Week 4: PREPARING YOUR ONLINE LEARNERS

Outcomes:

Given academic readings you will develop strategies and gain competency in guiding learners to successfully work in online environments individually as well as part of the learning community.

• Create an equitable and fair online learning environment that welcomes and supports all learners.
• Understand why and how to encourage participatory, connected learning in your own online courses.
• Learn about the principles of learner-centered course facilitation.
• Collaborate with other FLOf participants to build a pool of effective online facilitation methods and strategies to draw from for your own practice.
• Learn more about ethically responsible technology by using examples of open-source and Open Educational Resources that empower facilitators and respect student privacy.

LEARNING ACTIVITIES THIS WEEK:

ACTIVITY 1. Start Wikipedia Project – Participants will collaborate in an open-source knowledge-building project that helps understand and work within the mechanism of Wikipedia.

ACTIVITY 2. Interactive Lecture – Participants will listen to an interactive lecture that introduces learner-centered teaching to then collaboratively gather questions that arise out of the lecture.

ACTIVITY 3. Reading Discussion – Participants reflect on the assigned reading by sharing collaborative web-annotations referring to the impact course design and facilitation have on the learning experiences of online students.

ACTIVITY 4. Course Evaluation – Participants identify elements in the previous weeks of the course to evaluate them with regards to ease of navigation, design, available resources, and adequacy of e-learning supports.

ACTIVITY 5. Facilitator Resources – Participants share Student-Centered Learning Resources that orientate learners to learning online, doing a learning or assessment activity, or using a specific technological tool to complete a task set for them.

SCHEDULE AND DEADLINES