Timing and practicalities

Please note that next week’s webinar will be on Tuesday 4 June at 12:30pm British Summer Time. As always, we’ll be using Blackboard Collaborate. For help prior to the webinar and some frequently asked questions please visit our help page.

To join the webinar please follow this link after 12 noon on Tuesday.

Maximising learning for minimum cost, but who’s the online learner? iTunes U as an example

We looked at iTunes U  a couple of times already (in Weeks 4 and 5, occasionally arousing some controversy) as a repository of digital educational material provided by universities and other institutions. iTunes U has delivered over 1 billion downloads, providing unprecedented free public access to educational content for learners and teachers worldwide.

Tuesday’s webinar will present the potential of iTunes U to deliver free educational content and how this content is being used, offering the first full profile of the iTunes U learner and their practices and opinions of the materials they download. The data was gathered through a large survey (over 2000 responses) carried out over two years using the iTunes U site from The Open University, the UK’s most successful iTunes U provider in terms of numbers of downloads (over 60 million) as well as amount of collections uploaded (over 400). The session will conclude with ideas about how to introduce the use of free iTunes U materials to teaching, either in the classroom or as self-access resources.

About the presenter

Fernando Rosell-Aguilar is Lecturer in Spanish at the Open University, United Kingdom, where he writes teaching materials and chairs the presentation of courses with 800+ students. He also coordinates the provision of materials from the OU department of languages on iTunes U. In 2004 he received the Open University teaching award for his online learning materials. His research focuses on online language learning, mainly podcasting as a teaching and learning tool, CMC learning environments (such as audio and video conferencing) and digital literacy. He has published his research in international journals such as Computers and Education, Language Learning and Technology, ReCALL, CALL, JaltCALL and Reading Matrix, and regularly presents at international conferences.

Enhancement strategies

On the original Course Materials page, we billed Week 8 as “Maximum learning for minimum cost”. Reflecting the fact that enhancing learning has more dimensions than just getting more bang for your buck, we’ve changed the title to “Enhancement strategies”. There is a still a strong focus on efficiencies of scale, widening access, extending the reach of learning opportunities and reducing costs — but also a recognition that enriching and deepening learning and the learners’ experience is an important aspect of Technology Enhanced Learning.

No new bookmarks in this newsletter

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

If you missed all or part of the week 7 webinar, the materials from the session are now available on the Course Materials page, which is updated weekly with materials from each live webinar.

Gráinne Hamilton, this week’s lead tutor, has blogged about the session:

In the webinar, Nancy covered the impact of the contexts we teach and learn within, considering the ‘we, me, many&rsqu
o; – groups, individual, networks. Much of the discussion focused on how to move towards interaction and developing peer support online. Some of the participants described examples of courses they want to develop more peer-to-peer interaction and experiential learning within, sometimes in international contexts, and Nancy and the group came up with a range of suggestions that could help. These included:

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