Category: ETEC 565 – Module 2

Costs that Anju Need Not Pay

While there is no doubt that the creation of an informational DVD would allow Anju’s customers to have easy access to the resources Anju wants to present to them, the cost that Anju needs to incur upon her will be a continuous one, and is not necessarily sustainable. While the camcorder and the computer Anju bought can be used for her personal use, the DVDs she has to produce for her clients will cost her time and money. Assuming that Anju is conducting her diabetes workshop as a public service, and assuming that she will continue to host similar workshops (perhaps annually or semi-annually with updated information), it is not far-fetched to guess that she will need to produce a batch of brand new DVDs each time to give away. For a dietician working on her own computer, the time this would take would be enormous.

Many camcorders include softwares that would allow the camcorder to be connected to a PC/Mac through USB to easily upload videos into files that can be played on the computer. Once these files are uploaded, Anju can still burn the files into a DVD. My computer comes with Nero 7 Essentials, which is a fairly user-friendly software that would allow media files to be burned onto a DVD playable on DVD players and computers. The software also allows for the creation of a fairly simple, easy to navigate menu page. If Anju’s DVD requirements include the straight forwarding recording of her workshop and the creation of un-edited footages of her workshops, a DVD can be created within minutes of her return to home from such a workshop.

As I have said, however, the creation of such DVDs will cost Anju a lot of time, and to a lesser degree, a significant amount of money (a single DVD costs about a dollar, but if she has to mass produce these DVDs every time she presents a workshop, the cost would add up). I would suggest that, while she can still produce a small amount of such DVDs for some people (e.g. senior citizens who do not have a computer), the better approach would be to upload these videos onto a video sharing website such as YouTube.

While some may fear that people who are not fluent in written English may be afraid of using the computer, they often forget that a service such as YouTube is actually not language-specific. People of different ethnicity all use YouTube to post videos, and they can search for a specific type of videos in their own language as well. Once Anju creates an account, others just have to subscribe to Anju’s channel, and all of her videos can be watched whenever a person sits in front of a computer with internet access. Should the person chooses, he/she can even use a video-capturing program such as Video Piggy to download those YouTube videos. No more burning of DVDs by Anju.

If using YouTube is the method of transmission of choice for Anju, all she needs to do is to mention this information during her presentations. Or, if she chooses, she can prepare little business cards or brochures with instructions to subscribe to her YouTube channel. She could include screen shots to lead people into her channel. This, in my opinion, is a much cheaper way to do the same thing, not to mention that it leaves a smaller environmental footprint by taking the information to the digital world.

Resources and Support are Keys to Success

In reading Lenora’s scenario, I feel it would be advantageous for her to first research on the costs that she would need to incur to run a website, and the amount of support she will receive to maintain the website before she decides if establishing a website is the way to go. Further, she needs to learn about her targeted audience’s access and computer literacy in using her resources to determine if the format she is choosing is the most appropriate.

From the case study’s background information, it appears that Lenora is living in a place where high-speed internet is not readily available or that there are financial challenges that make the access to high-speed internet not feasible. This would substantially hinder the chance of developing and maintaining a very graphics and/or video-rich website as upload would most likely be a problem. I would argue that a significant portion of Lenora’s audience would also face similar technical challenges as well. If that is the case, then the creation of a website, much less one that features extensive display of graphics and large-sized files (for sounds and videos) may also be not suitable. A text-rich, free-hosting “holding place” such as a blog, therefore, may become more suitable.

In the design of the blog, Lenora can use multiple categories to classify the various topics on bullying against aboriginal people. To increase collaboration, she can grant access (user name and password) to other educators who wish to contribute to the compilation of resources as well. If, among the group of collaborating educators, there are people who have better access to internet services, services such as Google docs can be used as a storage place for sound tracks and videos. All Lenora has to do is to create a blog entry with the proper links to these documents on Google docs. Educators with access can download these files, while educators who do not can bypass them.

Wiki is another possible destination for Lenora’s work of collaboration. Similar to a blog, Lenora has to grant access to fellow educators to enter and modify the information of the subject specific wiki.

Neither a blog nor a wiki require extensive technical support and maintenance. I would argue that many blog websites provide a fairly adequate online/textual technical support. Other members of the collaborative team can easily receive assistance, and Lenora nor her employers would need to worry about paying for someone to provide that technical support.

A One-Term Course Requires One Term to Develop… At Least

While I have never designed a course online or face-to-face, I have tried to prepare the teaching materials for a course I have never taught before. From that experience, I would say that, for each week of lessons (two or three lessons at 80 minutes each), I would need about the same amount of time (i.e. 4 hours) to prepare the teaching materials.

Translating that to Benoît’s scenario, assuming that the business writing course is a 3-credit, 13-week course, I would think Benoît would need about 13 weeks of preparation time working at 5 hours a week. At first glance, the estimate may seem a little conservative because university lectures are only 50 minutes in duration, generally speaking, so Benoît technically only needs to prepare the equivalence of 150 minutes of teaching materials per week, and yet he has 5 hours of time to do so. However, this estimation does not account for the additional time of technology-related work that Benoît must do, which I believe, in the developmental stage, would take substantially longer to put in place than a face-to-face course.

This is of course not to say that the development time is not worthwhile. Similar to a face-to-face course, where once the materials are developed, the subsequent implementation would require a shorter amount of time, I see the same thing happening to Benoît’s business writing course. Once the foundation of the LMS is in place, future delivery of the course should be much easier.

Finally, a “curve ball” that may be thrown in is the delay that Benoît would need to endure for technical support. If he uses WebCT/Vista and has to wait for the very sparce technical support, a little glitch can take him hours to fix. If using Moodle that is not supported by his institution, then the research he needs to do to find the solutions to any technical problems can take hours to deal with… In short, I think a term’s worth of time to develop a one-term course may even be too generous of a timeframe to give to Benoît.

Benoît and LMS

“How might Benoît go about deciding whether to go with Moodle or WebCT/Vista? What questions might he ask himself?”

The most pressing question Benoît must ask himself when choosing a LMS is, “How much technical support would I receive when I choose a specific LMS?”

As an educator, Benoît is responsible mostly for the delivery of the online course. While we do not know the competency and the level of computer literacy that he owns, we can safely assume that managing the daily operation of the LMS would not be a task that is high on Benoît’s mind. If Benoît is working for an institution (e.g. a university, a school board, etc.) that has a network of technical support personnel for a particular LMS, regardless of how Benoît himself is competent and confident in using the other LMS, it would still be ill-advised to go against the institution’s flow.

The strengths and shortcomings of the individual LMS aside, almost everyone who has taken an online course can attest to the challenges faced when the LMS is down for various reasons. Signing onto a LMS that is not supported by the institution is almost suicidal in terms of an educator’s time, and I would argue, sanity as well. With a supporting team providing the technical support, Benoît can focus on the development of the course, and the delivery of the course.