MiraCosta Online Teaching Certificate
Program for Online Teaching

 

Cohort #2 Certificate Requirements
(for those beginning Fall 2009 or Spring 2010)

A self-guided program, which can be completed in one year (or more), which participants began at the beginning of one of these two semesters.

Note: Main changes from Cohort #1 include the replacement of individual blogs with one multi-user community blog, the replacement of OT600 with a second semester of documented application, specific skills to learn, and the guarantee of an online community.

Checklist for Cohort #2 certificate requirements for completion by June or December 2010 [Word format]
(when you are finished submit to Pilar Hernández at phernandez@miracosta.edu)

Requirements: Learning Pathway, Workshops and Community Participation

1. Learning Pathway (two consecutive semesters):

Your work must begin at the start of a semester, and from the start you must blog weekly as part of the Pedagogy First! community blog.

First semester: Exploration

The first semester is a self-guided exploration of your own pedagogy and web resources.

Week 1: Introduction
# Read through the POT site & find out about the program.
# Contact Jim Sullivan to get your account as an author at the Pedagogy First! community blog.
# Introduce yourself at the Pedagogy First! community blog.
# Check out a few educational blogs.

Week 2: Your Pedagogy
# Blog about what you do effectively in class, including your favorite activities or lectures.
# Define your teaching style: are your a lecturer? a constructivist?
# Discuss what challenges you think you will have teaching in the online environment.

Week 3: Explore Examples of Online Teaching and Blogs about Teaching
# Check out some sample online classes
# Check out some of the teaching blogs, such as Delaney Kirk, Cathy Nelson, Vicki Davis, http://awyatt.edublogs.org/, http://teachonline2008.blogspot.com/, http://www.jbj.wordherders.net/ .

Week 4: Photos & Images
# Explore Flickr and learn about this popular image hosting site.
# Upload a photo or image into Flickr and annotate it.
# Create a blog post about what you did, and include your image and a link to it.

Week 5: RSS & Newsreaders
# Learn about RSS feeds and setup your own newsreader account (Google Reader, for example).
# Locate a few useful online teaching or discipline-related blogs and/or news feeds and add them to your reader. Add the Pedagogy First! blog feed to your reader.
# Create a blog post about what you discovered.

Week 6: Creating Presentations
# Play around with a screencast program, like Jing.
# Create a short slideshow in PowerPoint, upload it to Slideshare and add some audio of your voice to make a Slidecast.
# Blog about and embed what you created.

Weeks 7 and 8: Creating Community
# Create a Ning and play with it.
# Create your own blog at a site like Edublogs, Blogger.com (associated with Google) , Wordpress.com (most powerful), or Tumblr (simplest).
# Check out Facebook or Twitter.
# Play with Elluminate (there's an installation inside Blackboard or a free trial at Elluminate) or another synchronous program (such as DimDim or Vyew).
# Blog about what you learned.

Week 9: Social Bookmarking
# Learn about tagging and discover Delicious (a social bookmaking site)
# Create your own account at Delicious or Diigo and collect at least 10 sites related to teaching or your discipline
# Blog your thoughts.

Week 10: Wikis and collaboration
# Learn about wikis and collaborative documents (such as Google Docs), at the POT site or elsewhere.
# Blog your ideas.

Week 11: Resources Online
# Explore online textbooks and e-books at sites like Project Gutenburg and open textbook.
# Search and find a good educational site in your discipline, something with animations that you can use.
# Write a blog post about your findings.

Week 12: Podcasts and Video
# Discover YouTube and a few sites that allow users to upload and share videos, such as blip.tv or Vimeo.
# Discover some useful podcasts about teaching or your discipline.
# Blog about what you learned.

Week 13: Explore copyright, accessibility and legal stuff.
# Learn about the TEACH Act (this UT site is good).
# Learn about online accessibility issues.
# Blog about what you learned.

Week 14: Summarize
# Create a post containing a list of links to each of your weekly posts.
# Summarize your thoughts about this program..

Second semester: Application

The second semester consists of application to one online, on-site or hybrid class. Choose a class in which to implement some of the strategies you learned in the first semester. Participate weekly at the Pedagogy First! blog to (1) document your work and (2) help your colleagues.

2. Eight POT-approved workshops or an approved class in teaching online.

See the list for which workshops qualify under these categories -- we are backward compatible. If you cannot attend workshops on campus, you may view recordings of the workshops and blog about your reflections instead.

OT100 Online Pedagogy (2 workshops)
OT200 Course Design Elements (2 workshops)
OT300 Technology Applications (1 workshop)
OT400 Experiential Workshops (2 workshops)
OT500 Current Trends and Theory (1 workshop)

3. Community participation.

All certificate candidates must participate in MiraCosta's online teaching community at the Pedagogy First! blog. The POT site features a forum led by experienced faculty. In addition to posting their own work, it is expected that all certificate candidates will comment on the work of others and help each other.

Idea for web exploration semester adapted from 23 Things, a professional development program created by Helene Blowers, which was based on the article 43 Things I Might Want to Do This Year by Stephen Abram.

Last updated 7 January 2010.