DANIEL THORNHILL
TTLO Unit 3 - Course Design
In this unit, we discussed issues related to online language course design and analyzed our own programs with an eye toward the ADDIE process.
For this activity, I turned a keen eye to my program and laid out its instructional context, its goals, and the learners' general profile. We had already done this as a program, but it was still worthwhile to hear from Professor Quinn and have my program's processes validated.
For this activity, we took excerpts from our current syllabuses and applied the UDL guidelines we learned about in Unit 1 and guidelines specifically for syllabuses we examined in this lesson. This made clear how inaccessible and "cold" my example syllabus was, as seen in the "before" version, so I chose to focus on this aspect of my syllabus.
I devised a short checklist using elements from The Accessible Syllabus rhetoric guidelines and the University of Minnesota CLA Online Syllabus Checklist. The resulting "after" version is clearer, more concise, accessible to people with disabilities, and more approachable. Our colleagues Professor Quinn, Sara Gardner, and Raegeom Lee agreed and expressed interest in the Dyslexie font I mentioned in the discussion.
It's crucial to note that online teaching is a round-the-clock endeavor. So, for this part of the unit, we analyzed how we manage our time. Based on examples provided by Professor Quinn, we composed workflows to help us stay on track while teaching online. Our colleagues Kelly Atwood and Professor Quinn commented that my flow looked effective and that my suggested email templates would save time.
This artifact comes from a two-part jigsaw activity. In the first part, I conferred with colleagues about how to boost student engagement in online language classes (thank you, Valorie Arrowsmith and Jacob Dixon). Then, I took their suggestions and incorporated them into a brief talk, which I uploaded to Flip where it became part of a series on issues in online learning with talks from our colleagues Erika Caranti, Sylvia Gregorutti, Kelly Atwood, and Raegeom Lee. These were followed a lively exchange of comments. I talked with Kelly Atwood, Raegeom Lee, and Professor Quinn about being anxious to record myself, issues with academic integrity during group work, and using icebreaker activities to build rapport and community.
If I took anything away from this activity, it would be that group work in an online context is challenging (especially across time zones); but with proper planning, it can be a rewarding experience for our learners.
In this unit, we reflected on how to get our learners to reflect on their own learning and how we ourselves reflect on our teaching - a "metareflection", if you will. We also discussed group work in the online context and how to further boost learner engagement. Check out my blog post for my thoughts on these topics.
See my for-credit artifacts on Chapters 3 and 8 here, detailing my interpretation of Boettcher & Conrad's (2021) best practices for online teaching and best practices for the late-middle phase of an online course.
