ESC supports online learning initiative
Looking at the Internet through the eyes of an educator, online learning is everywhere, and the ESC of Central Ohio has been involved in this arena for a number of years.
The goal of the ESC of Central Ohio is to raise the bar for teachers throughout our network to not only take advantage of the many offerings through our learning management system, but to extend learning so it is transformative to classroom practice.
There are self-paced courses that are offered free to anyone. There are facilitated courses, where the student has access to a knowledge-content expert and online materials.
A facilitated course may integrate asynchronous communication, allowing students and teachers to communicate in a delayed manner or there may be a synchronous communication component involving live chats between individuals or group discussions.
There are also blended courses that have both classroom and online components. These courses meet the need of every age level and every learning style.
While these types of “formal structured courses” are available by the hundreds, educators know that online learning does not require the parameters of a course. Online learning can happen as we teach students to be comparative shoppers by accessing online stores.
Users of the Internet are able to access and consume more information than every before. The most important skill we need as adults and that we need to teach children is Information Literacy; to answer the questions: Is this real or not? From CNN to Facebook, the educational possibilities abound.
The fastest growing segment of online learning is teacher-created online learning as an extension of the traditional classroom.
In the Central Ohio area, educators are using open source software such as MOODLE or Sakai. Open source is free software that has been developed by worldwide communities of engineers that believe in the freedom of access to software as their contribution to society. It is open source because the programming language can be accessed by anyone who downloads it and then it can be altered for the user’s need.
While this type of online learning exists on a continuum, students and parents alike are able to access content, activities, pictures and grades through a learning management system. Essentially, they are seeing an online version of their child’s classroom environment. Some of the districts in our area have children as young as ages 7 and 8 participating in online discussions and figuring out problems collaboratively. The benefits to having a system like this are vast as students are able to access an area on the Internet that is safe, forgotten homework or assignments that they missed due to illness.
It is important for coursework - whether developed for children or adults – to be engaging, relevant to their need and interactive.
Yet, content must be chosen carefully so that students are moving forward, scaffolding information in a meaningful way. The online environment requires technological knowledge for what the learning management system can do and how to use those tools with appropriate content. In order to build an online course, it takes approximately 810 hours with a team consisting of a subject matter expert, instructional designer, help-desk personnel, programmer and facilitator.
While the initial creation of online courses can be expensive, the pay off is – if the course is used multiple times – the cost of creation is diminished each time the course is deployed.