The title of this post is the title of a consultancy one-day session I ran on 22nd July. Once I'd convinced the client that such a course would be good for their trainers as they looked to develop blended and purely online learning, I relaxed thinking that running it would be simply about bringing everything together from my working practices. This is largely what I did but it was harder than I thought.
To suggest that you can teach everything there is to know about designing and teaching an online course is ridiculous. What to leave out and what to focus on is the challenge. I decided to present via prezi again so that I could create a coherent structure to help participant get a broad picture of events. Using images and much, much more zooming gave me a better quality outcome than previously but it there's still a way to go with my proper use of this canvas presentation tool. The fruits of my labour can be found here: http://prezi.com/4t29bt5r_s7m/designing-and-teaching-an-online-course/. I also did a powerpoint backup with all the same words. This was valuable on the day when I changed the order around somewhat. I've not achieved a neat and tidy framework yet which really justifies the use of prezi quite to the extent I wanted. However, I still think there was added value doing it this way.
The main sections were:
- Strategic decision to make before the design process
- Structural points
- Scaffolding frameworks
- Discussions
- Blogs
- Wikis
- E-portfolios
- Webinars
I organised the bulk of the day around the above 5 communication/collaboration tools. which are common to most VLEs. It wasn't about usability but providing them with example activity types which were context free. For each tool I composed about 12 and presented them on individual small bits of paper. I then had them marry up each activity to a phase in the scaffolding process of the Salmon model as a small group activity (I nearly went with Walmsley's Best practice model). I thought it useful to give them this as a launchpad for discussion or to provide some structure if discussion was struggling. It proved successful in that for the later ones they were less interested in marrying up with scaffolding phases and more interested in talking about the tool and it's possible uses. This is what I wanted and it worked well. I have already agreed with the client that next time we will have the bits of paper laminated and more neatly presented.
In addition to the above, I did a slot on e-facilitation where I presented some actual examples of facilitation in asynchronous discussion and got them to critique. I've done this before and it's worked well both times.
I had a few other subject up my sleeve but only got a chance to do the ones on mindmapping, social bookmarking and glogster. For the latter two it was simply mentioning and showing them. For mindmapping I gave out some guidance and had a discussion but not using the same format as the other tools discussed.
At the end, I had them have a go at structuring a session or course and give them a context they were all familiar with. None of the groups really stuck to this brief but there discussions were still on topic and there was some good good feedback.
Overall, I'm pleased with how things went. But there are bits to work on:
- I wanted a freeness to the discussions around each tool and this is what I got but I should perhaps think about more specific topics to feed back on. I might also abandon the marrying to Salmon stages and get them to do something else in their small groups.
- Everything needs more time. I felt like I was constantly rushing and that's even after I culled a couple of sections.
- Although this deliberately wasn't a hands on practice type workshop, I need to include some look and feel stuff on the tools which some won't have encountered before. For example, I assumed too much with wikis and ended up showing a couple of working examples when it became clear they didn't really know what a wiki was.
If you look at the prezi be aware that like powerpoint each phrase is a launchpad for me to talk around it, I wouldn't recommend presenting from this without knowing the meaning behind everything.
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It's hard to make practical use of pedagogical theories
We want our greater understanding of pedagogy to matter, to make a different. I've been looking closely at different pedagogical theories as part of my studies. It's interesting and challenging in equal measure. But at the back of my mind there's a so what factor which bugs me. In my role, there are very few situations where I can envisage making explicit use of pedagogical theory. Certainly, it's essential to have a good grasp but I want this knowledge to matter at a practical level.
So what are the issues?
The first point would be that they are abstract concepts. Of course they are, this is the point. But thinking about a practical learning design scenario there's a lot the educator has to do to make use of a theory. It's almost as if you read about a theory and then let it subconsciously effect your practice. Basically, the link between theory and practice has to be done by the educator which is a lot of work.
Which theory? Each theory makes it's own claims to get to the essence of learning and how best to teach/facilitate. For the educator, this means some form of value judgement about which to favour. Am I right about this? Certainly, this is how it feels as I read about them. I'm not saying this is bad but it makes it hard for the average educator to make decisions about their own teaching and learning.
Are they really so different? Of course, they are if you have the time to read and reread the important papers concerning each theory. Just reading the highlines can lead to confusing and a sense that some overlap with others. I found that ones with the word construct somewhere in the title take a while to nail as distinct entities.
Research around pedagogy is important and interesting. Long may it continue. But what we need are more conscious effort to make sense, make use and make them matter in the real world of education.
Answers on a postcard.... In my next post I will explore how I'm thinking about making use of the conversational framework to facilitate this process.
So what are the issues?
The first point would be that they are abstract concepts. Of course they are, this is the point. But thinking about a practical learning design scenario there's a lot the educator has to do to make use of a theory. It's almost as if you read about a theory and then let it subconsciously effect your practice. Basically, the link between theory and practice has to be done by the educator which is a lot of work.
Which theory? Each theory makes it's own claims to get to the essence of learning and how best to teach/facilitate. For the educator, this means some form of value judgement about which to favour. Am I right about this? Certainly, this is how it feels as I read about them. I'm not saying this is bad but it makes it hard for the average educator to make decisions about their own teaching and learning.
Are they really so different? Of course, they are if you have the time to read and reread the important papers concerning each theory. Just reading the highlines can lead to confusing and a sense that some overlap with others. I found that ones with the word construct somewhere in the title take a while to nail as distinct entities.
Research around pedagogy is important and interesting. Long may it continue. But what we need are more conscious effort to make sense, make use and make them matter in the real world of education.
Answers on a postcard.... In my next post I will explore how I'm thinking about making use of the conversational framework to facilitate this process.
Public/Private sector e-learning: the differences
There are different types of e-learning courses. I going to draw a divide between public and private sector courses purely to help my thinking. The divide is, of course, not that simple but it's a useful starting point for this post.
Appearance is the most obvious difference and this is down to money. The content of the private sector world is dynamically displayed, well designed and often involves bespoke video. The interaction is with the software and often restricted to the odd multiple choice instant feedback job. It's mostly about absorbing the content. It's more about web design than learning design. Pedagogy is firmly didactic and pedagogical thought seems lacking.
For the public sector, there is little money to sink into creating content to the same dynamic, multimedia standard. One area I am starting to explore is the easy creation of web content so that educators are less likely to whack on a powerpoint or word document. Making the content bespoke to a purely online course is an important step which many have not taken. The DIY nature means that it seems less valid to just put content up. They need to look good for this to work. Within education, there is unwritten understanding that learning activities are required regardless of this. However, I'm sure some would make do with just providing content if they could. Hiding behind making the content dynamic would make this easier.
Often, people bemoan the poor look and feel of VLEs. This is a fair point when compared to some of the communication/collaboration tools out there. It's not fair, however, if they are comparing to whizzy graphics of an expensively put together e-learning course. Pedagogically, such courses have less going for them even if they look the part.
This is not to suggest that HE online courses have good learning design across the board. Far from it, my job is try and facilitate this process and we have a way to go just to get everyone listening. However, there is conscious effort to make this happen. Private companies who get into e-learning steer clear of the asynchronous learning-type activities because they want to produce a produce and then sell that product. Ongoing costs are not on the agenda and facilitators cost.
A pertinent point to make is that this is largely what the customers want. Learners of all ages are used to being thrown content and then make to make sense of it themselves. They are not clamouring for a scaffolded learning process. They are not used to it and it seems too hard. All the better if the content they are given looks and sounds great.
Overall, there are massive differences with learning activities, software interaction, use of multimedia, look and feel and pedagogical design. My observation for this post is that private companies concentrate creating impressive looking, well designed software and where they produce courses themselves they often don't go much further with the pedagogy. Is this a bad thing? I guess it's just an observation.
Appearance is the most obvious difference and this is down to money. The content of the private sector world is dynamically displayed, well designed and often involves bespoke video. The interaction is with the software and often restricted to the odd multiple choice instant feedback job. It's mostly about absorbing the content. It's more about web design than learning design. Pedagogy is firmly didactic and pedagogical thought seems lacking.
For the public sector, there is little money to sink into creating content to the same dynamic, multimedia standard. One area I am starting to explore is the easy creation of web content so that educators are less likely to whack on a powerpoint or word document. Making the content bespoke to a purely online course is an important step which many have not taken. The DIY nature means that it seems less valid to just put content up. They need to look good for this to work. Within education, there is unwritten understanding that learning activities are required regardless of this. However, I'm sure some would make do with just providing content if they could. Hiding behind making the content dynamic would make this easier.
Often, people bemoan the poor look and feel of VLEs. This is a fair point when compared to some of the communication/collaboration tools out there. It's not fair, however, if they are comparing to whizzy graphics of an expensively put together e-learning course. Pedagogically, such courses have less going for them even if they look the part.
This is not to suggest that HE online courses have good learning design across the board. Far from it, my job is try and facilitate this process and we have a way to go just to get everyone listening. However, there is conscious effort to make this happen. Private companies who get into e-learning steer clear of the asynchronous learning-type activities because they want to produce a produce and then sell that product. Ongoing costs are not on the agenda and facilitators cost.
A pertinent point to make is that this is largely what the customers want. Learners of all ages are used to being thrown content and then make to make sense of it themselves. They are not clamouring for a scaffolded learning process. They are not used to it and it seems too hard. All the better if the content they are given looks and sounds great.
Overall, there are massive differences with learning activities, software interaction, use of multimedia, look and feel and pedagogical design. My observation for this post is that private companies concentrate creating impressive looking, well designed software and where they produce courses themselves they often don't go much further with the pedagogy. Is this a bad thing? I guess it's just an observation.
Reflections on teaching about Web 2.0 tools
It's been a criminal amount of time since I last blogged. The standard excuse of being busy applies but seems lame as I write it.
Today I want to reflect on some teaching I did on Tuesday, 17th May at the Institute of Education (IOE). It was called 21st century learning: using web 2.0 tools. I usually call this session Web2.0Learning but our marketing people didn't like that and renamed it. This was the first time I've been on the LCLL core events calendar so this was quite a bit deal. By the way, the LCLL - London Centre for Leadership in Learning - is where I work in the IOE.
Web2.0Learning is a day's training that I conceived a couple of years ago to teach educators about the various types of tools freely available 'out there' on the internet. I describe them as 'outside your VLE' tools. I've now delivered it 5 times mostly at the Chartered Institute of Marketing and I've always found it a rewarding experience. Part of the satisfaction comes from the fact that it's inspired and dictated by what I read, learn and reflect about in my personal learning on the blogosphere. It's more of a personal interest than a work chore. Also, it allows me to be creative as I seek to make sense of the different tools and software I encounter and distill it down into coherent messages.
There's lots to reflect on. Firstly, this is the programme I arrived at. When I compare to the last time I did it in July, 2010 there is a much that has changed:
9:30 - 9:45 Welcome and Introductions
9:45 - 10:10 Web 2.0 technologies in education
10:10 - 10:30 Our site/Group creation sites*
10:30 - 10:45 Group notice boards*
10:45 – 11:00 tea/coffee
11:00 – 11:10 Knowledge Building
11:10 – 11:35 Mind mapping*
11:35 – 11:40 Drawing tools*
11:40 – 11:50 Word Clouds*
11:50 – 12:00 Tool exploration*
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch
13:00 – 13:10 Brainstorming
13:10 – 13:25 Which media?
13:25 – 13:45 Creating a narrative
13:45 – 14:00 Collaborative bookmarking*
14:00 – 14:10 Screencasting
14:10 – 14:15 Recording audio
14:15 – 14:30 Break
14:30 – 14:35 Creative commons and copyright
14:35 – 14:50 Blogs/discussions
14:50 – 15:10 Collaborative documents/wikis*
15:10 – 15:15 Selection criteria
15:15 – 15:30 Reflection and discussion
The timings seem precise and weren't kept to as we moved through things quicker than planned. It's difficult to judge but it was useful to plan in this way so I could be clear which tools I was covering and in what order. The * means that we did a hands on practice on an instance of that tool. The purpose was to give an overview of what a particular type of tool is for and how it could be used for teaching and learning. My broad plan from this time was to get more contextual examples of actual use and extract this information into templates which I could talk around. I wasn't able to do this extensively for every tool but there was still lots of ideas for educational use. It was really helpful this time to have assistance from a colleague, Isobel Bowditch. She did some valuable research into some of the tools as we made sense of what's out there and decided what's important.
The first reflection was that it went really well. A positive day with positive feedback - the best I've got so far. I wasn't sure about how school teachers would react to it. On reflection, it has more relevance in this context than in HE and FE as a lot of the more dynamic, creative and fun tools don't seem to appeal the older the context. One important structural point was that I house the weblinks and resources here:
http://web20learningmay2011.grouply.com/
We linked to each example from the site and there are extra links to explore after the day. It's good to have a hub of activity and it allows me to build a resource which I can use again. I've left it open so that they can share it with colleagues. My ethos of sharing knowledge comes from a belief that more good than bad comes from it. I had someone this morning request to use a prezi I've done which is gratifying. The success of the day meant that two more sessions have been pencilled in for the next academic year which means I'll get to update the session again.
The group was mostly ICT co-ordinators and classroom teachers. The ICT folk were really good participants as they sought to incorporate the tools into their thinking. But I'm pleased those less ICT minded found it useful. As I suspected some of the tools were familiar to some of the group but this turned out to be no problem as there was sufficient breadth and variety of topics. I think they liked being given context/explanation before being allowed to practice using a tool. The practice were carefully setup to minimise difficulties. I tried, where possible, not to endorse a particular service and explain why I had chosen what I'd chosen. Primarily I was going for tools which didn't require any account creation, was free to use and had good usability. for example, with mindmapping I chose bubbl.us. There are better mindmapping tools out there but they require money and an account to be created so to practice in a controlled environment they are not suitable. BTW, never run a session like this and have them create an account which needs to be validated from an email - it's chaos!
From these principles, I ran the day. I have the following observations about some of the tools:
- Answergarden is a tool where you can ask a question, share the website and get quick feedback in a fun, dynamic way. I found this tool at the last minute, it seems to fit into a bit about brainstorming or generating quick feedback in a fun way so I included it. They liked it a lot and someone discovered that you could create word clouds out of the answers which I hadn't spotted.
- wallwisher and linoit are online noticeboard tools which also hit the spot. They are good tools where account creation is optional. It seems that this kind of quick, interaction, simple and visually impressive tool is right for the schools context. This is unsurprising when you think about it but useful learning for me. I'm sure there is more out there.
- I was almost apologetic in my inclusion of drawing tool, tagging them onto the end of mindmapping bit very briefly. However, they liked this as well which could be linked to the previous point about quick, easy and interactive.
- Collaborative bookmarking was also a winner. I prefer diigo as the educational account allows for bespoke groups to be created and the teacher to create accounts. This is a tool that I will always champion is I think it is under used in education.
- Collaborative documents/wikis - I put these together as they are similar in spirit. For the activity I chose a synchronous collaborative document tool - http://sync.in/ which worked well. I was right to have this at the end as people had got to know eachother a little bit so were ok with the ability to edit others' words. I nearly did this using a wikispace wiki but I'm glad I didn't now.
- I was unsure about whether to dedicate time to allowing them to explore different web 2.0 tools from the sites I'd linked to which had loads of them categorised, e.g. Best Online Collaboration tools, 2011 and Free Technology for Teachers but this worked well and we ended up giving more time for this.
- Word clouds went down surprisingly well. I've not included these before for some reason. I think I thought everyone already knows about them but I was wrong. Their potential for teaching and learning is perhaps limited but the ease with which they can be created make them worth a look.
- Finally, the section I called Creation a narrative. This is the section that Isobel helped me research. I knew I wanted to do something around cartooning/comic strip software and photo/video mashup stuff. We talked at length about how these tools related and what their educational potential was. What we found was not much of a track record for educational use or overt marketing in this direction. However, I felt there was suffificent potential to include them. I couldn't fashion a hands on activity as none of the tools fitted the criteria so I just did demos. At the time, I thought that it wasn't going down very well but afterwards some of the primary people said that they would think about this. The session suffered a little by having weak examples to show but I'm still glad I did it. Have a look on the website down the bottom of the page to see the tools that I decided to demo along with brief descriptions. Zimmer Twins and Xtra Normal are my favourites.
- As an afterthought to the creating a narrative section, I talked about and showed a couple of examples of glogster - the multimedia poster tool. I need to give this a higher profile to as they really liked the look of this. I can see why as there a lot of potential for homework activities with this. I need to look into this more.
Aside from the tools, I need to think of ways to engender more discussion. The computer room setup didn't help but I could have done more in this regard.
The biggest development I need to work on is getting better knowledge and understanding of the schools context. This session has potential if I can give it more contextual relevance. I'm not sure how best to do this so I need to have a think.
Finally, let me give thanks to the ICT gods for having all the technology work for me.
Today I want to reflect on some teaching I did on Tuesday, 17th May at the Institute of Education (IOE). It was called 21st century learning: using web 2.0 tools. I usually call this session Web2.0Learning but our marketing people didn't like that and renamed it. This was the first time I've been on the LCLL core events calendar so this was quite a bit deal. By the way, the LCLL - London Centre for Leadership in Learning - is where I work in the IOE.
Web2.0Learning is a day's training that I conceived a couple of years ago to teach educators about the various types of tools freely available 'out there' on the internet. I describe them as 'outside your VLE' tools. I've now delivered it 5 times mostly at the Chartered Institute of Marketing and I've always found it a rewarding experience. Part of the satisfaction comes from the fact that it's inspired and dictated by what I read, learn and reflect about in my personal learning on the blogosphere. It's more of a personal interest than a work chore. Also, it allows me to be creative as I seek to make sense of the different tools and software I encounter and distill it down into coherent messages.
There's lots to reflect on. Firstly, this is the programme I arrived at. When I compare to the last time I did it in July, 2010 there is a much that has changed:
9:30 - 9:45 Welcome and Introductions
9:45 - 10:10 Web 2.0 technologies in education
10:10 - 10:30 Our site/Group creation sites*
10:30 - 10:45 Group notice boards*
10:45 – 11:00 tea/coffee
11:00 – 11:10 Knowledge Building
11:10 – 11:35 Mind mapping*
11:35 – 11:40 Drawing tools*
11:40 – 11:50 Word Clouds*
11:50 – 12:00 Tool exploration*
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch
13:00 – 13:10 Brainstorming
13:10 – 13:25 Which media?
13:25 – 13:45 Creating a narrative
13:45 – 14:00 Collaborative bookmarking*
14:00 – 14:10 Screencasting
14:10 – 14:15 Recording audio
14:15 – 14:30 Break
14:30 – 14:35 Creative commons and copyright
14:35 – 14:50 Blogs/discussions
14:50 – 15:10 Collaborative documents/wikis*
15:10 – 15:15 Selection criteria
15:15 – 15:30 Reflection and discussion
The timings seem precise and weren't kept to as we moved through things quicker than planned. It's difficult to judge but it was useful to plan in this way so I could be clear which tools I was covering and in what order. The * means that we did a hands on practice on an instance of that tool. The purpose was to give an overview of what a particular type of tool is for and how it could be used for teaching and learning. My broad plan from this time was to get more contextual examples of actual use and extract this information into templates which I could talk around. I wasn't able to do this extensively for every tool but there was still lots of ideas for educational use. It was really helpful this time to have assistance from a colleague, Isobel Bowditch. She did some valuable research into some of the tools as we made sense of what's out there and decided what's important.
The first reflection was that it went really well. A positive day with positive feedback - the best I've got so far. I wasn't sure about how school teachers would react to it. On reflection, it has more relevance in this context than in HE and FE as a lot of the more dynamic, creative and fun tools don't seem to appeal the older the context. One important structural point was that I house the weblinks and resources here:
http://web20learningmay2011.grouply.com/
We linked to each example from the site and there are extra links to explore after the day. It's good to have a hub of activity and it allows me to build a resource which I can use again. I've left it open so that they can share it with colleagues. My ethos of sharing knowledge comes from a belief that more good than bad comes from it. I had someone this morning request to use a prezi I've done which is gratifying. The success of the day meant that two more sessions have been pencilled in for the next academic year which means I'll get to update the session again.
The group was mostly ICT co-ordinators and classroom teachers. The ICT folk were really good participants as they sought to incorporate the tools into their thinking. But I'm pleased those less ICT minded found it useful. As I suspected some of the tools were familiar to some of the group but this turned out to be no problem as there was sufficient breadth and variety of topics. I think they liked being given context/explanation before being allowed to practice using a tool. The practice were carefully setup to minimise difficulties. I tried, where possible, not to endorse a particular service and explain why I had chosen what I'd chosen. Primarily I was going for tools which didn't require any account creation, was free to use and had good usability. for example, with mindmapping I chose bubbl.us. There are better mindmapping tools out there but they require money and an account to be created so to practice in a controlled environment they are not suitable. BTW, never run a session like this and have them create an account which needs to be validated from an email - it's chaos!
From these principles, I ran the day. I have the following observations about some of the tools:
- Answergarden is a tool where you can ask a question, share the website and get quick feedback in a fun, dynamic way. I found this tool at the last minute, it seems to fit into a bit about brainstorming or generating quick feedback in a fun way so I included it. They liked it a lot and someone discovered that you could create word clouds out of the answers which I hadn't spotted.
- wallwisher and linoit are online noticeboard tools which also hit the spot. They are good tools where account creation is optional. It seems that this kind of quick, interaction, simple and visually impressive tool is right for the schools context. This is unsurprising when you think about it but useful learning for me. I'm sure there is more out there.
- I was almost apologetic in my inclusion of drawing tool, tagging them onto the end of mindmapping bit very briefly. However, they liked this as well which could be linked to the previous point about quick, easy and interactive.
- Collaborative bookmarking was also a winner. I prefer diigo as the educational account allows for bespoke groups to be created and the teacher to create accounts. This is a tool that I will always champion is I think it is under used in education.
- Collaborative documents/wikis - I put these together as they are similar in spirit. For the activity I chose a synchronous collaborative document tool - http://sync.in/ which worked well. I was right to have this at the end as people had got to know eachother a little bit so were ok with the ability to edit others' words. I nearly did this using a wikispace wiki but I'm glad I didn't now.
- I was unsure about whether to dedicate time to allowing them to explore different web 2.0 tools from the sites I'd linked to which had loads of them categorised, e.g. Best Online Collaboration tools, 2011 and Free Technology for Teachers but this worked well and we ended up giving more time for this.
- Word clouds went down surprisingly well. I've not included these before for some reason. I think I thought everyone already knows about them but I was wrong. Their potential for teaching and learning is perhaps limited but the ease with which they can be created make them worth a look.
- Finally, the section I called Creation a narrative. This is the section that Isobel helped me research. I knew I wanted to do something around cartooning/comic strip software and photo/video mashup stuff. We talked at length about how these tools related and what their educational potential was. What we found was not much of a track record for educational use or overt marketing in this direction. However, I felt there was suffificent potential to include them. I couldn't fashion a hands on activity as none of the tools fitted the criteria so I just did demos. At the time, I thought that it wasn't going down very well but afterwards some of the primary people said that they would think about this. The session suffered a little by having weak examples to show but I'm still glad I did it. Have a look on the website down the bottom of the page to see the tools that I decided to demo along with brief descriptions. Zimmer Twins and Xtra Normal are my favourites.
- As an afterthought to the creating a narrative section, I talked about and showed a couple of examples of glogster - the multimedia poster tool. I need to give this a higher profile to as they really liked the look of this. I can see why as there a lot of potential for homework activities with this. I need to look into this more.
Aside from the tools, I need to think of ways to engender more discussion. The computer room setup didn't help but I could have done more in this regard.
The biggest development I need to work on is getting better knowledge and understanding of the schools context. This session has potential if I can give it more contextual relevance. I'm not sure how best to do this so I need to have a think.
Finally, let me give thanks to the ICT gods for having all the technology work for me.
Presentation on "Structuring an online course" and some prezi reflections
Last week I taught a session (with a couple of colleagues) called Structuring an online course: guidance and example. Here I wanted to share my contribution to this session: a prezi presentation and talk about it. it's not embedding well so I'll just link to it - Structuring an onine course: Guidance and example - public version
What I've attempted to do is group together different sections of the process with a view to helping educators organise their thinking on this issue. The hard part of this is knowing what to leave out. I see this as a work in process because I hope to get clearer about the issues and the relationships as I get more experienced. The point of this practically focused framework is to help a Higher Education institution in 2011 - I work at the excellent Institute of Education. The point is that many academics need help with the basics. Basics that aren't well defined or universally agreed. By basics I mean the key decisions that need to be made; the main structural decisions to take. Some may disagree with the phrases used in the structure but the point is to give a framework from which to work. Of course, it needs context. I work with individuals to give this context. However, I'm interested in the academic staff who aren't banging down my door to have these conversations and are only at this particular session. It's something for them to take away. I want to make the maximium impact I can; an impact that cover the foundations of what they need to know. If this is all the time I get with them I don't waste time focusing on a small piece of the pie before they have tasted a bite or all the slices (not sure that works).
It's true that the pedagogy is only implicit in the presentation, if at all. In an ideal world the pedagogy is the starting point and the structure flows from there. My rationale for leaving this out is based on my experiences working with educators over the years. Rarely do they want to talk in the abstract and apply these abstract principles to their teaching. My best guess is that most educators have only a sense of their pedagogical tendencies but have a firm grasp on what types of activities they like using. So what I deem important for a first stab presentation like this are the types of activity available to them in their context. For this scenario, this meant outlining the main communication/collaboration tools available to people in my institution. A footnote to this is that pedagogy is complex and discussions around is are complicated and challenging. All this takes time, and this could feel a waste if there is only this one chance of communicating with them.
My concern with any teaching session is to avoid cul-de-sacs of discussion on issues of minor importance. Often such discussions focus on processes which hinder the success of teaching online or strategic and sometimes philosophical standpoints. This leads sessions and discussions down a slippery slope. By presenting something like this first, the chance of a focused discussion are much greater.
So the prezi provided has the following sections:
Before designing section - Basically, what I'm concerned with here is ensuring that you know why you are designing a purely online or blended learning course. Our context has a focus of converting from face-to-face but it applies to creating something from scratch. The why question is a whole area in itself which I won't dwell on here. The other noteworthy issue is whether you replace what you are currently doing with whatever you are designing now. This refers to replacing something purely online with something face-to-face. Most will not want to teach solely online, this is not what they signed up for when they embarked on this career! So duplication is the preferred way to go. I will probably rework this section. I think most of important issues are there but I'm not happy about the title and some of the wording.
Structural considerations - The prezi above is minus screenshots of example structures within our VLE. However, we have the key considerations. In reality these considerations are not decided upon before the actually activity/content design. It is an iterative process.
An online course needs - bespoke content, activities, readings This is the meat of the presentation and the focus is on the activities. The categories feel a bit simplistic but I think they work. What I'm keen to do is to make the point that uploading your powerpoint from a face-to-face lecture isn't good enough for bespoke content. You want specially created documents or multimedia at the very least. So I describe this area as bespoke content. Because we are HE, readings gets it's own area (the things in this bubble refer to our systems). For the activities bubbles, my split between asynchronous and synchronous was an easy design choice. They are such different beasts that we need to talk about them seperately. What I've outlined are the main tools available to us in our blackboard VLE. Moodlers out there will notice that moodle has more to offer. C'est la vie. I probably should have put e-portfolios in there however. What this model doesn't acknowledge is the relationship between the activities and the bespoke content. A blurring of the boundaries here would have got in the way of the message but this can come out when you talk.
Finally, some reflections on using prezi for this presentation. I did a few prezis a year ago but haven't done any since. My intention here was to present large structures and show relationships which could then be used to focus on individual elements. Doing it this way forces you to think hard about how the pieces fit together. When I started I didn't know what these structures would look like and, to be honest, I had hoped for better. However, it was a valuable exercise and I think it has a better look and feel using this tool. With powerpoint you can often get away with casually listing things as they come to mind and talk about them. BTW, if you just jump of one thing to the next without any big picture there's no point using prezi. What's frustrating about prezi is that when you decide to move a bubble and all it's contents, it's a fiddly job. There's supposed to be a multiple select option but I couldn't get this to work so I was forever dragging things around. Perhaps sketching things out on paper first is a good idea.
Anyway, I hope you find looking at the presentation and reading these reflections interesting. Presentations without the talking can only be so useful but hopefully you can get something from it. Feedback would be gratefully received.
What I've attempted to do is group together different sections of the process with a view to helping educators organise their thinking on this issue. The hard part of this is knowing what to leave out. I see this as a work in process because I hope to get clearer about the issues and the relationships as I get more experienced. The point of this practically focused framework is to help a Higher Education institution in 2011 - I work at the excellent Institute of Education. The point is that many academics need help with the basics. Basics that aren't well defined or universally agreed. By basics I mean the key decisions that need to be made; the main structural decisions to take. Some may disagree with the phrases used in the structure but the point is to give a framework from which to work. Of course, it needs context. I work with individuals to give this context. However, I'm interested in the academic staff who aren't banging down my door to have these conversations and are only at this particular session. It's something for them to take away. I want to make the maximium impact I can; an impact that cover the foundations of what they need to know. If this is all the time I get with them I don't waste time focusing on a small piece of the pie before they have tasted a bite or all the slices (not sure that works).
It's true that the pedagogy is only implicit in the presentation, if at all. In an ideal world the pedagogy is the starting point and the structure flows from there. My rationale for leaving this out is based on my experiences working with educators over the years. Rarely do they want to talk in the abstract and apply these abstract principles to their teaching. My best guess is that most educators have only a sense of their pedagogical tendencies but have a firm grasp on what types of activities they like using. So what I deem important for a first stab presentation like this are the types of activity available to them in their context. For this scenario, this meant outlining the main communication/collaboration tools available to people in my institution. A footnote to this is that pedagogy is complex and discussions around is are complicated and challenging. All this takes time, and this could feel a waste if there is only this one chance of communicating with them.
My concern with any teaching session is to avoid cul-de-sacs of discussion on issues of minor importance. Often such discussions focus on processes which hinder the success of teaching online or strategic and sometimes philosophical standpoints. This leads sessions and discussions down a slippery slope. By presenting something like this first, the chance of a focused discussion are much greater.
So the prezi provided has the following sections:
Before designing section - Basically, what I'm concerned with here is ensuring that you know why you are designing a purely online or blended learning course. Our context has a focus of converting from face-to-face but it applies to creating something from scratch. The why question is a whole area in itself which I won't dwell on here. The other noteworthy issue is whether you replace what you are currently doing with whatever you are designing now. This refers to replacing something purely online with something face-to-face. Most will not want to teach solely online, this is not what they signed up for when they embarked on this career! So duplication is the preferred way to go. I will probably rework this section. I think most of important issues are there but I'm not happy about the title and some of the wording.
Structural considerations - The prezi above is minus screenshots of example structures within our VLE. However, we have the key considerations. In reality these considerations are not decided upon before the actually activity/content design. It is an iterative process.
An online course needs - bespoke content, activities, readings This is the meat of the presentation and the focus is on the activities. The categories feel a bit simplistic but I think they work. What I'm keen to do is to make the point that uploading your powerpoint from a face-to-face lecture isn't good enough for bespoke content. You want specially created documents or multimedia at the very least. So I describe this area as bespoke content. Because we are HE, readings gets it's own area (the things in this bubble refer to our systems). For the activities bubbles, my split between asynchronous and synchronous was an easy design choice. They are such different beasts that we need to talk about them seperately. What I've outlined are the main tools available to us in our blackboard VLE. Moodlers out there will notice that moodle has more to offer. C'est la vie. I probably should have put e-portfolios in there however. What this model doesn't acknowledge is the relationship between the activities and the bespoke content. A blurring of the boundaries here would have got in the way of the message but this can come out when you talk.
Finally, some reflections on using prezi for this presentation. I did a few prezis a year ago but haven't done any since. My intention here was to present large structures and show relationships which could then be used to focus on individual elements. Doing it this way forces you to think hard about how the pieces fit together. When I started I didn't know what these structures would look like and, to be honest, I had hoped for better. However, it was a valuable exercise and I think it has a better look and feel using this tool. With powerpoint you can often get away with casually listing things as they come to mind and talk about them. BTW, if you just jump of one thing to the next without any big picture there's no point using prezi. What's frustrating about prezi is that when you decide to move a bubble and all it's contents, it's a fiddly job. There's supposed to be a multiple select option but I couldn't get this to work so I was forever dragging things around. Perhaps sketching things out on paper first is a good idea.
Anyway, I hope you find looking at the presentation and reading these reflections interesting. Presentations without the talking can only be so useful but hopefully you can get something from it. Feedback would be gratefully received.
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