Educ 639 Muddiest Point Blog

Hi all! I pray you all had an enjoyable, safe and happy Thanksgiving! I spent mines with family and for that I am thankful! The muddiest point to me is the grey area with plagiarism. I feel that it is sometimes unclear in distance education because some courses want you to summarize and in some courses allow you to copy and paste portions of the original document. Therefore it is important to me as the student to make sure I have clarity about the instructions because it changes from course to course. As well as ensuring that after graduation, when I am the instructor, I am clear with my expectations for the assignments. This point is also unclear to me because their are so many copyright laws and it is hard to dictate what information can be duplicated and what information can not. Therefore plagiarism can often happen when it is taken for granted that the material can be used in a form outside of its original intent. Therefore it is unclear to me as to when information can be reused, how much of that information can be reused and when it is necessary to contact the original source in order to reproduce the information. I am sure that people work hard to produce their work, as do I. Hence I understand why people want to get credit for their creations and not have them stolen and intentionally or mistakenly used for another persons.

Educ 633: Webliography Blog

Hope everyone had a safe and blessed Thanksgiving break!!! I enjoyed mines with family and for that I am thankful :) Chapter 7 focused primarily on the coherence principle. This principle was used to describe an uncluttered learning environment in an education setting where the focus is geared towards the content. Everything that is implemented into online learning should add to the instructional process rather than defer away from the content that is relevant. Extraneous things that maybe add to the overall look or interest of the viewers, but they do very little for the actual content that is taught, should not be integrated into online instruction. This point is important because it can assist instructors with designing their course. It is important that students are not being distracted by content that is presented on a webpage and forget the overall purpose of what should be retained through the assignment. This point did change my view on instructional design because it gave me more insight into more things that must be taken into consideration when planning an online course. Audio and visual cues as well as text size was not necessarily something that I had considered; and definitely in respect to the possible distractions that could present themselves. This point is also relevant to my ISD project because it also aligns with not adding “fillers” or irrelevant material just to meet requirements, but rather providing quality, relevant information.

Educ 639: Most Important Theory Blog

The theory that I have found interesting to distance education is Gagne’s Nine Steps of Instruction Theory. This theory is important to me because it set up a framework that instructors can use to help develop their course. This theory focuses on all aspects of the development of the student and tracking their progress. The nine steps for the theory are as follows: 1.Gain Attention. 2. Inform Learner of Objective. 3. Stimulate Recall of Prior Knowledge. 4. Present the Material. 5. Provide Guidance for Learning. 6. Elicit Performance. 7. Provide Feedback. 8. Assess Performance. 9. Enhance Retention and Transfer. This theory did change a small perspective on my views of education because I had not really previously thought in-depth about pre (assessing prior knowledge) and post assessments in a distance education program. Since being a student at Liberty University, I do not recall any assessments of these two types. Hence it changed my perspective about the effectiveness of assessments at the distance education level because they are rarely seen and could be beneficial in tracking a student’s progress. In a prior research effort it was found that some online universities were trying to adopt a video system where students are recorded while taking assessments online, therefore ensuring that the student is the one taking the assessment and not someone else taking it for the student. This theory could be used by me in the future when I start my outline of assignments to develop the structure of my online courses. Hence I would try to include the steps, at times in a different order, to meet the overall needs of my course and blend in the aspects of a traditional classroom setting.