Kelli's Korner

BLOG Post #1

I have really enjoyed the discussions in this course but my favorite activity has been the Personal Preference Profile. I liked this assignment because there was an activity involved that didn't guarantee that everyone would come up with the same answer.

Sometimes with discussion, I find myself struggling a bit with trying to come up with something new and profound to say (ok, maybe profound isn't the goal here) but I don't want to duplicate or jump on someone else's bandwagon all the time so taking the Kindomality survey and then writing about the results and what I thought about the results was refreshing.

On top of that, I then got to read everyone else's posts which was really interesting! Even though most of us were 'Shepherds', our summaries or thoughts about what that meant to us were all different. Even more fun was hearing about the personalities that were different than our own! It was a small, probably unscientific survey but it really helped us open up and look at some of our similarities and differences as a group. Additionally, it was multifaceted so one small survey lended itself to about 3 different activities and outcomes.


The social part of the assignment was really what was most important to me. One of our readings for this week talked about the 'human dimension' in online learning and how important this. Additionally, in Facilitating Online Learning, there was a section that talked about a group of online students that got together after the course was over and found themselves laughing and hugging and genuinely happy to see each other even though they had never met. I think it's activities like the Kingdomality survey that help groups get to know each other personally and become more cohesive which I'm finding is extremely important in online learning!


The only negative for this assignment as well as some of the other discussion threads is that some students go on really early and others go on closer to the assignment's due date so most times the same people are usually responding to each other which isn't necessarily negative but I think it would possibly help if students were told to add some variety to who they reply to. For instance, telling students to respond to 2 different students each week may get the diversity of thoughts needed and also help to foster a relationship between students that have not had as many opportunities to interact with each other because their schedules are different.