When we designed ocTEL we reasoned that anyone who was still with us in the three to four weeks at the back end of the course would, by definition, be fairly earnest and committed to Technology Enhanced Learning. Therefore we created activities that would give you the opportunity to relate the areas of study to your own circumstances and embed them in your practice. Hence the practical activities, action plans, case studies.

There hasn’t been much take-up of these activities so far (kudos to James Kerr for being the exception). Fair enough. We’d like to understand, if we can, a little more about why that is. A first hypothesis — with the benefit of hindsight, and a little of our own experience — is that anyone who is still with us in the three to four weeks at the back end of the course is, almost by definition, fairly tired and short on spare time…

Is that right? Are there other reasons? We’d really like feedback, especially from those stalwarts of you who have stayed the course, so that we can adapt the design of the activities if necessary. For example, is it the case that the action plans and case studies are interesting-but-not-urgent, so you might make a note to come back to them at a time when they’re directly relevant to a phase of your work? Or are these activities simply asking too much, so we should consider something simpler instead?

At this stage it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to make changes to this run of the course, but we’d love to know what you think so we can amend our approach in ocTEL 2.0, if there is such a thing (we are reasonably optimistic that there will be). Read more >>

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Last week’s theme on ocTEL focused on a fundamental question in Technology Enhanced Learning: why are we doing this? In what ways is TEL better than other forms of learning? Many remain suspicious that it isn’t better, so we need good, robust answers to this challenge. If we’re saying learning is enhanced, what kinds of enhancement could we, and should we, be aiming for?

Contributions are still coming in on these question, so perhaps it’s premature to declare a ‘wrap-up’ — I certainly don’t want to discourage further thoughts — but Week 9 on managing TEL projects and risks is now under way, so a little clearing of the ground is in order.

The first activity kicked off with by encouraging you to review some recent examples of new TEL models that purport to make learning cheaper and/or more accessible, with a view to identifying implications for your own teaching and learning practice. Much of the debate tended to start from an assessment of whether these models are either inspiring or irrelevant.

Joseph Gliddon has a natty technique with his to-camera video blogs, demonstrated to good effect in his slightly dystopian extrapolation from Open Educational Resources to widespread job losses in higher education (do check the comments as well, presenting a few different sides of the argument, including a startup business: “We question the added value of a university and think that there’s more to e-learning than watching one-way video. We can do better and we will do better.” Hmmm, well at least there’s one bit of that we can all agree on.) Read more >>

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Join our weekly webinar at 12.30 on Wednesday 12 June, via Blackboard Collaborate 11.

You can access the Week 9 webinar via this link.

This week’s webinar

In this week’s webinar we have two presenters from Imperial College London who will discuss their experiences of project management. Julie Voce will introduce a two-year institution-wide project to review and implement the new College virtual learning environment. Lisa Carrier will give an overview of a three-year Department of Medicine project to create and evaluate a blended multidisciplinary postgraduate programme. Both presentations will introduce the projects and the methodologies used and discuss topics covered during week 9 such as planning, risk assessment, key successes and failures, and lessons learned.

About the presenter

Julie Voce is the E-learning Services Manager at Imperial College London. Prior to this she was the Learning Technologies Support Co-ordinator at UCL and a Research Assistant in Computer Assisted Language Learning at UMIST. For ALT, Julie is involved with ALT’s Online Newsletter (http://newsletter.alt.ac.uk/), the ocTEL MOOC and was Co-Chair of the 2012 ALT conference. In addition she is Chair of the UCISA Academic Support Group (http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/en/groups/dsdg/asg.aspx) and is involved in the biennial Technology Enhanced Learning survey (http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/bestpractice/surveys/tel.aspx). Alongside her role at Imperial, she is in the second year of a PhD in Technology Enhanced Learning and E-Research at Lancaster University.

Lisa Carrier’s background is in psychology, pedagogy and management. Lisa has extensive teaching experience in Further and Higher Education, and in the last 8 years she has been involved in designing and promoting e-learning best practice in HE. In her current role as e-Learning Manager at Imperial College London, Lisa helps academic and clinical professionals design postgraduate blended curriculum. She has managed a number of projects in Postgraduate Medicine, which have become showcases for innovative education, and received awards for enhancing student experience. Lisa is a qualified coach and an experienced manager, with specific interest in change management and organisational learning.

We will make the recording of this session available via the Course Materials page.

Webinar help and FAQ’s

For help prior to the webinar and some frequently asked questions please visit our help page.

If you have any questions contact octel-tech@alt.ac.uk.

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Thanks to everyone who took part in ocTEL’s weekly webinar yesterday afternoon.

If you missed all or part of the week 8 webinar, the materials from the session are now available on the Course Materials page, which is updated weekly with materials from each live webinar.

Join us next Wednesday at 12:30 BST for the week 9 webinar on keeping things on track and cheating Murphy’s Law. Check the Course Materials page for more information.

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