The OLC Foundations course is now finished! To complete the certificate, I need to take 3 week-long workshops and work with a mentor to finish the changes I have planned for my undergraduate online course. I think I’m going to take a two-part workshop on the neuroscience research behind learning and a self-paced workshop on giving effective feedback. I’m glad I signed up for the program. It was quite a bit of work, but I did gain some new perspective about my course structure and content and ideas for improvement.

Specifically, I really enjoyed learning about the Community of Inquiry framework. Although I had heard of it in passing prior to this class, I had never taken the time to actually dive into it. The second big takeaway for me was the conversations around discussion forums and improving student-student interactions. I am currently making some pretty significant changes to my discussion forums for my summer undergraduate course. Hopefully, they go well!