Small group for distance learning

[KimLesley]

Hi Tom,

Yes, I’m doing an MA in Online and Distance Education with the OU and all the modules so far have been completely online.  We work through course materials on the web page, do activites such as research or developing an artefact and then there are forum discussions, blogs to write and respond to, wikis for collaborative work and online meetings via Elluminate.  It’s been a great way to learn and I’ve learned a lot.  The main difference with a MOOC though is that we are arranged into tutor groups of about 12 and so we very quickly build a good group relationship.  We also have a tutor we can contact via the forum or email.  The tutor also marks the assignments and provides feedback and learning points.  One things they do to get groups to gel quickly is an early collaborative activity and then a group discussion on the forum to reflect on the experience.  My aim with this MOOC is to join a couple of groups and really stick to them as much as possible.

 

[KimLesley]

Hi Trish

I’m a fellow AL with the OU tutoring on social sciences and environment modules.  I use Elluminate all the time and am also a trainer – it’s worth persevering as it can be a great tool.  We are moving to Collaborate soon and it’s probably even more straighforward

[Stuart Allan]

Hi everyone, I’d like to join this group too.

I work on producing distance learning courses for business education. (Although I should say that my background is in publishing, rather than academia.) Most of our course materials are text-based (printed text, e-book and online cases/MCQs); we’re looking to increase students’ sense of engagement and help them with conceptual bottlenecks by developing additional e-learning resources.

It’s been interesting putting myself in the position of a student again, and particularly to experience how overwhelming it can be to assimilate lots of textual information from lots of different sources. As Kari says, the smaller communities of practice could be a really useful peer-to-peer forum though.

Looking forward to getting to know you all over the next few weeks.

[Tom Buckley]

@karl_rasmussen i like the time difference. It means there’s always some things happening all the time. I tend to get a bit locked on to things so it keeps me interested. Realistically most people in the UK will watch the recorded webinar purely because actually in the middle of the day is kind of when everything else happens at work!

[James Kerr]

I am interested in the stats of how many attended the webinar live (I was there live at 7:30 am in the US and there were about 110 by my recollection) and how many watch the recording.  I would also compare those numbers against the number of registered participants for the MOOC, and against those who are actively participating so far.

Watching the participation rates of MOOCs as the course progresses is an interest of mine.

[Kari Rasmussen]

Hi Tom, for me it is more a matter of feeling a bit out of sync, mind you this is magnified right now as I figure out how to participate in my doctoral residential in Lancaster from home – I think I’ll be quietly engaged at 1 in the morning for a few days 🙂

I think the key for distance learning design is to recognize this if you are attempting to draw a global student population – recording of sessions is key and if it is something you wish them to participate in then perhaps running it a few times at various times of the day and during the week – more work but likely the only way.

Kari

[James Little]

At the risk of making this group too large I would like to join this group too.

In my previous role I used to support, design and encourage engagement with three distance-learning Masters courses in nursing and midwifery for over five years – so I’ve seen quite a lot of changes over that time – ultimately resulting in the debate re-igniting with trying to understand how MOOCs may or may not be an enhancement or challenge to ‘traditional’ VLE-based distance learning.

[tunners78]

Does anyone have experience of a happy medium between moocs and relatively simple enhancement of course material to good effect ? I would love to know more from those with experiences in such areas, as I and very new to the concept of course design and teaching structure in distance learning.

[Megan Kime]

It’s tricky isn’t it – especially as individuals like to work at different times of the day. For something like this, and other MOOCs, which I guess for a lot of people is ‘extra-curricular’ they may be more likely to participat outside of work hours.

The time zone issue couple with working students is why we’ve avoided any ‘live’ sessions in our distance learning course so far, and have stuck with asynchronous communication. But webinars etc do add much needed interaction and engagment, so its a balancing act.

[Megan Kime]

Could you give an example of what you mean by ‘relatively simple enhancement of course material’?

[Andy Turner]

I’d like to join your group Megan. I haven’t figured out yet what a small group is in this context and whether this group is full…

[Megan Kime]

I’m not sure either to be honest Andy. I don’t know whether this group was just for the induction period or whether we’ll carry on using it for the remainder of the course, I guess that’s up to us really, and given that we haven’t really got much discussion going yet it would be a shame for it to be finished with quite yet! The more the merrier!

[Andy Turner]

That would be interesting I agree. I logged in late to the Webinar, but we had a small but perhaps important interaction there… My thinking is that every course is different and every cohort of participants is too. What I have been impressed with so far is how the course information has been adapted based on participant feedback. I wonder how in your opinion this course compares to other MOOC branded courses you have participated in… 🙂

[Andy Turner]

One thing I’m wondering is how to link to specific posts from the Webinar text chat… In my experience with other such set ups, unless someone saves this information and throws it back online it often gets lost in the ether…

[Andy Turner]

Well the good news is that the text chat is stored and made available as a text file: http://octel.alt.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Webinar_week_0_chat.txt

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