ED403 ELEARNING PRACTICES IN HIGHER EDUCATION

This session built on the previous three sessions i.e. sessions 1-3.

There are two components of this work on eLearning Practices in Higher Education.
1. Elearning Case Study: A review paper and presentation was done as a group.
2. Microteaching (and MicroLED) and Efacilitation– A combination of individual and group effort. A MicroLED was designed and developed and a microteaching was conducted in this session. Efacilitation is done separately in Session 5.

The focus of this session was to evaluate eLearning case studies from a wide range of eLearning environments to highlight good practices, challenges and limitations so as to transform the mode of practice by using appropriate skills to effectively facilitate an eLearning environment within my context.

This was done as a group activity where each group member studied a specific issue regarding the umbrella topic agreed upon by all group members. Team Jonassen (my group) studied the “CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR CREATING A SOLID ICT PLATFORM FOR TERTIARY EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC” and each six group members focused on a Pacific Island regarding this broad topic. Countries that were chosen for this study were Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Tonga. My country of focus was Solomon Islands focusing on “Inclusive Innovation in ICT Resources, Pedagogies & Tools in Online Learning”. The group physically met once to discuss our topic and collaborate online afterwards via Google Docs. This collaborative online tool really made our work easy and convenient. We gave feedback to other group members so as to build on to the case study and also learnt a lot from what each found out regarding their chosen topic. Overall, a challenge that we have found out common to all Pacific Islands were the issue of connectivity and poor ICT infrastructure. A specific issue that I found to be a challenge in Solomon Islands regarding ICT development is a lack of national strategy and geographical locations making it hard to expand ICT development.

Each group member then collated their individual PPT slides for group presentation. The presentation was delivered on Go-To-Meeting, an online meeting software. Each group then assessed themselves and another group in this group presentation providing us opportunity to critically reflect and evaluate our own work as well as another group’s work. Personally, this online group presetation had given me the ability to deliver an online presentation with confidence and to be mindful of things that need to be considered in an online presentation/lecture/or tutorial. Shown below is Group Jonassen's slides on our chosen topic for the e-learning case study.

Moreover, this eLearning case study has not only enabled us to be enlighten with issues surrounding ICT development for learning in the Pacific but also helped us strengthen our communication and collaboration skills within the group, making use of online tools and technologies such as Google Docs and Go-To-Meeting.

The aim of this learning task was to produce a self-video - this is a micro Learning Environment Design (Micro LED) based upon a small part of one of my higher education teaching units. This was an exercise where I designed and developed a plan for a 15-minutes teaching lesson (which was the microteaching). My teaching course at USP  that was selected for this task was AF208: Financial Management and a single learning outcome was reviewed and reflected upon with my colleagues. Learning acitivties and asessment tasks aligning to the chosen course learning outcome were critically reviewed considering redesigning AF208 from a face-to-face delivery mode to fully online delivery. This was prepared in PowerPoint presentation using iSpring Suite 9 and produced as a video presentation using Screencast-O-Matic.

At first, I found this task very difficult for me as I haven't produce a video presentation before and have no experience in any video producing application or software, even in PowerPoint. Upon search on the Internet, I came across two tools; iSpring Suite and Screencast-O-Matic. I would recommend these tools to any one who is planning to do video recordings, presentations, lectures, etc. iSpring Suite is a PowerPoint-based authoring toolkit produced by iSpring Solutions that allows users to create slide-based courses, quizzes, dialog simulations, screencasts, video lectures, and other interactive learning materials. Screencast-O-Matic is a screencasting and video editing software tool that can be launched directly from a browser. The software has been widely used in the education sector to support video creation for flipped classrooms, bi-directional student assessments, lecture capture, and student video assignments.

The Micro-LED video was then presented to my colleagues on YouTube for their peer-review feedback. These feedback were taken into account in delivering the microteaching. My MicroLED video on the chosen course learning outcome is posted on the left.

A 15-minute teaching session (microteaching) was conducted on Go-To-Meeting by each member of my group including myself. This time round, we were demonstrating our teaching skills to teach a topic from our course in “real-time” (synchronously) in the presence (online) of other group members and the Course coordinator. I would say  this microteaching session was fun and constructive as we learnt a lot from each other's teaching; the diverse knowledge and content and the different methods of teaching that we showcased during the session. Very helpful and constructive feedback were given by the Course coordinator at the end of the session to strengthen our teaching skills further especially in an online learning environment.

This last session covered the most important aspect of online teaching, which is e-facilitation. Each group was assigned a Moodle shell and a particular week for this exercise and each student in this cohort got a chance to be the “online instructor” for 1-2 days while the students in the other groups became students. This task was first led by Team Downes in Week 8, then followed by Team Aristotle in Week 9 and my group, Team Jonassen e-facilitated the last course in Week 10.

Each group was given a topic for their e-facilitation and each of us designed, developed and delivered an online course on that same topic in our designated week. This was one of the most fun and engaging activity in this course as we attempted to design, develop and deliver an online course considering the key differences between online and face-to-face teaching, constructive alignment, pedagogy and ensuring that the quality of our e-facilitation material is met as per the different criteria for “Quality”. Some sites that were sited for Quality of Online Course are “Rubric for Online Instruction (ROI)’, “Quality framework” and Quality Matters”.

Each one of us displayed our online teaching skills collectively as well as individually by carrying out a number of activities in the designated Moodle shells displaying our technological, pedagogical and content knowledge and skills (TPACK). Great to have learnt the different methods, techniques, online tools, learning tasks and assessments designed and developed by each group regarding their courses’ topics and the diverse TPACK knowledge and skills that we have regarding online learning. Surely, I have learnt a lot from this e-facilitation exercise and from each other as well.

This e-facilitation exercise has practically been an effective recap on:

• Constructive alignment of online teaching & learning activities and assessment tasks to learning outcomes.
• Use of relevant and effective online learning tools and technologies in higher education.
• Use of e-assessments, rubrics and providing timely and constructive feedback and support to learners.
• Community of Practice (CoP) for meaningful engagement and discussions such as Twitter.
• The importance of Community of Inquiry (CoI) in an online learning environment.
• Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK)

In addition, this e-facilitation exercise has also introduced me to some of the features of Moodle which I was not aware of before and which I believe are very significant for student learning progress. These included the use of learning analytics/Moodle analytics in assessing student performance and identifying potential “at risk” students, the Early Warning system, Student Completion Progress, embedding Social Media feeds on Moodle e.g. Twitter, etc. These features will definitely be taken into account in delivering my own teaching courses online in the future emphasizing on a student-centred approach.

Overall, this exercise has been a fruitful and enjoyable one which also reminded us of the importance of collaboration and collegiality among instructors and course designers in designing, developing and delivering effective online courses for life-long learning.