What is a mark?

Dear Mphil e-Learners - your marks with comments are now available on Webstudies.
We hope you all had fun, and could use some of the skills (and theory) to implement in your own teaching.

Round number ...? e-Learning and passion.

The blogs are now silent ...

Maybe something to liven up your e-Learning spirits is an old blog post: Crash course in learning theory (from Creating Passionate Users). It is fun and useful - but only supplementary to your current reading material.

I would (and I trust Antoinette will agree) like all participants to comment at least once on each others' blog postings. To do that there should be some action on all of your blogs (for there to be comment). Could we try in the last week of official e-Learning "moduling" to get a sense and experience of what the collaboration and social networking power of blogs can be.

You are by now hopefully starting to write up your main (70%) document describing your project in terms of the ADDIE model for submission on or before 11 August (on Webstudies). Remember that the 30% reflection on your and the others' ideas and projects happen on the blogs.

Hope all have had some rest over the weekend and are now ready for the final stretch.

Round number 2

Welcome to week 3 of the e-Learning module!
Apart from some technical slow-starts, it seems that all of you are now up and running with your blogs and know more or less what you want to do.

In the coming week, we would like you to now start doing the following:
1. Refine your project: Especially the formulation of your learning outcomes is crucial. Also remember to not take on too big a project (try and calculate how many hours of e-learning you want to create). And then - remember that e-Learning makes activities possible that are not possible on paper, or face-to-face. Interaction, collaboration, formative assessment and rich media are some of the great reasons to use e-learning. We want to engage students, and that sometimes means to cut out a lot of the information (that one could actually refer to in a text book or a hand-out).
2. Remember the ADDIE model: The structure of the ADDIE model really helps one to focus and get started. It is also the model we actively promote as it is relatively easy and well respected. You should be reflecting academically on your project using the ADDIE model. You are not forced to use ADDIE, but if you use another model, you have to indicate which one you are using and again - reflect on the process of using that model. This is an important part of the assessment.
3. We have created an Assignment in Webstudies where you can upload/submit some materials. Maybe your final project outline/ planning, or your storyboard, or some final indication of how your e-learning activity/ programme will work. Incorporating the learning outcomes, activities and plans for assessment and interaction is crucial.
4. Your blog still stays crucial: Please remember to use the blog (e-Learning is learnt by doing!) as an instrument to capture your mind. It is not called a blog (i.e. Web Log) for nothing. Also please comment on each others' ideas and projects. I have heard from all of you personally that would like to have more comments from each other. This collaboration and networking that Siemens talks about can only be experienced, and we all have a chance to do just that! I am glad to hear that some of you actually plan using a blog as their own e-Learning project/ teaching.

Good luck for your wEEk!
JP

Good luck for the weekend!

Just wanted to say "Good luck for the weekend, and the rest of the module!" (Thanks to Megan for the Pic)

Activity design template - just start

It is sometimes hard to get started on a project like an e-learning activity/ course. Everything feels chaotic and especially if one is trying to integrate good learning and instructional design theory with technical skills and it forms part of a Master's program then one can quickly become paralysed.
This is completely normal, and part of the creative process (except the Mphil part of course :)) and should be embraced. The skill is to just start doing something, get into motion and the rest will follow.
That is indeed why we have something like the ADDIE model! It gives us structure to start somewhere and cover all the important bases. Just starting with the "A" Analyses already gets our minds in gear. Try and think of a very specific group of potential learners and especially what their specific learning needs are. Here Wilhelm is giving us a good example of describing the Registrars and the particular teaching and learning needs that he became aware of. How to solve the need now becomes writing learning outcomes and objectives. Once one has the outcomes, then follows the design of learning activities that will meet those outcome needs, after which development and implementation follows.
|For this module one should may not think so big (i.e. a whole semester course of 60 credits!) but rather a small Activity (also called e-tivities in some literature) that you can easily think through and also take through the 5 processes of ADDIE. The more specific the learning objective - the easier to design it and reflect on it in the process.

Here is another (maybe simpler) way of structuring an activity (taken from "Fascilitating online: A course leader's guide"[*1]):

Activity title

• Give your activity a clear and relevant title.

Learning outcome(s)

• Decide what you want participants to learn by doing this activity. Take into account participants' prior knowledge and experience and their current contexts.

Purpose

• Identify the purpose of the activity. State the purpose clearly and concisely.

Task

• Outline the task that participants will be requuired to do. The task should be short enough to enable most participants to complete the task with ease in the given time period.
• Provide clear instructions.
• State whether students will be required to work individually or in groups.
  

Tools

• Identify the tools that participants will require to perform the task (e.g. chat, discussion, forums, email, wiki).

Time

• Provide guidelines on when the task should be completed and how much time will be required bu the participants.

[*1] Carr, Jaffer & Smuts 2009. Fascilitating online: A course leader's guide. Centre for educational Technology Sries Number 3. Cape Town: Centre for Educational Technology, University of Cape Town. Download at webaddress: http://www.cet.uct.ac.za/FascilitatingOnline.

Connectivism - are we taking it seriously?

Just watching the slideshow (Social Networking Technologies for teaching and learning transformation) embedded below by the well known George Siemens from Manitoba University in Canada. He gave the talk at the e-Learning Africa conference in Dakar in May 2009. The show hints at very big issues surrounding teaching and learning, and I don't know if we are ready for the implications of being connected to networked learning ourselves, and servicing learners who have to become wayfinders, sensemakers and connectors in an abundance of information.

The quote on slide 25 is powerful:

"What we have here is a transition from a stable, settled world of knowledge produced by authority/authors, to a world of instability, flux, of knowledge produced by the individual" (Insitute of Education, London 2007).

Also draws in a lot of e-Learning theory and how it now evolves into news traditions of learning. Great stuff!

Day2 Elearning Africa

View more documents from gsiemens.

Storyboards and tips on livelier e-learning

As part of the module, we will be giving tips and tricks on how to further your skills as e-Teacher.

Here are two categories of help:

1. Create storyboards for your e-learing courses:
Resource 1
Resource 2
Resource 3

2. Creating livelier e-Learning
View this classic Slideshare presentation by Cathy Moore called: Dump the drone: Livelier Elearning.

3. Use this online learning objectives builder (using Bloom's taxonomy levels):
Interesting online tool (from Radio James) that helps one write objectives and learning outcomes called Objectives Builder.

Official start of the 2009 e-Learning module

It is 6 July 2009 and the module is now officially underway.

Please spend today posting about your projects as well as sorting out your RSS feeds (or your own way of keeping track of all the blog postings – we use Outlook 2007).

We wish you the best of luck with your module. Please do not hesitate to contact JP (jpbosman(at)sun.ac.za) or Antoinette (advdm(at)sun.ac.za) with any problems, queries or suggestions. If your query is something potentially useful to all participants – feel free to post it as a comment on this blogsite. Or on your own site.

RSS feeds in plain English

To answer Bronwen (in one of her comments) - I think understanding and using RSS feeds is quite important for the success of our module. You can subscribe all of our blogs (i.e. this blog, Wilhelm, Estelle, Bronwen) so that you get the updates and new posts and comments automatically.

To do this you can use Outlook 2007 (it has a RSS subscription function - the new feeds come right into your e-mail unread messages inbox!), or you can use Google reader (you already have a Google account - you might as well use that to sign in to the Google Reader service).

To help all of us understand RSS feeds, I suggest watching the following embedded Youtube movie from leefever of Common Craft! RSS in plain English - enjoy!

Let me know if you could add this blog and the others to your own RSS reader.

The magic of motivation

One of my regular "Blogs I read" is the Rapid e-Learning blog by Thomas Kuhlmann. His last post made me stumble on two wonderful short ideos about learning. The one is the fascinating Ted talk by Sugata Mitra on his "Hole-in-the-wall" experiments with technology in the poorest and remotest parts of India (children self-organise and teach themselves through technology). The other is the importance of motivation in the learning process, with a quick link to a short overviewby Kevin Kruse on Keller's ARCS Model for Motivation: Attention, Relevance, Confidence, Satisfaction.

Theories of instructional design

I found this wonderful overview of the aspects of Instructional Design theory on Slideshare.
Click here to view.

e-Learning module - everybody's blog addresses

Dear Mphil e-Learners
Almost all your blogs have now been created. You can access your colleagues' blogs by clicking on the webaddresses below. Or you can also look in the right-hand navigation bar "Blogs I read", where you will see the other blogs in action. You can now also add this blog, as well as the other blogs to a Blog Reader. Google Reader is one, but those with Outlook 2007 can also add so-called RSS feeds to come into your Outlook (almost as if they were e-mails). Try it out. Maybe I will give a bit more direction in a next posting. But one step at a time!

The three e-Learning participants' blogs are:

1. Bronwen: http://learn2teachcriticalcare.blogspot.com/
2. Estelle: http://estelle-e-leermodulehse.blogspot.com/
3. Wilhelm: http://ugobstb.blogspot.com

Good luck with the process.