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.