I love teaching my online courses, and I love the freedom that taking online courses affords me as a student. It means that I don’t have to give up other work or life matters to teach and to study, and I can accept opportunities in other parts of the world while teaching and studying.
However, like with most things in life there are ups and downs to teaching and learning online. One area that I have been questioning for sometime now, is finding a healthy balance between screentime and time being present in the real world. Exploring that balance was the focus of my research in Master of Educational Technology Course ETEC 500. As a result, I have decided to start to put reminders into each of my Units this term in my BCIT Course, BCST 1073: Building Your Digital Media Presence, to take a break from the computer and get up to stretch, dance, meditate …etc. I plan to share many of these Activity Breaks with all of you here, in case you are thinking of doing something similar. Feel free to copy and modify these for your own online courses, if so desired.
Here is the first activity break that I’ve shared with my students:
Activity Break #1: Git Up Challenge
After dealing with a concussion in my own online studies, and spending some time researching healthy screen-time / real world balance in one of my Master’s courses, I’ve decided to add some reminders for activity breaks into our course.
I thought, I’d start with a little dance break and the Git Up Challenge, as it is also a fun example of an interactive media craze in action.
From a couple of Canadians that have taken up the challenge …
In case you need to learn the steps …
An example of the Git Up Challenge being used to educate, and for social good …
And a bit of social media thinking with examples of the craze spreading across Tik Tok …
I made this a discussion, just in case anyone feels so inspired to partake in the challenge, and wishes to share their video with us!
Oh, and if you have a suggestion for future Activity Breaks in the course, feel free to share your ideas in the discussion.
If you have links to your own or other people’s activity breaks in online courses, I’d love to see and hear about them. Tell us about them in the comments below.
I do agree with your point that learning online can become boring after a few sessions, due to lack of interaction. Like you, I also prefer online learning as it fits my schedule and I won’t have to leave my job for this. Hence, I opted for Oxford Learning College, which one of the world’s leading distance education providers. The professors know how to keep their students engaged!