The Learning Management System (LMS) is the administrator of my course.

EVERYTHING for the course is on the LMS:

• Weekly schedule
• Grades
• Assignments with Rubrics
• Content (powerpoints, links to content)
• Calendar
• Email

Feel like you are answering the same questions over and over again -> Send them to the LMS

• When students claim they are going to miss a class and ask what they will miss, I point them to the LMS.
• When students ask how much something is worth, I point them to the LMS.
• When students ask when something is due, I point them to the LMS.
• When students ask how something will be marked, I point them to the LMS.
• When students ask what their grade is on an assignment, I point them to the LMS.
• When students want the answer to a quiz, I point them to the LMS.
• When students ask what is a good website to use, I point them to the LMS which has a link to my delicous bookmarks.

EVERYTHING for the course is on the LMS.

Online learning has definite advantages over face-to-face instruction when it comes to teaching and learning, according to a new meta-analysis released Friday by the U.S. Department of Education.

Critics say that Online Courses (and Blended courses) takes up too much time  dealing with the technical issues and  is often received with dissatisfaction and frustration.

Yes, I may have to spend a little extra time at the beginning of the term making sure my students understand how to navigate the LMS (Learning Management System); getting them signed up for the e-tools and point them to my delicious site, online course resources, activities and e-tools, but they don’t get the option of NOT learning how to use them, even in my F2F classes, which I would term all blended to a greater or lesser degree!

The results are always the same:

Phase 1: Start Up

An early steep learning curve, with a fair amount of “I can’t” and “You’re making us do all the work!” whining.

Phase 2: Maybe I can

A period of “Well yeah, maybe I can” when a lot of the tech-forward students start helping their tech-phobic classmates with my encouragement  which fosters group interaction, interdependence and peer teaching. One learns a lot by teaching others. The teaching students get a sense of pride and confidence and the learner gets the extra help they need. Sometimes my class is too big to get around and help everyone, although I will always help students one on one with tech issues outside of class.

Phase 3: Quiet Time

From about week four into the term until near the end, when my blended courses are firing on all cylinders… meaning the students have finally accepted that I am NOT going to do this for them- it is up to THEM, individually and collectively.
A fair amount of classtime is “free” for them to work, alone or together, on class assignments and online learning activities. Then all I do is walk around to keep them on task, help them around roadblocks and help them to connect with fellow classmates that have/had the same issues.
“All” I have to do during this period is to:

• put out tech-fires like forgotten passwords and miss placed accounts, etc
• serve as guide on the side by:
  • spending parts of each class as a “cheerleader”,
  • answering questions,
  • doing demonstrations,
  • giving new topic overviews,
  • responding to blogs,
  • listening to discussions,
  • advising on group projects,
• and of course my “real job”… assessing learning (A LOT) with regular online quizzes and weekly assignments.

Phase 4: We did it!!!

And lastly, what I term the celebratory “We did it!!!” phase, when the students look up, realize the term is almost over and that they have accomplished a BUTT LOAD of work and learned a great deal and that they did it (mostly) all THEMSELVES.

• They produce ‘real world’ projects which can become part of their portfolio.
• They created their own learning path, doing what interests them and often teaching me a trick or two.
• They come out of the course with a self-built list of resources and questions for their own discovery and next steps.

You just have to get past that Phase 1 with a determined and positive “Yes you CAN!” attitude …

Now that you are starting to use all these new and exciting e-tools, you may find it hard to keep track of all your passwords. I have a strategy that might work for you. Of course I won’t tell you my specific strategy or you will know all my passwords… not that I don’t trust you

My Password Strategy

I take a few of letters from the website and then add some consistent numbers.
For example, I might use the 1st 3 letters of the name of web site with the 1st 4 digits of an old employee number:

• for delicious -> del1780
• for google docs -> goo1780
• for pbworks -> pbw1780

The numbers usually have some significance to me so I will remember like:

• my house number
• an old student number
• an old employee number
• part of my phone number
• my extension at work

The result is a different password for each web site and it is easy to remember.