Approaching this assignment was a bit of a challenge for me.\u00a0 I wanted to do something a little bit different than I\u2019ve been tackling in my day to day workplace, but still expand my skill set to help me grow the skillset needed for my job. I selected to use a Moodle environment as my workplace has developed a Moodle site as our LMS.\u00a0 For the content, I wanted to do something a little different just for a change of pace, but not something that I was completely unfamiliar that I was biting off more than I could chew.\u00a0 I decided that I wanted to create a course that I was able to export and provide to some of the organizations that I had worked with in the past.\u00a0 In particular the Global Travel & Tourism Partnership.\u00a0 When I first applied for the MET program the Executive Director had written me a very nice letter of recommendation.\u00a0 By selecting tourism as my topic I was able to use a topic I was familiar with, and also, provide an output that could be used by an organization that helped me to get here.<\/p>\n
I decided to model the main structure of the course off of the BC Tourism 11 & 12 Program Guide (Simard et al. 2006). I had a couple of reasons for doing this, but the main one is that it is modeled after the Canadian Academy of Travel & Tourism program.\u00a0 I was the national director of this project for approximately five years and so I\u2019m very familiar with the content that should be included.\u00a0 With the backbone of the course determined by the curriculum guide I was able to focus on content creation.<\/p>\n
I decided early on that I wanted to focus the content around three main principles.\u00a0 The first principle to ensure that the material is informed by industry subject matter experts. Although I have a background in the industry I wanted to include industry experts in the development of the course.\u00a0 Through my network of contacts I was able to find two individuals who have experience in national and international roles.\u00a0 These contacts will feed into the content creation for the modules, particularly around the skill modules and the economic impact module.<\/p>\n
Forming a small industry advisory committee has allowed me to tap into the expertise of individuals who have a broad range of knowledge and experience in the industry.\u00a0 By keeping the group small I am able to keep communication efficient and maintain a level of engagement with subject matter experts.<\/p>\n
The second principle is built around Anderson\u2019s model of eLearning (2008). Sometimes I have trouble connecting some assigned readings to practical application, but this certainly was not the case with the Anderson reading.\u00a0 While I was reading the material it became apparent that all the interactions that are created are about building a learning community.\u00a0 I look at Anderson\u2019s model and I see carefully planned interactions designed to increase engagement with the instructor, peers, and the content.\u00a0 I wanted to keep these principles in mind when designing the material, and although this will come into play more as the course develops I am able incorporate the concepts into some of the material in the Course Introduction.<\/p>\n
I have selected introductory activities that are fairly low stakes for participants and provide them with a chance to interact with each other through an introduction and sharing their own experiences with the tourism industry.\u00a0 Although building a learning community can be difficult with a busy course schedule I have decided to require participants to comment on at least two peer posts in order to mark the discussion activity as complete. This will ensure that some interaction is taking place and provide an opportunity for some conversations around the material.\u00a0 In later modules I anticipate students to interact around occupations and destinations of common interest.<\/p>\n
Throughout the course I am going to try to present material using a number of different media. It would be easy to simply provide links, or provide only written material.\u00a0 I wanted to ensure I was creating several different types of interactions for learners.\u00a0 Currently I only have forums, videos, and text, but as more develop I want to keep the lessons learned from Bates to ensure the interactions support the learning rather than just existing for the sake of interaction (2014a).<\/p>\n
Finally, I wanted to incorporate digital badging into the material. I have been intrigued by digital badging. \u00a0Although my interest has focused mainly on the use of digital badging for credentialing, my experience in ETEC 580 and in this course has led me to look at digital badging not only as credentialing, but also as a method to increase the interaction and build the learning community.\u00a0 I suspect that the best method to create digital badges designed at learning interaction is to review a fully designed course and determine where the badges can best support the learning interactions.\u00a0 If I already had a fully designed course this is the process that I would like to follow.\u00a0 As the purpose of this assignment was to create the course and an introductory module I have included some potential badges as placeholders and examples. For the fully developed course, I anticipate a complex badge structure that helps to drive student interactions with the content, their peers, and even the instructor.\u00a0 The course will culminate with an open badge through the Mozilla Open Badges project and could be used as a credential indicating some knowledge and skills in tourism and hospitality.<\/p>\n
The third principle that needed to be accounted for in the course was to have them engage and experience the industry itself. In reviewing the article by Garrison et al, I realized that part of building this experience was to provide an opportunity to develop a community where students can share and collaborate on building their knowledge (1999). In developing this principle I also drew on an important part of all of the different curricular programs that this course compliments and this is an aspect of experiential education.\u00a0 Usually this is done through work or volunteer experience, but by building opportunities for students to interact with industry professionals and follow industry processes there can be some experiential education built into this course.\u00a0 The end course could easily be modified to also track workplace experience hours to integrate national and international certificate programs.\u00a0 This is direction and concept is reinforced by the ISTE standards by stating that it is important to, \u201cengage students in exploring real-world issues and solving authentic problems\u201d (2008).<\/p>\n
Throughout the design of this course this has really been the central pillar.\u00a0 From forming an Industry Advisory Committee to crafting interactions the focus is on providing opportunities for students to participate in and follow standard industry practices. This is a concept that is modeled early in the course with the introductory activities.\u00a0 The students are asked to provide information on their experience, or desired experience participating in the tourism industry.\u00a0 The purpose of this exercise is to focus students on developing a holistic view of the industry beyond what their preconceived notions might be. This is also incorporated into the practical nature of the content modules, such as skills based content and the practical nature of the assignments. By developing an opportunity for students to learn about the skill sets that are needed in the industry, and providing assignments that have a practical nature.<\/p>\n
The communication strategy for this course is based largely on the classwork from ETEC 565A, Week 6.\u00a0 The case study examined during that week quickly brought to the life the realistic scenario of managing multiple channels of communication that could create redundancies, inefficiencies and potentially an overwhelming number of inquiries. My thought process went back to the SECTIONS model as I think this framework also works well when selecting communications media (Bates, 2014a). Based on this, and my experience as a student in this course, I have elected to create a common question and answer forum that an instructor can field all general course questions through.\u00a0 I have elected not include additional communication methods such as a twitter block and it creates an additional dialog that needs to be monitored by both students and instructors.\u00a0 I have, however, included email communication for the selection of assignments.\u00a0 When I took a step back it became apparent that the selection of a topic was more appropriate as one on one communication.\u00a0 General inquiries regarding the topic would still be posted to the main discussion forum.<\/p>\n
While creating the assessment tools for this course I wanted to closely mirror the principles that I have decided to use in creating the course itself.\u00a0 I wanted to ensure that, as Bates outlines, the assessment choices have a clear purpose and support the learning outcomes of the course (2014b). Using this as criteria, I developed different methods of assessment based on the desired learning outcomes of each section of the course.\u00a0 I also wanted to place an emphasis on the practical nature of the industry and the experiences of the course leading to a higher weighted value placed on the assignments for the course.<\/p>\n
The nature of an online course, and the experience that I want to create for my students requires a fairly significant degree of participation.\u00a0 By creating a participation category, I want to influence students to post to the discussion forums, and also comment on the posts of their peers.<\/p>\n
The content for the quizzes has been selected based on the comments by Bates on multiple choice and short answer questions (2014b).\u00a0 When I examined the intended content for the initial eight weeks of the course I determined that much of the content was information that formed the basis for the comprehension needed to properly complete the assignments. By using these questions I can assess the comprehension of the basic facts and common knowledge of the industry.\u00a0 Through the short answer and essay questions I have provided an opportunity to evaluate how well students are able to apply that knowledge in context and provide an analysis of practical real world scenarios.<\/p>\n
The assignments make up the bulk of the evaluation for this course due to the practical nature of the learning outcomes and, as Bates states, \u201cProject work encourages the development of authentic skills that require understanding of content, knowledge management, problem-solving, collaborative learning, evaluation, creativity and practical outcomes\u201d (2014b).\u00a0 The assignments that I have chosen have students analyze the knowledge they have obtained through the course and apply it to the practical situations that would occur in a tourism workplace. This course will not only provide students with the knowledge of how the industry works, but with practical experiences that demonstrate how the industry works.<\/p>\n
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For my introductory activity I elected to make use of the discussion forum options.\u00a0 There are two required activities and one options activity.\u00a0 For the required activities I wanted to provide students with an opportunity to introduce themselves and their experience with the tourism industry, but I wanted to also provide them with a space to describe the industry from their point of view.\u00a0 I decided to separate the two forums to avoid posts that are too long, and I wanted them to think of a travel experience they had and the industry itself separately.\u00a0 I provided the optional activity of discovering the significance of the pineapple to the industry to provide an opportunity for students to do a small about of research and appreciate how long his industry has impacted society.<\/p>\n
There are several html based pages that have already been developed with HTML links, embedded pictures or video, and checklists. I struggled with the definition of substantive, but did not want to add content that could impact student understanding.\u00a0 I hope to be able to add embedded audio files to the next stage of the product.<\/p>\n
Much of the basic structure is based on the outline provided by the BC Tourism 11 & 12 Curriculum Guide, however I have made a number of choices to assist students with navigating the course material (Simard et al. 2006).\u00a0 The first is that I have provided html links in the general description that appears at the top of every page.\u00a0 Students are able to access basic information and every module of the course with one click no matter where they are in the course. I am not truly happy with how this currently is represented as it is not as visually appealing as I would like.\u00a0 However, I have specifically chosen to only use only text rather than inserting clip art or other items that may clutter up the main page even more.\u00a0 I have also selected to only display one module of the course at a time.\u00a0 I wanted to make sure that any student accessing the course did not have to scroll multiple times down a page to find the current module.<\/p>\n
I have also made a conscious effort not to clutter modules with documents that could be linked, but did not necessarily need to be reviewed as part of the module by creating a \u201cReferences and Resources\u201d section.\u00a0 A perfect example is with the Career Explorations Assignment Rubric.\u00a0 This document needed to be referenced, but didn\u2019t need to be included in the list resources and activities in the module.\u00a0 Rather than clutter the module, I simply linked to a resource listed in the \u201cReferences and Resources\u201d section. In addition, the documents in this section include a link that returns users to the main page of the site.<\/p>\n
This was a delicate balance where I had to provide students with some information, but also wanted to provide an opportunity for students to connect with each other and introduce themselves.\u00a0 By creating the short video I was able to introduce the topic and push the idea that they need to expand their definition of tourism.\u00a0 I tried to support this not only through the scripting of the presentation, but also through the visuals used.<\/p>\n
In the end, this project seems to be coming together nicely, however, it is taking much more time than I anticipated to pull it together.\u00a0 There are some aspects that are there currently that I consider placeholders until an area can be developed fully, an example would be the badges that are currently listed.\u00a0 As I mentioned, I want to review these once the course is complete.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m also surprised at how long this reflection has become, but this was a valuable exercise to articulate my decision making process.\u00a0 With input from my industry advisory committee, and potentially end user organizations I am looking forward to completing the development of this course.<\/p>\n
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Anderson, T. (2008). Towards a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.),\u00a0Theory and practice of online learning<\/em>. Edmonton AB: Athabasca University. Retrieved fromhttp:\/\/www.aupress.ca\/books\/120146\/ebook\/02_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n Bates, T. (2014a). Chapter 8 SECTIONS Framework. In Teaching in a Digital Age<\/em>. Retrieved February 21, 2016, from https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/teachinginadigitalage\/<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Bates, T. (2014b). Appendix 1: Building an effective learning environment A.8 ASSESSMENT OF LEARNING<\/em>. Retrieved February 21, 2016, from https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/teachinginadigitalage\/chapter\/5-8-assessment-of-learning\/<\/p>\n Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (1999). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3)<\/em>, 87-105. Retrieved from http:\/\/www.anitacrawley.net\/Articles\/GarrisonAndersonArcher2000.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). (2008). Standards for teachers<\/em>. Retrieved from\u00a0 http:\/\/www.iste.org\/standards\/standards-for-teachers<\/p>\n