Community aims

Welcome to our new group - Engaging Online Learning. 

This group has come into being at the request of Brenton Dansie (negotiated project with the Learning and Teaching Unit and ITEE 2009)  to address a disconnection between the online teachers in the Division. He knows that there is online teaching and learning out there, but the teachers and their experiences are not brought together in any organised way.  Would you agree with this perception?

The Dean would then look to us, as a group, to support with development activities, presenters, new PLE trials, apply for grants and awards - and could help shape a strategy for online teaching and learning for the Division in the future. 

To meet this we will start a blog-based Community of Practice (CoP) - this sketch from Nina Evan's whiteboard tells the story...

Therefore we have a few aims...

Primarily we are a Community of practice (CoP) that shares our experiences (good and bad) as teachers in the online environment based in the Division of ITEE. Using blog posts and tagging we will publish our practice and allow the community to interact with these experiences through comments. This will be used as an record of what is happening in the Division for reference for Brenton and newcomers to online teaching and learning.

We are able to apply to Brenton for funding for things like trials, seminar presenters etc. to have some fresh influence to the group.

We are also in a position to influence what is happening in the online teaching and learning arena in the Division by shaping our strategy - but this is secondary and long term aim. 

So welcome, please subscribe and stay connected!

Diana and Nina

P.S. To "subscribe" - add your email to the box in the right hand column called "Subscribe via Email" to get an email alert or use one of the RSS feed options to your browser, outlook or news reader. There is a second step - validation of your request by clicking on a link in an email, however this email often ends up in Junk mail folders!

YouTube lectures

Did you see this article about a UNSW academic using YouTube as his content provider?
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2009/03/04/1235842462189.html



Pity it doesn't really share what the students think of it - but it does emphasize the benefit of creating short pieces of content for the teachers - its re-usability - in this case, for high school students.

I remember a few years ago the sound of dropping jaws world wide when MIT announced that it was going to put all of its content freely available online - as it was the not the content that was the mark of the MIT experience, it was the learning activities that really made the difference. It is what the student does that is important.

Besides YouTube, iTunesU also provides good systems for distributing and organising content (audio and video) - see promotional video here. We need to factor this mobile dimension of learning into our thinking about delivery options.