Online, Distance & Blended Learning

This has been an interesting week of learning for me. And already it’s given me ideas on how I might change the course I teach. I have been struggling to keep up with the work because it’s a busy time. This has made me think about how that must feel for a learner who is doing a more demanding course – the impact on feeling part of things, trying to squash it in etc.

I have liked the way we are being encouraged to consider from the outset how this all might feel for the learner. I found the post-its about emojis interesting. I felt a bit differently to what seemed to be the majority view. I guess it comes back to how they are received. For me they are a way of trying to encourage, maybe connect and a quick way to ‘do tone’. At the start of the course I teach we’d done a ground rules exercise and emojis were a hit 🙂

Looking forward to learning more!!

Fiona

It’s a revolution! The way we access entertainment is changing radically.  Once, the likes of EastEnders was cutting edge with astronomical viewing figures; now we see the rise of Game of Thrones and Netflix.  We have audience/actor interaction, we have on-the-move viewing, we have fan zones.

What has that got do with the serious business of educating our future nurses?  Surely that should be about imparting information so that care can be delivered safely.  Well yes, except care is not “delivered” any more (with the exception of a small proportion of all the care processes that occur).  Care is largely about involving and empowering patients and families; it’s about shared decision-making and supporting self-care.  This is partly driven by the need to democratise and personalise care, but also by the shifting nature of health and disease. The modern nurse needs to be able to deliver safe, technical, procedural care, but also to work within complex multi-disciplinary teams and networks and  to support patients with complex conditions and lives. In addition, the evidence behind that care is progressing on a daily basis.  So the modern nurse needs to continuously work with information from a wide range people and sources.  Teaching nurses how to sit in lecture theatres will not meet these learning needs.

In addition, nursing students are frequently returners to education, have family responsibilities, have to work to pay the bills and have to work around placements.

Supporting nursing students to develop the skills they will need to work within communities of learning and to be independent learners is a way forward.  Having that anchoring point of face-to-face teaching is valued by students and teachers alike, but providing a blended learning approach which gradually shifts them towards independent learning, developing their skills and confidence, could help to prepare them for career-long learning.  This approach may help them to cope with the multiple demands on their time and focus, but would have to be person responsive and engaging.

This is my first go at a blog so don’t expect anything in the least bit interesting! I have a bit of catching up to do for this course but hope to get up to speed very soon. I was sorry to miss the webinars, I could not free up time for the appropriate slots. I have never experienced a webinar, the nearest I have got to it was a skype type group tutorial for another course and I didn’t find it very helpful. It feels very disjointed to me to speak to people I cannot see and then add the lag and technological failings and it was a bit of a disaster! I hesitate to mention technological failings as my laptop is a sensitive soul and it might decide to break down.

So yes, that’s it really. If I ever have anything remotely interesting to say, I will let you know.

I haven’t blogged before either and in a Luddite kind of way don’t feel too comfortable with it. I have never engaged much with social media/Facebook/Twitter etc as I find the blurring between what (I think) should be private/public very troubling in general – although I know I need to engage more from an academic/professional point of view. So that has put me off blogging (and I am not sure how public this blog is anyway).

So back to reflections on Week1.

I set up an online course (badly) about 5 years ago and have never felt comfortable with it. It does not evaluate well either. I thought it would be replaced before now (but that’s another story). I am running another online course for the first time this semester. So I badly need this training.

The first course is basically just a load of stuff that the students need to read. There are four online sessions that I record but not many students turn up in person.They record a presentation half way through the  course as one of their assignments and this works quite well (they e mail me a PowerPoint recording). But I have minimal interaction with them apart from this (which I know is not good).

Week 1 has given me a few pointers which I can use.

I set up an Introductions discussion for the first course – as Ros did. I know this sounds very elementary and I should have done it before – but I generally did Introductions during the first online sessions (although of course not everyone came. Doh!).

I have set up two extra online sessions for help with student assignments and have asked them to post questions on the Linoit board so I can prepare answers before the sessions. No questions posed yet though – but it’s another point of interaction to get students to engage.

The webinar was very useful. I liked the poll and the students being able to write down thoughts and I will definitely use this to enhance the online sessions.

I am also in Week 5 of the second course, running for the first time. This takes the form of traditional lectures. delivered online and recorded, with a follow-up session the following week. This course is different from the first as I have tried to minimise stuff within the Canvas site that students need to read, but have two set text books (that are available online) and I give students work to do between sessions. Again, I am looking forward to the next ‘lecture’ where I will try to make it more interactive. I have also now used Linoit on this course too.

So, yes, this is all very basic. But I am feeling more positive that my online courses can be improved with just a little bit of extra effort.

I am a big fan of university campuses so, while I appreciate its importance and am glad it exists for other people, online learning has never been appealing for me. The discussions this week have helped me think a bit more about the sources of that resistance.

I found it interesting that many people in the class mentioned the ability to do things at your own pace and to fit studying around other commitments as a key advantage of online learning. One of the reasons I haven’t really been much of an online learner is because I’ve never had to fit my studies or work around anything else. Because I have no other commitments, I think I work better if learning is structured with set times. Unless I’m in a scheduled activity, I always feel I should be doing something else more urgent instead. From a teacher’s perspective, I also struggle to compartmentalise online-based work. This is a well-known aspect of connected working lives, where work expands to fill time way beyond office hours. Since there is always more work you could do online (design more activities! respond to more posts! send out some links! create a website! and so on and on), then having the opportunity to work online just means having the perceived obligation to work all the time. I thought about that as I saw Ros responding to our discussion posts.

Last semester my class had a student blog, and it was easy to see that the more I interacted with student posts, the more responsive they were; however, it was impossible for me to keep up with it. In comparison, I can prepare a lecture or a seminar, and deliver it, and know that there isn’t anything else I can do after that point. There are boundaries to that work, which I find harder to see when working ‘at my own pace’ ‘in my own time’. Thus I really appreciated the webinar, because it showed me how remote co-presence could work, and it had a clearly bounded time frame.

To finish up on a related thought about labour: One risk of designing learning to accommodate the busy lives of students is that it removes incentives to campaing for their right to be students. As much as we support parents, carers, and other workers to be able to access higher education, we should also demand better maintenance grants, subsidised accommodation, and no tuition fees, in order to reduce the need for students to work.

At the end of the first week of learning about on-line learning, I have been thinking about the challenges and opportunities for using social media within a global network of students. For the developer of learning materials, materials will need to use international case studies, and various methods (chat boxes, webinars, etc) can be used to encourage student exchange of experience. Use of video can enhance impact.

With increasing awareness of the dangers of social media creating an echo chamber of distorted and extreme views, I feel the need to harness social media in digital learning to do the opposite; to break down barriers amongst people, to enhance understanding about different cultures and perspectives.

In my view, online learning is the way of supporting off-line learning with technologies being able to connect between tutors and students. Distance learning is the alternative of face to face learning in order to support students who have difficulties participating in the class because of the distance between teaching places and students’ base. To cover the pros and cons of the above learning systems, blended learning is the combination structure of face to face learning, online learning, and distance learning.

We can identify types of learning depending on situation and technology, but I think it does not necessary to identify those in the real learning project because each learning style complements merits and demerits of them. I think each part has complementary relations covering technical limitations and learners’ demands. 

According to the increase in online learning needs, it would happen some etiquette issues in online learning. Tutors have to teach carefully considering learners’ different situations and views, and also learners are required to concentrate on the class and send feedback to tutors for improving the next class. 

In terms of feedback, some learners are satisfied with the standard of online-learning and others complain about the efficiency of online learning. Therefore, tutors always need to consider the purpose of online learning and effective delivery ways for learners. Regarding subsidiary ways, I think the webinar is supporting students’ interactive process in online learning. 

Most of all, the important thing is what subjects are more suitable for online learning and how to deliver those projects to learners effectively.

In the end, online learning will be developed qualitatively, quantitatively via diverse measures and learners’ reflections.

A reflection on the use of emojis by lecturers

After reviewing the ‘post-it’ comments on the course, I found my own views challenged – should I change my view on our (lecturers) use of emojis?

So, I conducted an unscientific survey of my 3 teenagers (aged 14,16&18).

In response to the question “would you want your lecturer / teacher to use emojis in any type of written communication ?” the answer was a resounding NO. Not being content with a pure binary answer of 100% no, I continued in search or their reasoning: #1 “you don’t want them to be your friend”

#2 “it’s a bit weird”

#3 ” because a lecturer/ teacher is a students superior and shouldn’t try and on their level, on the other hand a simple smiley face at the end of a message or lecture is ok but nothing too often or dramatic”

So, pretty clear from the Macdonald family then…

Stepping back from this, my view is that we do need to be careful to communicate clearly though, especially as the visual cues are lacking in most online communication. It is therefore vital that I recognise that my words may be interpreted a different way to the way in which I intend, so I must be very careful when I interact with students to minimise this.

In a different setting (for example a sports coaching forum online), I would be perfectly happy to use emojis.

So, it seems like the context of the communication is key and that the student expectation of the lecturer has to be borne in mind.

Hi Everyone,

My name is Margot Buchanan and I work part-time in the Communications, Media and Culture Department. As a mature student, I studied English and Media as an undergrad, then completed an MSc in Media Research and followed that with a PhD – also in CMC. Since then, (and before), I have headed seminars, supervised dissertations and worked with students in Vietnam both in person and online. I have always joked that the department will have to take me to the university gates and push me out!

I am very much looking forward to this course, as online and distance learning is a great way to reach people who may, for one reason or another, be unable to physically attend university. It opens the door to so many opportunities.

I look forward to ‘meeting’ my fellow students getting down to work!

Margot

Digital learning creates an opportunity to reach a student body thousands of times bigger than through class room teaching. Are Universities geared to embrace the opportunity, or will the logistics of accrediting and assuring learning at scale prove to be too big a challenge? In my field of older people’s care, the most important sources of support comes from family members, health care assistants and paid care workers, all without formal professional qualifications. It is estimated that there are 54 million health care assistants world wide, about three times as many paid care workers and, in the UK alone, over 6 million family caregivers. Digital learning creates the opportunity to share insights derived from academic research into how to deliver person centred care for older people, to empower these groups to “Be the Difference” in older people’s care. We need to embrace the opportunity, sharing the secrets we hold within our temples of knowledge.