My TPI Results

At first I was surprised to see that Nurturing is my dominant style. I guess it’s the word nurturing that threw me off. After reflecting on the description further I realized that this is both my preference for learning as well as teaching. Providing an environment of trust, support and encouragement while challenging the learner to grow is what I believe teaching is all about.
Besides my dominant perspective, it seems like I strongly hold 3 other perspectives: Apprenticeship, Developmental and Social Reform since my scores are in the 30s for all of them. This fits well with my view of myself as a teacher, I know that when I teach I have intentions to guide students through the process of acquiring the skills I master, look at the content from the learner’s point of view and encourage students to reflect on how they can improve their lives and the lives of others. This is confirmed by the fact that my highest intentions scores fall under these 3 perspectives and my dominant one.
I struggled as I was completing the TPI to keep a specific educational context in mind; I’m not a school teacher but I manage training programs, teach software development processes occasionally and I’m also a fitness instructor. In my role as a training program manager, I realized that although not a subject matter expert, I can still assist in students learning activities by noticing where they have gaps and providing guidance to fill them. This could explain my low score on Transmission. Yet, as a fitness instructor, I find myself working hard on making the fitness goal attainable to all my students by breaking it down into concepts and actions that guide them along the way. Hence, a high score on Apprenticeship was not surprising to me.

I believe that ideally a teacher’s TPI results should not differ if they teach FTF or online since TPI results identify a teacher’s philosophy. That said, I believe some teachers who might be moving or new to online could have slightly different scores. I doubt their believes would change but as a result of training on online teaching and/or departmental directions, their intentions might change. Also, being new to online, they might still be looking for ways to accomplish some of these perspectives so their actions scores might change.
For teachers who are experienced in both FTF and online environments, I believe that even though actual scores might differ, the recessive as well as combination of dominant and backup perspectives will remain the same.

My TPI results are:
Transmission total: (Tr)   29.00
  B=11; I=6; A=12
Apprenticeship total: (Ap)  38.00
  B=11; I=14; A=13
Developmental total: (Dv)  35.00
  B=8; I=14; A=13
Nurturance total: (Nu)  40.00
  B=13; I=15; A=12
Social Reform total: (SR)  36.00
  B=11; I=14; A=11

Personalized Learning

As I was looking at some sample online courses and evaluating them this week, I was reminded of one of the main appeal of online courses; personalized learning and I learned one way to evaluate that aspect. According to NACOL national standards, an excellent online course provides students with multiple learning paths so they can connect the dots and reflect on the new concepts introduced. It would also cater to the different learning styles and mastery level needs and would provide frequent teacher-student interaction to track individual progress.
In the future, when I design, evaluate or deploy an online course, I would look for this criteria to be satisfied.

Dina

A Different View of Online Schooling

I learned more about online schooling since the first week, I had this impression in the beginning that online schools are all multimedia and no teachers are involved. I thought once instructional designers figured out the course design, everything after that was simple.
I realize now that teachers are involved and I understand why, I also get how complicated teaching an online course must be. Decisions that could affect the learning outcome need to be made such as how many students per course, how often should the student-teacher and student-student interaction and what's the best form of interaction to use.

How Would I Choose an Online School for My Child?

I would pick an online school based on quality, support, teacher availability, social activities, reputation and commitment for improvement.

End of 1st Week Reflections

I had this impression before I started this course that online schooling is all multimedia with no teacher interaction at all. Finding this out this week was a big surprise.
At the end of the week, I was left wondering how can we address all the con arguments mentioned on this week's discussion forum so virtual schooling can be improved.

Me and Online School/ing

I was born in Cairo, Egypt and now live in San Francisco, CA. I earned a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Cairo University then moved to the US to complete my masters in Computer Engineering at West Virginia University (WVU). Since graduation, I held several positions at Intel Corporation in the Bay Area in California and currently I'm a Training Program Manager in the Sales and Marketing Group. While at Intel, I have worked on a couple of technology in education assignments,the first was a project manager for the localization of an online learning solution SKOOOL and the second was a project manager for the deployment of 500 classmate PCs in rural parts of Egypt (Article). Outside of the office, I enjoy volunteering in the community, running, teaching a group exercise class, playing tennis, modeling and reading.

 

Over the last few years, I realized that education is at the heart of the change needed to sustain development in underserved communities, the kind of education that teaches people how to learn not the one that teaches facts. I then developed a strong desire to find a way to merge my information technology background and experience with my passion for education development in my country Egypt and the rest of the Middle East. This course will help me understand and evaluate existing online learning models, their success criteria and impact. I'm hoping to learn how technology is used in schools today as well as ideas on what’s still needed and how to improve.

I took a few online courses and deployed a few in my role as a training program manager, overall my experience has been positive. The flexibility and ability to research topics on the fly as opposed to the limitation of being in a classroom worked very well for me!

Dina