IT for Education

It's been a busy month or two, but my e-learning site (and this blog) are nearing completion. Typically, I keep seeing things I'd like to tweak, but I have to get the report finished so I'm drawing a line in the sand where it is now, and calling it done. What do I think of the result? First things first, here's a link to the site for reference . You'll notice a [blog] link at the top of most pages - these link to some hidden posts in this blog giving some extra details on individual pages, so the blog proper is just about more global themes, process etc. I'm reasonably pleased with the result as a whole, but at the same time I'm acutely aware of some issues that I wish weren't there, mostly caused by platform limitations and time restrictions. What it does well I think, is illustrate the concept and principles I was aiming for, even if it does contain a lot of what I feel are placeholder elements. On the plus side I've managed to implement a v...

I've put a fair amount of thought into my approach to blended learning with regard to tailoring my existing materials for my e-learning site. Part of the reason I chose the subject I did was because my lesson prep was already intended for sharing online via the university's Moodle VLE. While the materials were already VLE-friendly, the VLE in question served the module more as a repository, hosting notes and documents. It wasn't necessarily suitable for a fully blended learning module, so there would still need to be some adaptation to make it fit better. This begs the question: what actually is my approach going to be? What sort of synergies am I hoping to gain from adopting the blended approach for this module? What advantages will I gain by hosting content in an e-learning site with regards to this specific subject? According to JISC (LTSN, 2003), a VLE's main elements are: mapping of the curriculum into elements (or ‘chunks’) that can be assessed and recorde...

Just a quick note to talk about VLE-design methodologies. We were provided a link to a development framework for e-learning design called SIMPLE ( Systematic Instructional Methodology for Personal Learning Environments - a forced acronym if I've ever seen one). It provides a structure to the planning, development and testing of e-learning environments that is intended to make it easier for educators to deal with technical implementation and techies to develop the educational side. It has four stages, each of which is further split into non-linear concepts: Requirements analysis Course curricula Course design Course assessment Requirements specification Design Environment selection Tool selection Human-Computer Interaction Design/source instructional materials Development & Implementation Build Test & fix Deploy Operation Evaluation User satisfaction Facilitator evaluation Review Revise If you've ever done any software development, or...

Subject chosen, who exactly is my e-learning site going to be aimed at? I won't leave you hanging, it's degree-level students, specifically BSc. I've been teaching that demographic for nigh on 12 years so I'm hardly going to suddenly change it. What does that choice mean for my site? They'll be at least 18, most commonly early-20s and potentially of any adult age I'm not dealing with children, basically, but beyond that I can't guarantee anything. I can expect a certain level of maturity, but not always, and everybody should be capable of using a full-featured web browser & other software. Beyond that, Knowles' assumptions apply, so in theory they should be willing to learn (debatable...) and self-driven (Knowles, 1990). It will probably be male dominated It's no secret the computer sciences attract way more males , but speaking from personal experience maybe one in 10 I've taught web design to have been female. They typically (but n...

For my e-learning environment I went on a bit of a journey deciding what the subject matter is going to be. My original idea (and why I plumped for the module) tied in with a 10-week course I wrote for a previous assignment. This course was an introduction to post-processing in the film/TV industry and had a very strong blended approach to the syllabus. My concept was to implement some of the more unique elements in what was (in my humble opinion) quite a novel approach. However, to properly do what I wanted would require access to several proper VLE development tools, perhaps even some app development. It was getting to the point where it would become more of a development exercise than something focusing on the strengths of e-learning. As it turns out I couldn't do it anyway, as we have to use a specific tool to build our sites and it really wasn't up to the job - more on that in a later post. Instead, I started looking through my teaching materials from some ten years of...