The Iowa Department of Education has released a series of videos featuring Iowa students on how to maximize your educational experience while taking a class online.
The videos were created to complement coursework available through Iowa e-Learning Central, which can be used online or in person. The idea of creating the videos, however, came from the students themselves.
“To ensure we are meeting the needs of Iowa e-Learning Central users, we collected feedback from a diverse group of stakeholders from across the state through focus groups and surveys,” said Department Consultant Nancy Hunt. “When students were asked to review the resources available in Iowa e-Learning Central during the focus groups, they told us they would like the content to be more engaging. Many youth suggested we develop videos to accompany our written resources to make the content more interesting.”
The eight videos touch base on many challenges that students face when working online, from avoiding distractions to the importance of collaboration.
Students from several school districts across the state are featured in the video, including Norwalk, Cedar Falls, Iowa City, Johnston, Carroll, Southeast Webster-Grand and Des Moines.
Iowa e-Learning Central is a resource for educators, students and families that features online courses created by Iowa teachers for Iowa teachers, facilitates online course sharing so schools can offer their open seats to students in other schools and includes expert-developed resources to support successful online learning.