523 Final Reflection

In EDTECH 523: Advanced Online Teaching, I spent my semester developing a blended physics course based on discovery learning methods. I found ways to make the course highly collaborative and to include a similar quantity of hands-on lab activities as I do in my fully face-to-face classroom. This gave me the opportunity to dig deeply into the application of discovery learning principles to a science classroom, but it also helped me to picture what a primarily online physics classroom could look like.

As someone who has always prized the role of labs in the science classroom, I've been hesitant to make the leap to online teaching. In spite of my qualms, I decided to take the online teaching courses because we are seeing our physics enrollment decline as more students struggle to fit every course in they would like to take. One option is to offer a section of physics mostly online, giving students the extra flexibility they need to take a physics course. 

I tried to enter these courses with an open mind, ready to examine the potential of online teaching. I was pleasantly surprised by the emphasis on student-centered approaches and opportunities for active engagement that closely parallels what I've been trying to achieve in my face-to-face classroom. Building a complete online course based on these principles showed me that an online course can include meaningful collaboration and provide students with opportunities to engage in the scientific process. Armed with this new perspective, I'm now not only willing to teach an online section of physics, but interested in the challenge of developing additional web-based physics curriculum.