Module 3_2: The Learning Environment

Module 3_2: The Learning Environment

          When approaching this week’s prompt, my initial thought was that I would reach out to students in the course to find out more about them and their experiences as online learners.  However, I had to rethink this as it is inappropriate to speak to children without parental permission, and our limited access in the course does not grant us the right to email.  Therefore, I decided to do two things: 1.  I reached out to my mentor to find out his opinions/analysis of the group of learners he has and 2.  I browsed through the introduction posts and met students virtually.

            I have yet to speak to my mentor about the learners as we are one week behind because of his obligations to grading assignments and working with the students.  However, we will speak via chatroom this week.  Nevertheless, I was able to “meet” some students virtually.  This was very interesting because when I spoke to my mentor in our very first interview, he informed me that GAVs has a variety of learners including those that need credits to graduate, those that are ahead and only seek enrichment, and those that may be in situations that do not allow them to attend school physically.  Through the introductions I met an 18-year-old attending SCAD in the fall that interested in photo manipulation, a 17 year old that does not do any extracurricular activities, an athlete that doesn’t think anything in his life is interesting outside of football and baseball, some children that are well traveled, a student that has attended five different highschools, and a lot of fans of Atlanta sports (this excited me).  It is amazing how you get to know the students in a different way when meeting them virtually.  Through the design of their PowerPoints, their writing style, and the information they decide to share, the reader gets to see a little piece of each person’s personality.

            Another interesting revelation this week was how cumbersome online teaching can be.  As I read through the introductions, I noticed that my mentor had commented on a lot of them.  I didn’t read a fourth of the class’ introductions, but found it very time consuming opening each slideshow and reading through them.  I can only imagine reading 400 of them.  Additionally, my mentor mentioned having to reach out to students and parents outside of the online environment through phonecalls and progress reports.  Although this was only the introduction assignment, I noticed that many students did not follow instructions.  The assignment was to post a presentation about yourself.  Some students simply typed text, and did not include a presentation at all.  This showed me that no matter what type of teaching environment you have, there must always be policies and procedures in place that help redirect students when needed as well as give them consequences when necessary.