Reflection on course dimensions based around Hill et al (2012)

[AliSheph]

I’ve posted my (somewhat lengthy) reflection at http://alicesadventuresinedtech.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/octel-activity-5-1-course-dimensions/

I found that as I thought more about it, this design process was like a tangled ball of wool that I was trying to unravel, with limited success.

[MariusJugariu]

Hi Alice,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. You mention “I like a fairly blank VLE template (sort of basics+)- which, happily, is what my institution goes for.  I find this leaves me with plenty of flexibility to enhance my VLE site to scaffold the uses I want to put it to during my courses.” in your blog post – I agree that the flexibility is good and a template should not limit teachers in any way. What about consistency across modules and overall student experience? What if you have an increasing number of students with dyslexia? Would the subject of your teaching influence in any way regarding your mention of “consistency/constraint”?

You mention screencating as an adaption to time and space constraints. Have you thought of doing webinar-type sesions that can be recorded so the students get more than your view, they also see potential questions interactions from those that were able to attend.

[SueFolley]

We are battling with this consistency/flexibility tension in terms of VLE use and what we have agreed is that certain elements must be consistent and present e.g. staff information, module documents, and assessment information – and that all staff keep the same labels for these in the menu so that there is some consistency across modules about what they are called and what these items contain. For the actual learning resources though we allow staff full flexibility to both organise these as they best fits their teaching practice and to add the elements they want in their design of modules. We also allow full flexibility in terms of styling/colour schemes (taking accessibility issues into consideration), as although we want some consistency for students, we don’t want all modules to look exactly the same, we want students to be clear as to which module they are in. What we really try and push though is clear organisation and signposting of materials for students. One of the biggest complaints we have had in the past is that students can’t actually find things. What may be obvious to staff members may not be for students. So we ask them to use folders to organise their materials to clearly identify contents whether that be by date order, topic, activity, whatever makes sense for their teaching approach.

[James Kerr]

From an institutional branding point of view, it makes sense for all online coursework and materials to have a consistent look and feel; however, the reality of it is many faculty don’t want to be constrained by style choices already made for them by a committee or non-academics.  Please allow me to play the institutional side; consistent interface choices means that resources can be designed and deployed from a central location, reducing redundancy and duplication of services.  When changes need to be made to a core set of templates, those changes can be made in one place.  Students have consistency throughout their courses, can find relevant institutional resources in the same place in every online environment, and faculty and instructional designers can concentrate more on content and teaching than design and mechanics of the course.

The flip side:  If it’s a clumsy or poorly designed interface, everything suffers from it.  Students will face the same interface in every course, with no significant differences in the look and feel.  This can lead to student apathy and boredom.  There may be content areas or courses that conflict with the singular design philosophy; are exceptions made for those courses?  Once exceptions are made for one, will they be allowed for many?

Better to have guidelines and best practices in place, style guides and resources required to be included in courses, rather than strict design mandates.  Allow for personalization and individuality, to a degree.

[AliSheph]

Hi everyone – I’ve been wanting to get back to this but I’ve been on a conference this week…getting some further teaching inspiration (and honing my pub quiz skills :)) !

While I like the relatively loose template I know that not everyone organises their VLE site in what I would see as an intuitive manner which is easy to navigate, or considers accessibility.   For example, I’ve seen jumbles of documents, files that are not named in a comprehensible manner etc.  So, I think guidance should be combined with a light touch audit and then suggestions to those staff whose sites aren’t in line with the guidance.  I’m sure this view would be controversial among some, but I think if we talk about consistency of student experience etc, that doesn’t mean ‘uniform’ but does mean some basic level of comparability between modules.

I had a mobile health check on one of my module sites recently to see how it would appear in the mobile app for Blackboard.  Even though I had not designed the site with this app in mind, the learning technologist told me it looked great, and there weren’t any changes I needed to make – I was quite surprised!

 

[ElizabethECharl]

Ali

I totally agree about having a light touch consistency in style in VLE so that students can navigate around it.  We have recently moved to Moodle and although our IT people tried to put this in place so as to give a consistent scaffold for our learners, lecturers have found it very difficult to accommodate it.  It is especially important for students with dyslexia to have this and it benefits all other learners too and you are correct that this also underscores the consistency in student experience.

[Megan Kime]

Thanks all, I’ve found this exchange really helpful. I can see both sides of the debate here – consistency and clarity is really important for the students, but a little freedom is valuable for teachers. In the absence of a template I think I’d like to see mandatory training for anyone populating VLE sites – but I’m aware that would be controversial, not to mention the resource implications…

My thoughts on this activity are at http://www.megankime.net/drivers-and-constraints-octel-5-1/

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