Professional development for teaching online

Dr Janet MacdonaldThe Open University in Scotland

12th International Conference on Distance Education Quality, Moscow, Dec 2010

• Flexible part-time study

• Largest University in the UK

• Over 570 courses

• 250,000 students

• Over 2 million have studied with OU

• 1 in 4 of UK’s part-time undergraduates are OU students

• 10,000 staff (8,000 part timers) 

The Open University (UK)

The OU in Scotland: 15,000 students

Population 5m

78,000 sq kilometres

790 islands

What do students need to be able to do?

How do we support their learning?

Who does this?

Listening, reading and sense making

(Course content)

Communicating and community

(Learning, belonging in groups)

Searching and researching

(Using online resources)

Writing and speaking

(Preparing assignments)

What do students need to be able to do?

Macdonald & Creanor (2010)

Reading andmaking sense of course content

- still mostly print

Course quiz

Communicating and community

- Mostly online using forums, wikis, blogs, synchronous

tools

Elluminate synchronous web conferencing

Writing and presenting

- assessments mostly online submission;

some courses have online assessment

Searching and researching

- most courses have links to

approved resources

How I do teach online?• Some anxious, others

terrified• Under skilled• 10000 staff• Highly motivated to learn• A significant quality issue

for the university

Online professional development:VLE Choices

Let’s start with the job..Intentions

Explaining course content

Strategies

Tutor contact; Learning activity on website

Tools

Synchronous conferencing; forum; online quiz; podcast

Learning from peersVLE-Choices: Teaching difficult concepts

Visit an online tutorial in Elluminate

Activity using Audacity

Activity checklist

Automated certificate production

CohortSelf

Study Total

2009-10

135 (58%) 96 (41%) 231

3%

33%

43%

20%

1%0%2%

10%

65%

21%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

Complete ignorance Mostly ignorant Slightly aware Very aware Completely aware

(Mar 09 - June 10, n=107)

Start of course

End of course

Awareness of ways to support students using VLE tools

Which parts of the course were most helpful to you?

(106 respondents, 48% response rate)

Number of responses

Reflecting on intentions and strategies

35

63

96

Exchanging ideas with colleagues 40

Examples of good practice

Activities using the tools

Activities using the toolsBeing given the chance to try out various tools was the best part of this course as it's so difficult to see the possibilities until you are actually using them.

Seeing how others used the tools and then discussing my thoughts with others and gaining new perspectives.

Examples of use

The case studies are really useful, it's always an advantage to see what other

people have tried on similar courses - and to see what worked.

Peer support

It was useful to have the course in order to set aside dedicated time to look at the tools, and knowing that colleagues were doing the same so that we can discuss these together.

Making it work!

• Learning by doing activities and reflecting with others

• Peer learning: a sense of presence and community

• Near-synchronous activity• Activity checklist and certificate

OU in Scotland www.open.ac.uk/scotland