Tag: Educational development

Integration of Pathfinding activities into staff and educational development activities; Development of models and processes to support inter and intra institutional teams undertaking transformative course redesigns; Support for e-Learning Champions in academic Schools and e-Learning Networks in Associate College Partners and Community Learning Centres; Guidelines, Reports and Dissemination to embed e-learning into the wider communities.

New Lecturers 2013-14 Introduction Day

Fifty or sixty people attended the introduction to the New Lecturers Programme today. Biggest intake in my experience. There was a good buzz throughout the day. This year we quite significantly revised the way the session is run. Less talk from us. More activity for the participants. And a shorter day, as well. Scanning the … Continue reading New Lecturers 2013-14 Introduction Day

Learning design for open online courses – part 1

Further to my previous post, Learning design principles: educational pragmatists, which was an abstraction of our beliefs about teaching, this post is an attempt to set out some practical implications for designing open online courses, following from our key assertion: Change is brought about through critical, experiential, social learning activity in connected communities where people … Continue reading Learning design for open online courses – part 1

Learning design principles: educational pragmatists

I am trying to write a proper academic paper about the principles we used when developing FSLT12&13. But, as I do I find myself getting bogged down. So in the spirit of Digital scholarship (Weller 2011) I am going to exercise some of the ideas here. We are educational pragmatists. Change is brought about through … Continue reading Learning design principles: educational pragmatists

Activity and interaction in #fslt13 open online course

The #fslt team sat down today and thrashed out the mid-level detail of how the four activities that are at the heart of this course will work this time and how badges will be awarded for completion of activities. We had some principles to work with. Learning is dialogic. Everyone has the opportunity for peer … Continue reading Activity and interaction in #fslt13 open online course

MOOCs and teaching: a reply to Stephen Downes

Stephen Downes is unfairly hard on teachers and teaching in this post (The Great Rebranding), or may have fallen into a (rare) category error. Yes, given the way the world is organised the 25:1 or 50:1 ratio of students to teachers can be seen as a luxury that few can afford. Downes says, "Having one … Continue reading MOOCs and teaching: a reply to Stephen Downes

FSLT Open Online Course Accredited!

In a very positive move, Oxford Brookes University has accredited two open online courses to our Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching in Higher Education (PCTHE). The two courses are: First steps into learning and teaching in higher education (FSLT) Teaching Online (TO) Both courses are offered as open online courses and the accreditation commences in semester … Continue reading FSLT Open Online Course Accredited!

Drop ins: MOOCs and the price of learning

As an undergraduate in the US in the early 1970s, it was not uncommon for there to be people in our classes "auditing" the course. (Auditing in the sense, "listening", i.e. attending but not enrolled.) While auditing was supposed to be governed by regulations there were a range of practices from entirely informal dropping in, … Continue reading Drop ins: MOOCs and the price of learning

MOOCs Stadium Rock or folk clubs

Choose your metaphor. The discourse around MOOCs is congealing around a set of qualities. Bigger better; inherited authority; transmitted knowledge; cognitivist construction; solitary interaction with content. To some extent it is a matter of taste. Or learning preference. Or community. I saw the Police play Twickenham once. It was OK. Entertaining. But nothing was challenged. … Continue reading MOOCs Stadium Rock or folk clubs

How do we sustain participation in open online courses

First, sustaining participation is a design question. Thought has to be given to this question. You have, at least to consider the do-nothing option. This question was asked in etMooc over here (maybe) in a Google+ community. I replied: Tell me about it, and I am an experienced MOOCer & online course runner of things. … Continue reading How do we sustain participation in open online courses