Madden,+Maureen

=Maureen Madden's Design Document =


 Need to take a physical education class to finish your degree? Are you working full-time, raising a family, and taking classes all at the same time and just can't imagine finding the time to fit this type of class into your already over-extended schedule? What about online? It can be done! And all while creating and implementing fitness and wellness routines and practices.

Part of a successful fitness and wellness program includes good instruction and guidelines with encouragement from others. One method for promoting student collaboration is the creation of individual online journals for recording plans and results while allowing for comments from classmates and the instructor. Tools for this type of online journal include blogs, GoogleDocs and wikis. These tools allow for the inclusion of diary recordings, text, audio and/or video, links to additional resources and supporting and encouraging comments from classmates and the instructor.

This physical education SSLE (social software learning environment) would contain two parts. The i nstructor's Collaborative Learning Environment (CLE) would be the institution's required use of a standardized Blackboard site that would contain general College, department and course information and information specific to the completion of this course including particular assignments (assessment of current status in the areas of nutrition and physical fitness, setting goals, writing a contract, how to track progress, determining triggers, etc.) and resources (videos, diagrams, charts, internet resources, etc.). The students' PLE (Personal Learning Environment) would be included in a class wiki maintained and monitored by the instructor. This wiki would contain an abbreviated repeat of the assignments found in the CLE, additional resources for the student and the students' individual pages for their online journal - a place to record the assigned assessments, photos, videos, music, additional resources, etc. In addition, there would be a Twitter Message page that would contain brief encouraging comments & reminders from the instructor to the class. The students would have the opportunity to add whatever material and widgets appropriate to their successful completion of the online physical education course.

After accessing and using the materials presented in the BB and wiki sites and through self-assessment, reflection, note taking, and research, the student learner would gain a new understanding of health and wellness by assessing and making changes in nutrition, exercise and personal habits. If the wiki were made public, others accessing the wiki would gain insight through the experiences of the students.

This design document will concentrate on the students' PLE. These two blogs are examples of the types of information the students would include in their personal pages in the wiki (PLE) -[]and [].


 The students would be taking the class either as a requirement for graduation, as an elective towards a degree or certificate, or because of an interest in self-assessment and change in the areas of fitness and wellness with regards to nutrition and exercise. The individual PLEs would be developed by students enrolled in a CLE (Blackboard course through the college/university) with a typical enrollment of 10-50 students. Faculty and students would be able to collaborate using the comments options available on the wiki pages.

Content

 * The students would learn about themselves - physically, emotionally, intellectually, etc. - through the use of self-assessment tools and recording of actions and feelings in the online journal (wiki).
 * The students will be presented with detailed instruction in the BB course site. These instructions will reference the text book readings, the fitness and wellness assessments, publisher provided PowerPoint presentations, discussion board exercises, proctored exams, etc.
 * Instructions for creating and maintaining wiki pages will be included in the BB site. Instructions will include how to read and make comments, how to receive notification of page changes, including widgets, embedding videos, etc.
 * The wiki will provide abbreviated reminders of the assignments. The students will use the class wiki to record their responses to the assignments.
 * The instructor will frequently update a provided Twitter page with reminders of assignments and encouraging words for the students.
 * Students will have the freedom to use and include on their wiki page whatever media they deem interesting, appropriate &/or helpful to themselves or their classmates (self-produced video & audio recordings, found video, audio and other references &/or widgets).
 * Information shared by the instructor is not subject to copyright restrictions when used in an educational environment. Students would be reminded to document their resources and references. See [|Fair Use] [].

Format
 The format of the wiki would be fairly linear. Each page would contain information specific to an aspect of the course or a student journal page. At the beginning of the semester, the first page would be a welcome to the wiki. After the drop-add period, the opening page would be changed to the Twitter page so that the students would see the updated messages when first logging onto the wiki.

Students and the instructor would have editing rights to the class wiki. They would be able to add pages in addition to their personal journal page. They would be able to edit current pages - perhaps add additional resources that might be of interest to the others in the class. The students would be cautioned to not change the postings or pages of another student or the instructor.

While most collaboration (particularly discussion boards and email) will be maintained in the BB course site, students will have the opportunity to leave comments on their classmates' journal pages. Audio, video and links to external resources will be available throughout the site and, as stated earlier, students can add additional materials as they see appropriate. Students will be able to select to receive notification when the wiki "common" pages are updated or changes/comments have been made to their journal page.

Evaluate & Refine
 One of my first instructional design assignments was a team redesign of an online PE class - "Fitness and Wellness" - and the redesign was, in a word, a failure. The attempt to use blogger as an online journal for the students was not well understood or received by the students or the faculty. Some students were not used to technology outside BB and were not comfortable being "out there" with their personal information. Faculty found themselves spending a lot of additional time logging into personal blogs to find that some students had not made any recent entries. The list of stumbling blocks goes on. I made it my personal mission to make the redesign work - someday, somehow.

I started again with using the blog. I hoped that my new knowledge and experiences with social networking tools would give me some new insight in how to make it work for this online PE class. Well, needless to say, the blog is not the answer. Security & privacy would still be an issue & some students might find it intimidating to use. I then looked into GoogleDocs since it is housed inside NOVA's Blackboard structure making it easier to use and more secure. Again GoogleDocs was not the answer. It was difficult for me to add the widgets and embed the videos I wanted to use, so how could I expect technically challenged students to use it as an option. Then I realized that the answer was staring me in the face. This class is taught by incorporating a wiki within the class BB site. Thank you, Rick, for the inspiration. I decided to do the same.

There is work to be done. I want to make the wiki private with only members having access to editing. I want to develop a delicious page for the course for the instructors to reference, update and share. The instructors could then create their class delicious page with the sites they want to share with their students. This course is due for a major redesign for fall because the text is being changed. I hope to share this prototype with the design team and encourage them to give it a try.

Peer Review comments from Jeff (my responses to suggestions are in **//blue//** ): Likes: SSLE student design document: I also reviewed your completed SSLE student design document. It was well done, thorough and the Evaluate & Refine section was useful and insightful.

SSLE prototype: Your site is colorful, easy to read and visually appealing. It follows a nice linear and logical path from setting fitness & wellness goals through creating, following & documenting fitness & wellness plans. You made good use of whitespace and bullets to separate your concepts and to make reading easy.

Widgets, gadgets and tools: I liked the interactive Calorie Counter, wiki search tools and the videos.

Suggestions: Perhaps because I am unfamiliar with using wikis, I found it difficult to navigate through the various pages. It would be helpful for me to include a wiki use tutorial or link. **// Intend to include in BB site before the student gets to the wiki. Will repeat link to printable instructions on Welcome page. //**

For ease of navigation and logical flow, you may want to add a link at the bottom of Fitness Assessment & Goals page to the Wellness Assessment & Goals page. **// Included link to Wellness page. Also included additional instructions and encouragement at then of Wellness page. //**

Spell-Check On the Wellness Assessment & Goals page - questionairre should be questionnaire. **// Fixed both misspellings. //**

OER and Creative Commons license - I wasn’t able to locate an Open Educational Resource (OER) with an attached Creative Commons license even using the wiki search tool. I may have overlooked it. I hope Rick can locate it. **// Will ask for Rick’s guidance in this matter. //**