Designing Online Learning Acivities

I have decided to read chapters eight and nine this week in Empowering Online Learning by Bonk & Zhang, (2008). The reading, reflecting, displaying and doing (R2D2) theoretical framework extends the “doing” activities for hands on learners. The pragmatic question implied in chapter eight asks “what do we do now,” and gives guidelines to help the learner express their new acquired knowledge. Simulations can imitate reality situations and challenge the learner with viable situations accommodating new found information, while game playing can add a flavor of fun with a bit of competiveness.
Simulating in the medical field can, in fact, assume a real life situation without the cost of a life. While it would be awe inspiring to assist the learner with real life critical situations, cost for the programs could be disadvantage, especially for a state community college. Online case scenarios are within reach and with the versatility of the internet, most computer systems can accommodate this type of learning without much adjustment. Our college uses Web CT for online testing and is already formatted for discussion groups, case scenarios, games, resources for research, as well as, the current page used for exam purposes.
Wiki’s can be used as an adjunct site to list further practice scenarios or discussion questions, depending on the need. Using other websites will assist the student to learn the internet and introduce sites foreign to them. If needed, SurveryShare, is available to help with data collection as a component of active learning, in a real “world” setting. The key to chapter eight is doing something with newly learned knowledge or skills and gives practical concepts to subsidize the learning process as described by the R2D2 framework model.
Chapter nine gives outcome measures with examples for all the doer strategies discussed in chapter eight. Our school currently uses action research for a community research project that has been changed, this year, to include online postings and guidance from the instructor. Next year this project will be 95% online with an in class presentation for peer review and according to, Bonk & Zhang,
(2008), the learner-centered index is high which gives the project validity.
Content review games, such as jeopardy, bingo, hangman, and word puzzles are user friendly and assist with knowledge retention by actively doing Having the students design a puzzle by using a website such as Puzzlemaker, to test other students is a great idea! Of course, online resources are a must for student research and adding a glossary would be very fruitful. Already, our nursing course lists words in a syllabus for the student’s benefit, so the alternative of devising a plan to have the students share in the responsibility of finding definitions and adding them to the online site is sensational!
As always, new knowledge can produce trepidation and when it stretches a student’s ability and takes them out of their comfort zone, they can be paralyzed with fear. “Doing” can reduce those fears and help the learner gain confidence with new skills, while having fun doing it!