Studying Online: Tips

 

Embarking on studying a course whether it be a short course or a diploma or degree part-time online is a tough decision to make and should not be taken lightly. It requires dedication and commitment on your end to begin, progress, and eventually complete the course.

 

There are so many online courses and a wide variety of platforms from which you can register and take a course. Online courses are inexpensive; some are free while others may cost a few dollars up to a hundred or even a thousand. This usually depends on the level of qualification you're studying for.

 

Where to begin? Free courses are great, to begin with. Several reasons why I say this:

 

To familiarize yourself with the online learning environment or community.

A free course could give you an opportunity to find your natural aptitude for learning. Are you a self-learner, are you someone who needs guidance? Can you easily progress at your own pace?

You begin to learn about your own learning style by participating in a free course and this will be very helpful when selecting courses.

You may also learn how much time (hours) you can be able to commit during your working week once you begin doing the online course. It's easier said than done as things can get overwhelmingly difficult as time goes on.

 

It is not to say that free courses have no value in them and are only good for trying out online courses. No! In fact, many of the courses I have taken in the past years have all been free courses and I can honestly say I learned so much about my preferred learning style and also learned new skills for free. These free courses I have taken have added some skills that I am able to apply in my work or even help me learn a new thing.

 

Tinkering thoughts shares from time to time links to free courses on this blog and also on the Facebook page.

Evolving as a digital teacher: Tools of the trade (Part 3)

Here at DWU, we have talked about online learning for several years now. Several workshops and seminars were conducted all in an effort to upskill academics in the area of online learning. One of the workshops I remember attending was with A/Professor Dr. Susan Crichton from University of British Columbia (UBC) back in 2015. There were quite a number of tools introduced during the week-long session.

Since then we've had lengthy discussions and musings over the pros and cons of online teaching among other things e-learning. Discussions continue to evolve on our university broadcast surrounding this topic as several staff already using various tools share through blog posts (like this post itself) and Youtube videos such as this and others shared by Bernard Yegiora (a DWU staff who also shares some digital teaching tutorials on his blog). We even had a separate Moodle site set up by ICT to experiment with online learning. This site unfortunately has been decommissioned recently this year. Initially not many were keen on taking on the idea of online teaching. In fact only two or three people used the DMS Moodle platform setup specifically for online learning. Reasons as to why academics did not take the challenge to at least offer a unit online are unknown.

DWU however does have a well established e-learning environment using Moodle established several years ago which has gone through various updates with one done recently beginning of this year adding additional features and plugins to allow for more functionality. This university-wide learning platform has been used for both its undergraduate programs and flexible mode programs. Use of Moodle in this case has been mainly for blended learning where lecturers upload resources and post assignments for student to access and for students to post task submissions for feedback. It was not used for full online learning programs. The traditional approach of face-to-face classroom style seminars and lectures is still the norm for most of our programs.

The idea of online teaching using video,web and audio conferencing tools for remote learning was there but somewhat shelved every time it came up in discussions for various reasons. 

Anyhow, it now seems the COVID-19 may well 'force' academics to start using the vast array of tools online that allow for remote learning. At least that is the approach taken now in many universities across the globe given the outbreak of this pandemic as this article suggests among many other similar articles.

• Shift to online learning due to COVID-19 requires rethink of teaching: experts
• The COVID-19 online pivot: Adapting university teaching to social distancing

This post will not talk about how you can move your classroom online, an expert at Harvard Business School has done that already and is sharing his expertise and experience by hosting several webinars like this one which you can sign up to attend or download recordings. Harvard Business Publishing also share some great resources on Moving Your Classroom Online.

In this post, I share with you briefly three online delivery options I have been using and which I am familiar with. I use all three of these tools at various times in the Graduate Certificate in Data Networking program that I teach for 14 weeks fully online (remotely) and 1 week face-to-face on campus.

Cisco Packet Tracer as a teaching and learning tool for computer networks in DWU

I recently published an article co-authored with Dr. Peter Anderson in the DWU Journal on Cisco Packet Tracer as a teaching and learning tool in DWU. This paper was basically a reflection on my teaching experiences with Packet tracer for the networking courses.

Here is the introduction.

Computer networks have become a fundamental tool of today's corporate environment. “Computer networks consist of devices that provide communication paths between electronic machines to create local networks inside buildings as well as the interconnection of networks in such structures as campuses and the Internet” (Frezzo, Behrens et al. 2010).

As Lammle (2010) suggests, “computers have become invaluable to us personally and professionally. Our society has become highly dependent on these resources and on sharing them with each other. The ability to communicate with those we need to whether they’re in the same building or in some far-away land completely hinges on our capacity to create and maintain solid, dependable networks” (Lammle, 2010). To have such skills that will enable an IT professional to create and maintain networks requires rigorous training. It is a demanding field of expertise since the efficient operation of many business organizations today rely upon the smooth operation of its computer network.

You can download or read the paper here 

MOOC List

Was doing some reading and research online about doing MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) studies and stumbled upon this site. A very useful site indeed that lists all the MOOCs around the globe all in one page. Awesome stuff! I seriously do not like opening hundreds of pages to find what I am looking for.

Here's a screenshot of the category list that you can search. Thought I should share it here for those interested in doing something.

Here is the link to the site again. Please do check it out! MOOC List