Synthesizing it all...

Introduction: Context, Subject Matter, and Target Audience
I would like to create an online Children’s Literature course. Cameron University has a high population of non-traditional students who are returning to college with full-time jobs and families. These students often have difficulty creating schedules that allow them to continue to make a living for their families and make sufficient progress toward a degree. Because Children’s Literature is a prerequisite for several reading and methods courses, it will be especially advantageous to offer it as an online course.

Children’s Literature offers an overview of the various genres of literature available for children from birth through completion of elementary school. In addition, the course presents library collection and organization techniques and beginning methods of unit creation for elementary teachers.


Course Concept Map
(Note: I created a visual representation that goes here, but can't get it to cut and paste into the blog...any suggestions, guys? It was created using the drawing canvas in Word.)
Course participants would engage in a circular learning process beginning with individual reading of the textbook and supplemental articles with supporting notes provided by PowerPoint presentations with built in audio tracks. When available, videos will be hyperlinked that compliment the reading and PowerPoints. After exposure to the necessary concepts, students will proceed to the discussion board to answer guiding questions and respond to classmates’ posts. Finally, each student will write a weekly blog entry that summarizes learning, insights, discussions, and outstanding questions and synthesizes the current topics with past information and personal experiences. Each week, this cycle will begin again with individual reading. In addition, each month a Skype conference will give an opportunity for the course instructor to demonstrate read aloud techniques and reemphasize main points.


Strategies
In recognizing the differing needs of learners, the course concept map addresses Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences by offering opportunities for interpersonal and intrapersonal learning through the independent reading and the discussion boards and Skype conferences (Gardner, 1983 & 1999). In addition, linguistic, visual, and auditory learners’ needs are met by utilizing a textbook, PowerPoint presentations, and audio features.

Another learning theorist, Vygotsky, concentrated on the social aspects of learning (Vygotsky, 1978). Personal blog pages allow students to create an online identity by uploading photos and customizing their page design, further encouraging social interactions both through the blogs and the discussion boards as students get to know one another.

During the course, students will also be required to complete a service learning component by volunteering at an elementary school or daycare reading aloud to children. The goal of this assignment is to build a bridge between new knowledge and classroom practices. In addition, read aloud skills are needed in the field experiences students have during their final three semesters in our program. Video hyperlinks and Skype conferences will offer modeling to support this assignment.

In response to the weakness found in the case study I conducted on Ning in Education, where a lack of leadership in the forums led to a lack of involvement and depth in discussion, I will assign discussion leaders each week. This will meet a central goal of the course design, to encourage leadership, ownership, and participation. The discussion leader will be asked to facilitate conversations as needed, pointing out main threads and posing clarification questions as needed.


Influence of Literature in the Framework
In addition to the foundational learning theories discussed in the strategies section above, Renninger & Shumar's Building virtual communities: Learning and change in cyberspace, was a heavy influence on this course design. Chapter 12 of the book points out how the shift from modern to post-modern era has influenced today’s knowledge building communities which share a mindset of individual learning and subsequent knowledge sharing. The circular weekly flow of the course reflects this ideology with students individually viewing the resources prior to engaging in discussion then reflection.

Additionally, both asynchronous and synchronous discussions are utilized in order to encourage higher levels of understanding (Koschmann, Hall, & Miyake, 2002). While I’m initially planning for Skype discussions once each month, adjustments will be made in subsequent semesters if additional synchronous interaction is needed to encourage accommodation of knowledge.


References
Gardner, Howard. (1983) Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books.
Gardner, Howard. (1999) Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century. New York: Basic Books.
Koschmann, T., & Hall, R. P., Miyake, N. (Eds.). (2002). CSCL 2: Carrying forward the conversation. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Renninger, Ann & Shumar, Wesley. (Eds.). (2002). Building virtual communities: Learning and change in cyberspace. Cambridge University Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.