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After reflecting for a week on my quick response to these two case studies and reading my class mates responses, I realized that I live and breathe these types of scenarios on a day-to-day basis and I did not even need to think when I created my responses. My responses were based on my experiences from my institute and I realize now that most of my classmates have very little experience in this area so struggled a bit. This is a change as many of the theory based discussion topics in other courses have been a struggle for me; however this a good way to learn when placed outside ones comfort zone. I believe we covered this in one of the learning theory’s – zone of proximal ….?

Scenarios like this; deciding on which LMS option to choose and scoping out the time to create a course is difficult to do without knowing many factors not provided by the case study. That of course is not the purpose of this exercise, it is to think about the factors involved using one of the two frameworks we are studying this week: Chickering and Gamson and the SECTIONS model from Bates and Poole. This was a great exercise to apply the frameworks mentioned above in a case study.

Below is the case study and my responses:

Case Study: Moodle or WebCT/Vista?

Benoît is a sessional instructor in the English department of a large, research-intensive university. Previously he has used WebCT to disseminate lecture notes and readings for his face-to-face Business Writing course.

His department head has approached him about offering an online version of Business Writing. However, WebCT is no longer available at his university and Benoît must choose either WebCT/Vista or Moodle. WebCT/Vista is the university’s “official” LMS and has university-wide IT support, but the Help Desk is difficult to get a hold of and can be very slow in responding to e-mail. Moodle is hosted within the Faculty of Arts, but operates as a stand-alone tool with no real technical support: instructors need to set up their own courses from scratch. More and more faculty and instructors in the English Department now use Moodle, since it isn’t administered by IT support: less paperwork, less red tape.

Benoît is very comfortable in the design mode of WebCT; he has also done some general web design, mostly for personal use. In terms of web design he’s developed content, uploaded it via FTP and then left it there. He’s heard from colleagues that WebCT/Vista is dreadful, that doesn’t have half the functionality of WebCT, though he has not yet had time to do any evaluation himself.

Because of his teaching load, Benoît estimates he could spend up to 5 hours a week developing the online version of Business Writing. The course would go live next semester.

Discussion questions

Please answer in the discussion forum:

1.  Moodle or WebCT/Vista for Benoît?

How might Benoît go about deciding whether to go with Moodle or WebCT/Vista? What questions might he ask himself? Come up with one specific question and post it in the Benoît discussion thread. Be sure to explain why this is an important question.

 

My Response:

This case study has so many hidden messages and there is a lot that can be gleaned by reading between the lines. It sounds like it is based on a real scenario somewhere.

Designing and developing a fully on-line course is no easy task, Benoit may not know what he is in for. As a sessional instructor he may not know all of the politics in his department and the institute in regards to the switch over to WebCT Vista and the real reasons why faculty are using Moodle. He has heard lots of things, but he needs to validate what is real and what is not as one factor to help him decide which LMS to use.

Institutes quite often have funding and resources available to help with the development of courses and for changing delivery modes; for example from F-2-F to fully online. Funding could amount to some offload so he could have more than 5 hours/week available. They may also have resource support available: Instructional Designer so the course is designed and developed so students will be successful, multimedia support to ease the burden of uploading content, Writer/editor support to review and edit his content and copyright support to advise him on what he can upload/access freely and what will need permission or what he should not use. Any funding or institute resource support may depend on the LMS he uses; the institute LMS: WebCT Vista or the “Lone Ranger approach” (Bates, 2000) and use Moodle.

He should do some reading about online course development, for example Bates (2000), Bates and Pool (2003), Bullen and Janes (2007) and Garrison and Vaughan (2008). He should also talk to colleagues in his institute and perhaps other institutes about developing on-line courses to get a sense of their experiences in general and with different LMS’s. He should also talk to the person responsible for distance education in his department to determine what is expected in a fully online course. Then with a list of questions, meet with his department head to clarify what is expected of him and any institutional resources available to support him. Then he should have enough information to decide if he is still interested in developing the course and if he is which LMS to use.

References:

Bates, A.W. (2000). Managing technological change: strategies for colleges and university leaders. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Bates A. W. & Poole, G. (2003). A Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In A.W. Bates & G. Poole, Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education (pp. 75-108). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 4.

Bullen, M. and D.P. Janes (2007). Making the Transition to E-Learning: Strategies and Issues. Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing.

Garrison, D.R., & Vaughan, N.D. (2008). Blended Learning in Higher Education, San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass.

 

After a request from the Instructor to give one question only, my response was:

Okay, round two without reading between the lines and knowing what goes on in the background.

Benoit would need to consider whether no technical support is better or worse then poor technical support. Considering that technical support not only applies to the instructor, it also applies to the students, he would need to ask himself: “Which would be better for the students?”

 

2. Benoît’s time

How much development time (in weeks) would you estimate Benoît would need to develop Business Writing, the online version? Post your estimation in weeks in the Module 2: Business Writing development timeframe discussion thread. Be sure to explain how you came up with this number.

 

My Response:

This is a variable with many factors. Many a project has gone off the rails without first reviewing the quality and quantity of the “content” promised by the instructor. Another unknown factor is the quality expectations of the institute, or by provincial education bodies for fully on-line courses. If institute funding and resources are available to Benoit then he may have an opportunity to update or even redesign his course as he is putting it on-line. It also depends on the institutes approach to developing courses, do they require the Instructor to work with an Instructional Designer to create a learning design or a blue print first before they start developing content. What value does the institute put on instructor time in terms of their content expertise verses their time doing other things such as loading content to an LMS that could be done more effectively with a multimedia specialist. Based on costing models and centralized technology support at my institute, and the 5 hours/week that Benoit has available, I would estimate Benoit would need the following time frame:

• Learning Design supported with a facilitated workshop: 50 hours @ 5 hours/week = 10 weeks

• Course development including updating his current course: 120-150 hours @ 5 hours/week = 24-30 weeks.

Total weeks needed: 34-40 weeks based on Benoit’s timeframe. He would need to either have his department head get a nice grant to give him a significant offload or he would be best to turn down the offer.