Designing my online lesson plan was something that I was really excited for, and probably over planned for what was required of the assignment. Throughout the MET program, I have been interested in creating an introductory GitHub course for adult learning and I took this opportunity to finally develop it into a learning management system. Because of this I started to create learning materials and collecting resources that took up a lot of my time. Unfortunately with the current state of the world being in quarantine, this affected my course development as I lost access to some of the materials while also dealing with family issues with the current pandemic. Trying to put something together was the most difficult part of this assignment. I took too much on to begin with and it ended up hurting my planned outcome altogether.
With the development of my course being targeted for adult learnings. I tried to employ active learning strategies that I had researched earlier in the semester. This included a variety of learning content such as readings and videos, discussions, and slideshows. There is also a lot of opportunities for students to practice what they learn and use the GitHub application with a creative choice of what they plan to add for a class assignment while working with their peers. The course instructor is also actively involved throughout the course as well.
Really overall the only troubles I ran into were trying to cope with the current quarantine situation and find the time and available resources to try to create as much of my lesson plan as I originally intended. In the end, this project really helped to generate my strong interest in online teaching and I feel a lot more comfortable moving forward with exploring the idea of getting into online teaching.
This project was a lot of fun and did help to distract me from our sick household when possible. I was happy to finally try-out the Blackboard LMS and that might be the most rewarding overall. Since there are so many moving parts to Blackboard and it is usually the required LMS that I see in instructional designer job postings, it was really valuable to get to “test run” it. This might be my favorite assignment in the entire MET program. I just wish I was able to have done it without a global distraction.
Jake Dalton 