This course was one of the first courses in Distance Education Program. I never had any experience learning online. This course gave me insights on distance education. I studied the history, development and current trends in distance education. It was interesting to study how distance education has evolved over time and how the technology is playing a crucial part in today's correspondence learning.
This course is focused on technology used in distance education. Correspondence education dates way back in history and very little technology was used at that time. As the distance education field evolved, more and more technology has become an essential part. Synchronous and asynchronous are main modes of technologies used in modern distance education. In this course we explored both the modes as well as other supporting factors such as software, connectivity, applications etc.
This course is focused on economics involved in distance education. Creating online courses includes subject matter, experts in various fields, managers, technology. But economics involved in creating a distance education program is also very important. In this course, we learned how to calculate different costs for designing a course. We were to do a group project for a fictional course and calculate and chart all the costs including salaries, material costs, technology, support, tuition and much more. The instructor used small audio-video tutorials to teach how to chart different graphs. The group project was a good experience.
This course educates about supporting the learners in distance education.The learners need various types of supports including technical support, library services, writing coach services, advising, counseling etc. I had an opportunity to work on a group project where we designed a project for a fictional company. Major learner support factors like accessibility, technical support, counseling, advertising, family support were considered.
This course focused on teaching and learning online. The course helped me develop the basic framework and theory for teaching and learning. I learned that a strong theoretical framework is need for any course, whether its face-to-face or online. The assigned readings developed a strong sense for how to create individual and collaborative projects, assessments and appropriate interaction with online learners.
DETC 630 (Fall 2011)Emerging Technology Trends and Issues in Distance Education and E-learning This course was focused on emerging technologies. I have always like technologies and I always try to learn new ways to incorporate latest technologies in my work and in personal life. For this course, we were supposed to study the latest trends in Distance Education with regards to emerging technologies. In one paper, we were to compare different technologies, for which I chose e-books and game based learning. In technology review report, I compared several emerging technologies, with regards to reviews, ratings, prices, uses in education etc. This course gave me an opportunity to learn in depth about technologies and also a knowledge to utilize them in education.
This course focused on different types of multimedia used in online education. We learned about different criteria such as audio, video, speed, browsing, display, appearance for a typical online course web site. We then studied and compared two online lesson plans for strengths and weaknesses.For my final project for this course, I designed a course that uses different multimedia such as a learning management system, different software and online resources. I also rated my project proposal using the rubric we had created as a group project.
This course was mainly about distance education programs around the globe. Globalization has made possible for education to reach everywhere. Different modes of communication like Television, radio, Internet, computer, phones, satellite are used across the world. We studies different forms of education and different modes of delivery. Each of us in this course had to choose a topic and had to conduct a one week conference. I chose open schooling in developing countries. The conference helped me study my topic in great detail.
IMAT 639 (Fall 2012)Internet Multimedia Applications This was by far my most favorite course. This course focuses on building a website. We were required to learn Dreamweaver and CSS. The textbook for this course is very self explanatory. If the instructions are follwed step-by-step, building a website can be very fun. I had encountered some technical problems with this course at the beginning. My office computer has a Dreamweaver software so I did not purchase one. I did my first lesson and I was very happy with the results. The next day, all my work had been automatically erased. I had to start from the beginning. Also, there were some issues with the resolution. The webpage on my office computer would look "shifted" on my laptop and it would also look different on different browsers. I learned through failures but that made my base stronger.
The leadership requirements in distance education are studied in this course. There was a great emphasis on being a manager and being a leader. Booth need different qualities and play different roles in distance education programs.We studied different leadership styles and their applications in different scenarios. For in depth understanding, our assignments included different case studies, and we were to solve them by applying appropriate leadership styles. We also had an assignment where we had to create a scenario and also present a solution for the same.
DETT 607 (Summer 2013)Instructional Design and Course Development in Distance Education and E-learning This course was more like a creation course. We studied the basic principles and applications of instructional designing process using ADDIE model. We also designed a sample course using ADDIE principles and presented it in different stages. In the final stage, we created a storyboard for our project. This was the first course I learned through a different learning management system, D2L. D2L was a good experience, although it took me a while to get acquainted with the new learning management system.
This course was the final capstone course. We are to write a research paper on chosen topic and also create an e-portfolio. I chose alternate modes of education using web-based technology as my research theme. I concentrated on hybrid courses and flipped classrooms.