Sunday, February 27, 2011

Web Based Courses - Manitoba Education

The Manitoba WCB site has many different disciplines offered.  It runs the entire gamut from all kinds of math, science, and ELA courses to computer science, drafting, French, phys.ed and social studies.  Many different grade levels are offered, but not every subject is complete on the grade offerings.  I decided to explore the phys.ed course because it is something that I have yet to explore as an option in my Ed degree.  Change it up a bit.

Surfing through this material the information is broken down into sections and then further broken down into lessons, as one would expect.  There is a lot of text present that gives the instruction which seems like a fairly traditional approach, considering this is a new concept of using the internet to offer courses.  One would naturally suspect that in creating this type of instruction many different modes of web 2.0 instruction would have been used.  At the very least the use of videos, or downloadable powerpoint slides.  With this particular course the main focus was on the health aspect of phys.ed.  There was not much of any instruction that pertained towards physical activity, although students are required to log what activity they do maintain for this course.

The course seemed well thought out and did not seem daunting.  Sometimes at the beginning of a class when the outline is handed out there is a bit of a panic on how to balance or juggle everything with all of the assignments, but this did seemed manageable and balanced without being daunting or intimidating.  Almost like they were aware of that stress factor when making the site.  A concern of mine is that using courses of this nature does take a motivated and mature attitude towards learning by a student.  They are more accountable for their work and their instruction.  So it isn't for everyone, and the way that the online information is not varied might even make it more of a challenge for some learners who think they are able to handle this manner of conducting a course.  As with most things, I'm sure there is still a lot of tweaking to be done to make this site and these courses even better.  Who knows maybe this blog will help with that, lofty goals.

1 comment:

  1. I agree that this kind of course is not the right fit for everyone. Confident self-motivated students or students really interested in the subject will do great. However, I would suggest that most students will need a teacher there to help guide them and keep them moving forward - particularily for classes that they are not interested in themselves.

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