OL 101_Kushner

Discussing learning objectives/outcomes is not a "sexy" topic within education. In fact, there are very few topics I can think of that teachers would like to talk about less during professional development. Nonetheless, developing clear and measurable objectives is essential to effective teaching practices. The central question every teacher must ask themselves while designing a lesson is, "what do I want my students to know when they leave my classroom?" - THIS is the objective. While this may appear straightforward, I feel that some teachers fall into the Goldilocks trap - that is to say, their objectives are either too vague or too specific, and not "just right".  Too vague implies the objectives cover too much material and students are not sure what to take away. For example, in psychology class, "students will be able to (SWBAT) discuss how the human brain functions." I would ask this teacher, "do you mean how the brain functions ev...

  Moodle is a fantastic learning platform to help run and organize an online course. Instructors are provided with an array of tools and resources to support student learning and teacher instruction. The primary assignment for this week was to embed many of these resources into our moodle course, such as wiki, a discussion forum, quizzes, a checklist, and folders etc. The essential question we need to ask ourselves is not how many resources are available - there is an abundance - but what is the best resource available for what I am trying to accomplish? For example, when should I use a wiki vs. forum? When should I use a URL vs. page? When should I use a quiz vs. survey? Veteran teachers, like myself, have access to a pool of activities, lessons and projects, etc. One of our challenges is picking the "right" activity, lesson, or project to meet specific learning outcomes/objectives. This challenge is magnified when teaching online courses because we have l...