3 e-learning guidelines relevant to my area of practice
(How do you choose??????????????)
TD1 Is the use of e-learning the best way to achieve the intended learning outcomes?
TD2 Do students get clearly defined learning objectives that assist them in focussing on their learning activities?
ST7 Will e-learning foster student’s curiosity and creativity?
Reasons for choosing them and issues related to quality
1. I think e-learning is great but can see that it isn’t always the best way to achieve learning outcomes –so am keen to explore more – in what circumstances e-learning is and isn’t the best option. As a designer of education programmes /courses /resources I can see that major quality issues can be experienced by the end user if the medium for delivering the course/material is inappropriately selected.
2. Its something that I have seen too often - courses that do not have clearly defined learning objectives. Why do we create a course that doesn’t have clear goals? It seems crazy for students to complete a course of study when they don’t know what they are trying to achieve or learn? I think this issue becomes exaggerated in an e-learning situation. The lack of face to face contact can add to the confusion! There are huge quality issues that arise from programmes /courses /education material where there is a lack of clearly defined learning objectives.
3. This is something that can be a challenge when working with science education. I work a lot in the areas of marine and environmental science but come from a multidisciplinary background. I believe that curiosity and creativity can and should be part of science education – there is a lot of very of not very good science education that occurs that definitely doesn’t seem to foster these aspects in people!
How the guidelines might address issues identified
In my job, I could adapt these guidelines and use them as a checklist to use when designing programmes, courses and resource materials. This would ensure that the courses and materials I produce avoid the quality pitfalls that seem quite avoidable with the use of a good set of guidelines like these!
2 comments:
Like you say Rika - so difficult to choose and so many to choose from. But I think that your choice of TD1 is relevant for many programmes and as such, the reason why a blended learning approach is often taken as a safe bet. Having said that, e-learning guidelines should surely, still be relevant for web-enhanced or even web-supported courses and consequently, a good area to investigate further.
Hi Rika - I like your first line "How do you choose???????"
I guess that is the whole point. I found most of them to be relevant to my situation and they are all things to consider when working with e-learning. Are some more important than any others? To some degree it would be subjective, but I reckon you ignore them at your peril.
I think you are right about using the guidelines as a check list. I printed off the guidelines in pdf format and think I now have a good start point from which to work.
Cheers
Gordon
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