Week 5 Assignment: The Impact of Open Source

The key to success in an online classroom is not which technologies are used, but how they are used and what information is communicated using the technology (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2012). There are several steps that should be considered when selecting appropriate technologies for online instructions: (1) assessing available instructional technologies, (2) determine how the outcome will be for the learner, (3) identify learning experiences and match each to the most appropriate available technology, and (4) prepare the learning experiences for online delivery (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2012).

This course on Game Design is well thought of and the course is easy to navigate. This course is planned behind the ADDIE model. The course description is well written for any learner to understand. It gives a description of all aspects in this course from what type of text, tools, references, technology that will be used throughout the course. Dr. Piskurich discussed in his video how you can get students into small groups and collaborate with each other about working on different activities (Chauser & Piskurich, 2012). In the description of this course, the instructor will have learners to come together and design, develop, and methodically test their game. This will allow the learners to brainstorm different ideas together about the game they will design. Communication is a key factor in distance learning.

The Game Design course has a self explanatory syllabus of what is required for the entire course (ex. course credits, grading system). The study material for this course is easy find. There is a tab for each topic and a section where the reading and gaming labs are located. Also, there are tabs for different audios, related resources, and course material downloads. If you have comments about this course, there is a feedback tab to leave your comment about the course.

It is clear in this course Design Game that the detailed assignment instructions were used to create this course. Some of the steps that were used are: (1) purpose of assignment, (2) instruction created for attended audience, (3) hot links to pertinent online resources, (4) identification of required components of the assignment, (5) grading criteria, (6) due date, (7) instructions of how to submit assignment, and (8) any other special instructions (Simonson, smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2012).

If I was interested in taking this course it would be easy for me to navigate through each tab without any problem. This course offers the necessary tools such as audios and resources, I should be able to complete this course without difficulty.

References

Tan, P. & Begy, J. (2010). Game Design (Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare). Retrieved from http://ocw.mit.edu/.

Piskurich, G., Chauser, J. (2012). Planning and Designing Online Courses [Video]. Laureate Education, Inc. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_549515_1%26url%3D

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvcek, S. (2012). Teaching and Learning at a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education (5th Ed.). Bost, MA: Pearson.