It's more than just the technology

The course I am creating will be blended classroom, I believe a STEM class would be a challenge to be 100% online because the students work together to build and create objects.  I have designed the Civil Engineering course to build on basic physics concepts to allow students a deeper understanding before they apply these ideas.  The students will begin learning about different forces and how they work together. Then, they will apply the knowledge of these forces to how they relate to bridges and other structures.  Last the students will use this knowledge to design, build, and create structures.  All the separate units contain an assessment to measure the students learning. These assessments will consist of quizzes, discussions, assignments, and projects.  At the beginning of the year, I showed the students how to effectively save documents remotely, how to navigate through an LMS, and how to submit assignments.  I also have fielded questions as students are learning how to use the LMS. ​

​There are many valuable benefits of having access to MOOCs.  Often these courses allow access to online courses for free (Bates, 2015).  Education is increasingly expensive and to provide students an opportunity to learn for free is an enormous plus. MOOC’s also allow the learner to choose the specific content they want to learn through many different avenues.  Students are able to interact with other students which can increase their learning.  I am disappointed to read that the certifications or badges that can be obtained through MOOCs are not recognized for credit.  Even though some Universities have designed courses, it still is not enough for the courses to truly be recognized. This is sending the message that these courses are not as good as actual enrolling in the University, which defeats the whole purpose.  If students certification was recognized it would most likely increase the number of students that complete the course.
This in-depth explanation between media and technology was useful in understanding the differences and how they connect to each other. Bates defines in detail the difference between media and technology in regards to education.  Technology is a tool that can be used in the classroom, such as a computer, learning management system, or software (Bates, 2015). The media is the manner in which the technology is used and the technology is just one part of the media.  The media is then organized into text, graphics, audio, video, and computing.  The media component is crucial to determine how the content is taught and can have an impact on the students learning. Just simply using technology can make learning more accessible, but that doesn’t mean there is an increase in the learning.  It is important that educators create a thoughtful design, which will provide various different ways for students to learn.
The STEM course I am designing will be a combination of broadcast and communicative media. The broadcast component will include resources and videos that students can view and learn the material from (Bates, 2015).  The communicative media will include discussions that students can interact with each other, feedback provided to students, and students creating assignments in groups.  I believe the combination of the two will be more valuable in this course, than just relying on one form of media. In addition, the STEM course will primarily incorporate asynchronous technology which allows for the students to participate at their own pace.  The materials will be readily available for students to access at any given time.  The in-class part of the blended learning model will have components of learning where we will all be discussing something at the same time.
References:
Bates, A.W. (2015) Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning (Chapters 5-7). Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/