What's on my mind?

WOW!!! I don't know where to start, at this time I find mysef a bit worried. Maybe I should have waited until the fall to fully commit more time and effort to this design course. Summer seems to be the best time of the year for me, family cookouts spending more time with my daughters but right now it has not been easy to do. Trying to concentrate on all that this course requires takes more than I thought.

In my opinion this course is probably the most difficult. It has been a true blessing to have professor Engle guide us each step of the way. I never thought I would say this but I almost considered dropping it. Why? While I know the online world is for me, I seem to be a bit discouraged and overwhelmed at this time. I have previously mentioned how I never stopped and paid attention to the amount of time and energy a designer goes through. My appreciation has definitely increased for online instructors/designers.

Now that I know what the course design entails it gives me a bit more confidence to make sure I cover all the following:

-how will my students access the course content
-what types of learning exercises will I provided to encourage student-content interaction
-how will I as a facilitator communicate and interact with my students
-how will my students interact with one another

When I see it this way it does not seem very difficult to do, but the more I think about it the more I truly know that at times certain stragies may or may not work. It's almost like trial and error and then adjusting what did not work to make the course better. The only downfall I see is that our students suffer the consequences.

I don't think anyone starts off as an expert and practice in my opinion does not make perfect but it makes it better. There is always room for improvement and thinking of ourselves as lifetime learners we are open to feedback and with this comes more knowledge that will enhance our experience in this online world.

There is one very important part that I feel guilty of not complying with which is my feedback to my team. I honestly feel that giving feedback to my design team is a bit much if I am not an expert in that subject matter because in my opinion what works for a Spanish online course may not work for a psychology online course. I know that anyone can give feedback but do we trust their judgement fully to make necessary updates to the online design or do we keep our own ideas if we are sure they will work.

I will end this entry by saying that the bar has been raised and with this comes the knowledge of technology. Let's work hard at staying current on what is going on and move forward with the changes in order to be in demand.