Hello, my name is Roger Harrison and I am a senior lecturer on a fully online distance learning course in public health at University of Manchester, UK (www.manchester.ac.uk/mph). I’ve been a course unit leader and tutor on this programme for about seven years now, and developed and written three new units as part of this. The international student base, many working across a range of public health organisations and settings makes the work interesting and highly rewarding at times. From an online learning design aspect, it raises a number of important questions. For example some people wishing to take the course will not have good internet connections, and many will be working and with different time zones for international students – thus the balance of synchronous and asynchronous activity, amongst other things.
Recently I’ve become more interested in pedagogy for online vocational training and have been thinking through a learning aim I’m calling “In Time Learning” which follows on from what used to be called Just In Time learning.
I’ve been a student on two MOOCs in the past and am likely to be involved in writing one hopefully this year as well. I find the number of students on a MOOC quite daunting, because I want to try and read all the postings – of course this is impossible. I also find the more organic approach challenging too – having had so many years as a student and then as a tutor on more structured teaching programmes. But then I suppose a MOOC is structured but just in a different way.
This is my first blog page so apologies if it is not too trendy but perhaps over time I’ll get chance to make it more appealing!
Hi, I'm a senior lecturer in public health, at the University of Manchester. For seven years I have been course unit leader on a fully online distance learning programme in public health/primary care. I've been designing & running course units for this, using Blackboard now. I work with other lecturers alongside a e-learning team. Having students all over the world helps give an interesting perspective to the teaching of public health and to using online learning. I am keen to learn more about pedagogical principles and development for technology enhanced learning, and how to maximise the student learning experience. More recently I have become involved in developing proposals and hopefully design and running of a MOOC. I am also interested in exploring greater use of OERs for public health and would like to pursue my research interest/hypothesis I am calling "Just In Time Learning". But with a PhD already alongside other things, my friends are trying to keep me away from more studying. I am a convert for free-education across the world, which is frustrating at times working in a university which clearly needs to bring in income too. But massive shifts have taken place with Web 2 and democratic education movements. I would like to find out if there is a local network / northern network for TEHL in higher education, and if not, perhaps we could start one.