Week 1

I am James Namekata and this is my 3rd year in the Instructional Technology program at CSUSB.  I should be graduating in the next two quarters provided I finish my project on time.  I have been taking my time and enjoying my learning experience in this Masters program because I want to learn more about how I can better serve the students that I teach.  I teach both mathematics and karate at Riverside Community College Moreno Valley Campus and Crafton Hills College.  I serve RCC "Mo-Val" as it is commonly called as chair of mathematics and physical education.  I am also the faculty chair of Standard I Institutional Effectiveness and Mission Statement for our accreditation, which we are in the process of becoming our own separate community college.

My main purpose for going back to school and working towards my second Masters degree was to better understand distance education and how I can better serve my students from an online instructor's perspective.  I have taught many math classes online and also in the hybrid design.  I enjoy these classes as much as teaching in the traditional format, but I think I can become a better online instructor if I understand as much as possible regarding online learning.

As far as classes go, I have taken EDUC 603, 605, 607 and ETEC 500, 543, 544, 692, 699, 644, 542, 546, 623, 674 and 676.  Therefore, I have experience both asynchronous and synchronous learning.  I have used blogs, skype, email, chat, discussion boards and forums as well as face to face meetings for my classes here at CSUSB.  I have learn so much in the last 3 years and gained more experience in using these new technologies in my own classes.  I really enjoy the skype discussions because the class could be at home or at work and still participate in the lectures.  The disadvantage was that the entire class needed to meet at the same time, which was sometimes difficult for everybody in the class.  Chats and instant messaging share similar issues.  The blogs and discussion boards or forums is what I like to use in my own online classes because it give the students the freedom of being asynchronous.  Many time students who are taking online classes are busy with full time jobs, families and other issues in life that prevent them from being able to drive to campus to take a class.  Therefore, it is often difficult for them to find a common meeting time when everybody could log onto the computer at the same time. For this reason, I like to use blogs or discussion boards for the students in my classes to interact with each other as well as their instructor.

My experiences in teaching online classes have changed from negative to positive.  My first online class was terrible.  Most of the students in my class were not motivated and many dropped the class before the midterm.  However, after two years of experience and learning more about how the online environment could be improved, last semester I retained 78% of my original students with a pass rate of 73%.  Many of the students who did not pass the class should never have taken an online class because I feel they were not prepared or motivated to be self paced learners.  But the success rate is dramatically increasing and students who are enrolled in my online math course understand the demands and needs of learning math online.  All of my online math class have been taught using an internet based program called MyMathLab. This program gives students videos, animations, explanations, examples and the textbook online.  Through surveys that we have asked the students to submit, we have found that a majority of the students prefer this program in comparison to other online programs that we have used in the past.

I would like to learn how to become a better online instructor for my students.  I know that I have much, much more to learn as far as developing my own online materials for my students.  My project that I have been working on is based upon showing students how to work through math problems related to fractions using a tablet pc and recording my work using Camtasia.  Once I create my library of fraction problems, I would like to keep these videos on a website in which any student who needs help with fractions can refer to.

I would also like to learn how I can deliver my lectures to online students in a more personal format.  I know that webcams could record short videos and I have done some in the past.  But I want to improve and see if there are alternative methods that other instructors have used that might be better or more interesting for the students.

I think this is all for now and I wish everybody in this class a successful quarter.  I look forward to chatting with ya!

James