DISCIPLINE
Multimedia/Educational Technology

DURATION
Entire length of subject/unit/course (14 week semester)

ICT USED
World Wide Web; Web Site independent of a learning management system. (It will be offered as a Blackboard unit from 2003).

The site includes several communication and interactivity tools such as a discussion board, student lists, email, online journal and ‘add your own URL’.

DELIVERY CONTEXT
The unit has been designed to be delivered totally online.

This unit can also be delivered in mixed-mode with some face-to-face interaction, although to date it has not been offered this way at ECU. In many ways, the unit has been designed to work best totally on line because it allows the potential online teachers to experience online learning from the student perspective.

TARGET AUDIENCE
Postgraduate level: Graduate certificate

The unit is targeted at teachers (university, TAFE, schools) who might be placed in a position where they need to teach online. Many of this target group feel unprepared for this challenge. The unit is part of a Graduate Certificate, with appropriate entry-level requirements.

Most students are practising teachers or university administrators.

COHORT
The unit is viable with 2+ students. Ideally, group size would be optimum at about 15. A student ratio of 1:15 is possibly wishful thinking, but this would be ideal both in terms of the number of students a teacher could adequately deal with, and to form a large enough group to have a critical mass for discussion groups and collaborative work.

BROADER CONTEXT
The learning design is the entire unit. It is the first unit of a four-unit Graduate Certificate in Online Learning designed to explore issues associated with the creation of effective learning environments.

The second unit Resources for Teaching and Learning Online provides learners with exposure to the various technologies that support online learning. The third unit Designing Effective Online Learning Environments focuses on the development of students’ skills and abilities in the delivery of online learning. The fourth unit is the Online Learning Project Unit.

On completion of the unit, students would be able to:

• Employ contemporary learning theories in the design of flexible and open online courses.
• Choose appropriate learning media for open and flexible online delivery.
• Plan engaging online learning activities.
• Assess the learning potential of online activities and exercises.
• Plan online learning activities to engage and motivate adult learners.
• Understand the limitations and opportunities of online technologies for teaching and learning.
• Understand and appreciate the critical elements of effective and engaging online learning environments.

IMPLEMENTATION OF ASSESSMENT STRATEGIES
Assessment is integrated with the task (the task comprises the entire unit of study – there are no other requirements). Students are assessed on the three component parts of the task.

The first task is completed individually (for purely pragmatic reasons – forming groups early in the semester has problems associated with late enrolments, false starts and early withdrawal). Students are given criteria for assessment both within the task memos themselves and also in a downloadable pdf file with marking criteria.

The second task is a group one, where students are deliberately put in geographically dispersed groups. Students use communication technologies (either those provided on the site or others that they arrange themselves such as msn messenger) to create a model of online learning. Peer assessment is used with the task, where students individually assess every other group’s model of online learning according to criteria described in the memo and the pdf marking key, (presented on the site as a draft version that can be modified if desired by consensus).

In the third task, students apply their model of online learning to the design plan of an online learning environment of their own choice. This part is teacher-assessed according to the criteria described in the memo and the pdf document.

IMPORTANCE OF ASSESSMENT STRATEGIES USED
The importance of the assessment strategies is primarily that they are fully integrated with the task. Marking criteria are described within the terms of the task description, that is, students are marked according to whether they have fulfilled the requests in the memos. There is flexibility in the interpretation of the assessment criteria, as students can amend the draft criteria for the second and third assignments.

The peer assessment conducted with the second task is also important with many students reporting that they found the exercise of reading and evaluating others’ models of online learning very valuable.

WHY ICT IS USED
The learning problem, apart from typical distance education ones like geographic isolation, was that many teachers who are faced with the prospect of designing and teaching online have never learned anything in this mode.

HOW ICT USE HELPS
While the unit does provide for students who are geographically isolated from an institution offering a course in online learning, the principal impact of the ICT advantage is that students are able to experience online learning whilst at the same time,learning how to design effective learning environments. This can be quite a powerful learning experience.

For example, students are immersed into a learning environment that has been designed according to the learning principles that they investigate in the unit. While exploring and learning about these principles, they are also experiencing them. They are then in an excellent position to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the approach, and decide for themselves how they might create, improve and streamline strategies to suit their own requirements as they teach online units.

MOST IMPORTANT ICT CONTRIBUTION TO LEARNING DESIGN
The use of online learning technologies to teach an entire course in online learning gives teachers an opportunity to learn about online learning whilst also learning online. Online delivery also creates a learning environment free of the constraints of weekly timetables and fixed delivery blocks. This can be quite a liberating experience for many students.