Core activity 6.3: Evaluating elearning practice
Here is the result of the group task:
Core activity 7.1: Professional values
- Review the CMALT prospectus from Unit 5. Note what specific professional values are mentioned and also any values that you think are relevant but are not mentioned.
- According to ALT, such values and codes of practice differ between institutions, disciplines and roles, and may evolve through time. (See the ALT response to the ‘Framework of professional Teaching Standards’ (2004) below: question A, part 11 on page 2.) Look through the other resources for some statements of professional values and ethics in other professions, such as medicine, counselling and engineering, and try to identify aspects in which the underlying values differ significantly from those of higher education (see the Higher Education Academy statement). Alternatively, you may choose any other professions that you might have an interest in and access to information on, such as architecture or law.)
- In no more than 500 words, write an assessment of differences in the professional values described in the different statements. Store this in your repository for possible later use as evidence of your understanding.
- Post a statement of your own professional values to your blog and/or your tutor group forum.
Gallery of Teaching and Learning
Carnegie Foundation, this organisation has used a ‘knowledge-sharing tool’ developed by the Carnegie Foundation’s Knowledge Media Laboratory called the KEEP Toolkit.
What methods have the developers used to measure or otherwise assess the effects of their teaching designs on student learning?
Looking Into the Efficacy of the Course Construct
Barbara Gayle, a CASTL Scholar and Professor of Communication Studies, University of Portland, uses a template to represent student development in a public speaking course. Gayle tracks students’ growth by displaying videos of student presentations alongside her own reflections and analysis.
This process is described as “more than an exercise in editing”, and is reported to have led several academics to rethink the format of their assessment and analysis of responses. Also using the web-based representations helped identify resources and evidence that were initially missing. The suggestion is that these kinds of tools may not only make creating web-based representations easier but may “amplify” stakeholders ability to analyse the teaching/result outcomes.
For me this example shows how online tools can 1) take some pain away from publishing web based materials and 2) How on reflection these tools can stimulate a step change in the means of assessment.
Transferring Knowledge and Experience in Innovative Educational Transformation
John Belcher, Professor of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his colleagues in the Department of Physics, successfully converted an introductory physics course from traditional format to a student-centered active learning space. According to claims made this resulted in “substantial increases in student conceptual understanding and decreases in failure rates“.
Belcher says, “Changing institutional teaching practices is enormously hard, especially in research universities. Even though scientific studies repeatedly show that the ‘transmission of knowledge’ model is not particularly effective, there is a real inertia in moving away from this model, because it has been common practice for centuries. The way to facilitate even tentative moves toward scientific teaching is to hold up best practices for faculty to see, and to publicize them widely using tools like the KEEP Toolkit.”
I can understand that this has been well recieved in publications and articles. I imagine that it is important for academics and lecturers that wish to move their teaching objects from paper/classroom based to digital format that they don’t need to learn an entire new set of skills to do so. The toolset should take the headache out of what is going on in the background. However like all tools these can be used effectively or badly. In this case I think that Belcher had a good vision of what he wanted to achieve. For those who lack direction this is perhaps a case for and the realm of the Learning Technologist were they can advise those wishing to make this transformation the possibilities available to them.
Core activity 6.1: The concepts of practice and competence
Hillier, Y. (2002) ‘The quest for competence, good practice and excellence’ (online), The Higher Education Academy.
To be excellent has to mean more than good, it means very good, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. (page 2)
The NTFS also lists the following illustrative characteristics of excellent teachers:
• innovation in the design and delivery of learning activities;
• ability to organise course materials and present them effectively and imaginatively;
• provision of effective and sympathetic guidance, supervision and assessment of students, that enable student
advancement at all levels;
• a reflective approach to teaching and the support of learning in order to sustain self-development;
• the ability to arouse curiosity and to stimulate independent learning and the development of critical thought in
students;
• a recognised commitment to the scholarship of both subject knowledge and learning and teaching;
• participation in professional activities and research related to learning and teaching;
• recognition of the value of student diversity;
• ability to share and promote good practice,
Most of the characteristics of excellence identified in policy models of teaching relate to:
• planning;
• resources;
• explicit statements of outcomes.
‘Excellence’ is a slippery concept which is used to reward certain practices in higher education, as a measure for possible future funding and is, in the consumer society, something increasingly expected by students who are paying personally for their education. (page 3)
Competences for online teaching (Goodyear et al.)
Centre for Studies in Advanced Learning Technology (CSALT)
Think about the implications with how online teachers might be recruited, trained, assessed and certified.
Online continuing education is creating a new and distinct educational realm, and it is the future of education. There is a global market here that is potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars. (Drucker, 2000)
Education over the Internet is so big it’s going to make email look like a rounding error. (John Chambers, CEO, Cisco Systems, 1999)
while some vendors of ‘online learning solutions;’ make their return-on –investment cases by disposing entirely of teacher or trainer costs, many more agile companies are realizing the need for flexibility and that a judicious mix of technology and teachers or trainers can help achieve greater learning effectiveness. (page 2)
According to Masie (2000), “88% of learners and 91% of managers want a trainer assigned to this e-learning experience…. 62% of learners and 63% of managers would be more likely to select an elearning class if a trainer were part of the package.”
how to conceptualize online teaching.
(a) competency-based
(b) humanistic
(c) cognitivist perspectives.
The Process Facilitator is concerned with facilitating the range of online activities that are supportive of student learning (contrast with content facilitator).
The Adviser-Counselor works with learners on an individual or private basis, offering advice or counseling to help them get the most out of their engagement in a course, (contrast with process facilitation, which is mainly, if not exclusively, done in the group or public setting.)
The Researcher is concerned with engagement in production of new knowledge of relevance to the content areas being taught. This is not necessarily restricted to teaching in the university context. Many people in most
companies also engage in the kinds of research activity that Gibbons et al. (1994) call “Mode 2 knowledge production.”
The Content Facilitator is concerned directly with facilitating the learners’ growing
understanding of course content
The Technologist is concerned with making or helping technological choices that improve the environment available to learners.
The Designer is concerned with designing worthwhile online learning tasks. (cf. process
facilitation, which is predominantly an “in course” activity; design work is predominantly a “precourse” activity.)
The Manager-Administrator is concerned with issues of learner registration, security, record keeping, and so on.
Core activity 5.1: eLearning and professional development
Websites
We have identified the websites below as ones that may be of interest. We also encourage you to make your own searches using the keywords ‘elearning professional’, ‘certification’ and ‘development’. Post any links that you find that are useful to your tutor group forum.
Digital Learning Asia 2007 conference: eAsia 2007, http://www.digitallearning.in/dlasia/2007/agenda_day3_9.asp (accessed 6 August 2010).
EIfEL (European Institute for E-Learning), http://www.eife-l.org/ (accessed 6 August 2010). An independent, not-for-profit European professional association that supports organisations, communities and individuals in building a knowledge economy and a learning society through innovative and reflective practice, continuing professional development and the use of knowledge, information and learning technologies.
The eLearning Guild, http://www.elearningguild.com/ (accessed 6 August 2010).
Learning and Skills Improvement Service Excellence Gateway, http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/page.aspx?o=ferl.aclearn.page.id8 (accessed 6 August 2010). This site is an online portal for staff in the further education and skills sector being developed by the LSDA in the UK. Can you find what other governments agencies are doing worldwide?
New Zealand Ministry of Education (2009) Professional Development for Elearning: A Framework for the New Zealand Tertiary Education Sector. Available from: http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/ict/58020 (accessed 6 August 2010).
Research Center for e-Learning Professional Competency, http://elpco.a2en.aoyama.ac.jp/EN/index.cgi (accessed 6 August 2010).
The Training Foundation, http://www.trainingfoundation.com/index.asp (accessed 6 August 2010). Has had a Certified e-Learning Professional (CeLP) programme accredited by EifEL.
Core activity 5.2: Professions and professional values
I agree with Demelza that this was an overly heavy and grammatically cumbersome paper. However from what I could glean from this I would say that the e-Learning industry professional could be catagorised by what is termed as “‘new’ occupations seeking professional status”.
The direct links to e-Learning professionalism and this paper are I think a little tenuous. However from reading the paper I can understand that there is an understanding that “established professions” need to get a certain qualification to be deemed as professional. Whereby in the field of e-Learning, in the absence of a credible accepted qualification, the practitioner relies on evidence of achievement in the form of:
1. Legitimacy of the individual expertise through an example of a successful rollout of a flagship product that they had involvement in i.e. “the knowledge economy has led to value being placed on those individuals who are seen as talented an able to apply their skills to complex business problems”
2. Given examples of unique approach or slant on the current tools / concepts available and the application of these in a documented product i.e. “delineate the coherent and unique body of knowledge that underlies their work”
So in the case of the e-Learning practitioner the stamp of professionalism is possibly achieved through the linking, conception and realisation of unique ideas rather than an achieved level of qualification i.e. “As such, this approach to professionalization switches scales from the sector or industry in general to the individual worker and her/his employing firm.”
Profession
An individual who has forged a career from the understanding of single or related subjects.
Elearning
Single or multiple digital objects accessed through a form of “electronic” display device that has the potential to transfer knowledge to the user.
elearning professional
An individual who understands various parts or processes involved with the development of e-Learning and does so for financial gain.
TMA 02 – Preliminary
Part 1: (2500) Professional Learning in e-Learning. What are the characteristics of this in a familiar context?
Part 2: (1500) Summary of activities in weeks 11 & 12
Terror Cells as Learning Communities!
I have been reading the following thread.
http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionID=17363083&gid=138953&trk=SD
Some significant and excellent ideas in here
10 Things A Good Flex Developer Should Know
Drupal :getting started #1 localhost
For video instructuctions you can go here
Download and unzip the drupal package. To use locally wampserver.com. Install this then launch. This will start up the server. Left clicking the taskbar icon will allow you access to the wampserver toolset.
PHP myadmin is a utility that allows to manage databases. First create a database (drupal_learning) create
Next to install drupal you want to drop the extracted version into the wwwroot folder. Just copy the whole folder accross. Next go to the localhost and install teh site. Before doing that, left click wamp server >apache>apachemodules & ensure the rewrite moddule is checked. http://localhost/myDrupalVersion
Install drupal, next asked for a settings file. Copy default settings php and make that settings.php. Now asked for database configuration screen so the database setup name can now be added. Should now be installing drupal. Set basic configuration, sitename, email address, admin account etc.
Update: You will need to close skype to get wampserver to connect.
Simon Cowan's Personal Learning Environment 