Tony Bates Wimba Session

The Wimba session with Tony Bates was very informative and provided me with a wealth of knowledge regarding both the costs that go into creating online learning, as well as the steps in creating an e-learning plan. A few items stuck out to me during the Wimba session with Tony Bates.

First, the notion of surveying students regarding feedback on course content and design is troubling. To me, a lack of informative and useful responses from students seems to be a very weak aspect of the current online learning process. Standard surveys, as mentioned by Bates, typically do not provide a great deal of useful information and have low response rates. One strategy that Bates mentioned as helpful in the course evaluation process is the use of student focus groups. This is a great idea! Another idea for student feedback that I have experienced in online courses is a conference thread towards the end of the class that prompts students to answer content and technology-related questions about the course.

Another item that I found to be interesting during the session was the idea of providing students with a variety of options to complete their assignments in order to better accommodate students’ different learning styles. This is an exciting idea to me, as both an online learner and an Instructional Designer. In another one of my classes this semester, this topic was also discussed and seems to be an emerging idea in the online learning field. The idea that I could potentially submit an assignment through a video presentation, an audio presentation, or a written paper, etc., is amazing.

Third, the notion of creating courses that are designed with students with disabilities in mind is an excellent idea. Unfortunately, in my professional experience, courses are created for the masses and when a student needs additional support, there is a frenetic scrambling to get the student what they need in the appropriate format. I think that this is ridiculous and diminishes the student’s learning process because materials are tossed together at the last minute. The most sensible way to remedy this issue would be to design courses, as best as possible, with all learners in mind.