This resource has been drawn from discussions in the General Forum of the Australian Flexible Learning Community during the period July 2002 to May 2003. Many thanks to all who contributed.
Imagine you’re a teacher of bookkeeping and either want or need to “go online”. You’ve written instructional material for basic bookkeeping in a way that includes a lot of detail because you know a student can't ask for guidance from an online lecturer as easily as they would in face to face situations. You’ve also tried to anticipate every question a student might ask based on your 15 years of teaching the subject.
The answers to Bookkeeping exercises are either right or wrong so you don't see any real need to ask students to collaborate other than if they feel inclined to do so as they would with a friend in the campus cafeteria. The students will be mature people in business for themselves who need to go & learn MYOB - an electronic accounting package.
You know that arriving at the ideal mix of techniques will come through experience and trial and error but need to get up & running quite quickly. Therefore you’d suggestions from an expert as to a mix of techniques that could give you a starting point.
Your questions to the Community are…
1. How do I present the online course?
2. Do I ask the students to read a chapter & work the exercises at the end of each chapter?
3. Do I provide them with model solutions for them to access immediately after I set the first work assignment?
4. Would using conferencing techniques using MS NetMeeting be useful and when should I use it? I imagine that it would be a good way to discuss problems that students might have but I feel that it may be unnecessary if model solutions are provided.
5. If they get all the exercises completed and correct in accordance with the model solutions doesn’t the whole online teaching exercise become rather like an old fashioned correspondence course?
Here’s what members had to say…
To begin with, members clearly felt that how learning is presented online depends on whether you want it to be teacher lead or self-directed. This means the mode will change dependent on your vision. The type and timing of questions/review/assessment activities depends on that vision and how the learning will be accessed (ie do you intend on having a set class time, or would the course be self paced?).
A common response was “Have you discussed your process with other online learners, have you participated yourself as an online learner, have you addressed these issues with experts?” In other words, rather than make the decisions yourself, engage with the users to find out what they want and expect.
Is online a type of correspondance course? The word “depends” came up again.
“It depends on how you want to lead it and how you want to interact with your participants. This comes down to matching the best technology with your modules. It is like going back to the classroom and deciding when you will use the text book, when to intervene with an overhead transparency and when to let them do group working.”
“You need to think of video conferencing, data conferencing, phone conferencing and self managed learning environments such as webex or Web CT or Blackboard. Then you need to work out when you want your modules to be synchronous and when you want them to be asynchronous.”
One of the suggestions for newcomers was to…
“seek some PD for yourself - it need not be the expensive and lengthy kind initially, maybe just seeking out a mentor is a good start.”
A mentor is a terrific form of support through the early stages of a person’s online career but depends on being in a network through which a mentor can be identified
"Next you do need to source some materials for yourself. I mean the ones that help you to design, develop and implement online learning strategies. Look for the self-paced kind that you can access quickly and without cost. There are some wonderful resources here in Australian Flexible Learning Community and also from TAFE frontiers, WestOne, OTEN and other professional development services."
"My next recommendation is that you visit a sample http://www.holmesglen.vic.edu.au/courses/business/myob.htm to get some ideas on what others have done with a MYOB course online. "
Now all of this if all very well if you have a learning environment in which you can present your course online, but if that’s not the case it’s wise to implement the new flexible tools gradually.
"I wonder if there is some merit in considering a simple sequential introduction of the new tools to your clients (emails for your weekly communication and electronic submission of completed exercises to begin with - assuming a distribution of an instructional manual) and to use the conferencing tools of your choice to collaborate with them on the next steps in the design of the course. They are probably just as new to flexible learning as you."
No-one argued against using some sort of conferencing tool. A very useful suggestion was…
“The discussion board is a really powerful tool for enabling the social interaction for your online participants and I have seen it used effectively for presenting 'the weekly lessons' and providing 'focussed tutorials' in a sequential manner. (This strategy might suit your methodology of presenting model answers to exercises and enabling students to work with one another.)
You could also use your discussion board to value add to your instructional manual's list of FAQs. Perhaps this is a way for your clients to add to that growing body of 'lessons learned' and to have ownership in the design of their own learning.”
Many suggested that Netmeeting is good, although has some drawbacks. It was also suggested that teleconferencing could be used – this has the benefit of being a bit more ‘connected’ to the real person rather than to their written words only.
One of the final words of advice was to explore some of the resources in the Australian Flexible Learning Community such as…
7 Steps - A framework for developing online learning - a general introduction to the topic - download the resource by selecting the Word document at the top right of the page
Quality features of online learning - a summary of research outcomes on what teachers and students thought constituted "good" online learning
Blended Learning: Getting the right mix - this was an event where Laurie Field shared the outcomes of some research into exemplary practices and blended approaches to flexible learning.
