Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Online Teaching Standards
One of the sessions I attended described an approach to ensuring quality of online teaching via checklist. I do not think that this is the total answer (and the presenters agreed that they were not finished with the project), but it is a start.
Essentially, the office of distance learning needs to form a committee to propose standards for online courses. Representatives on the committee should be from instructional design, IT, and academic areas. Once the committee has come up with a checklist, they should use it against existing, effective courses to see what revisions need to take place.
The suggested areas of a course to examine were:
Navigation
Consistency
Accessibility
Syllabus
Content
Activities
Communication
Assessment
Off the top of my head, I would add "Resources" (library, bookstore, technical help, etc.) The purpose of the checklist would be for evaluating a course, but I think it could be useful to teachers as they build new courses.
Quality Matters
Another session dealt with implementing QM in your program. This refers to the course design, not content or means of distribution. An important factor is paying attention to the course from the perspective of the student. What will a student need to know in order to make sense of the course? Also consider that "quality" does not mean "perfection." Part of the process of review of a course will involve recognizing improvements which could be made even though the course meets quality standards.
Something that gets completely overlooked by many teachers is the relationship of the textbook to the learning objectives of the course. Each unit of the course should have objectives which align with the course objectives, NOT to the objectives of "Chapter 3" in the textbook. The learning activities, similarly, must relate to the objectives; they should not be chosen just because your textbook has those activities. Are textbooks chosen because they align with the course objectives? They should be.
Essentially, the office of distance learning needs to form a committee to propose standards for online courses. Representatives on the committee should be from instructional design, IT, and academic areas. Once the committee has come up with a checklist, they should use it against existing, effective courses to see what revisions need to take place.
The suggested areas of a course to examine were:
Off the top of my head, I would add "Resources" (library, bookstore, technical help, etc.) The purpose of the checklist would be for evaluating a course, but I think it could be useful to teachers as they build new courses.
Quality Matters
Another session dealt with implementing QM in your program. This refers to the course design, not content or means of distribution. An important factor is paying attention to the course from the perspective of the student. What will a student need to know in order to make sense of the course? Also consider that "quality" does not mean "perfection." Part of the process of review of a course will involve recognizing improvements which could be made even though the course meets quality standards.
Something that gets completely overlooked by many teachers is the relationship of the textbook to the learning objectives of the course. Each unit of the course should have objectives which align with the course objectives, NOT to the objectives of "Chapter 3" in the textbook. The learning activities, similarly, must relate to the objectives; they should not be chosen just because your textbook has those activities. Are textbooks chosen because they align with the course objectives? They should be.
Labels: distance education, standards, TxDLA
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Instructional design
One of the challenges of an expanding cadre of teachers and a stagnant budget is providing instructional design resources. A session of the TxDLA conference dealt with creating a part-time instructional design (PT-ID) team from instructors who are experienced and willing. The teams, consisting of three or four members, meet with the director of distance education on a weekly basis. They not only design courses but review existing courses for suggestions for improvement.
The team members are compensated with overload pay for one course per term and must re-apply each term. They have to be willing to work as a team and put 6-8 hours a week into the PT-ID activities.
I am thinking that we could do something like this at Wayland, using LiveClassroom to communicate between team members and individual teachers. We have enough personnel who are willing to do this sort of thing. The major challenge would be that they are not all on the same campus.
The team members are compensated with overload pay for one course per term and must re-apply each term. They have to be willing to work as a team and put 6-8 hours a week into the PT-ID activities.
I am thinking that we could do something like this at Wayland, using LiveClassroom to communicate between team members and individual teachers. We have enough personnel who are willing to do this sort of thing. The major challenge would be that they are not all on the same campus.
Labels: distance learning, instructional design
Monday, March 26, 2007
TxDLA conference, March 26-29, 2007
The pre-conference session I am attending on Monday afernoon is called "Global Voices: Interactive Podcasting and VOIP Projects." I am hoping that the information will be useful for our communications with Kenya Baptist Theological College.
The first tool that we observed was YackPack. This tool allows for leaving audio messages asynchronously, but they can be played back sequentially. The teacher could pose a question and the students could answer over the course of a couple of days. Then the messages could be played back to present a dialog.
A number of other free audio tools were presented: gabcast.com, bubbleshare.com,mychingo (which will become mobatalk in the near future), and studio.odeo.com. I will begin to investigate these tools and explore the possibilities for university online classes. The presenter has a blog at vickiwiki.pbwiki.com. If you want the password, let me know.
The first tool that we observed was YackPack. This tool allows for leaving audio messages asynchronously, but they can be played back sequentially. The teacher could pose a question and the students could answer over the course of a couple of days. Then the messages could be played back to present a dialog.
A number of other free audio tools were presented: gabcast.com, bubbleshare.com,mychingo (which will become mobatalk in the near future), and studio.odeo.com. I will begin to investigate these tools and explore the possibilities for university online classes. The presenter has a blog at vickiwiki.pbwiki.com. If you want the password, let me know.
Labels: audio, distance education, TxDLA, video
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Reporting on the eLearning Africa conference
So far, I have registered for the conference to be held in Nairobi and made arrangements to make the daily trip from my quarters with my friend Mbugua. He drives pretty crazy, so I will probably have to converse with him with my eyes closed!
Labels: Africa, distance learning, education
