course while they feel like they are playing a game. As in the definition, the course or the activity is set up like a game and the students are able to "play" the game and earn points, badges, and rewards. It reminds me a lot of standards based learning, because the students can play (or resubmit assignments) until they master the material. I had never heard of doing this in a course before, but think it is a interesting tool to use to help students learn. 

I will say, I will more than likely not use gamification as a way to set up my entire course. I will, however, use some aspects of it in order to incorporate it in my biology courses. I think I could make some virtual labs and turn them into a game (like in genetics) to help students understand the concepts better. I think students would have fun playing a genetics game. 

My take away from this course is that I feel like I can open up my mind to new ideas and new ways to teaching biology. I think this course has given me insight into new tools to use as well as new ways to teach information. I think in the long run, this class will help me improve my teaching. In fact, I have already seen that it has. 

By the way... I won the game!!! haha