I’ll take the following sentence, extracted from the “Set up your WordPress e-portfolio” course page, as an invitation to comment on aspects of the course (and e-learning in general):
And appreciated Your opinions are valuable—important, in fact.
This wonderfully garbled sentence illustrates something that confounds me — that editorial standards are so lax in the realm of e-learning.
True, these pages aren’t ‘published’ in the normal sense — only those taking a course can see them. Yet standards still matter — for clarity, of course, but also for credibility. Do sentences like the one above inspire confidence in a course?
Moreover, some branches of learning theory hold that the instructor should model the expected behaviour, for the students’ benefit. Indeed, Chickering & Gamson, no less, include “communicates high expectations” among their “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education.”
Here’s an “expectation,” although I wouldn’t think it’s terribly high: Since students in this course are expected to write with clarity (as is anyone with a bachelor’s degree), I expect the course material to walk the talk.
In a previous life, I worked as a copy editor for a magazine — exacting and demanding work. Perhaps I could teach the folks at External Programs and Learning Technology, or whoever puts these Vista courses together, something about proofreading — its importance, for starters.