The Impact of Open Source

URL: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/athletics-physical-education-and-recreation/pe-550-designing-your-life-spring-2009/

Massachusetts' Institute of Technology (MIT) offers open courses that anyone can take. They provide over 100 different open courses, in which they offer different supplements and teaching resources for each. MIT has a good reputation, and this is supported with the amount of courses and information that they make available to anyone. From lecture notes, to assignments, to assessments, MIT does not really miss a beat when it comes to designing an open online course. Being that I am a Health & PE teacher by day, I examined a PE course called Designing Your Life. Although the last time this course was updated was 2009, it appears as though a lot of planning went into the design and implementation of this course. The lessons were very thorough, and the assignments seemed relevant to the material, and designed for a distance learner.

A distance learning education program must have several attributes for the learner to be successful. This course follows many of these recommendations. For instance, in the textbook, Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, and Zvacek (2012) stated that the online course must be well organized, containing a syllabus and well mapped out and detailed assignments. This course captured did each of these things in an attempt to make the learners successful. They also must facilitate active learning, because getting students involved and engaged are more likely to learn the content (Simonson et al, 2012). Throughout the assignments, and lectures, the online must get actively involved in order to truly gain anything from the assignments. Also, the use of instructional materials to supplement teaching and learning is another essential element that should be present for students to be successful. The instructional materials that were provided here are the lecture notes, assignments, and the assessments. Finally, the textbook suggests using assessments to measure student learning and understanding is an excellent way to help students be successful in a distance learning program. There are several assessments available in this course to measure student learning and understanding. There are a variety of different types of assignments that all promote and measure learning.

The course designer did an excellent job of choosing assignments that maximized learning for the online student. Some assignments were ongoing, while some were just one time. However, all assignments were thought-provoking and provided students an opportunity to truly delve into and think about aspects of their lives and how to better "design their lives." With all that said though, as a IDT major, I do feel that there could have been more technology tools implemented into this course. It seems as though the assignments were all simply written assignments, and they could have been jazzed up a little bit by implementing more technology.

Overall, this course was very well designed. It possessed many attributes of a successful distance learning course, as well as it was easy for the online learner to navigate through. In closing, if I had more time on my hands, I would most likely take part in this course. At the very least, I will suggest it to my colleagues.

References:
Massachusetts' Institute of technology (2002-2012). http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm, Retrieved February 5, 2012.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (5th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.