So i had every intention of blogging through the delivery of this course…but so far i have had no time. The course is in its third week and i am still trying to figure out how to use the grading features and trying to keep up with it all. I am trying to be a good example and to practice what i preach. There are somethings that i know already i would do differently next time and some things that i will change. i have been meaning to reflect on the experience a bit so far. 

From about 15 original registrants there are now 8 students in the course.

Wow! Building and teaching this course has been one of the hardest and most rewarding experiences i have had in my professional life. So far I have LOVED every minute of the exhausting experience.

• I am using a manual that i wrote as the course textbook – a CMS neutral resource in which i have updated my thoughts and approaches to online course development.
• I designed a course in Moodle.
• I blogged.
• I interviewed online faculty and posted the interviews with their online courses creating podcasts for faculty development purposes – an online course for observation with author /instructional designer commentary.
• I created 3 Breeze presentations – audio annotated powerpoint presentations.
• I designed and have implemented several course learning activities using web2.0 applications that are external to the CMS, including edublogs, voicethread, diigo, meebome, youtube, twitter…

This has been a very satisfying experience. I innovated, i stretched, i did new things, i have met and interacted with new people, i am listening/observing … it is a total blast.

I still trying to figure out how to use the gradebook. I am not crazy about how much work this is for me. Next time i will change the intro discussion in module 1 and the discussion design of module 2. With the voicethread some of the self intro in the first module discussion is redundant… i thought that would be ok, but i need to really reframe that discussion to be more than a casual into… interestingly enough that same discussion with new online SLN faculty is a completely different experience. There is a different character to the teacher/student relationship that i had not anticipated that is not there with faculty that i train. It is probably the fact that i am not grading faculty : )

The second discussion in module 2 may be too many questions… i need to evaluate that some. Look at which questions are generating engagement and which are not.

Also, i am concerned that the class community area is not getting as much traffic as i would like/as expected. Perhaps because it is visually/physically way down several scrolls on the screen. Students are contacting me with questions via email rather than in the ask a question area or in the talk with me area. I need to think about how to address that and manage it better next time. I am looking forward to feedback from the students on all of this.