New Vocabulary for my Awareness: A Reflection

Though this is the first course I have taken in the new ELC platform created by brilliant people at Hopkins' Center for Technology in Education, it is the 9^th course I have taken in a mostly or completely online format. The actual format of learning in this new platform is largely the same as the old ELC, but now that I am explicitly studying the design and evaluation of e-Learning environments, there are several components of improvement that I have noticed and feel are worth mentioning. For instance, here's a look at the main page of a course in the old ELC:

And now, here's a look at the welcome page for a course in the new ELC:

When I first logged into the new ELC for this e-Learning course, I noticed the change in color first, and then the menu. I thought it was more aesthetically pleasing than the old edition, and generally a simpler look; I did not, however, notice the core upgrades in the Essential Elements of a course. For instance, on the main page of the new ELC, one can see all of the content presentations sorted out by week right away as opposed to having to select the coursebook. This is a major upgrade in the Essential Element of Tone & Style, as it links the content presentations with course announcements in such a way as to say, “Welcome to class, here's what's going on now, what we've done in the past, and what's coming up next.” This thoughtful change is a great upgrade, but I think the most striking positive change addresses the Essential Element of teaming. Here's a side-by-side image of the team work space comparing the old ELC with the new:

As one can see, the new ELC team space includes updates, a collaborative blog, discussion, simple chat functions, and places to share resources amongst the team and keep a collaborative calendar. The old version of the ELC included a team space only for discussion. Any other collaboration had to be improvised elsewhere within the course shell or maintained outside the ELC.

There's also the newly improved communication features, such as the ability to very easily track updates to a particular discussion or area of the ELC using the “Subscribe to Email Updates” function. All of the changes in the new edition of the ELC seem positive to me, and I have learned a lot about how I might take that with me into course design myself – including the e-Learning PD initiative I am currently designing and will be soon implementing at my school.

There is a wide range of instructional technology abilities and interests at the school where I currently work (lots of digital immigrants on the faculty). As the new Technology Coordinator, I have made it my core mission to provide more scaffolding and differentiation in professional development opportunities for all faculty and staff. My initiative will involve providing a place for asynchronous learning of Web 2.0 and school-specific tools. These will sometimes be intended as stand-alone resources and other times as follow-ups to face-to-face interactions. I am going to be looking for more ideas in the coming weeks about how to best support digital immigrants in the asynchronous e-Learning environment to ensure the best possible success of the initiative.