I will be doing a podcast entitled "Tips and Tricks for Online Classes." In this podcast, I hope to outline some of the issues online students face and also to provide tips (and tricks!) for succeeding in an online class. As I have been both an online student and an online instructor, I hope that I will be able to provide some useful insight to students. My learning goals for the podcast are:
To provide information about online classes to help listeners in determining if this format is a good choice for them.
To provide guidelines on how to be an effective online student.
To provide organizational tools for working in an online environment.
I hope that by providing this information through a podcast, it will be another way to get out information to those who are curious about online classes. I also hope to use this podcast series as a starting point to have a class podcast series for my own online students.
While I haven't found a podcast that specifically relates to the topic that I am pursuing, it will follow the lines of Grammar Girl, in that these will just be some quick tips for people that are interested.
Audience
The target learner population will be students already taking or planning on taking an online class. I am not targeting this at a specific population in numbers, but rather, at anyone who finds this topic useful to them. In the future, I hope to use a podcast like this for an online class, rather than just providing such guidelines in text only. I envision the future of this series to consist of one podcast episode per week of online class. The episodes would be available to students of the class and I would hope that students would listen to it as yet another way to aid them in their online courses.
Content
The content will focus on ideas that I personally have on taking online class based on my experiences in both taking online classes and teaching online classes. I will also be bringing in additional sources. For example, in Episode II, I will be bringing in a guest online instructor to share some of his own tips.
Episode I: I will be discussing some advantages and disadvantages of taking online courses as well as outline the top three things that every online student should know.
Episode II: I will be discussing ways to be organized while taking an online class.
The music that I will use is royalty-free, in order to avoid any copyright issues and will help signal the start and end of the show as well as transition through the topics of my podcast. I used the "Balloon in the Park" theme from http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/music-education/ and the ping sound effect from http://www.vionline.com/sound.html.
Format
In the first episode, I have done a straight podcast, with a musical introudction and ending, and two topic segments that are transitioned via music. For the second episode, I have done a podcast with musical intro and ending, and three segments with musical transitions, including one with a sound effect/
The following will be the format of Episode I: Online Advantages and Disadvantages
Introduction: music, podcast title, my name and purpose.
Outline of the Episode
Segment I: Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Learning
Convenience vs. Slacking
Shorter Classes vs. Information Overload
Instructor Presence and Absence
TRANSITION: music
Segment II: Top Three Things to Keep In Mind
Overview of Course
Pay Attention to Timeline
Communication with Instructor
Ending: music, quick overview of next week's topics, signoff
Episode I Length: About 5 minutes
The following is the format of Episode II: Online Organizing Tools
Introduction: music, podcast title, my name and purpose.
Outline of the Episode
Segment I: Personal Study Spaces
Free of Distractions
Finding Your Own Optimal Space
TRANSITION: music
Segment II: Course Calendars
Creating a Calendar
Putting Multiple Courses on the Calendar
[SOUND EFFECT]
TRANSITION: music
Segment III: Study Plan
Introduction of Guest Speaker
Guest Speaker Tips on thinking of a Study Plan
Additional thoughts on Study Plan w/ Course Calendar
Ending: music, quick overview of next week's topics, signoff
Episode II Length: About 6 minutes
In both episodes, I have used the same music and the same introduction. At the end of each episode, I introduce the topics for next week, then use the same sign-off ("This is Neda Khalili, logging off"). I use the same format and design pattern purposely as a design technique to make the audience establish a connection to my podcast series.
For each episode, I also present an outline for the show: I introduce all the topics of the episode, go through all the topics, then do a quick one-sentence summary of what was reviewed. This is an instructional design technique called Advance Organizer. This way, the students are given a type of roadmap to follow along with the podcast.
Evaluate & Refine
Episode I Evaluation:
When I began recording the first few takes of this episode and listening to it on playback, I could hear the headphone "cracking" in certain places since my jaw pops out here and there when I talk. It's not noticeable unless I have a pair of headphones on my head! Even if the headphones are not directly on my ears, there are occasionally cracking sounds. In order to lesson this effect, I broke up my podcast into sections and tried to record short sessions so there were not too many cracking sounds at once, and then I selected the sections with the least interference. Using Audacity, it was easy to put theses sections together and make it into one podcast. In order to do this, however, I wrote out a script and read from there, which according to my peer reviewer was too obvious (I would have to agree). In the next episode, I am going to try to just jot down points and "freestyle" more. This may be easier to do as I will be doing an enhanced podcast and it will be harder to read from a script when giving a demonstration at the same time.
Episode II Evaluation:
For this podcast, I took into consideration my previous "scripted" podcast and made an effort not to read directly from my written words, although I did need it to stay organized and on task for my podcast. I also took some effort in keeping my voice a bit lower on this podcast in order to prevent some of the popping sounds on the podcast due to my jaw hitting the microphone - it seemed to work out better than last time. I had wanted to do an enhanced podcast for this episode, but due to some unforeseen circumstances, was not able to produce my final podcast this way. Still, I had mapped out a screencast transcript and played around with Camtasia enough that I really find that a screencast will be useful to my online classes. I will be using this in the future.
All in all, I found this experience to be very useful to me as I will be applying what I have learned here directly to my work. I am thrilled with the ease of use of Audacity, which I used for both podcasts and am looking forward to moving on to Camtasia next.
Neda Khalili's Design Project
Design Idea
I will be doing a podcast entitled "Tips and Tricks for Online Classes." In this podcast, I hope to outline some of the issues online students face and also to provide tips (and tricks!) for succeeding in an online class. As I have been both an online student and an online instructor, I hope that I will be able to provide some useful insight to students. My learning goals for the podcast are:I hope that by providing this information through a podcast, it will be another way to get out information to those who are curious about online classes. I also hope to use this podcast series as a starting point to have a class podcast series for my own online students.
While I haven't found a podcast that specifically relates to the topic that I am pursuing, it will follow the lines of Grammar Girl, in that these will just be some quick tips for people that are interested.
Audience
The target learner population will be students already taking or planning on taking an online class. I am not targeting this at a specific population in numbers, but rather, at anyone who finds this topic useful to them. In the future, I hope to use a podcast like this for an online class, rather than just providing such guidelines in text only. I envision the future of this series to consist of one podcast episode per week of online class. The episodes would be available to students of the class and I would hope that students would listen to it as yet another way to aid them in their online courses.Content
The content will focus on ideas that I personally have on taking online class based on my experiences in both taking online classes and teaching online classes. I will also be bringing in additional sources. For example, in Episode II, I will be bringing in a guest online instructor to share some of his own tips.
Episode I: I will be discussing some advantages and disadvantages of taking online courses as well as outline the top three things that every online student should know.Episode II: I will be discussing ways to be organized while taking an online class.
The music that I will use is royalty-free, in order to avoid any copyright issues and will help signal the start and end of the show as well as transition through the topics of my podcast. I used the "Balloon in the Park" theme from http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/music-education/ and the ping sound effect from http://www.vionline.com/sound.html.
Format
In the first episode, I have done a straight podcast, with a musical introudction and ending, and two topic segments that are transitioned via music. For the second episode, I have done a podcast with musical intro and ending, and three segments with musical transitions, including one with a sound effect/
The following will be the format of Episode I: Online Advantages and Disadvantages
Episode I Length: About 5 minutes
The following is the format of Episode II: Online Organizing Tools
Episode II Length: About 6 minutes
In both episodes, I have used the same music and the same introduction. At the end of each episode, I introduce the topics for next week, then use the same sign-off ("This is Neda Khalili, logging off"). I use the same format and design pattern purposely as a design technique to make the audience establish a connection to my podcast series.
For each episode, I also present an outline for the show: I introduce all the topics of the episode, go through all the topics, then do a quick one-sentence summary of what was reviewed. This is an instructional design technique called Advance Organizer. This way, the students are given a type of roadmap to follow along with the podcast.
Evaluate & Refine
Episode I Evaluation:
When I began recording the first few takes of this episode and listening to it on playback, I could hear the headphone "cracking" in certain places since my jaw pops out here and there when I talk. It's not noticeable unless I have a pair of headphones on my head! Even if the headphones are not directly on my ears, there are occasionally cracking sounds. In order to lesson this effect, I broke up my podcast into sections and tried to record short sessions so there were not too many cracking sounds at once, and then I selected the sections with the least interference. Using Audacity, it was easy to put theses sections together and make it into one podcast. In order to do this, however, I wrote out a script and read from there, which according to my peer reviewer was too obvious (I would have to agree). In the next episode, I am going to try to just jot down points and "freestyle" more. This may be easier to do as I will be doing an enhanced podcast and it will be harder to read from a script when giving a demonstration at the same time.
Episode II Evaluation:
For this podcast, I took into consideration my previous "scripted" podcast and made an effort not to read directly from my written words, although I did need it to stay organized and on task for my podcast. I also took some effort in keeping my voice a bit lower on this podcast in order to prevent some of the popping sounds on the podcast due to my jaw hitting the microphone - it seemed to work out better than last time. I had wanted to do an enhanced podcast for this episode, but due to some unforeseen circumstances, was not able to produce my final podcast this way. Still, I had mapped out a screencast transcript and played around with Camtasia enough that I really find that a screencast will be useful to my online classes. I will be using this in the future.
All in all, I found this experience to be very useful to me as I will be applying what I have learned here directly to my work. I am thrilled with the ease of use of Audacity, which I used for both podcasts and am looking forward to moving on to Camtasia next.