Original post link: https://my339coolsite.opened.ca/2019/08/01/unit-3-blog-post-1/
According to” An Open Introductory Computer Science Course” Major (2015) introduced an online course, Udacity CS101. CS101 is an introductory computer science course, targeted to students with no previous background in computing who want to understand the foundations of computer science and learn how to program. (Major, 2015, p.102) Especially, This course is an open-enrollment course is available for anyone who has reasonable access to the Internet to participate and is for free. The course divided into two parts. One focuses the course around a motivating project that would be used as a vehicle for introducing the computing concepts throughout the course. The other one is designing the lectures to discuss the exercises and answer questions from students to maintain frequent communication. There also are the basic things of the online course. Major used the course CS101 as an example to list the benefits of the online course tool and show how to use the tools. We also use many learning tools in our daily study, especially when we take an online course. Online courses must use tools to self-learn and complete the tasks and assignments assigned by the instructor. Today I want to introduce three useful online course tools.
The first tool is Blogger. Blogger has many features, such as privacy, multiple contributors, social-media widgets, and the capability for hosting discussions. (Major, 2015, p.93) It can manage three missions, discussion, presentation, and analysis. With these reasonable and clear curriculum design. All students will grade on following assignment instructions or not, creating clear and concise posts and comments, and completing assignments on time. As of late 2016, Blogger is available in these 60 languages. People from any country in the world can learn and communicate through bloggers. Our online course, EDCI 339 also used a similar approach to bloggers. The student submits and completes the task assigned by the teacher by posting a blog.
Image from: https://www.udemy.com/blogging-for-business/
The second tool named Moodle. Moodle is a free and open-source learning management system. The acronym Moodle stands for modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment. The Moodle system allows the main page of the course to be organized like a syllabus, with blocks for each week’s activities and smaller information blocks on each side of the screen. (Major, 2015, p.88)The students also can know grade and participation in Moodle. Moodle mobile app is available in the App Store, Windows Phone Store, and Google Play. This means that we are not limited to using computers only, we can also use mobile phones to learn and check updates anytime, anywhere. We can use some piecemeal time to learn, such as waiting for a bus or when we are on the bus.
Image from: https://blogs.library.ucsf.edu/convergence/2017/08/09/moodle-mobile-app/
The last one is the tool that I have used in my personal study experience. As a university student, online learning tools and systems for me are usually used under the requirement by the instructor and teacher assistant. The next thing I want to introduce is used an online course website called Udemy. ( https://www.udemy.com/) Because I accidentally saw a report about “Top 10 courses to take on Udemy”. A variety of different courses can be found on the Udemy, such as business, marketing, music, photography, IT and software, design, development, personal development and so on. However, the difference from the first two tools is it is not free, usually ranging from $20 to $100. They will set the price according to the difficulty of the course. Using Udemy’s course development tools they can upload video, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, audio, zip files, and live classes to create courses. No Udemy courses are credentialed for university credit. Most students take courses largely as a means of improving job-related skills. I was taking a class on basic python. I would communicate through message, voice, video call with teacher and classmate.
Overall, I think a successful course is to involve students and learn about it. These tools can help instructors manage the course better, and help students can learn clearly. The online courses are inseparable from this type of tool. More and more online course tools are currently available. People who develop tools are constantly trying, breaking and innovating. In the future, these tools will be more sophisticated and more functional. I think the number of people who choose online courses will also become more and more.
References
Major, C. H. (2015). Teaching online: A guide to theory, research, and practice. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle
10 Best Udemy Courses & Certifications [2019] [UPDATED] https://digitaldefynd.com/best-udemy-courses/
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