Online Teaching: Online Course for Novices

As an independent study, I designed CyberTools for Today's Schools: Using the Internet for Professional Development and Productivity. This free five-week course was designed especially for those who had never taken an online course. The course introduces students to skills and tools online learners need to take an online course - either for credit or professional development. You may download the syllabus [pdf] or review the entire class by signing in as reviewer and using the password reviewer.

The CyberTools course has been offered by the Instructional Technology Resource Center, in collaboration with SouthEast Initiatives Regional Technology in Education Consortium four times. I have facilitated three of the sections. In addition, the Madison Wisconsin Metropolitan School District has obtained the course to offer to Wisconsin teachers.

As you review the course, notice how the assignments are flexible enough that participants from a wide array of classrooms can make them applicable to their contexts. The immediate application of new skills to the participant classroom was something I wanted to achieve. I worked diligently to identify high-quality multimedia resources for the Utility Tools sections of the course.

Because SEIR*TEC no longer has funding, this class has not been offered in a while. I anticipate the content suffers from "link rot." Despite this, I think you'll get a good idea of how I approached the course.

Comments from anonymous participants in the CyberTools course evaluations include:

"This course opened my eyes to the communication power of the Internet. While I was already an e-mail user, particularly on the job, discussion boards and chat rooms were new experiences for me. The potential for using them for staff development and student learning seems unlimited. I enjoyed the course and learned many new skills. Thanks for providing educators with such a well designed learning experience. Finding time for professional development in my busy life is difficult but well worth it when the course content and assignments are so "job" related. Choosing Becky as the first instructor for Cybertools was also another indication of your commitment to excellence. She is both knowledgeable and supportive!"

"This was excellent! I came in with a lot of computer experience, but I learned a lot. The course was better-organized and paced than any other I have taken online. I designed my own course two years ago, and now I want to go back and model it after this one. I see now that I left out many things that would have improved it."

"The final assignment allowed me to recognize the potential that I had to apply the newly gained knowledge and create a cybertool of my own. The encouragement from Becky and tools provided throughout the previous 4 weeks' lessons enabled this to be possible."

"I appreciated the Lesson 2 assignment, which called for an organization of our bookmarks. I was glad to participate in the online chat in Lesson 4 - I had never done that before. The final project in Lesson 5 was fun to create. I will use the web sites for making my own checklists (to guide students in their projects) and rubrics (for teacher evaluation and students' self-evaluation) in my classroom."