Wednesday, January 16, 2013
mooc certs pay model
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/coursera-announces-details-for-selling-certificates-and-verifying-identities/41519
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
musings on how to manage pedagogy in blended courses
The new version of Blackboard has multiple teaching style
templates included. And this I think is very important. I teach many topics -
computer apps, digital information literacy, art history, printmaking, faculty
development workshops in pedagogy and technology, etc. Some are online, some
are web enhanced, some are hybrid, some are flipped. I've been teaching online
and in multiple modalities since the 90s on WebCT, Bb, Angel, proprietary home
grown systems and simple web pages.
I see the branding of courses as important to the
institution overall, but I see structure and pedagogical approaches as needing
to be fluid and matched to the objectives of the individual course. Not just as
a "preference" for the faculty, but as intrinsic to working within a
given discipline, learning experience etc. I would never teach art history the
way I teach computer apps. And it would be clunky to use a fixed set of buttons
and navigation strategies that I had to force my teaching and learning
activities into. That in fact was always the complaint about LMSs in the early
days - for example Bb was CourseInfo and you had limited buttons you couldn't
relabel and limited structural and navigation options. LMSs have evolved from
limited environments faculty complained about to authoring systems with more
tools than many faculty can fully use or understand.
Over the years I've seen various attempts to try to
standardize. I have always been perplexed by the assumption that students who
jump from myspace to facebook to Linkedin to phone apps to video games etc are
too confused to navigate courses created by different faculty. What I have seen
happening at many institutions is faculty with limited understanding of the
technology tools creating courses with clunky navigation, jerry-rigged tools
and outright confusing design or even non-functional activities that anyone
would find overwhelming and unproductive. This is remedied not by standardized
courses but by training.
What we do at my community college is train online
faculty starting with a simple template that is based on best practices in the
field for design and structure and pedagogy. It serves as a starting point but
they can change it if they are willing to learn how to do that - and most are.
Our Best Practices guidelines prioritizes interaction, accessibility, faculty
presence, and appropriate use of the tools and environment. We expose faculty
to Community of Inquiry, Quality Matters, and exemplary courses from multiple
sources. The goal is to give them enough skills and background knowledge to
build courses on their own as the products and their disciplines change in the
future. Most faculty meet that challenge and develop rich courses that students
can easily learn to navigate within the first week (part of the training).
My recommendation would be to review all the documented
Best Practices available, make them part of a rigorous training initiative,
empower faculty to make good decisions, support faculty with technical
assistance and accessible tools, and consider incorporating a metric such as
the Quality Matters review process. The courses will be consistent in their
overall quality and not just superficially in their appearance and navigation.
Linda K. Ryder
Senior Instructional Designer
Art History Faculty, Fine Arts, Theatre Arts, Broadcast
Communications
Monday, January 7, 2013
create-a-personal-learning-environment-
http://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/how-to-create-a-personal-learning-environment-to-stay-relevant-in-2013/
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