Over the next couple of weeks we're looking at the design process of elearning and in particular designing what Gilly Salmon referred to as E-tivities. This area is probably the area I am most interested in, I gained a lot of feedback and insight in H800 covering this area.
I recently, coincidently, re-visited Salmon's 5 stage model of moderating for TMA03. Something triggered in my mind about my current night course that I teach on, I hoped I would come back to it but didn't expect it to be this week!
A bit of background, I teach a supervisory management course over 11 weeks, one night a week, 3 hours per session. I ask the learners to set up a gmail address and I add them into a Google group. From there I post discussion activities pre and post lecture. I try to use video, audio or ask about their own experience, the criteria I use is short, simple and different [from the class]. Over 3 courses I have achieved varying degrees of failure. I have reflected on this and made some changes but in truth I have not planned this out properly. It fails on 3/5 of Salmon's criteria for all interactive activities.
I have some barriers to overcome, this course is not an elearning or blending learning course, the micro community is an innovation I have developed myself. Therefore learners are unaware of this aspect when they sign up to the course. We average about 10 learners on a course, should this be easier to manage or more difficult? as every learner counts.
I think stage 1 is probably the most important of the 5 stages closely followed by 2 [naturally enough], I feel this is where I'm falling short. I need to spend some time on Access and Value, address technical issues, get them to play around and really sell it. There have been some learners that have taken to it, but without the support of colleagues it lacks purpose.
What I noticed recently though, and it demonstrated some tunnel light, is that an audio piece I uploaded had some technical glitch, everybody commented to me at the next class that it wasn't working - maybe managers make great lurkers!!
Karl
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Hi Karl, I've tried similar online extensions to a face2face course, with just the results you describe. It helps if participation is compulsory, but that means getting the course provider involved and often there's just no time or inclination...
This free hosted open source VLE is miles more intuitive than Moodle, reduces the initial faff factor of setting up a gmail account that puts some people off, and has some great functionality, particularly the assessment tools: http://www.instructure.com/teachers
I don't have shares in them, honest.
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Likewise - Students really appreciate that you've gone the extra mile when you do add ons like this but they don't necessarily have the desire or time to go that mile with you. If they are making decisions on whether or not to enrol based solely on available course descriptions, time and acceptable/accessible activity types are a big factor in those decisions. Is there any way of you publicising what you're doing? Maybe an enrolment poll so that the more technophile participants (willing to put in a bit of extra time) in the cohort are directed to your group? Or something like that...
The students who participated most when I did these were really committed exam prep students - they were doing tons outside class anyway so the e-component was a way of channelling that work rather than being something extra they had to do.
D