The Bitter(sweet) end

As the class draws to a close and the students make their final reflections, it's only fitting for me to make mine. With a new course, at some point I always take my best preparations, jump in and wait to see what happens. This was especially true this time when after jumping in (week 1), I never actually saw anyone again.

This was not my first time teaching an online coures, but the first time it was quite so open-ended. The final wiki was truly an experiment and I was pleased with how robust the content and style were.

I was also pleased at how well the class remained a virtual team. In previous online courses, there have been students who sneak away for a variety of reasons. This time people remained supportive of each other through to the end. The final reflections include not only their own growth, but mentions of how they learned from each other and were able to observe growth that can be used in their on-the-job lives.

Still lots of room for improvement, but overall I enjoyed the class...and maybe I'm even a little sorry to see it come to an end!

Final Week of the Course

We've all come a long way and it's all been captured in wikis and blogs. I've told everyone that this has been a bit of an experiment, but from my vantage point it seems to be working out. The "wikipedia" we've created has come together in both form and content.

The remaining observations in the blogs will be extremely interesting to see how everybody sees this course. I'm glad to see everyone is also reading each other's blogs.

Home Stretch

With the long weekend ahead, I've just taken a look at the wiki and the blogs. Everything seems to be falling into place and no one is screaming (virtually). It's interesting to see the wiki grow as people fill in their parts of the whole.

After my tour of the blogs, I've seen a number of indicators of the kinds of side experimentation and growth that was my real hope for the class -- Amy has added a picture to her blog entry, Natasha has a new tech triumph each time and Kevin, Clif and George are all thinking about the wiki assignment compared to the rest of the assignments in their academic careers.

All this oversight of the class from my porch at the beach!