Blog Post Week 7 - IITV & Online Courses
The presentation on Wednesday February 20th with Shannon Magee & Chris Fredrickson from MB. Education & Training was very interesting and informative.
I have substituted in IITV classrooms, so this was not new for me. I am not entirely sold on these types of classes, I prefer the face to face of a traditional classroom. Especially in classes such as Physics and pre-calc math, where it may be difficult to explain the task, and see where students are making errors in their work when trying to communicate through a screen. I also have seen first hand how difficult it can be to classroom manage and engage students in conversation in these types of courses. (My mom taught a course called "History through Cinema" - when she taught it in a classroom, the students were engaged, participated in discussion of the movies content and had no behaviour problems. Teaching it over VC resulted in less students taking the course, students in the other schools goofing around and not paying attention, chasing students around for their assignments was difficult to do, little to no discussion of the content and she had to frequently go into the other schools to classroom manage and make them complete assignments.) These types of classrooms need students who are there wanting to learn and are self-regulated. It is much too difficult to teach students over VC who don't want to be there and are essentially 'slackers'.
I get the purpose of them for small schools where there are not enough teachers qualified for teaching courses such as Physics, Chemistry, and Pre-Calc Math. However, I have also seen where the number of students taking these classes has declined because they don't want to take the course via VC. When I was in grade 12, my class had 13 students, all but 2 people took grade 12 Pre-calc. That means 85% of us took the course when it was offered in the classroom. I myself needed the one-on-one help of the teacher, I don't think I could have passed the course without that assistance. From what I have heard from teachers, there has been a significant decrease in students taking the higher level courses.
Click here for the available courses (both compulsory and optional courses).
Click here for the order form!
Another option for teachers in Manitoba are the Web-based courses.
Click here to view the available courses!
Click here for the Web-based course request system (can ONLY be accessed from schools and universities - once into the course it is available anywhere)
When requesting the course(s) you can select to use it as a resource only, or can enroll students in the course online, where they will use Blackboard Learn(an education platform).
Click here to go to Blackboard Learn. If you select 'preview as guest' you can view all the course content, just not assignments, discussions, etc. I thought this is a pretty handy tool, so you can look at the course prior to requesting it and decide if it would fit your classroom or not.
Blackboard Learn appears to be very user friendly and allows the teacher to customize the course to their liking by adding videos and assignments, there's a place for tracking students grades. It was a little overwhelming and would take some playing around with the platform to get familiar with it. It definitely looks like something I would like to look into using for the future.
~ Miss C.
Click here to go to Blackboard Learn. If you select 'preview as guest' you can view all the course content, just not assignments, discussions, etc. I thought this is a pretty handy tool, so you can look at the course prior to requesting it and decide if it would fit your classroom or not.
Blackboard Learn appears to be very user friendly and allows the teacher to customize the course to their liking by adding videos and assignments, there's a place for tracking students grades. It was a little overwhelming and would take some playing around with the platform to get familiar with it. It definitely looks like something I would like to look into using for the future.
~ Miss C.
Our class discussion totally sold me on the idea of distance education courses. I liked the idea of courses taught through video conferencing or over the telephone, as I've taken "learn at your own pace" courses with no scheduled classes, and I found them frustrating in that I felt I was missing out on learning key skills that would enable me to get the most out of the course materials. However, I never considered how classroom management might come into play in video conference or telephone classes. The degree of separation between the instructor and the students certainly limits the effectiveness of many of the most popular classroom management techniques. I'm curious as to what information might be out there on classroom management in these contexts.
ReplyDeleteI agree Courtney! I think that classroom management is a lot harder when the teacher is not in the room, but on that note - In my experience the classes that are offered over IITV, are usually the higher level courses like you said, pre calc, chemistry, physics, and the students that are taking these courses are students who understand they need these for their post secondary schooling so they likely will be buckling down to understand it and get it completed so the classroom management takes care of itself- however I know this is not always the case! It would be interesting and a new challenge to take on thats for sure!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Courtney, and Courtney Treble! Distance learning was not something I ever did, so this was somewhat new for me. I had heard of it, but everything it entailed was new. I myself was wondering just how the classroom management would work. High school students can definitely be challenging to manage, especially if you are not in the classroom. But like Courtney (Treble) said, most students taking these higher level courses are usually there to learn for their post secondary schooling. Possibly talking to those [disengaged] students, and finding out what strategies are going to work best for their online learning, as it is not fair for you as their teacher to feel this constant struggle.
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