Online_Distance Ed BOF Summary

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Last updated: Aug 06, 2010 by Former user (Deleted)Version comment
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NOTE: Please review but I encourage anyone interested to add comments (and join the discussion) on the T&L Distance Ed Subgroup Brainstorming page and not here. --RC 6/23/10

Below are the key themes and questions that emerged out of the BOF and side conversations.
If you have any comments or questions do not hesitate to contact: Rob Coyle

Summary

Expanding OpenEdPractices to include an Online/DE Repository

(Randy from rSmart volunteered to help with the website.)

  • Sharing Templates - effective course elements (syllabus, modules, video, text resources, assignments, etc.)
  • Examples - not just of live courses, but to include development tools, faculty training materials, etc.
  • Other Resources - articles, chapters, web resources, etc.
  • Teaching FAQ - means to set some standards
  • Developing effective group-work practices with Sakai tools, and accompanying pedagogy

Online Faculty Development - Collaborative Courses

  • Course on Effective Strategies for Designing/Developing an Online or Hybrid course
    • perhaps several core modules that are pedagogy based that are universal that anyone could use
    •  Quality Matters
  • Course on Effective Delivery of Online courses

Opening up a mechanism for free exchange of ideas unique to DE/Online

  • examples discussed: delivering content to areas with limited bandwidth (South Africa, India, submarines), flexible nature of course if students or faculty must travel (ex: get deployed)

Bridging some of the gap in terminology

  • What is online? What is hybrid? Distance Ed?
  • Program vs. Course?
  • Narrowing these down for consistency

Questions

Should we have a separate email list?

Should there be a DE/Online Track?

Is Online/DE subgroup of the whole T&L community? or it's own group?

What would be some short term goals to get moving? What are the next steps?

More discussion will take place on the Wed T&L Call and Rob will follow up with Josh Baron. 

Notes from Table 1 at BOF

 (Provided by Brian @ Marist - Thank you!)

 There was some discussion at our table about the desire for something of a Distance Learning Resource Library for faculty who are developing and teaching online courses. Those resources seemed to fall into one of four buckets:

1. Courses: We talked about two potential courses (which might or might not actually be one long course). One for designing and one for teaching effective online courses. Several of us are using QM and-though there are some standards that are US-centric-we thought that might be a jumping off point for this. Virginia Tech also uses a portfolio in their redesign efforts which might be useful here as well. Indiana, Marist, and Charles Stuart had all previously discussed the possibility of collaborating on the design of one or both of these courses.

2. Teaching FAQ: Videos and printed material providing tips for teaching challenges. These might be more tool-based. At our table, Johns Hopkins and Virginia Tech seemed to be developing (in some part) these resources. We had also discussed that-while this might be counter to the idea of a collaborative development model-basing these on school-specific evaluations might be helpful. That way, faculty who saw that they were performing poorly against some standard on their evaluations might be able to find resources that helped them meet that standard.

3. Examples and Templates: Virginia Tech had attended a presentation by somebody in South Africa (not sure if it's NW or Capetown) who had started assembling a set of examples of effective course elements (video, text resources, assignments, etc.). Perhaps we could work off of that and open it up?

4. Additional resources: articles, chapters, etc. Might we give preferential posting to members of the Sakai community as we develop this library?

In terms of next steps, it seems like there is probably enough here that a Distance Education Resource working group might be valuable to develop and set up a plan for maintaining this type of library. Do we want to start this small at first or open it up (my gut tells me it would probably end up being a subset of the T&L group). Maybe if a small group of us got together over the next few weeks to come up with a vision we might have a better understanding of exactly what we need as we bring this to the whole community?