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Matthew Moran

Changing courses – but not changing into ICT courses

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Courses may be changing, but they are still health and social care courses, not IT courses with a HSC flavour.

Therefore:

  • Don’t overload the student with burdensome and unnecessary IT-related tasks. The IT element helps to deliver (and hopefully, to enhance) the HSC curriculum – it is not the object of the exercise.
  • If you find yourself giving way to the temptation to over-egg the IT element of the learning (perhaps overcompensating for a lack of familiarity with the tools), resist. And beware transferring to the material your own learning about the tools.
  • When the temptation to rehearse proves irresistible, do it yourself – work through the activities with the proposed tools, as you intend the learner to do. This can be extremely helpful in designing good online learning experiences. So try having a project meeting in Elluminate, for example, or sharing photos online (e.g. in Flickr) with media and academic colleagues.

Think

How long will it take the learner to learn to do this? Is this is a worthwhile investment of time – or is it a one-off exercise? Will the learner really do it – what’s the incentive?

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