One of my assignments for this week was to select a course from a free open course site and analyze it from the perspective of an instructional designer. The analysis is to be done based on the new information acquired from our resources of the week and in reference to planning for effective instruction.
An open course (or Open Courseware – OCW) is defined as the publication of course materials on the web which are created in higher education institutions and are free of charge (Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S., 2009). These publications are increasingly common and used by learners who want the knowledge but not necessarily the credits which accompany a program within a degree.
One of the institutions which have more than 1400 online courses as open courses is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (Simonson, M. et. al., 2009). My personal interest guides me to review a Spanish open course and I have chosen Spanish I open course from MIT. This course can be found at here.
As I accessed the course, I found myself with the overview of the class and right away began to see flaws on the layout of the course. This one does not have indications to the learner about where to go from that point, there is no platform description as well as no background information of previous learners except from being beginner learners of the language.
The Syllabus is the first encounter to the content of the course and this one presents an overview of the course including evaluation methods. However, the description of the course is not detailed, does not include learning objectives and only describes activities related to the workbook and videos which are to be watched. According to Simonson, M. et. al. (2009) a distance education syllabus should include course goals, course objectives and a topic list.
Within the syllabus, there are embedded links to access videos related to the course. The first link gives access to another page. This one is MIT’s Foreign Language & Literature Resources. However, it is not a direct link to the video resources listed on the class. While searching for the exact video in this page, I found resources but these are available only at location, not downloadable.
The reliability of course materials and resources for distance education courses is an important requirement to consider for an effective online course (Simonson, et. al., 2009). The second link is the one which gives direct access to the videos used for this course. For this to be an effective online course there should be more clear directions.
On the other hand, the Related Resources list of the course is ample and contains very valuable links to the learner. Once again, this course is another example of how learning on line is not only about the content of a specific course, but the value of learning information beyond that content. Further research is encouraged within this course by presenting such array of resources.
For the purpose of viewing online course formats, this was a good resource. However, as a learning experience of the Spanish language I do not see a greater value other than the Related Resources page. This course was taught in 2003 and though it is on a list of Open Courses for MIT, it does not specify anywhere whether this course is an asynchronous or synchronous course. It is not clear on the course description if the access given is for anybody to take the class online, or just a record of a face-to-face class previously given.
It really seems as if this course was designed for a face-to-face class and only uploaded “as is”. In order for this course to be effective through distance learning some adaptations are needed. I would suggest the following:
a. Specify learner’s characteristics. The course states that it is designed for beginners, but no specific background is given or what does it entail to be a beginner.
b. Specify course goals and objectives. Stating completion of a workbook page and video watching does not qualify as either a goal or objective.
c. The course should specify content of each video and how watching the video will help the learner achieve a specific goal through the course. Likewise with the use of the workbook, specifying content of the pages to work on will give the learner more information as to the value of completing such pages.
d. If this course was to be graded, it should include rubrics for students to know ahead of time how they will be graded. The creation of rubrics also gives the instructor a framework on how to grade the individual learner with a fair score (Simonson, et. al., 2009). There are various free online sites for the creation of rubrics such as one found here.
Finally, this course could use a space for collaboration. There are not many studies done on the value of collaborative work for language learning. However, as found by Hoffman, S. (2011), students who use collaboration learn greater amount of second language vocabulary than those who work on their own.
Resources
Hoffman, S. (2011). The role of collaboration in Developing l2 vocabulary Knowledge through computer assisted Language quests. CALICO Conference 2011 as found in https://calico.org/Podcasts2011/Sat/HuffmanCALICO2011.pdf
Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson
An open course (or Open Courseware – OCW) is defined as the publication of course materials on the web which are created in higher education institutions and are free of charge (Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S., 2009). These publications are increasingly common and used by learners who want the knowledge but not necessarily the credits which accompany a program within a degree.
One of the institutions which have more than 1400 online courses as open courses is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (Simonson, M. et. al., 2009). My personal interest guides me to review a Spanish open course and I have chosen Spanish I open course from MIT. This course can be found at here.
As I accessed the course, I found myself with the overview of the class and right away began to see flaws on the layout of the course. This one does not have indications to the learner about where to go from that point, there is no platform description as well as no background information of previous learners except from being beginner learners of the language.
The Syllabus is the first encounter to the content of the course and this one presents an overview of the course including evaluation methods. However, the description of the course is not detailed, does not include learning objectives and only describes activities related to the workbook and videos which are to be watched. According to Simonson, M. et. al. (2009) a distance education syllabus should include course goals, course objectives and a topic list.
Within the syllabus, there are embedded links to access videos related to the course. The first link gives access to another page. This one is MIT’s Foreign Language & Literature Resources. However, it is not a direct link to the video resources listed on the class. While searching for the exact video in this page, I found resources but these are available only at location, not downloadable.
The reliability of course materials and resources for distance education courses is an important requirement to consider for an effective online course (Simonson, et. al., 2009). The second link is the one which gives direct access to the videos used for this course. For this to be an effective online course there should be more clear directions.
On the other hand, the Related Resources list of the course is ample and contains very valuable links to the learner. Once again, this course is another example of how learning on line is not only about the content of a specific course, but the value of learning information beyond that content. Further research is encouraged within this course by presenting such array of resources.
For the purpose of viewing online course formats, this was a good resource. However, as a learning experience of the Spanish language I do not see a greater value other than the Related Resources page. This course was taught in 2003 and though it is on a list of Open Courses for MIT, it does not specify anywhere whether this course is an asynchronous or synchronous course. It is not clear on the course description if the access given is for anybody to take the class online, or just a record of a face-to-face class previously given.
It really seems as if this course was designed for a face-to-face class and only uploaded “as is”. In order for this course to be effective through distance learning some adaptations are needed. I would suggest the following:
a. Specify learner’s characteristics. The course states that it is designed for beginners, but no specific background is given or what does it entail to be a beginner.
b. Specify course goals and objectives. Stating completion of a workbook page and video watching does not qualify as either a goal or objective.
c. The course should specify content of each video and how watching the video will help the learner achieve a specific goal through the course. Likewise with the use of the workbook, specifying content of the pages to work on will give the learner more information as to the value of completing such pages.
d. If this course was to be graded, it should include rubrics for students to know ahead of time how they will be graded. The creation of rubrics also gives the instructor a framework on how to grade the individual learner with a fair score (Simonson, et. al., 2009). There are various free online sites for the creation of rubrics such as one found here.
Finally, this course could use a space for collaboration. There are not many studies done on the value of collaborative work for language learning. However, as found by Hoffman, S. (2011), students who use collaboration learn greater amount of second language vocabulary than those who work on their own.
Resources
Hoffman, S. (2011). The role of collaboration in Developing l2 vocabulary Knowledge through computer assisted Language quests. CALICO Conference 2011 as found in https://calico.org/Podcasts2011/Sat/HuffmanCALICO2011.pdf
Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson
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