A focus on providing personalized instruction material and organizational tools to positively influence the student’s classroom experience, engagement and performance.
At Kaplan University, the online course’s asynchronous learning opportunities provide the student with more control over the time and content they engage in during the unit. The flexibility of time and the virtual online environment is vital to the success of the students in our classrooms. The question that many online courses still grapple with is how to engage and focus learners in the classroom. Many of the assignments require the student to navigate to different areas of the classroom and utilize additional resources. Studies have demonstrated that instructor initiated multimedia in the classroom increases student engagement (Mandernach, 2009; Webster & Hackley, 1997). With this in mind, our courses are populated with personalized instruction material. Student’s have access numerous tutorials, textbook resources, Live Binders and tutoring - all designed to appeal to the various learning styles our students posses. Despite the abundance of classroom support, there may still be some challenges faced by students in the classroom. In particular, students that are grappling with course topics and those new to or returning to the secondary education classrooms are often overwhelmed and can quickly become discouraged (Hara & Kling, 2000; Maki, Maki, Patterson & Whittaker, 2000). One obstacle the learning maps are currently trying to overcome in our classrooms is the need to establish a way to ensure students are aware of the resources that could best aid them to succeed based on the requirements in a particular unit. Students can enter a unit with various levels of previous understanding, experience and learning styles. This means that each student may need to have a different approach and ultimately engage in varying resources in order to succeed.
Using a prescriptive approach can help student assess how they need to approach the learning requirements of each unit. Creating individual unit learning maps offers guidance to the students about how to best utilize the appropriate resources to maximize their learning experience. This allows the classroom to adapt to the needs of the student. The learning map then becomes a resource with actionable feedback for the student as their learning and the unit progress. Ultimately, these plans can be a motivational tool while teaching students to prioritize the classroom requirements.
Reference:
Hara, N. & Kling, R. (2000) Students' distress with a Web-based distance education course: an ethnographic study of participants' experiences. Information, Communication and Society, 3 (4), 557 - 579.
Maki, R.H., Maki, W.S., Patterson, M. & Whittaker, P.D. (2000) Evaluation of a Web-based introductory psychology course: learning and satisfaction in online versus lecture courses. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 32 (2), 230 – 239.
Mandernach, B. J. (2009). Effect of instructor-personalized multimedia in the online classroom. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 10(3).
Webster, J., & Hackley, P. (1997). Teaching effectiveness in technology-mediated distance learning. Academy of management journal, 40(6), 1282-1309.