(Notes from the Technology Enhanced Learning event at The Open University on 9 Feb)

Sharon Monie – LTS

Further examples of communication and collaboration

(Notes from the Technology Enhanced Learning event at The Open University on 9 Feb)

Volker Patent DSE232

http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/course/dse232.htm

Applying Psychology – provides an example of a second-level course where the team spent some time considering how to use learning systems to help students communicate with one another online and use their online experiences to inform their assessment. The team will describe how the size, shape and scope of their asynchronous forums changes during the course, as students become more confident in working online.

• 15-point course. Recruits around 500 students each presentation. Just finished fourth presentation.
• Uses a range of VLE tools, including quizzes, wikis, fora and polls.
• Clear about learning outcomes: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation
• Forum structure is provided and referred to as a meeting place, rather than created by tutors and students. Threads are under student and tutor control.
• Different design options. Single, course-wide forum. Used as a pre-course forum and one to support tutors. Multiple, parallel forums, which run for a few weeks. Single grouped forum for multiple groups. Each week’s forum becomes its own archive.
• Default in Moodle is to have a tutor group as equal to a forum group, but this does not afford team teaching. Team teaching needs to be built in from the start of the design.
• Use the polling tool to work out which subjects students are interested in, and to divide them into groups.

Andy Northedge: K101

(Notes from the Technology Enhanced Learning event at The Open University on 9 Feb)

http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/course/k101.htm

K101 An Introduction to Health and Social Care – a course in its second presentation that walks new students through different learning systems, encouraging students to communicate with one another before a major collaborative activity half way through the course. The course team will share with you why they took the approach to communications and collaboration that they did; how successful it has been and what their aspirations are for the future.

• Trying to replicate the dynamics of summer-school group work.
• Has been presented seven times
• Around 800 teams have started the project.
• Small teams work intensively without tutor intervention
• Less than 1% have not completed their project and produced a report.
• Quality of reports is impressive
• Students tend to be enthusiastic.
• Two weeks of highly coordinated teamwork halfway through course
• Agree a subject, review websites, submit reviews of two websites – team members review each others website, there is structured discussion
• 10% for team-forming tasks. No marks for team project report. 50% for individual essay, 30% for project-related skills and 10% for library skills
• Website provides narrative of activities, work of each member is displayed to entire team, each team has its own forum and sub-forums, collaborative activities are highly structured, time targets re closely managed and very visible. Students cannot complete tasks for other team members (as can happen at residential school). Teachers can track progress,
• Can compare website reviews.
• Discuss quality, breadth, access, trust, power and effects of websites – each of these in different forums.
• End up with a collectively written report. Can only alter their own section of the report – so if they want to change other areas, they need to discuss changes with that section’s author.
• Develop skills in independent inquiry, team working and information literacy.