Well this is going to be a very short post. Not because I am not interested in the final topic on evaluation, but because I am busy preparing two conference presentations I am giving in just over a week. I hope to catch up though on week ten materials, because I am particularly interested in evaluation. My background is in developing randomised controlled trials for health care interventions, and I am encouraged to find some RCTs evaluating technology enhanced learning interventions. So I will be reading some of the materials in this week.
And a big thanks to the ocTEL team – I’ve submitted comments about the MOOC overall. The main things I found was that it was too much for too long. I’d love to have had the time but I don’t. In future, perhaps it would be helpful to break the course down into sections, so that one would study for a few weeks then have a break. But I have certainly learnt some very helpful things overall. Whether I will be able to introduce those into my work remains to be seen.
Thanks too for those who commented on my blog and other postings, and to other students who presented postings for me to read and comment on aswell.
regards
Roger
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.