Introduction and BIG questions

[Shandell]

Hi all

By way of introduction I’m a lecturer in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Tasmania. I coordinate a first year first semester primary health care unit for nursing and paramedic students. The students are geographically distributed across four campuses.

I am new to TEL and feel very novice and at times like I’m flying blind. In an effort to foster student engagement and provide a range of learning and assessment opportunities, I’ve introduced some activities this semester which involve the use of technology including synchronous live streaming of lectures (recording people).

It has been challenging introducing these changes this semester as we have recently changed our online blackboard learning system and many of the things I would like to do are technically possible but they haven’t been done before. There are also approximately 700 students enrolled in the unit so even if 10% of students experience difficulties, it’s still a significant number of students.

I don’t feel at all confident using the “language” of elearning but through participation in this course I hope to develop a shared understanding and confidence in this area. I am daunted by the thought of undertaking this course in the middle of a very busy semester, however, I’m committed to learning more so I can better understand and improve the way TEL is incorporated into my teaching.

My BIG question really relates to evaluation – how do we know this works? I’m interested in evaluation not just in relation to the results, as in what research says about its effectiveness. I’m also interested in how we design evaluations and collect data that respond to the need to better understand what works and why and for whom and in what circumstances. This is both from an educator’s and a student’s perspective.

Thanks to everyone for sharing your experiences.

Shandell

 

 

 

 

[RachelHeathersh]

Hi Shandell,

I am very interested to read your post, I am also a lecturer in a school of nursing and midwifery at University Campus Suffolk in England. I am part of a course team who deliver the Preparation for Mentorship course for our registered practitioners who support and assess pre-registration nursing and midwifery students. I also am relatively new to TEL but want to utilise this as part of the learning experience particularly as most of our students are also employed and have competing demands so the need to be flexible and responsive to their needs is particularly important.

We have a very supportive educational technologist team at UCS and I am often linking with them. Your BIG question resonates with me but in addition to this I want to discover how to engage my busy collegues in this too. I also lead a Masters programme in Leadership and Service Innovation and am very interested in Design Science but haven’t had the chance to pursue this yet!

It’s good to ‘virtually’ meet you

Kind regards

Rachel

[eennever]

Hi Shandell

 

Good to see you in here. I am still finding my way around the MOOC a bit… I am gong to post re my big question soon.  Hello to Rachel too. I am with the Faculty of Health Science at the University of Tasmania based in Hobart and talk to Shandell up in Launceston a bit (they are about 200km apart). I am the Project Officer Teaching and Learning supporting (hopefully) staff like Shandell to explore TEL offerings. UTAS is looking at MOOCs as a public course “taster” option. I guess my biggest concern with some TEL is that it is sometimes introduced as “the next big thing” without being fit to purpose. As Shandell points put we have some rather large course numbers in internal units but UTAS is looking to attract over 10,000 into a new MOOC, while we still are trying to supprt people to use the new LMS Desire 2 Learn platform to its best advantage.

I guess I am not a “cutting edge” TEL user in many ways…but if you don’t try something you never learn. As far as motivating colleagues to use TEL it seems a common problem.

Look forward to catching up again in here.

Ellen

[Author]

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