I need your help. I’m forming this vision of a new way to engage students around career education. Ready for my breakthrough idea: it’s an online course. You don’t find this idea so breakthrough? Well as Dean Bruner always says, quality matters, and I believe that no high quality, targeted career preparation online modules exist today. I’m putting this out there as a stretch goal for me—I think this will be fun and can be breakthrough in the industry.
Here’s an article from the website edudemic entitled, “5 Things To Know About Today’s Online Learning Options.” Human guidance, pedagogical expertise, real-time interaction, personalization of content, and innovative use of technology—those are the five. Doesn’t quite sound like online learning that I’ve experienced. But my vision is that my online career education will incorporate these components.
I also think the platform for this vision will be important. Clay Christiansen of Harvard recently tweeted about an article in gigaom by Ki Mae Heussner: Online Education Startups: A Field Guide. What this tells me is that a video posted on the web wont do it—my course must meet the standard being set by many of the nations leading academic institutions.
Before I begin development, I’m looking for you to help me know the qualities in online courses that you think make them most effective. Please respond with your ideas. In the meantime, I’m excited to get this project going.
Everette, Interesting idea. I am currently taking an online course from U of San Francisco on advanced social media, and it has been an interesting learning experience: I have no previous experience with this sort of thing. The class lectures, given by experts in the field, were delivered to me on CDs, as were the notebooks with the screen shots for each of the 8 classes. In addition to these, there is a weekly online class, delivered at 9 p.m.EDT by an expert who happens to be in Florida. The link between the live class that that week’s lectures could be better, but all in all, a good course. There is an online, open book exam for each week. It is a go at your own pace deal, within an 8 week window. After the 8 weeks is up, you no longer have access to the course website. Would be happy to chat with you more about this if you are interested.
Margaret
Mr. Fortner,
This is a very ambitious goal and wish you the best success in achieving it. To assist, I am going to give you my input as an undergraduate student at Longwood University who is currently doing an internship at Westinghouse Electric Company. I have had a fair amount of experience with online education ranging from classes at Longwood to completing the courses Westinghouse Electric Company has for their employees.
There has been pro’s and con’s of each, but overall I found that I learned better when I was consistently being engaged online by the video through answering questions, etc. Without being of high quality and complexity you can easily lose focus or interest in the course. I struggle sometimes to keep interest when I am given mind numbingly simple questions on these online courses. After all, were taking these course to go to the outermost edge of our intellectual ability correct?
So I think a challenge you may face from my perspective is providing consistent engaging and challenging online delivered courses. Once you have that mastered I think you will truly be able to make a difference in the students lives who are taking the courses in the future.
I hope this insight helps and if you have any questions to follow up on please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Steven A. Valdez
steven.valdez@live.longwood.edu
540.290.8426
http://www.linkedin.com/in/valdezsa
Steven, thanks for your insightful comments. When I am able to pursue this, I’ll let you know. UVA just announced a partnership with Coursera as a platform. CHeck it out.
Best,
Everette