Tag Archives: Case Study 1

If Lenora builds it, they will come.

In short, yes, a website is the way to go.

Lenora has found Indigenous online communities of practice, such as Cradleboard, to be very helpful. In today’s world internet is the most useful to connect to other people, over long distances.

I noticed the Cradleboard Teaching Project Teacher’s Circle (http://www.cradleboard.org), is designed in a way which would work well on low bandwidth or dial-up internet connections. The site used frames, basic formatting, and is not media rich. Taking a simple approach to the anti-bullying website design would make the site more accessible even in remote regions.

The problem still remains, that Lenora does not have the skills to create her own website for the anti-bullying resources. There are a number of ways she could address this:

  1. Lenora could ask others for help and support with her initiative. Since she is already participating in Indigenous online communities, that would be one place where she could ask, outside her regular connections.
  2. She could approach SD 83 (North Okanagan) with her idea and ask if they can host or sponsor such an educational initiative.
  3. Since the web site she needs is very basic, she could sign up to learn how to create basic web pages.
  4. She could pay someone to do this for her.

For her purposes, print or other methods of broadcast communication will not be able to foster the type of connections that she could in an online community.

Too much work, not enough time…

Benoit definitely has a task ahead of him. The first factor that he should take into consideration before comparing the two platforms is the time constraint. Let’s say for example that Benoit has between 12-14 weeks until the next semester starts. That gives him roughly 60-70 hours of available time to invest in this project. Benoit’s time is a finite resource that needs to be taken into account throughout this project. While it does seem that there are positives and negatives to both platforms, my initial opinion is that with such a limited amount of time for development he should be leaning towards a platform he is more or less familiar with, which would be Blackboard.

To expand upon this, Benoit should be asking himself about the overall time commitment for development and support throughout the launch of this course. Being that Benoit’s experience with LMS has been limited to using them as an online repository for resources, the learning curve to create and maintain a new online course is going to be substantial for him. It is hard to say which aspect of technical support is going to be more time intensive between the two solutions. Even if IT is slow to respond for Blackboard issues, it might be quicker and/or easier than some of the issues that arise in Moodle with no formal support structure. I suppose it depends on how comfortable Benoit is with working on online systems.

My breakdown of the time allocation needed for Benoit is as follows:

4 hrs – Review of existing course materials to see if anything needs to be updated or removed for the course transitioning to an online delivery platform.

8 hrs – Revision, modification, and addition of course materials to suit the online course model.

4 hrs – Development/modification of the course topics, objectives, and outcomes.

8 hrs – LMS account/course creation and training time to familiarize oneself with a new system.

16-24 hrs – Creating and/or curating multimedia content for the course. This would include videos, images, audio, presentations, etc.

16 hrs – Development and creation of the weekly activities in the LMS.

8 hrs – Development and creation of the LMS assessments if applicable for the course.

4 hrs – Time spent reviewing and testing the modules of the course.

8 hrs – Time spent dealing with technical difficulties.

 
My total estimates would put the development at around 76 hours or 15 weeks for Benoit’s Business Writing course.

Quite the Benoit’s Choice

I think Benoit needs to take a step back and outline how he wants his course to look online compared to an in person course.  Assuming his face to face course is successful he then needs to choose the best way to recreate the experience for the online environment.

The big question is what functionality does he need in order to present his materials, and in order to deliver his course?   It is a difficult question for anyone, but it sounds like he has no experience in delivering a class online, so I’m not sure he even knows what functionality he would need.

Looking at the Two Solutions

From the description Blackboard Learn doesn’t sound like a great option for a few different reasons.  A big one is limited functionality.  If Benoit isn’t quite sure how he wants his final product to be this could be helpful as it would limit the choices that he has to make to deliver the experience.  The issue however, is the help desk.  Benoit already has the content, he’s just changing the way it’s delivered.  If he gets stuck and needs assistance from the help desk he may be waiting a while before he gets any help.  There is also an assumption that the issue will be resolved on the first try.

Moodle being an open source product has a lot of flexibility and add-ons that can really add to the course experiences.  From the description it sounds like this tool is sanctioned by the university and Benoit doesn’t need to administer the LMS, just the course.  This opens up a great deal of functionality in terms of the activities and enhancements that can be made to engage students, such as digital badging.  It is also important to note that although there is no official help desk, there is a community of users that he is able to tap into for assistance. This exists both in his faculty and in a thriving online Moodle community.

Course Development

Development time is a little tougher as without knowing the course material and the functionality he needs, it is impossible to know how far down the development rabbit hole he is planning to go.  If he keeps things simple it would benefit him as he already has the course material developed, but for the benefit of the students he may want to augment his existing content.  A minimum effort on his part, he could have his course up and running within just a couple of weeks, again he already has the content. It would only benefit him, and his students in the long run to them rework the course week by week to add in interacting and engaging content.

Looking at how much time he has budgeted to create this course, I would be nervous. Yes, he already has content and some of the instructional design which is roughly 35% of the work completed.   There is a good chart from the Association of Talent Development that outlines how long it takes to create training.  I think Benoit is going to have to rethink his time otherwise his students are going to be very disappointed in him next semester.

 

Reference:

Kapp, K. M., & Defelice, R. A. (2009, August 31). Time to Develop One Hour of Training. Retrieved January 21, 2016, from https://www.td.org/Publications/Newsletters/Learning-Circuits/Learning-Circuits-Archives/2009/08/Time-to-Develop-One-Hour-of-Training

Ok Benoit – what’s your long game?

After reading through the many excellent posts from my peers in the Oak group this week, I write this knowing that many great questions have already been asked!  Yet a post made by Mark in reply to Mo’s post sparked a new question in me, for Benoit: What is the goal of the long game? 

Mark brought up the point that LMS continue to be widely used, and the case study is currently applicable – but for how long?  I read the Porto (2015) and Spiro (2014) articles last, after completing readings for this and my other course, all of which have been about the viability of LMS or online teaching.  So after all that, to read pieces that essentially broke down the traditional LMS – well it almost made me laugh, in a way.  It became clear that in the long run, or in the ‘long game’ as I tend to think of it, Benoit is going to find himself on the other side of this project without much need for the results.

Previously asked questions regarding reliability, suitability, and ease of use are all excellent – but again I think I agree with the question of which has the best potential to evolve, as posed by Mark.  If it looks likely that LMS as we know them are already in flux, perhaps due to what Coates, James & Baldwin (2005) describes as their tendency to create an “overly systematised compression of different disciplines and styles of learning” (p.31).  But seeing as that article is 11 years old, the current LMS options are obviously still well-liked enough since then to have stuck around.

So to return to this week’s task of what to do for poor Benoit, out of the two options provided I would encourage him to go towards Moodle.  Although he would have less tech. support through the school (which is apparently unreliable, anyway), it sounds to me like the best option for him to grab the bull by the horns and a) learn how to design web spaces more purposefully and b) create such a space that will be available outside for the students in the longer term, even if eventually it is not used in favour of something else.  Considering Spiro’s list of what may herald the downfall of LMS in schools, Moodle seems to be the best compromise – it allows for the functionality of LMS for the school’s use, but will be open-share and thus not lose relevance (or accessibility) as the course closes.  Although it may require more independent work on Benoit’s part at the start, it sounds to me like a greater investment in his own skills, as well – no more uploading content to FTP and then walking away, now is the time to get his hands a little dirtier with the creation of things.  In terms of factors for the ‘long game’, I would say these would point him more in the direction of Moodle over Blackboard.

In regards to how long it might take him to approach this challenge given his 5 hour per week time allowance, I’m going to propose a longer time frame than many of my peers!  If we say that he spends 1 hour per day learning Moodle, 40 hours – or an average North American work week – would span 8 weeks.  Considering all that must go into the development of an online course, as Meghan beautifully outlined in her post (LMS learning time, content development, assessment, testing) – it would certainly be a lengthy process.  Imagining he had 8 hours per day to develop this, I would hazard to outline the following:

  • 2 days to learn Moodle
  • 8 days to curate course content
  • 5 days to design assessment
  • 2 days to test the platform

That would look like 17 8 hour days, or 136 working hours.   Considering he only has 5 hours per week to invest, if my math is right (and there is a VERY good chance it isn’t), Benoit would need approximately 27 weeks based on my timeline – about 6 months.  This is certainly much higher than it is for many of my peers, but to be honest I would think requesting 6 months to develop a new course, from scratch, sounds quite reasonable!  Then again I’ve never had to propose anything such as this before, so if anyone would like to comment, please do!

 

Reliability should be Benoit’s priority.

In Benoit’s specific situation, a driving factor in his colleagues’ decisions to gravitate toward Moodle is the speed, or, rather, the lack thereof, of support from the IT department for Blackboard Learn. While this is definitely a factor worth considering, I am more alarmed by the implied belief that Moodle is the superior choice because there is less paperwork and less red tape. As the perceived lack of technical support for Blackboard Learn seems to be a significant factor in Benoit’s choice of platform, I believe the question Benoit must ask is: Which platform is most reliable? This is an important question to ask because, regardless of how easy it is to create the course, or how easy it is to use, none of that will matter if the course becomes inaccessible due to technological difficulties. Bates (2014), in his discussion of reliability, states, “Technical support can be a huge cost, not just in paying technical staff to deal with service calls, but also in lost time of students and teachers” (8.3.4 Reliability section, para. 1). The case study explicitly states that there is no real technical support for Moodle and support for Blackboard Learn is slow at his institution. Therefore, it would be wise to consider which platform will ultimately be more reliable in order to decrease possible lost time due to inadequate technical support.

As Benoit can only dedicate five hours per weeks to developing the online course, he does not have the luxury of time. Boettcher (2004), in her analysis of faculty effort required for an hour of instruction to be converted to online material, states “a recommended planning number today for experienced faculty is 10 hours per hour of instruction” (p.3). Boettcher suggests that, in the case of a three-credit course, that approximately 45 hours of instructional time would need to be converted to an online format (p.2). So, if this suggestion is accurate, it would take 450 hours, or 90 weeks at 5 hours per week for Benoit to develop his online course at this rate. Similarly, Wu (2014) reveals that when factoring in all elements of designing an online course, “Verizon Communications reports that it needs at least 40 hours[…]to develop 1 hour of an e-learning course” (p.597). This translates into 1800 hours of development for Benoit’s course if we apply Boettcher’s estimate of instructional hours in a three-credit course. This number is obviously unreasonable as the course is due to go online the next term—so how can I come up with a more appropriate estimate?

First, I need to discount all hours used in platform and interface development as this is largely covered by Moodle and Blackboard Learn’s existing design. Therefore, Verizon Communications’ time estimate is not useful as it does not categorize where the time is spent. Boettcher’s estimate can still apply, but her information is twelve years old, so we need to account for increased usability of LMS and a potential increase in the skill set of users. Finally, we know that Benoit has developed content previous to being asked to develop a fully-online course, so he will save time there. Taking these adjustments into consideration, my estimates of time needed are as follows:

  • Two weeks to become acquainted with the chosen LMS and its functions.

Rationale:
Regardless of which LMS Benoit chooses, he will have to learn how to use it. Bates (2014) suggests a useful criterion to use when estimating time needed for students to learn how to use a new software is 20 minutes. As Benoit has to do more than navigate the course, I estimate it will take approximately 5 hours of learning and 5 hours of practice to become confident in his skill set. This may be reduced if he chooses Blackboard due to his previous experience with WebCT Vista).

  • Six weeks for content development, broken down as follows: two weeks to review existing material from the face-to-face course and determine its suitability for the online course and four weeks to adapt and upload content material.

Rationale:
The content from his face-to-face course may not be entirely suitable for the online course. It would be wise of Benoit to take into account Mayer’s 12 principles of multimedia design as outlined in the Teaching and media selection components of the SECTIONS model (Bates, 2014), then adapt the content for an online-learning environment.

  • Four weeks to construct interaction and assessment components for the course.

Rationale:
While Benoit does have experience uploading content, he will have to design online assessments and opportunities for interaction, something he does not currently have experience with. I presume that this will be time-consuming.

  • Two weeks to conduct a trial run of the course as both student and instructor (perhaps using faculty members as testers?).

Rationale:
When considering Bates’ (2014) SECTIONS model, I think Ease of Use is an incredibly important area to consider when choosing technology. Therefore, I suggest that Benoit carefully tests the usability and reliability of this course before launching it. I suggest two weeks so he can potentially recruit colleagues to test the course, rather than relying solely on himself in order to provide an outside perspective.

  • One-two weeks for revisions.

Rationale:
Benoit should reserve ample time to correct any issues discovered in the testing phase.

Total number of weeks: 15-16

References:

Bates, T. (2014). Teaching in a digital age. Retrieved from http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/

Boettcher, J., (2004, June 29). Online Course Development: What Does It Cost? Retrieved from https://campustechnology.com/Articles/2004/06/Online-Course-Development-What-Does-It- Cost.aspx?aid=39863&Page=1

Wu, H. (2014) A framework of combining case-based reasoning with a work breakdown structure for estimating the cost of online course production projects. British Journal of Educational Technology, 45(4), 595-605. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com