Wednesday, September 04, 2013

Aloha from Kentucky - Howdy Y'all to Hawai'i

What is your intention for this course (why are you here)? I'm a librarian at Bluegrass Community and Technical College, and I want to find ways to reach students better, and one way to do that is to become more embedded in online teaching. So, I'm here to see how the library can fit in all this.

What issues do you think are important? It is hard to know where to start on this one.

  • There seem to be a lot of tensions: engaging students as interactively as they are used to communicating with their friends, but not violating their privacy (even if they don't yet acknowledge that they have any)
  • Providing students with a well-rounded educational experience in a media environment that is still developing (when I explain something in the classroom, I can SEE how many people "get it" - how can I do that online?)
  • How do we compete with free? If my students could watch MIT or Stanford or Sorbonne lectures, while would they continue to take mine?

How will contribute? Not sure what I'm supposed to put here "a lot"? I'm hoping to post as often as prompted is probably closer to the truth

How would you like to see community develop among participants? It would be nice to have more people to commiserate with: to let us know that we are not alone. It would be even better to learn how others have overcome those challenges. Or re-directed their energies into more fruitful paths (maybe some obstacles are meant to be gone around).

These types of courses are new for most people. In fact about 90% don’t even participate. How will you overcome the fear of learning in the open and the frustration of using new technology? How do you plan to courageously work through any setbacks, and not give up? I have courage, but only some. I have energy, but only some. My challenge will not be courage/openess, but prioritizing, and keeping up with this, along with all the other stuff I'm trying to keep up with.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Howdy - nice to have you joining us all the way from Kentucky. It's great to have online support professionals joining in on this MOOC. While we are all here to help students succeed, in your area you face some unique challenges of embedding these skills/support into online teaching. Looking forward to hearing your perspective on the issues.

Unknown said...

Hello! I work at the KCTCS System Office! Nice to see someone else from the system here!