We did it our way

Having submitted the final marks for the e-learning elective of the MPhil HPE (formally HSE) degree, I have the classic song running through my head " I did it my way...." knowing full well that it is not I, but WE that did this module our way. Each person that has been involved, from facilitators to participants, has shaped the way in which I facilitated the module. My experience has grown through reading past blog posts of former facilitators in this module. I have learned an enormous amount from the participants and their blogs over the years as well!

Now, the module officially comes to an end with the final submission of marks for the final group in this elective and it is a bitter sweet moment. It's a moment which has encouraged me to find ways to use this module as the basis for further faculty development opportunities and has sparked an idea that I hope to share one day soon.

I would just like to sign off with a very big thank you to each person who has contributed to this blog. To each student who has contributed to the type of posts that we as facilitators have made over the years.

Happy lEarning!

Time to implement and evaluate = the starting bell

So now we reach the stage where we have analysed our context according to an identified problem, designed an intervention, developed materials and plans and hopefully are ready to implement our PILOT / PROTOTYPE for testing through an evaluation process. Please remember, that in the case of this module, we understand that there is not nearly enough time for a full and in-depth engagement with this process. It is however necessary to have tried to prepare for the final two phases in the ADDIE cycle. A reminder of that full cycle and what it entails is available on this blog and will therefore not be repeated here. I will however continue to share my 'quasi' process as I have throughout the module.

As you will recall, I have outlined the process I have followed in the previous weeks of this module. I am now about halfway done with the development of the Google site that I am creating and it is starting to take shape. I used one of the templates that are available on Google sites for users to edit and found it quite easy to add documents, text and images as I needed them.

My implementation plan is for the staff members for whom the site is developed to receive an overview of this site and the purpose / outcomes during a face-to-face discussion in the form of a meeting. This will be supported by email correspondence. I will be requesting feedback from them on the usefulness of the site via a Google Form which will then provide information as to what needs to be added or removed from the site. I am also open to the possibility that this may not be the best way to support staff development in this unit and will have to respond accordingly as part of the evaluation.

If this were to be an assignment for the module, I would most likely focus on faculty development literature  to support my planning of the evaluation stage and instruments. I would also identify when, where and how evaluation instruments would be delivered and how these would be analysed. I would refer back to the learning theory and approaches discussed in the motivation section of my assignment where I would have outlined the theoretical and philosophical reason for addressing this problem and for choosing the tools that I have to address it.

Finally, being an educational researcher, I would most probably design my assignment to allow for minimal changes to be made before I could run a pilot study with the necessary ethics committee approval. That, I hope, is the way that many of you will approach this assignment. As a proposal for your head of department, funding committee, or ethics committee in order to innovate your teaching in 2017.....and with that, have rung the starting bell for the new academic year and another ADDIE cycle just around the corner.

Development takes time

Last week we discussed the process that Design requires and the multiple factors that play a role in the planning of a course. This is true for all teaching and learning interactions, whether online or offline and should be clear by now to you as facilitators on various levels and MPhil Students.

One of the difficulties that arise when people start working on e-learning or Blended learning programmes, is that the expectation that technology will decrease workload is not met. Initially, it will take as much time to develop an online component for teaching as it would a face-to-face one; if not more! This is not to say it is a completely negative thing to consider. Remember, the more time spent on developing something really well, the less time it will require in future for you to use it effectively. That said, let us continue to explore the ADDIE process through the pseudo-prototype that I am creating for this module.

I have spent a lot of time looking at the various technology options I listed in the Design Phase last week. I had to consider the outcomes of the course, the capabilities of the participants and the functionalities of the sites I thought would be useful. I also had to think very clearly about what I want the participants to do on the site I create and how much of an input would be needed from my side. Is this an e-learning course (fully or mostly online), or is it a blended course which has at least 50% of the interaction online with additional face-to-face interaction? I constantly reminded myself that if I am given a Fridge, I can't expect to bake a cake in it :) i.e. whichever site I use, I need to understand its' functionality or affordance to know that this is the best option for the outcomes that need to be met.
So, by way of reflection, I will share my process to now in an easy to follow list:

1. Identify need and problem that must be addressed through analysis.
2. Document the outcomes, aims, learning theories to support my thinking, research technologies available (cursory).
3. More in-depth research on the technologies that are options for use in the protoype.
4. Decided on Google Sites based on affordances and ability to meet my aims and outcomes (ease-of-use, accessibility, ability to create an overview of the course and upload documents, ability to embed links)
5. Created a Google Site using a template that is available for all users. 
6. Began uploading and designing the site.

As you can see from my process above, the development part of the course is now underway. It is taking time, and this is to be expected. Remember, when you do start developing your protoype, it won't be perfect. It definitely won't be 100% ready for implementation, and it may not even be your final choice. However, this is the point of the ADDIE process, it is recommended as a cyclical process for a reason. 

In submitting your assignment for this module, you will discuss the implementation in theory and also plan on how you will evaluate this innovation. We know you do not have access to your students now as you do in the beginning of the year due to exams and classes ending. What we also know is that this module, and assignment, is a great way for you to have started early on planning for next year. This is but the first round of a cycle and will hopefully go through a pilot implementation phase next year and evaluation before being refined and implemented again. You may even decide that this assignment will now be used as the basis for an innovative research proposal that you could submit at your institution for an educational study next year! Whatever your decision, the time you're spending now on development of the prototype will be a great learning experience for you and hopefully for your students as well.

I look forward to seeing your reflections on the development phase and to sharing my prototype with you next week!

The devil is in the details: Reflecting on Analysis and moving forward to Design

Reflecting on the analysis phase, we are reminded that student needs are often linked very closely with personal learning expectations and the status quo in any programme, more so than the outcomes of a module or learning opportunity. Remember that regardless of the mode of delivery, a curriculum (programme or module) should be developed with the outcomes at the forefront of decisions made around teaching and learning opportunities and assessment.

I re-read the article by Gedik et al in preparation for this post and am reminded of the necessity of planning. The use of the knowledge that you have developed over the course of the MPhil programme regarding learning, curriculum design, and assessment, among others, is imperitive if you are to design an effective blended or e-learning intervention for this module. For a more detailed discussion on the Design phase of the ADDIE process, please refer to the post on this blog focusing on the topic.

To continue with my endeavour to demonstrate the process using this particular elective, I will reflect on my thinking and planning thus far and how this influences design. Just as a disclaimer, I will remind you that this is an example of how I am approaching the ADDIE process.

I initially decided to re-organise the e-learning elective into a Faculty development opportunity for a fellowship in which I am involved centered around HPE. However, my analysis resulted in the following realisations. Firstly, this is already a registered programme and our Univeristy already offers a Blended Teaching and Learning Short course which is also accredited for staff members.  In analysing the module and potential student cohort, I have concluded that there is a wide variety of participants with regard to roles. This includes clinical facilitators, academics and a combination of both. I have also discovered that potential participants are using mainly e-mail communication to engage with students via electronic means with a range of perspectives regarding the need for e-learning and skills development in this regard. Therefore, as with any potential design, I had to take the findings of the analysis into account and recognise that I need to change my idea.

My decision was therefore to focus on staff development within my own centre, particularly focusing on the support team responsible for supporting lecturers on a technical level more than on an academic one, in developing skills around the use of learning technologies. Analysis of the current "programme" and "students" resulted in the following findings:

• There is a wide variety of resources both online and off-line for the participants to use in gaining experience and skills in providing training and support to lecturers.
• The resources are not organised in a central location or according to known protocols.
• Participants have, for the most part, been self-taught over a period of time making it difficult for new members to gain expertise without physically shadowing or being taught by more experienced members.
• New participants/members find it overwhelming to develop their skills without the use of a formalised and structured training programme.
• The overall aim of the support team is to provide training and development opportunities for lecturers to facilitate student learning using technology.

Moving on to the design phase, my initial reflections are that I need to develop a programme which is constructively aligned. I am using a site to help me visualise and plan this initiative called Learning Designer which uses both Blooms Taxonomy and Laurillard's Ways of Learning as a theoretical basis for curriculum design and planning. 

Aim: To enable support personnel to develop an understanding of learning technologies and support opportunities at SU. 

Outcomes:

At the end of this programme, participants will be able to:

1. Describe the roles and responsibilities of the integrated support systems at the University responsible for learning technology systems.
2. Understand the purpose and function of the supported learning technologies.
3. Use each of the supported learning technologies.
4. Provide basic instructions to end-users on how to use the supported learning technologies.
5. Create training materials for novice and intermediate end-users of the supported learning technologies.
6. Conduct a training session for academic and administrative personnel on the learning technologies required for their work.
7. Identify the most applicable learning technologies for stated educational needs by academic personnel.

Potential Teaching and Learning Activities

1. Reading (Acquisition) the team vision / mission
2. Meeting with the team to discuss (Discussion) roles and responsibilities
3. Reading (Acquisition) training manuals for the learning technologies.
4. Creating (Production) a module with all available activities on the learning managements system.
5. Creating a podcast (Production)
6. Creating a training video for publishing to YouTube (Production)
7. Facilitating a consultation session with a client and providing solutions and resources for the client (Investigation)
8. Co-facilitation of a training session (Collaboration)
9. Identifying FAQ's and training needs with team members based on feedback from clients and partners (Collaboration)

Potential delivery (e-learning prototype)

There are a number of options which can be used for this personnel development opportunity. I am currently considering the following:

1. Google Sites

2. Wikispaces

3. Sharepoint

4. One-on-one training

Regardless of which one I will use, the following should be included as separate pages, files and activities. Each of the delivery methods allows for this type of delivery:

• Overview of team vision, mission
• Profile of each position in the team 
• Summary of each Learning Technology and links to formal training manuals
• Examples of current training resources
• Monitoring processes for training of staff

Analysis of what?

Within the context of this module, you will have discovered by now that you are required to develop an e-learning or blended learning intervention within your teaching and learning context. While there is still much to be discovered and understood around the concepts of instructional design, one of the more commonly used methods of design is the ADDIE process.

Each week, for the next three weeks, you are expected to consider one of these concepts by reflecting on your personal blog. As this first week of the module comes to a close, we, as facilitators, expect to see you posting your thoughts and reflections on your personal blog regarding the analysis of your context.

If you scroll down on the course blog, you will see that over the years we have spent time posting on here about what exactly each phase of the ADDIE process is. So for the purpose of not repeating myself this year, please have a look at this post from 2015 regarding the ANALYSIS phase of the process.

You will recall that I asked for everyone of the participants in this module to complete a short survey at the beginning of the module. I used Google Forms to create this survey. If you are interested in learning how to use this very useful tool, please work through the tutorials provided by Google Forms for this purpose. Forms can be used for surveys and provides you with a quick and easy way of identifying needs or answering questions from a large or small group of people in a relatively short time period. Recently, Google Forms included a quiz option which responds to the needs of educators looking for ways of using this free tool for assessment purposes.

We used the Form tool to identify how you as students in our module are currently using technology in your teaching, what your conceptions are about the use or necessity of technology in teaching as well as to identify some demographic and support information. To date, only half of you have responded, making it difficult to draw any conclusions, I will however share what we have in the results here. [I did this by saving a PDF copy of the responses on the form to my Google Drive and have created a hyperlink to that file here]

As the module continues, I will build on this ANALYSIS of my student group to demonstrate how the ADDIE process can be used in practice to develop a new or improved course.

Please remember that ADDIE is a cyclical and repetitive process, as with any other design-based intervention. You are working on your first iteration of this process and for this module, will only be able to complete the first 3 phases and theoretically plan the final 2. Do not feel overwhelmed. We are here to help and will be commenting on each persons' blog as well as this one going forward.

Good luck!

Practice what you preach? What are we doing and why are we doing it?

As we embark on this final journey through the MPhil HPE (formally HSE) elective, I experience a sense of bitter-sweet anticipation. Is this the year that it is better than any before? I certainly hope so.

As much as I have asked the student group this year to be self-directed in their approach to the module and clarify their own expectations, I realise that I need to practice what I preach. I realise that over the years one of the biggest lessons I have learned is that most people learn by seeing something in action. So this year I have a major expectation for this module, and that is for the facilitators to practice what they preach, to provide a space for students to experience the ADDIE process required as a framework in the module beyond just theoretical and practical posts.

Throughout this module I know that there will be constant questions, and that is great! I look forward to hearing the answers from others as well as trying to provide some myself. While we engage in this way, we will try to remind everyone of the focus for each week. I can promise you this, the one way to be sure to avoid too much stress in the module is to stick to the schedule for your blog posts.
Each week you will be required to post your thoughts and plans around a planned intervention/change in your curriculum for next year.

Week 1 = Analysis
Week 2 = Design
Week 3 = Development
Week 4 = Implementation and Evaluation

By sticking to this schedule, writing as many blog posts as you like to clarify your thoughts, reading your classmates blogs and engaging in discussion using the comment section; you will succeed.

You will succeed in being able to submit an assignment that shows your understanding of teaching and learning in HPE as it relates to the knowledge you have gained in this field over the past two years. You will be able to use that knowledge to use this module assignment as the beginning phase of a potential proposal for an intervention in 2017. Most importantly, I have yet to find someone who has completed this elective who has not said that they have learned something new in the module, whether about teaching with technology or just their own philosophy of teaching and learning.

So hear goes.....we begin our journey together and I look forward to having you along as travel partners as I embark on the final leg of this epic adventure.

2016: The final frontier

Today has been interesting. Definitely the most technical issues we have ever had with a contact session thanks to network issues and pc's not working. What is awesome....besides that fact that I used that word way too many times today, is that I still find it exciting to share information with colleagues who may one day be the authors of blended learning/e-learning articles I will reference.

This, being the final time that the elective is being offered, is bittersweet. I will however endeavour to have as much fun learning as we always do in the module and know that whomever chooses to join in, will enjoy it just as much.