(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.