Experiencing Free/Open Source Courses

The course that I chose to take was on geology.  It is a self-paced, interactive course with a lot of great information about the different types of rocks. This is a good course for students that need a visual learning experience.  There are videos, interactive activities, and actual pictures of the different types of rocks: sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic. It is not only informational, but it is also extremely kid-friendly.  There are objectives, instructions for use, and ideas for class discussions. The Marzano Strategies that I found evidence of were as follows:

• Nonlinguistic Representation – With all of the fun pictures and videos, this course was very appealing.
• Summarizing and Note-Taking – There were points during the course that gave the student the time to take notes on the information learned.
• Identifying Similarities and Differences – Students were supposed to compare and contrast the different rocks.

The benefits that I found to this lesson were the useful information given and that it was kid-friendly.  The challenges that I found were that there was no collaborative learning or feedback/interaction with the instructor.  As a student who is taking courses online, I find the collaborative piece of my classes one of the most important parts.  I learn an awful lot from my peers.  I also find the feedback from my instructor extremely valuable and I think all online courses should incorporate those aspects to help students be successful learners.