1 / 15

Having Students Set Personal Goals in an Online Course

Having Students Set Personal Goals in an Online Course. By Boria Sax, PhD. Students participate in setting their own goals…. In the course “Animals and Human Civilizations,”

zwi
Download Presentation

Having Students Set Personal Goals in an Online Course

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Having Students Set Personal Goals in an Online Course By Boria Sax, PhD

  2. Students participate in setting their own goals… In the course “Animals and Human Civilizations,” taught online at the State University of Illinois at Springfield, the facilitator asks all students to state their own personal goals for a course at the beginning of the term, reconsider these goals as the course progresses, and review their own progress toward accomplishing those goals at the end. All of this is done primarily in a discussion forum, where other students share experiences, criticism, perspective, and encouragement. When the personal goals are overly vague, either the facilitator or a student may ask for clarification. Students also brainstorm together on writing topics and critique drafts of one another’s papers.

  3. Advantages: • 1) Students who set their own goals are likely to have a greater level of interest and involvement. • 2) Community support can help students in setting and pursuing goals, especially when the subject is intellectually complex and emotionally intense. • 3) Personal and professional transformation, a tradition purpose of liberal education, is most likely when students set their agendas

  4. Challenges and complications: • In so far as students set their agendas, it can be more difficult to grade objectively. • When a course involves multiple goals, it is more difficult to establish quantitative measures of learning effectiveness. • When students pursue personal goals, there may be greater potential for conflict within the classroom

  5. At the beginning of the course, students are asked to introduce themselves, give pertinent experiences, and set personal goals:

  6. At mid-point, they revisit their goals:

  7. At the end of the course, they evaluate their success:

  8. One student noted all of the revisions to her goals in her final major post:

  9. At times students can be controversial or provocative:

  10. Differing viewpoints generally enrich the class and do not lead to conflict, provided students remain focussed on their own experience: Director of Course Design, Research and Development

  11. But how will a student feel when the course draws to an end? In this case, we do not know yet. Making courses in part student directed can add not only learning effectiveness but also human interest and drama.

  12. “While we teach, we learn.”Seneca Giorgione, Three Philosophers (ca. 1505)

  13. “Animals and Human Civilization,” taught at UIS, won the Society and Animals Course Award for the Distinguished New Course of 2007 form the Humane Society and the CRLE.

  14. The End With special thanks to the UIS students who allowed their posts to be used in this presentation, especially Betty Lynn Chrostoski, Jessica Simmers, Derek Sutherland, Rhonda Urban, and Caroline Ziogas.

  15. Postscript: After the preceding was completed, more final messages came in:

More Related