Staff Development Workshop Update (3/30 – 4/6)

Developing both a face-to-face and online version of the same workshop has been a great experience. I would recommend it to any instructor. Just when you think you have organized your course content in a way that is crystal clear, a workshop participant asks a question that alerts you the fact that it is not! Until I started receiving feedback from online participants, in my mind, I truly thought that the same amount of content covered in a face-to-face workshop would be covered in the online workshop in the same 3 hour timespan. In hindsight, I realize that that was a ridiculous thought. Participants were not required to start and finish at the same time therefore the learning community required to complete some of the required activities was not readily accessible. Asynchronous discussions can not be rushed, so that created an issue that I had not taken into consideration. Also, in the face-to-face setting, I could simply review how course content was being displayed in the participants building section. For some reason, I did not consider the fact that I would not be able to do that for online participants therefore the assessment of “Building a Virtual Learning Environment” become quite a bit more complicated as it required participants adding me as an auditor in their build class section. Not a big deal, but not something that I had fully considered!