Elearning design

Self-assesment

vkajava — Sat, 16 May 2009 10:34:14 +0000

So now I should evaluate my work in this course. The big picture for me with this course was to learn how to create a functional online course and I think I achieved that goal. Now I also have ability to design one by myself so it brought important knowledge to my work as a teacher.

My other evaluation criterion as being a significant part in planning and creating the course prototype was also achieved. I was quite active when we planned the course prototype in wiki’s discussion area, I took part on both our Flash meetings and I created content to the course prototype. Still when the discussion and planning was standing still, I should have taken more active part and helped things forward.

I think that I have done those individual tasks that I saw important to our course prototype but some of them was done too late. For example the task that was to “Explain, what are the components of course design” helped to realize what the course prototype should contain.

Revised learning contract

vkajava — Sat, 16 May 2009 09:13:59 +0000

My objectives

I wish to learn how to create a functional online course and the basic knowledge needed in that. As I’m about to become a teacher, I think that all of my studies should bring something useful to my work.

Resources

As we had a quite difficult start for this course I wish to have guidance through the whole process. Also other groupmembers should enable collaborativeness, so that the final product wouldn’t be just a collection of individual works but a solid entity.

How to reach objectives

I will commit myself to this course, I will do individual and group tasks on time.

Evaluation

Have an ability to design an online course by myself. (self evaluation)

Being a significant part in planning and creating the course prototype. (self, peer, facilitator evaluation)

Have done individual tasks so that they help designing the course prototype. (self, peer, facilitator evaluation)

Course coming to the end

vkajava — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:38:47 +0000

By the end of this week this course will end and we’ve done pretty good job lately with our course prototype. It’s a pity that most of our group’s members weren’t active, it seems that only our universities students were participating on creating the course prototype.

As we were disgussing about our course prototype in our wiki, I forgot Week7 personal tasks so I’ll fill them in now. Week7 we had a meeting with Sisko and Kalle where we started creating the actual course in our group’s wiki. I think it was a good idea to do that because the course was pretty much just standing still and then we had the frame where to put content. As my learning contract’s objective was to “learn how to create a functional online course. As I’m about to become a teacher, I think that all my studies should bring something useful to my work.”, I think this was the time when I got something for it.

Week 6

vkajava — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:01:30 +0000

Course reading in week 6 is quite hard, first the slideshow with a huge amount of information and second material is filled with numerous links about instructional design models. But… as I had a glance for the reading it said the same that has been told ever since I walked to university: behavioral and constructivist learning. I think that constructively created learning environment would be the best one for our e-learning course. Environment shouldn’t give everything to learners but guide them to right direction, teacher should also quide learners but not more than they need, given information should be based on learners’ earlier knowledge and the most important thing, learners should construct their own understanding. Teacher’s role in this is to be the tutor who sets quidelines and helps when it’s needed.

Components of course design

vkajava — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:05:35 +0000

I’m not quite sure if I understood week4 reading/reflection task correctly but I’ll answer to it the best I can. Issues that have to be considered as designing eLearning course are structure, content, motivation, feedback, communication and involvement.

Structure: Course designers makes a decision on how information is presented. They have to consider their targetgroup, content and context of the situation.

Content: In this kind of a course facilitators cannot look for cues from learners to provide just the needed information (like in classroom) but they have to present all the material needed to learners.

Motivation and feedback: Every learner have to have their own motivation and it cannot be given by facilitators though their acts may help to keep up learners motivation. A good feedback can also increase learners motivation: if you know that your going on a right direction it will build your motivation.

Communication: In this kind of a case it means interaction that involves learners with the content.

Involvement: Learners are involved to the process by having them do some activities but they can control their own involvement so motivation steps up again: if their not motivated the involvement might be slight.

References: The Use of Traditional Instructional Systems Design Models for eLearning

Week 3

vkajava — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 07:24:01 +0000

Third week we had a videomeeting with our group. It was nice to see and hear other members and the session made this course more “real” as I’ve had no experience in this kind of courses. Kalle and I took to our responsibility to make a platform to our group to wikispaces and now we can design and have conversations about our course and its content.

Conversational Personal Contract

vkajava — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:56:39 +0000

Conversational personal contracts are made by learners themselves so it’s made on their own “language”. Learners can set their goals, analyse, reflect and evaluate their own learning in the way they see it important.

The point of conversational personal contract is to get aware of personal learning experiences. It’s divided in four phases: purpose in learning, learning strategies, learning outcome and evaluation.

The outcome of all this is that learners get more motivated as they understand all their goals and therefore their learning experience is deeper and better. This kind of activity might be hard at first but when learner gets familiar to the process it sounds far more effective than basic learning.

Learning Contract

vkajava — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 10:54:33 +0000

My objectives

I wish to learn how to create a functional online course. As I’m about to become a teacher, I think that all my studies should bring something useful to my work.

Resources

As we had a quite difficult start for this course I wish to have guidance through the whole process. I’m sure I will reach all the guidance I need.

How to reach objectives

I will commit myself to this course, I will do tasks on time and I hope students on my group will do the same.

Evaluation

If I have reached my objectives, I will have ability to design an online course by myself.

Week 1 reflection

vkajava — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 08:27:51 +0000

Hi again.

I don’t have much expectations to this course, I’m quite “tabula rasa” right now. Sure I’m looking forward to see how our team works, now that we really work virtually and there’s not so much face to face interact.

Week 1 course reading familiarizes us to changes that have happened in eLearning. Todays trend is to have open and social ways of learning instead of closed systems. This new way of learning provides flexibility and opportunity to personalize learning experiences. A little dilemma in this personalization is that how can you promote individuality and at the same time act in community? One conclusion to this is that you don’t depend on community but keep they as a resource that supports your personal learning.

In this first week I learned to use Delicious and Wikiwersity that are social software tools used in this course. I’m not sure about Delicious’ meaning and how it can be useful but I’m sure it will come clear to me during this course. Wikiwersity seemed to be easy to use, I’m familiar with the use of wiki environments during my studies so that shouldn’t be a problem.

The most important thing that I learned in this week is that you should do these tasks on time so that they wouldn’t pile. I hope that it was only this weeks problem, I’ve been quite busy lately.

Intro

vkajava — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:19:13 +0000

Our first task was to introduce ourselves here, so here it comes. My name is Vesa, 25, and now its my fifth year studying in Oulu University. I’m about to graduate this spring so these happy years of studying won’t last for long anymore.

My teacher studies focuses on technology education and my thesis too, so I I have quite close relationship with technology. Still I haven’t used many social software tools, I’m only familiar with weblogs and wikis.

Yep, thats all for now but stay tuned for the next episode.