Form 3b: New Course Thoughts

Author: Bemie Enyong/EDUC 763 summer 2013 Description: What will this course be about? Where/how will it be taught?
This is a self-paced, self-directed career development course which will be available online via the Moodle LMS. The purpose of this course is to provide students with knowledge of their career preferences, an understanding of the world of work and available career options, and to help them understand how different academic majors can help them prepare for various careers. The workshop consists of three modules which may be completed in any order.

Learners: Who are the learners? What do you know about them that might make a difference in what you design? (Think about age, prior knowledge, familiarity with technology).
The learners consist of First Year Experience students who are both traditional and non-traditional, range in age from 18-50+, and have work and life experience commensurate with their ages. Many of the courses available here are what we call Brick and Click which is a hybrid of online and face-to-face. There are also completely Brick courses {face-to-face, traditional classroom style) and completely Click courses {fully online}. Since this course is self-selected, it would appeal to students who already have some facility with technology. It would be offered as an alternative to the current offering of a traditional classroom style course which runs for approximately six weeks.

Things that you want to accentuate in the course. This can be related to what or how you teach, how students respond, or about the technology. What do you want to see happen in this course?
Since my first fully-fledged course in an online environment doesnt yet exist I dont think that I have enough information to know what Id like to accentuate. I will be teaching myself how to use a robust authoring tool called Adobe Captivate to create content once I have the curriculum fully fleshed out. I expect the content to be engaging, impactful, dynamic, and interesting, but with that said, I especially want to be sure that sound pedagogy underpins my content so that I can provide students with an experience that will support and encourage true learning to occur. I want to use this new technology to assist me in delivering well designed content that provides students with a viable alternative learning option.

Problems that youd like to avoid in the course. Based on past experience, what would you predict will drag you down? It could be technology, disinterested students, lack of discussion, etc.
I want to be sure not to get bogged down in design details and lose sight of the forest for the trees. I want to be sure to remain tied-in to learning objectives and implement sound instructional strategies. One concern I have is that the millennial generation of learners (which comprises about 80% of my audience) is used to living in a world where highly sophisticate CGI [computer generated imagery] is the rule of law. How do I create content that doesnt look gimmicky or cartoonish? I dont want my technical design skills to be an impediment to learning.

What might be the most problematic aspect of this course as you teach it?
Taking this course will be completely optional so I am concerned about how to attract students to the course and encourage them to persist with the coursework such that they can engage in meaningful reflection about their career development options. Students have so much on their plates already that I am concerned that I may not get as many users as I would like to take advantage of this learning opportunity. Im trying to brainstorm some ideas of how to get other stakeholders such as faculty involved in selling this to students, perhaps by embedding it in their curriculum and requiring that students complete certain

Form adapted from Smith, R. M. Conquering the Content. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008.

modules.

The most time consuming aspect of this course as you teach it will be:
The course will be self-directed and self-paced so I anticipate that the most time consuming aspect will be the design and development of the course content since I will be using a tool with which I am not yet familiar. Also based on feedback that I receive from end users Im sure that I may have to redesign various elements of the course.

Form adapted from Smith, R. M. Conquering the Content. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008.