Week 4 Collaboration and reinforcement

Of the topics discussed this week the one I struggle the most with is implementing the collaborative learning piece into my online course. I believe the way in which my classes structured make it very difficult to implement the collaborative assignments. I have a set curriculum for my AP classes and their is a small piece The Discussion Board that is collaborative. Otherwise with the amount of information and time constraints I cannot really make any changes to those classes. In My Environmental class I could implement some collaborative assignments as it is of a manageable size and has a adaptive curriculum. This is where I will be able to be the most creative and flexible. The majority of my students are in my Biology class. The difficulty here is that there I teach literally hundreds of them. With so many students all with different degrees of interest, abilities and technology skills it seems impossible to set up manageable groups etc for truly collaborative work. I have used discussion boards in the past with limited success. I can and do incorporate some short collaborative activities in my online presentations using Elluminate. All ideas are welcome.

The online environment also makes it difficult to give directed effective reinforcement. Difficulties arise when you have a large number of students that you deal with in a virtual manner. There are students that you interact with on a weekly basis and some you may never directly interact with. Even the ones I do get to know, the interaction is not the same as a face to face environment. It is important in the online world to find ways to personalize the education experience though not necessarily for all students. I guess it comes down to giving all the students the opportunities to interact, and the online environment does have an advantage in this regard. My students can have access to me many hours almost every day including most weekend and evenings. So for some of my students the reinforcement happens but with many the most effective tool I have is a timely emial.