Welcome to the blog for Psyc100 section 06, Fall 2009. We’ll use this space to communicate, share and collaborate. Hopefully you have all enrolled yourselves in the course Moodle. That’s the other important place on the web. Moodle is where all the administration of the course takes place, and that’s where you’ll find all the details about assignments, exams, the course outline and so on. So for course admin – check Moodle. For commentary from the instructor, communicating, and discussing – come to the blog.
If you have any questions about the course or anything you see on Moodle, please check out the FAQs. If you can’t find an answer, please post your question on the blog. And if you have the answer to someone else’s question – you know what to do!
Some of you may be completely new to e-learning, and are wondering what you’re letting yourself in for. Well, e-learning IS different from traditional F2F (face-to-face) learning – there are a lot more acronyms for a start. However, there are some similarities. This course is equivalent in credit to the F2F versions, so it transfers to other institutions the same way and is a prerequisite for most upper-level Psyc courses. The big difference lies in the respective roles of student and instructor. In F2F university learning, the instructor often takes the role of the “sage on the stage”, and delivers content that the student is meant to absorb, and hopefully reflect upon and evaluate.
the sage on the stage
In e-learning, this model doesn’t work very well. Translating an F2F course into the online environment necessitates a new way of looking at learning. In e-learning, the instructor steps back from the content somewhat, and adopts the role of a “guide on the side”. Rather than giving students a pile of content such as a document to read (boring!) or a set of PowerPoint slides to watch by themselves (even more boring!), e-learning requires students to uncover the content for themselves. As well, students collaborate with their peers to create knowledge – a powerful tool for taking ownership of a topic and really learning what it’s all about. The instructor’s role is to provide a narrative that connects the dots – the big picture in other words. The course blog will be used for this purpose and you will see the blog feed on our course Moodle so you can check it out there or here.
You may feel apprehensive about this different way of learning, and that’s normal. But don’t worry – you’re in the same boat as about 35 other students in the class. This is my second time teaching a fully-online course (I’ve taught lots of mixed-mode classes) and the learning curve is steep and fast. Just take it one week at a time, and if you feel bogged down there is lots of help available.
What about e-learning will be a challenge for you?
