2008 March | Keith Newhouse:

Since Project One I’ve decided that I need to have a separate Instructional Goal for the course than for my module that will be worked on as a part of this class as I hope to use the module created here to help me create future modules. The Instructional Goal of the course to introduce the learners to various software programs to increase their productivity and creativity in teaching undergraduate and graduate classes.

For the purpose of this class I’ve come up with an Instructional Goal, Design Goal and three objectives for the first module. The Instructional Goal is to give Professors a general working knowledge of Macromedia/Adobe Dreamweaver and my design goal is to do it in a way that Professors can complete it in small chunks, on their own time and have their learning lead up to something useful to them (which also secretly will be useful to my department in organizing the College of Education’s website and bringing otherwise missing information to visitors to the website).

Even though the course will be self paced for professors, I wanted to make it so that Professors could measure their success and have come up with three objectives for the module:

The learner will be able to understand the basics of using Dreamweaver.
The learner will be able to explore and use various features of Dreamweaver
The learner will be able to create a Professional Web Presence using Dreamweaver

Besides being a performance based assessment, the Professional Web Presence will then be used by my department to inform visitors about the quality of faculty that we have at the College of Education and will act as the professor’s contact center with the website. The College of Education website at present is a design nightmare and finding any information about faculty is nearly impossible at the moment. By having professors attach their CV’s, contact information and anything else their students and other visitors may want to know on their Professional Web Presence, I’m hoping this may help clean up our site at the same time as giving the faculty a way to help others get in touch with them.

Deciding which technology to use is always a difficult task, but trying to come up with ideal technology to create the perfect class is even more difficult. After long contemplation I’ve finally come to my perfect list of technology if cost, time and technology constraints were not an issue. The ideal scenario for my class would be web based filled with instructive interactive media including a specially designed for the course version of the software being taught, in this case Macromedia/Adobe Dreamweaver. To make sure that faculty had all the help they could possibly want I would have a staff working around the clock over video conference answering all faculty questions as well as being available at a walk-in center and telephone hotline for those who may not want to communicate via video conferencing.

Of course just like in most cases, I can’t have my dream class and need to cut back greatly on that plan. Using the ACTIONS model, I’ve cut my class back to a web based Learning Management System to organize the course (In this case moodle), with web based print, graphics and maybe a screen cast video or two (to be added after initial testing of the module). As I am the only staff available at this time, support will have to be email based or done through Help Desk software (Open Source=Free). I also would like to create a wiki and forum to make things more interactive for the learners and so that they can learn from others who have completed the module and share their own ideas.

For the components of the class please see http://www.actsoup.dreamhosters.com/orientation/course/view.php?id=4

I’ve created this moodle class as a self directed course, primarily learner-content course with voluntary learner-learner interaction and learner-instructor interaction when necessary. The content is the most important factor of the class however I’ve included wikis and forums to aid in the learners interacting with each other and I am always available for learner-instruction by email.

Type of Interaction	Level of Interaction	Use in Course
Social/Rapport-building Designs for Interaction	Moderate to Above Average	Voluntary interaction with classmates, Interaction with instructor when necessary (and I’ll probably check in every once in a while to see what’s going on)
Instructional Designs for Interaction	Low Interactive Qualities
Interactivity of Technology Resources	Moderate Interactive Qualities	Class chat room, Forum, Email, Wiki
Evidence of Learner Engagement	N/A
Evidence of Instructor Engagement	High Level of Interactive Qualities	Prompt detailed emails (May even include screencasts here)