Designing activities for an online course

Organization of the online learning process requires a lot of important decisions. What activities to do synchronously, what activities to do asynchronously, what interventions to make to facilitate and not direct or assign, how to stimulate engagement and independent inquiry? That is indeed a big challenge. 

What do we have so far? Video and reading materials designed and placed in the information repository ("FOLDERS"), organised by lessons. Students signed up and organised into groups. A welcome post inclusive of instructions on how to navigate on the platform posted, although the navigation is relatively simple, identical to Facebook. 

There are several objectives we as the teachers should pursue:

1. Facilitate inquiry and engagement with the video and reading materials placed in the repository. 

2. Facilitate communication and connection amongst students and other participants (knowledge hubs), inclding the teachers and mentors. 

3. Track student progress and adjust strategies accordingly. 

A prompt has been given with the first post on the wall (that remains pinned) to launch asynchronous process of connecting with each other as students are asked to introduce themselves by posting on the wall in their group. A selfie and a brief introduction is what is expected. 

But what if the barrier of "stage fright" is too overwhelming for some of the students and they do not create posts?

A synchronous live activity is created and scheduled in the calendar for each group. This session is also indicated on the agenda. Both the calendar and the agenda provide information on how and when to connect to the synchronous session (can be administered via BigBlueButton, but I preferred Zoom as a tool that has a wider acceptance and most of the students could have experience with it). 

In the synchronous online session a teambuilding activity is performed, where students get to know each other. At the end of the session students are referred to lesson 1, which should take no longer than half an hour to perform through independent inquiry. 

To meet the third objective listed above we need a comprehension check activity. And here your imagination can go above and beyond. The objective is not to mark the student. The objective is to evaluate the level of group's engagement and comprehension of the new knowledge acquired. 

In Lesson 1, that is a Crossword puzzle:

This does not complete the learning cycle, as on the relevant Group's wall the Facilitator creates a post and encourages the participants to ask question, discuss the experience, reflect and practice, as the theory of Connectivism prescribes. Students communicate, connect and exchange information. 

The following day, similarly the synchronous and asynchronous activities are organised for Inquiry, Discussion, Practice and Reflection. Comprehension check on day 2 is performed with a different type of activity, such as a matching exercise:

Not all days activities are performed online. On day 7, for example, in the synchronous session students are referred to independent inquiry materials, posted in the folder and as a follow up they are asked to pay attention to the main wall. On the main wall, a post is created by the Teacher/Facilitator engaging students in a competition for the best selfie in the library with the book they liked. 

Similarly, forums, contests, assignment tasks (a separate prompt is available on Edmodo with grading capability), asynchronous activities such as taking a selfie and creating a post may be used to engage students with the learning material, facilitate inquiry. 

This looks far more engaging than the "watch the video, do the quiz" type of online course we used to have. 

Indeed, my reflection on the use of Edmodo functionality is great. It seems that using the tools available the synchronous and asynchronous activities could be seemlessly integrated to create a very engaging course!

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