As e-learning becomes ever-more widespread, online educators are being required to design learning experiences that engage and meet the needs of very diverse learners. This course is suitable for anyone involved in online education or training, including teachers, trainers, course designers and researchers. To take part in this course you need an internet connection. No specific software is required.
Course Timeline:
Welcome to the course. Get to know what this course will provide for you.
Discussion
In a world of shiny new platforms, tools, apps, hardware and software it can be difficult to find evidence of whether they are meeting the needs and accommodating the learning preferences of real people.
At this point, it’s worth differentiating between ‘learning activities’ and ‘learning design’
How to create an effective persona
Let's create a persona
The relationship between technology, pedagogy and people in online learning contexts can be difficult to unpick.
Research reports come in many shapes, sizes and forms, such as journal articles, conference papers, blog posts, newspaper articles and videos.
A vital component of the online educator’s toolkit is a strategy for investigating the effectiveness of your own teaching, especially when you’re experimenting with new technologies and pedagogies.
Research is often driven by a burning desire to find out more about a phenomenon or to solve a particular problem.
Discussion
The field of ethics deals with establishing moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity, and which differentiate between right and wrong, good and bad.
What ethical obligations do researchers have to protect the privacy of subjects engaging in activities in “public” Internet spaces?
The use of blogs, Twitter and other online technologies, such as the creation and sharing of YouTube videos and podcasts, can allow educators to create an identity beyond their classroom or the lecture hall.
Twitter has proven to be the most popular, with one study finding that 90% of academics with a social media presence reported using Twitter for professional purposes
A repeated theme has been the relationship between face-to-face and online education.
Can old technology have new applications? Can changes in infrastructure increase the value of technology and lead to its re-emergence? Are avatars more engaging than real people?