Maggie's+contribution

In a critique of the course structure, which we have chosen as our “core issue”, one framework that helps with that is proposed by Lehmann, K. & Chamberlin, L. (2009). It suggests that the good practice of the designing of any online course should pay attention to: in terms of critiquing the Global Environmental Change course structure, developed by Christina, certain key strengths and weaknesses emerge. One of the strengths of the course structure is the attempt by the tutor to use use “chunking” – Lehmann and Chamberlin (2009) - dividing the work into modules, weeks or units and ensuring learners have enough work for each but are not overwhelmed. The written course information is very comprehensive eg the weekly schedule helps structure the course – and the “chunking” seems evident in the dividing of activities per week. Each week a folder is released on to the VLE, with an introduction, some guided reading and 5 to 10 thought questions to be addressed and discussed. The sheer volume of activity within the course, however, could also be a negative point here, as Conrad and Donaldson (2010) highlight that, although it is important to give structure, there is also a danger of incorporating too many activities, and not allowing the students an opportunity to do something with the learning materials. Christina has a full programme of contributory activities every week, except week 7 when there is an exam. Perhaps there could also be more variety of activity and some room for reflection – there is little evidence of any reflective activity, most effort seems focussed on contribution and participation. Everything is individually assessed; maybe there is also scope for group work, enhancing the social aspects of learning, within this particular learning community, utlising a wider variety of methods.( Lehmann and Chamberlin, 2009) Another strength is demonstrated In relation to how the course is structured to be facilitated, and the activities Christina builds in, there is definitely an attempt to build a learning community, to facilitate an authentic learning environment (Oliver, Herrington and Thomas, 2006). Given the diverse students studying this course – military and traditional students, spread out across the world, mostly working adults with families, who would never meet face-to-face, there exists a huge challenge to meet their online needs – to take account of time zones, availability to be online etc. The use of asynchronous discussion boards is clearly a good mechanism to enable contribution across the world, and learners can choose their, “teachable moments” (Conrad and Donaldson ,2010). It is not clear if these students have studied in this way before, but, as this is term three, that is perhaps a possibility. Christina, however, spends a lot of time explaining the mechanics of the course – discussion forum contributions, reading assignments, home assignments, explaining her standards eg number of contributions, when you should make them, and how the collaboration should work. This discussion is helpful as often initial experiences in online learning communities can be overwhelming - the sheer learning curve of using the new tools can get in the way of deep learning; focus instead is on mastering the technology, Conrad and Donaldson (2010) One key weakness of the course is a poor attempt to link the key Learning outcomes to assessment or learning activities. More specifically, the learning outcomes total eighteen and are presented as a list. Biggs and Tang (2007) suggest that five or six learning outcomes are the optimum number, to enable successful alignment to teaching and learning objectives and to assessment tasks. Christina is ambitious in her breadth of course objectives, but perhaps falls into the trap Gardener (1993) suggests -, “the greatest enemy of understanding is coverage... if you are determined to cover a lot of things, you are guaranteeing that most kids will not understand, because they haven’t had time to go into things in depth, to figure out what the requisite learning is..” The sheer breadth of the course also suggests that it has veered towards what Biggs and Tang (2007) call, a curriculum, "a mile wide and an inch deep" Within the course documentation, Christina doesn’t show any linkages of the learning outcomes to objectives or to the assessments. The student would probably also be unclear about how they could achieve a good grade, an essential element of engagement according to Biggs and Tang (2007) - the learning outcomes should explain the learning, but the student should also be quite clear about how to do them well. Another potential weakness of the course structure lies in what Oliver et al (2006) suggest is pivotal in providing an authentic learning environment for blended learning, - strong support from the tutor, which was certainly Christina’s intent, but perhaps it wasn’t quite what was achieved. An example of this was the high levels of contribution by the students, often daily, and therefore was she found herself unable to keep up with the very activity she had facilitated. Converting this course from its previous format of face-to-face has clearly been a challenge to Christina, it also comes across that this is perhaps the first time it has been delivered. In the course a wide range of communication methods have been used – perhaps more than is helpful? The sheer variety could probably confuse the student when they start, but the narrow focus on contribution via boards might also frustrate, and perhaps favour those who can write succinctly, limiting the development of knowledge and skills around the subject area.  Tutor Experience  The key issue we decided to consider was the tutor experience within the development and delivery of this course. This was interesting at a few levels – the course had been adapted from a face-to-face delivery mode, it was completely online, and also the curiosity around how to develop and run a course to such a diverse, worldwide group. What did that mean for the e-moderator role? One issue that clearly affected the e-moderator role was the sheer level of interactivity within this course- Christina set this very high at the start. The expectation was that each student should use the discussion boards 2 -3 times per week. . The reality was that they contributed much more; she appeared to open up a whole other way of communicating to the group. The difficulty with this level of interaction arose because the tutor had stated that she would respond and moderate the discussions – this became a daily task, and in her course evaluation she admits that she felt she hadn’t responded enough, despite reassuring the students she had read all of their contributions. Maybe a review of the scale of contribution would be helpful. The group itself is quite diverse, and spread throughout the world, so maybe they unintentionally used the discussion board to compensate for that, to develop a sense of who they all were, creating some social linkages, not just course ones.A separate facility for this may help, or a streamlining of the number of contributions expected and ultimately assessed. Christina was very explicit in her role as e-moderator in trying to “set the stage” for the course (Palloff and Pratt, 2003). Her management of the VLE, paying attention to the timing of released materials, using a variety of tools – boards, conference spaces, informal spaces, certainly provided the students with a framework for the course to “work”. Palloff and Pratt (2003) suggest the success of this element, then allows the virtual student to understand their role in their learning via engagement with the other students in their group, and with the tutor. <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">Conrad and Donaldson (2010) argue that online communication often takes longer than face-to-face, and that this should be allowed for in the course plan and related activities. Discussions need at least a week to develop. As an e-moderator, Christina gave a very structured outline of how the course should run, maybe she didn’t quite take into consideration these elements, due to her inexperience, or perhaps her poor translation of key activities from the face-to-face delivery previously undertaken of the course.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">Learning outcomes
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">The use of 'chunking'-.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">The level of interactivity with material and with instructor and students- ie is it daily interactions with instructor or student- or self-paced with no interaction?
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">To what extent is it structured to be facilitated?
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">How are different activities structured/used to present opportunities for developing knowledge and skills?
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">The rubic for any reflective activities
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">The accessibility and differentiation of learning activities
 * <span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">What recommendations would we offer? **


 * <span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">Reviewing the course structure – aligning the learning outcomes with the learning materials and assessment
 * <span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">Consider widening the methods of contribution to the course – these appear to be all individual and written – is there a possibility of verbal input via podcasts etc?
 * <span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">Changing the weekly activities to have some variety of activities, not the same format for 13 weeks
 * <span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">Get some additional help for the setting up / monitoring of the activities, or review tutor expectations of personal inputs/ responses
 * <span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">Build in some group work, allowing for more intimate interactions and collaboration, rather than within the group of 25

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">Lehmann, K. & Chamberlin, L. (2009) //<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">Making the move to elearning. Putting your course online. // Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Co  <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">Biggs,J. and Tang C,. (2007) //Teaching for Quality Learning at University// Buckingham: Open University Press/Society for Research into Higher Education. (Third edition) p82 <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">Gardener H W (1993) Educating for understanding, //The American School Board Journal,// July ,20-24 <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">Palloff, R and Pratt, K (2008) Assessing the online learner: resources and strategies for faculty. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">Oliver, R., Herrington, J., and Thomas, R. (2006) Creating authentic learning environments through blended learning approaches. In C. Bonk and C. Graham (eds.) The handbook of blended learning: global perspectives, local designs. San Francisco: Pfeiffer. Chapter 36 pp. 502-515 <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif';">Conrad, R.M., and Donaldson, J.A. (2010) Engaging the online learner: activities and resources for creative instruction. San Francisco: John Wiley and Sons.