Final Reflection Piece on CEP 820

CEP 820 was the first online course I had ever taken and I was not sure what to expect. Fortunately for me this course was a very enjoyable and positive experience and I felt that I grew a lot professionally because I feel that I learned what it takes to design a successful online course. During the course I felt challenged since I was forced to critically think about aspects of the design of an online course which, prior to taking this course, I had not given any or much thought. For example I had not given much thought to how to clearly communicate the goals for my module to all stake holders; how to assess tasks and projects to be assigned during the module; how to design meaningful tasks that would engage the student with the module and fellow classmates; and how to establish my “voice” as well as the voices of the students in the module. 
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Prior to taking this course, I had also not realized how important it is to have a  communication policy in place at the beginning of the course so that students, parents and administrators will know what to expect when a situation arises during the course. On the other hand I also learned that online instructors need to be much more flexible and patient than a regular classroom teacher because of tech issues which may arise, everyday “life” issues and even issues or situations which the instructor had not foreseen. 
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When I began to design my module I had envisioned a strictly online course with no face to face meetings. However when I began to plan assignments and projects I realized how challenging it would be to incorporate some aspects of the module, specifically discussions of literary pieces I wanted to share with the students and I also began to wonder how I could be certain that the students would know how to use the online tools which I had envisioned for my module. For example, would all of the students know how to use tools such as Voicethread, Skype, Google Docs, Lingtlanguage for voice recording and the Discussion Board? It was then that I realized that a hybrid online course would probably be a better fit for me and the HS students who would be taking this course.
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While designing the module I was thankful for the wealth of resources already on the internet which offer first time online course writers such as me a lot of pointers and guidance for online course design. For example, the principals of Universal Design for Learning, (UDL), taught me to take a critical look at my module to see if it provided for the three principals of UDL, (multiple means of presentation; multiple means of action and expression and multiple means of engagement). I also remember watching a video about the three types of interactions in online courses. After watching the video I realized that my module was a little heavy on learner content. Consequently this led me to change some of the activities I had in mind for my module in order to be certain that the module had a good balance of the interactions, (learner interaction with the course content; learner interaction with other learners in the course and learner interaction with the course instructor). A good balance of interactions will ultimately allow the learner to learn the content better which is key to a successful online course. 
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While designing the module I was also not sure how I would or could assess certain activities in an objective manner, in particular, the discussion forum. I had no idea how to value discussion board posts. For example, should I require one post and one response? Furthermore unlike a face to face discussion in a classroom, how do I know the student on the other side of the web page is actually the person they say they are while posting on a discussion forum? 
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Yet another reflection on assessment while I was designing my module and one that is not necessarily limited to an online environment was the lesson on rubrics. During this particular lesson I was forced to stop and think about the use of rubrics as an assessment tool. My school is very rubric oriented for both formal and informal assessment, hence why I was curious to know if we are in fact following best practices in this area. I personally found the readings, (excerpts from Maja Wilson’s book, Rethinking Rubrics and the forward of this book, written by Alfie Kohn, very enlightening as an educator.  These readings made me aware of the pitfalls of using rubrics however on the other hand I was also reminded that there are several types of rubrics depending on what the teacher wants to communicate to the student and most importantly, a teacher always needs to evaluate a rubric after having used one to make sure that the results from the rubric are valid, reliable, consistent, objective, usable, etc. I must admit that I don’t always do this.
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I do find it a bit ironic that it takes a course about designing a successful online course to get me thinking more critically about several key aspects of my “face to face” course.

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Link to my Developer Notebook: http://tiny.cc/le52x