Reflecting on Online Teaching and Learning, Where Expectations Can Lead Me

Much of my time is spent online, either on social networks (Twitter and Facebook), or clicking through blogs to learn new information about topics of my interest. This probably comes to mind when you think of someone in my generation. This self taught knowledge is what I would describe as my introduction to online learning and online (self) teaching. Beyond this, my experience with online learning comes from classes I have taken in graduate school (ecology) and most recently a class I took last semester, Introduction to Online Learning. This class refreshed my memory on a lot of technical aspects of the internet and usage of the web for research.  I participated in class discussion through threads, did a group project where we found information in a scavenger hunt, and attempted to chat with the Wimba software, to no avail.  This class was challenging when it came to discipline.  I had to log in several times a week to view classmates comments and teacher announcements just to make sure I didn't miss anything.  Keeping up with the reading assignments was something I also had a hard time doing in the first few weeks because I enrolled in the class 2 weeks late, but over time all of the assignments and tasks became a routine part of my life.  I found this class to be useful because it taught me about different ways to use search engines for scholarly research and the many other ways I can communicate to people without being in person.

I am interested in online teaching to do online presentations on student leadership and diversity.  As a Student Affairs professional, I know this information will progress the learning in our field and increase the number of times to possibly communicate with my students as well as students on other campuses.  It is my belief that the knowledge I gain from both the Online Learning and Online Teaching courses combined will give me a solid background to foster learning on the internet.  In the Online Teaching class I expect to be prepared to identify different teaching styles that may be best for online learning and build upon what I already know about aggregated environments from ecology in Student Affairs.