Tag Archives: discussion

Challenges and Opportunities

For the Moodle course I am creating some major issues are:

the large number of adult students per class and only one online facilitator.
a wide range of student motivations. For example, some students are taking the course due to personal interests, whereas others are taking it as work-related professional development.

Often due to the lack of resources, non-credit adult education courses for professional development are often designed to be self-paced and without a facilitator or instructor. For example, think of the Human Resources or WHMIS courses organizations often require their employees to complete.

One of the goals for the course I am working on is for the learning to be based on constructivist principles, so that learners can share knowledge, and prepare them to access resources and become involved in the communities. Therefore, a facilitator is necessary to guide discourse, and provide expert input where required.

In order to focus attention to the integration of key concepts, rather than the memorization of knowledge, the course is designed to limit the instructor’s time with the rote knowledge. The use of frequent knowledge check-ins, thought-provoking questions, and weekly auto-graded quizzes will provide repetition, knowledge assessments, and feedback.

This will free up the facilitator’s time to focus on the discussions. The discussion questions are designed to capitalize on the wide knowledge base and experience of the learners.

Being Centred with Online Learning

While I have not taught online, I have taken a number of courses online, including a recent completion of one MOOC. I’ve started a number of MOOC courses, but only completed one. I now fall into the 15% group of MOOC completers!

Since the early 2000’s, I have put together hundreds of online courses. For the most part, I was just putting content online. Even with my experience putting courses online, actually taking online courses was what really helped me to understand course design from a learner-centred perspective. Anderson defines the “task of the online course designer …is to choose, adapt, and perfect, through feedback, assessment, and reflection, educational activities that maximize the affordances of the Web”(2008a). This is much, much more than merely publishing content. Throughout the MET program I am learning to understand and appreciate the role of a course designer to a much greater depth.

So the lens I can explore the attributes of learning in terms of being learner-, knowledge-, assessment- and community-centred is from both a student and an online course designer perspective.

Learner-centred

Anderson considers “efforts to gain an understanding of students’ prerequisite knowledge” , the learning environment’s sensitivity to cultural attributes, such as language and particular forms of expression that the learner uses to interpret and build knowledge as aspects of being learner or learning-centred. I found that as a course designer, or instructor it is easy to assume what the learner knows or needs in order to learn. It was not until I took online courses did I see that those “assumptions” built into the course did not necessarily help learners. This helped me to look at the courses I work on from the perspective of the student. Sometimes a course writer many have a tendency to write in a way that confuses new learners who are not yet comfortable with the “jargon” or technical language. Something simple like a word used to label a link may be misleading, and create small obstacles for learners. This is where the student feedback is important to consider. I think a course which is well designed should be easy to follow and access. I try to make the language clear and concise, use visual cues where appropriate, and set-up navigation so it requires minimal effort by the users. I try to make the LMS “fade into the background”, so learners are not overwhelmed by the technology or have to spend time to learn to use the LMS. They should be able to dive into the course.

Knowledge-centred

Anderson refers to the web as “providing a near limit-less means for them to grow their knowledge”, which can easily become overwhelming (2008a). In many of the online courses I have taken, I have noticed that the courses are designed so that the learner gains knowledge incrementally. They are often designed so that the knowledge about a topic is not too much and too soon. The instructor/course designers have “chunked” and organized the information into pre-screened accessible pieces of information, and opportunities to reflect on learning experiences. In particular, I have enjoyed courses which include information in video format, or a case study approach.

Assessment-centred

Assessments I have enjoyed as a student have involved the creation of something where I get a opportunity to apply or demonstrate what I have learned. I have noticed that overall in the MET program, being entirely online, manages to have many different and enjoyable types of assessments. I would even say that the online courses provide variety of assessments compared to the face-to-face courses I have taken. This may be due the affordances of Web 2.0 as Anderson discusses.

Community-centred

Of all the “centreds”, this is my favourite. In my opinion, it’s also the hardest one to implement successfully. Anderson states that “the community-centred lens allows us to include the critical social component of learning in our online learning designs”. Anderson refers to this mostly in the online community context. In adult education, community-centredness is more easily achievable, as students are often working in the fields they are studying. For example, fire-fighter students can connect with their own communities, by working on projects that require them to go out and take photos of buildings in their communities, and study the floor plans and create evacuation plans. They then share the results with their local fire chief as well as with the online class. This sharing of information enriches the knowledge of the other online students, who may be located in another city or province and creates a sense of community online.

Works Cited

Anderson, T. (2008a). Towards a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and practice of online learning. Edmonton AB: Athabasca University. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/02_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf

Anderson, T. (2008b). Teaching in an online learning context. In Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and practice of online learning. Athabasca University. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/14_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf

Neither, Either or Both

“LMS are not pedagogically neutral technologies, but rather, through their very design, they inﬂuence and guide teaching. As the systems become more incorporated into everyday academic practices, they will work to shape and even deﬁne teachers’ imaginations…”

— Coates, 2005, p. 27

I think one question Benoît needs to ask himself before deciding to go with Moodle or Blackboard Learn is how much influence on the actual content of his course by the LMS is he willing to accept? As mentioned in the A Critical Examination of the Fffects of Learning Management Systems on University Teaching and Learning article by Coates, technology is not neutral and will inevitably have some influence on teaching and learning. In the 2005 article by Coates, he does mention that there has not been much research in that area. LMS’s provide structure to the learning content, and they lends themselves to institute wide standardization. Even if Benoît uses Moodle, which is less standardized in his case, this can both be a good thing or bad, depending on what is valued by the institute, his faculty instructors and himself.

If I was in Benoît’s position, I would consider the past, in order to make some decisions about how to move forward. His institute had previously used WebCT, and many of his colleague didn’t not feel the move to Blackboard Learn provided the functionality that WebCT did. It seems that using the LMS to deliver the actual content was not the issue, but rather the dependency on the LMS functionality.

I personally think Benoît should design his course for online, and not design it for a particular LMS. I think Benoit’s approach on storing the content on the FTP server is a good start and good way to centrally store the actual course content, regardless of his LMS selection. As far as the LMS functionality, he should design the course to rely on LMS functionality as little as possible, so that he is able to “control” the content, and be able to adapt to LMS upgrades or migrations more easily in the future. For example, he could limit LMS use to assignment submissions only, and use tools like “the social web [which] has been offering myriad tools that support everyday communication, productivity and collaboration” (Porto, 2015) . Often those tools are more intuitive to use, are of better quality and functionality when compared to those previously found exclusively inside the LMS (Porto, 2015).

Use this approach will greatly reduce development time. Benoît will not need to learn the intricacies of either LMS. He would not have to write content to include for the discussions or testing areas in the LMS. This will save time in the future as far as edits to content, as the content is centralized on the FTP server, and not repeated or broken up into the different LMS areas.

A far as giving a total completion time, is is hard to predict given how little we know about Benoît’s current training materials. He already have his face-to-face materials prepared, but we don’t know what they are (PowerPoints, readings, lectures, etc) and nor do we know how he is grading the students. Whether he would like to include his lectures in video or animated graphics is not mentioned. We don’t know if the text is used, and if that text book has a publisher’s companion site with interactive features already existing for student use. In fact, we know nothing about the students demographics, preferences, etc. So as far as the design of the course content, and development, it is hard to accurately gauge.

Works Cited

Coates, H., James, R., & Baldwin, G. (2005). A critical examination of the effects of Learning Management Systems on university teaching and learning. Tertiary Education and Management, 11,(1), 19-36. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11233-004-3567-9

Porto, S. (2015). The uncertain future of Learning Management Systems. The Evolllution: Illuminating the Lifelong Learning Movement. Retrieved from http://www.evolllution.com/opinions/uncertain-future-learning-management-systems/