Every online course I have taught has been pre-packaged, with known outcomes. While I have felt as though others needed me to provide that kind of an experience because of their apprehension about online learning, it wasn’t the type that I knew they would learn the most from. Because this course has “advanced” in the title, I have decided that we can write the rules together and create something that hasn’t existed before. Here is how I introduce the course in the Moodle instance (open to everyone) where all of our resources will be housed:
This course will center upon three basic principles of advanced online learning. These principles are defined as:
- Learning is co-created
- Tools are multi-use
- Sharing is essential
I separate out advanced online learning and traditional online learning because we can no longer be satisfied with doing read and respond activities within our online courses. For too long, we have relied on content heavy online resources. The purpose of this course is to ensure that we are focused on the individual participant and his or her learning rather than on simply transmitting what it is that we want them to know. To state the obvious: he ability to know and the breadth and depth of that available knowledge has grown beyond our comprehension. We must build better nets. This course will go about building those nets and also how to cast them out.
With that in mind, the content for this course is not established before we begin. We will be exploring the tools, creating the conversation, and inspiring the community of practice necessary to push the boundaries of Online Learning to the point at which it becomes Learning.
It is my belief that all we need in order to create a space worthy of our time is a few good tools and a lot of conversation about how to use them. Our responsibility over the next two days is to craft learning experiences for ourselves and others, and not to have me craft them for you. Here are the tools and spaces that are going to help us do that:
- Our Drop.io
- Our Posterous
- Our Livestream
- Our Dropbox Feed (Go into the Moodle Course and put your email in the comments to become have the dropbox folder shared with you)
- Our Backchannel
Please help our course by simply using the hashtag #synclinkpost in order to share how you co-create learning.
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