what have you learned about online learning

Assignment Due: Tuesday Dec 22, 2020 at 2 PM
To complete this module, please complete the following after reviewing
–    the Session 2 slides and/or material:
–    module 1 slides and materials
Slides are attached
Module 1 material is enclosed
1. Post your responses to the questions below:
    After completing Module 1, what have you learned about online learning? Consider both what you have learned from the module readings and discussions, as well as what you have learned about yourself and how you learn online.
    What beliefs and values guide your teaching? Consider some of the questions shared on slides 8 and 11.
2. Share a response to this post :
  I took several online courses during my undergraduate education and generally enjoyed the self-driven process. However, I was always also cognizant of the different types of challenges that online learning (especially asynchronously) presents. I continued to think about how online learning environments affect students when I TAd for an online course last summer. As a student, I was able to engage with and learn from my online courses on an individual level, but as a TA I noticed it was much more of a struggle to engage students. Since the course has no synchronous sessions, it was very challenging to make connections with students that are often integral to student success. Likewise, Brown and Roediger articulate in Learning is Misunderstood that it is vital to hit multiple modes of engagement and learning styles to encourage long-term meaningful learning. I did find that the online medium presented significant challenges to create different learning opportunities. Engaging students in participation forms becomes difficult due to students varying availabilities in asynchronous courses, and creating different exercises is left largely to the discretion of the course director. Going forward, creating class agreements or communicating alternate methods of participation may help to both encourage student engagement and to introduce multiple methods of learning.
                I am personally invested in ensuring equitable access to education. I try to bring a decolonizing praxis into my classrooms by integrating real-world applications and focusing on universal design to increase the level of accessibility without putting the onus of articulating need on the students. My students always seemed to be the most invested and motivated when they were genuinely interested in the material. While not every subject in every course will appeal to all consistently, building an understanding of why course material is important to overall course objectives has been key in keeping my students motivated. When teaching in-person courses, I would focus on having the class participate in exercises like creating mind maps to form connections between different material they learned. I could bring this functionality into an online space by using programs such as Google Jamboard as an augmentation to forms.
My response: