FIT Experience Reflection

After two sessions of FIT experience in IT 6135, I am certainly more confident in my abilities as an e-moderator after only a few short months. The readings in Salmon's E-moderating and the corresponding e-learning activities in Bonk and Zhang have increased my knowledge of how to engage adult students in a blended learning environment. 

For the most part, I enjoyed "lurking" at the beginning of each week to identify the hot button issues of the participants. I found myself getting annoyed at the genera lack of effort towards grammar, as well as the "two-liners" that merely mimicked what the presenters iterated in their own commentary. I'm sure this will come up in next week's FIT Project diagnoses and remedies, so I won't dwell on them. There are indeed many fixes to this problem!

One of the things I would like to reflect on is the noticeable changes in my own behavior as it relates to my duties as a FIT. That is, I was certainly more reserved in my commentary, more objective in my opinions of some of the posts, and certainly more reflective of the process of learning in the Online environment. Perhaps this is the point! My limited participation within the actual threads, was reserved for re-direction questions, encouraging comments on insightful posts, and a generous amount of resource materials for both host and observers alike. The latter part made me feel exceptionally useful in an otherwise neutral role as their FIT. In addition, I was especially grateful for having some knowledge of the subject areas-Podcasts and Virtual Schooling (K-12). I found myself digging up articles previously researched and read for reference. On the latter topic, I was fortunate enough to have participated in Dr. Barbour's IT 6230-Internet in the Classroom last Winter, which served me well for proper monitoring of the content presented and discussed.

Among the more intriguing activities that I found useful to analyze and synthesize the materials presented, were the concepts of summarizing and "weaving" of posted threads by the students. Having the students or hosts of each of the emerging technologies forums summarize the postings for the purpose of finding common themes of respondents is a good way to capture Salmon's Stage 3 & 4 activities. Simply put, it allows the students to reflect on their own understanding of the topics presented, while also allowing for meaningful dialogue. Similarly, one of the New activities for our group FIT Project deals with this in greater detail, but with a twist. So, standby for more details. 

Overall, I truly enjoyed being a FIT for Prof. Boileau's class and would welcome the chance to either teach or work in this environment again. It is not often one gets the chance to teach in such a safe learning environment. Twenty-five students to manage in the virtual realm represents a great deal of monitoring, planning, and "Classroom" management for any level of teaching and learning success.  IT 7130 was an excellent choice for my plan of work and will serve me well as I move on in my career. 

Brad.