Monday, March 9, 2009

Week 3: eLearning guidelines for quality

Image: Lines & lights by tanakawho

This may be week 3, but if you are not up with the schedule do not worry. Most people have just completed the week one tasks of introducing themselves and setting up a blog. The best thing for everyone to do now is to follow the course weekly schedule. Please read important notice about my leave dates at the end of this post. Welcome to Pradeep who has joined us and is located at Polytechnic of Bahrain.

This week we are scheduled to look at some eLearning Guidelines which have been developed for New Zealand. These were used by 21 tertiary organisations as part of a Ministry of Education funded and sector wide project on implementing e-learning guidelines. This national project provided a mechanism for developing, introducing, trialling, evaluating, and sharing examples of e-Learning Guidelines. Check out the list of things to do for week 3. The eLearning Guidelines were developed specifically to address some of the issues around quality in online teaching and learning. Some of the factors impacting on quality in eLearning were discussed in the week 2 summary on the course blog.

Make sure you have read the information about the assessments and make contact with me if you have any questions. Remember my recommendation for keeping up with the course schedule is to spend approximately 5 hrs per week on it. Lots of people have found that marking dedicated time slots on the calendar works a treat and helps you fit your study into your busy weeks.

Optional fortnightly class meeting: 19 March 2009 - 7 to 8 pm. I hope you can attend the web conference. This will be a discussion about quality and eLearning Guidelines and will be recorded. If this time does not suit, please email times and days to the email group so we can find a more suitable time and perhaps add another day and time to the mix.

Process for Questions and comments
General questions and discussion can go to the email forum: evaluation-best-practiceATgooglegroupsDOTcom and personal email messages can be sent to bronwynDOThegartyATgmailDOTcom (letters are used on here to deter robots in case you are wondering). You can also generate discussions by using the comments area at the end of people's blog posts. It is alway great to get a comment when you have spent time and effort posting on your blog.

My Skype name is at the end of the group email, and if you would like me to Skype you please send me your user name and some suggestions for times and days to make contact. Generally, each week I will post a summary on the course blog with links you may wish to follow and this will help you pull some of the information together for the week. I also make an announcement at the beginning of each week regarding the main direction for the week.

I look forward to hearing about your ideas for evaluation and working on your projects with you. I am on leave from 12 to 17 March so will not be responding to emails over that time. Please contact Oriel Kelly, programme manager of the Grad Cert at MIT if anything comes up which just cannot wait.

1 comment:

Heather said...

Hi Bronwyn
Could you clarify something me please regarding the option web conference. I had it slotted into my diary for tonight (Tuesday 17, I must have added it after the last one) but I see on the wiki page it says "Wednesday 18 March 2009 - 7 to 8pm " and the blogspot page says "Optional fortnightly class meeting: 19 March 2009 - 7 to 8 pm". Which date is correct OR is there one every night from 17th - 19th March?
Thanks in advance
Heather