As I mentioned, the functional aspect of Edmodo was the most attractive to me, and I wanted to make my teaching as comprehensive as possible.
The next challenge was to think of what to post and what material to develop. The most appropriate course I thought, alongside my partner, was to develop an Orientation course, as an alternative platform to BlackBoard. It is also important to note that we primarily focused on an Asynchronous approach, since the nature of the orientation and the increase in student admission has proven that resources become a challenge.
The asynchronous approach in online learning, in this particular case, has the biggest benefit of cost-saving (Sherrod, Holland and Augustus, 2021). Furthermore, there is sometimes an issue, where freshmen who just entered the university do not have access to the Intranet, where most of the Orientation material is located.
Lastly, another reason why Edmodo seemed more attractive to me, is its availability (Borg et al., 2021). There is a mobile application that can be used and the desktop version is similar to Facebook and other social media (Puspitaloka, Rahmawati and Sonjaya, 2018). This platform is most relatable for students, and is easier to use over platforms that may be new for the students.
Considering where the majority of the students are coming from, local schools and lyceums, they rarely employ learning platforms, rather resorting to us television broadcasts and telegram channels to engage with students.
It is important that we, as an educational institution, utilize platforms for learning that are familiar to students, since new platforms will require "educating students on how to use the platform first". This causes us to use more resources and time spent on aspects of the course that are not required.
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Puspitaloka, N., Rahmawati, I. and Sonjaya, D.O. (2018). EDMODO AS EDUCATIONAL SOCIAL NETWORK IN TEACHING COURSE DESIGN OF EYL. Script Journal: Journal of Linguistic and English Teaching, 3 (2), 146. Available from https://doi.org/10.24903/sj.v3i2.212 [Accessed 20 April 2020].
Sherrod, D., Holland, C. and Augustus, T. (2021). It’s time for a fresh look at online learning. Nursing Management, 52 (8), 26–33. Available from https://doi.org/10.1097/01.numa.0000758680.54535.8b [Accessed 24 March 2022].
Asynchronous is the biggest part of the course of course, as in line with the connectivism theory we as teachers are merely facilitators of the process and students access knowledge largely independently. But the facilitation part is planned through synchronous sessions too. The Calendar and Agenda tools are great on Edmodo to help students navigate independently and connect to the synchronous sessions organized. Synchronous sessions are also extremely important to feel the presence of the social networks you are connecting with, especially for students who meet each other for the first time.
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