Showcase: Most Memorable Online Learning Experience

In the 20th century, education has continuously “open” and aimed for everyone to have access to knowledge. Due to the popularity of social media, online learning has been widely used in our daily lives. The format of learning has shifted from traditional face-to-face education to digital education, and later, MOOC has become popular for self-education. The shift of education format has also led to the shift of learning style. In my opinion, online learning plays an essential role in today’s education system. Most universities or colleges also have begun to offer flexible open learning with online courses and degree programs.

MY MOST MEMORABLE ONLINE LEARNING EXPERIENCE: EDCI 337

My most memorable online learning experience is the online course: EDCI 337 that I took last year as one of my electives at the University of Victoria (Uvic). It was my first time taking an online course at Uvic, and the topic of this course is Interactive and Multimedia Learning. This online course focuses on introducing the theory and application of multimedia learning in an interactive learning environment (EDCI 337, 2019).

It is aimed to help educators to create the educational materials by using different kinds of social media platforms and tools. In this online course, there were four main challenging projects: comics, screen-casting, whiteboard animation, and interactive multimedia elements. For each project, we could decide to either work individually or work in a group of 2-3 people corporately. Also, each project should be uploaded and shared in a specified discussion forum before the deadline so that all the classmates can engage in a semi-synchronous discussion and provide feedback to the projects that they feel most interested in individually. In addition, this online course is clear-structured and planned out. The deadlines of all the four challenging projects are scheduled at the beginning of the course, so it helps me to arrange my own time efficiently. Here is an animation project that my team made to teach other people about “Color theory” on this course:

THEORIES IN RELATION TO EDCI 337

In the reading, “Understanding Technology in Education”, Bates describes and lists the theories of some effective educational technology in relation to this online course:

Media Richness

This course contains rich media, including comics, animation, video, audio, reading materials, and images. Detailed instructions and several helping tools have been provided to benefits learners’ learning experiences. As Bates explains, rich media may help learners to achieve their learning goals successfully (Bates, T., 2019). Also, in my opinion, the use of rich media can make the course more attractive and interesting.

Communicative Media 

Many communicative media are used in this course, such as e-mail, online discussion forums, social media platforms or tools (i.e. Powtoon, Scratch, Screen-O-Matics, and ComicLife3), and the Internet. In Bates’ opinion, the educational significance of communicative media is that it can provide more interaction between students and instructors and making the learning or teaching process more engaged.

Also, in the reading, “Effective Practices in Distributed and Open Learning”, Crosslin declares some theories and ideas, which I think can be connected to the design of EDCI 337:

Planning for Flexibility

First of all, the entire course design and assignments are clearly stated in Course Syllabus in the first class. This action provides a lot of flexibility to students to arrange their time and work on their own speed and space. Additionally, the scheduled deadline of each challenging project can also help students to arrange their own time and hand in assignments timely. As Crosslin explains, flexibility should not flow from the lack of planning ahead. Therefore, a well-designed and flexible course design will be important. (Crosslin, M., 2018).

Humanizing Online Learning 

In Crosslin’s theory, ‘humanizing’ as an important element in an online class, the process to eliminate the distance between instructors and students should be provided to engage the connection (Crosslin, M., 2018). Online discussion forums in this online course as an example of communicative media or technology have significance engage in building strong communication and interaction between learners and teachers (Bates, T., 2019). In my EDCI 337 experience, the instructor has provided a few useful forums, such as “introduction and final reflection forum”, “sharing cool finds forum”, “help forum”, and “respond to requests forum”, to help students to communicate with each other, learn from each other, and interact with each other. Students are also encouraged to ask questions via email.

Type of Communication

By my observation, this online course also has designed to reflect on two main communication types in Crosslin’s theory: student-content and student-student. For each project, students should read class materials and watch the relevant videos by themselves beforehand to understand how to complete the course successfully, which is student-content interaction. On the other hand, after upload and share our own project on the designed forum for each project, students need to interact with other students by commenting on their posts and reply to their comments.

Synchronous Interactive Sessions

Last but not least, as a semi-synchronous online course, the instructor did not provide any synchronous interactive sessions, such as live sessions, but he encouraged students to work in a group and use online synchronous tools to communicate with each other.

In my opinion, the online course that I took at Uvic is interesting and memorable. After taking this course, I feel more interested in online learning and digital technology.

 

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REFERENCE

Bates, T. (2019). Understanding technology in education. https://via.hypothes.is/https://uta.pressbooks.pub/onlinelearning/chapter/chapter-5-effective-practices/

Crosslin, M. (2018). Effective Practices in Distributed and Open Learning. https://via.hypothes.is/https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/part/chapter-8-understanding-technology/

EDCI 337: Interactive & Multimedia Learning. (2019, May 14). Web.Uvic.Ca. https://web.uvic.ca/calendar2019-09/CDs/EDCI/337.html