Hybrid Instruction

Hi Friends,

Now with the Open University of Sri Lanka poised for modernization, attention is being focused on development of on-line courses and on-line course delivery. I felt that those who are designing on-line courses would find this article on 'Hybrid Instruction' very interesting.

As our students are used to the traditional mode of face to face learning, it is natural that they would favour this mode of learning. However as the article states "Hybrid instruction, a combination of online and traditional classroom instruction is the latest trend in higher education", and indeed would be a teaching/learning mode which may go down well with Sri Lankan students and could be a good option to consider when designing courses.

This is just a thought which I wanted to share with you and I am sure you will find this article useful.

Here's the link.
http://www.worldwidelearn.com/education-articles/hybrid-education.html

Regards,

Shiranee

Evaluating On-line Learning

Hi friends,

I just came across this article on “Evaluating On-line Learning” and I thought of sharing it with you as I felt it might be of interest to you. Now that the OU is poised to step into the arena of on-line learning, evaluating the results of e-learning will naturally come into sharper focus. I am sure this article will help you to re-orient towards applying your current knowledge on evaluation to e- learning. Just copy and paste the link given below to access this interesting article by Clive Shepherd.

Happy reading!
Shiranee

www.fastrak-consulting.co.uk/tactix/Features/evaluate/evaluate.htm

Going 'e'

Hi friends,

As I have not had the opportunity to meet all of you personally, let me first introduce myself. I am Shiranee Dissanayake, the new Social Marketing & Community Animation consultant to the OUSL – CE project. I thought it would be nice if we got to know each other and interacted regularly on matters pertaining to our work at the OUSL, so that it would help me get an insight into the OUSL and its work through your valuable experience at this university.

Going ‘e’ has been discussed at many a forum associated with education and as you are already aware, the modernization process of the OU is now on its way. Once the systems are in place undoubtedly, life will become so much easier in terms of the work load and certainly more interesting, with on- line course design, delivery and learning coming on stream.

This crucial transition from ‘print-based’ to ‘online’ will naturally give way to a complete paradigm shift which will change the way we think, work and act in the future. If implemented effectively, it would not only improve the image and prestige of the organization but would also signal a bright future for the OU in terms and financial strength through the high marketability of its courses both here and abroad. Therefore, this is indeed an opportune moment to reflect, discern and act to put things right by doing away with old practices which have cramped your style so far and impeded progress by preventing you from giving your best for the betterment of our country through the democratization of higher education.

So I thought of sharing this article written by a friend of mine Dr. Gamini Padmaperuma who is an accomplished instructional designer himself. I am sure you will find it very meaningful to your current work.

Just go to the following URL (http://edriveeditorial.blogspot.com/) to read the full article. Don’t forget to give your comments and suggestions as I am looking forward to receiving them.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Shiranee

Bridging the Gaps Between Urban and Rural Sectors with e-Learning
by Dr. Gamini Padmaperuma

Flash Workshop Part 2 - Hands-On Flash for Education

We've completed both parts of our Flash training now. The second workshop was a day long and mostly presented by OUSL's newest trained Flash people - Rani, Ramiya and Pradeepa.

The Flash trainers did a lot of work behind the scenes preparing their teaching materials and learning about teaching methods. Afterall, they are technicians first and trainers second - Although 'forced' to train due to a contract they signed when they requested free tuition for an extensive Flash Course, they happily took on the challenge! And they did it well, I might add...in fact, I'm hoping the three will present more Flash workshops!

Here is a pic of our presenters:


OUSL is promoting lifelong learning at the university by first encouraging employees from all levels to participate in additional training and then, as part of the contract for getting free training, the new trainees are asked to provide a skills workshop for the university based on what they learned. So this is how Rani, Ramiya and Pradeepa, who are usually behind the computer, had to step forward and teach at the front of the room!

The topics we covered included:
1) Storyboarding your flash product – using planning tools to design your interactivity.
2) Getting around in Flash – The interface and terms to know
3)Getting to know the Tools and how they work
4) Setting Up Your Learning Object – (Timeline, Stage Properties, Simple Action Script)
5) Adding Navigation (buttons)
6) Adding Animation
7) Adding an image and Publishing your learning object to a web page

The Flash Handouts from the workshop are available by emailing ouslce@gmail.com

The group was small for the debut offering of the new Flash Trainers but I wasn't concerned since we had the right people in the room.The participants asked the right questions, were keen to experience all aspects of Flash and challenged the instructors just enough to give them a good teaching experience.

The idea of the "trained" becoming the Trainers is an excellent way to build capacity on campus - I'm looking forward to more flash work and training in the future from all who participated...on both sides of the computer!

First Audio Project Complete

Thanks to Nalin, Birendra, Arosha and Dr. George, we completed our first audio learning interactive.

We started out by thinking that an audio exercise might be a good way to personalize a sometimes dry and face-less subject - Research Methods. Nalin made up a script that mainly consisted of questions he would ask Dr. George. I asked him to prepare the questions from the students perspective - what would be the questions students have about the content. Nalin did an excellent job coming up with interview questions which we then sent off to Dr. George prior to the interview so that Dr. George could be well-prepared.

On the day of the interview, things went smoothly, Dr. George came well prepared and provided thoughtful, succinct and personalized answers to the all the questions. Nalin found a quiet spot on campus where the sound of air conditioners or traffic would not instill annoying background noise. Nalin used the sony digital voice recorder shown above which has proven to have a excellent recording abilities.


The next step for Nalin was to edit the audio so only the pertinent information was shared with the students and any "um's", "ah's", and long pauses were removed. Nalin was quick to learn the open-source audio editing software Audacity. Here are a few tutorials that will help anyone get started in audio editing with Audacity:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/manual-1.2/tutorials.html
http://www.tsof.edu.au/resources/sound/Support/tutorials.asp
http://teachdigital.pbwiki.com/podcasting

The last step was adding the audio to Moodle. This is where Birendra came in. We wanted a way for the students to EASILY access the audio. This meant not downloading it and playing it on an audio player that the student needs to find on their computer but rather using the internal flash audio player that Moodle supplies. Birendra used a host of sources to discover how to get the multimedia plug in to show up but of course, the most useful was: http://moodle.org/

I asked Birendra to make a screencast to explain the solution. You can view her tutorial on our wiki here: http://ouslce.pbwiki.com/f/as.swf (To keep the file small, Birendra created the screencast with no audio)

Here is what the audio activity looks like in Moodle:


If you're curious, you probably want to hear what the exercise sounds like. Here is a sample. 2min - 2.2 megs - mp3 (right click and save since Blogger does not have handy mp3 flash player). A special thanks to our office manager, Arosha, for lending her 'reporterly' voice to the audio session.

More about the Microbiology Educational Software

A few days ago, I posted an article about Geetha's Usability Testing of a Microbiology Software project. I want to share some additional information I received from Geetha - It helps us all to view the project from the developer's eyes. The following is an excerpt from the Geetha's email....


I produced this Interactive Multimedia for my M. Phil on ‘Development and evaluation of Interactive Multimedia to enhance distance learning in microbiology’ I used the Macromedia Director 8 software in producing this multimedia. Actually, I developed the product in my own, since it is part of my research project. Also there were not any trained personnel when I started this in 2001 and also it was something new to the University at that time.

Help
Initially, I got help from Dr Buddhi Weerasinghe (Director /ET) who was then my supervisor, on how to develop this kind of multimedia. At that time I was learning ‘Director 8’in my own referring the user guide.

Later, by participating the workshop on ‘Developing multimedia courseware for distance education’ organized by CEMCA (Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia) at OUSL, 2001, put me into the correct path on how to develop interactive multi media (IMM) using Director 8.

Also I got help from Rani Ponnamperuma (graphic artist/ET) on how to place the graphics on a screen. Mr. Nobel Perera who was in the English Dept. at that time did the narration, and the audio studio staff of the ET helped me in recording. Throughout the production, Dr Gayathri helped me a lot by giving valuable comments in the design and developmental process. Also my peers (in the Botany Department) gave their comments in improving the product.

I also participated an International workshop on ‘Interactive Multimedia on Distance and e-Learning’, at IGNOU - Indira Ghandi National Open University, New Delhi, India, organized by South Asian Consortium for Open and Distance Learning and Inter University consortium for TEFED in 2005. That training enriched me with the instructional design aspects of producing IMM.

Advice to Other Developers:
Designing phase is crucial in the production of IMM. Planning and commitment from the very beginning brings about a better outcome in the end. We have to plan on the ‘product’ as well as ‘time schedule’. It is very necessary to think why we need a multimedia when choosing a lesson to produce one, and why cannot other media support this content area. That is because lot of effort has to be put into it when producing one. When planning the product, development of good storyboards, though it is laborious, will make half of the work done. When writing the storyboards we have to think visually, because IMM is not to include a lot of text but it is more effective as a visual medium. Also we have to think in students’ point of view when scripting. So that it is advisable for the developer to mimic/imagine the students role, and also go to his/ her undergraduate student hood when he learned these concepts and the difficulties that s/he faced in understanding the concepts.

It is also advisable not to do it in a hurry in between the busy schedule of an academic. That will affect the building up of creativity into it. Lengthy programs might take the student off from the program, so that to make students actively involve with the IMM, interactivity should be build into it. I feel, if not very necessary it is not practical to use a lot of video clips in an IMM. Whether it is in a CD or on the web, when added too many video clips, access to the program will slow down.

Though the technology can provide a lot, and the developers are competent with the use of technology, it is not advisable to use all that they know. That is because; technology should not be cumbersome to our learners. In a developing country like Sri Lanka, our learner profile is very wide in competence to use the technology. Though we produce a good product, and if it is not acceptable, user-friendly to our learners it will become a total failure. Therefore, the navigation should be clear, the structure should be simple.

It is very necessary to carry out evaluations (developmental testing) with the stakeholders continuously (at least once) before final product is published. Though the academics are competent with subject matter s/he should not take the autonomy of developing it. It is wise to evaluate on the ‘content’ as well as on ‘technology’ with the stakeholders, especially with the students. The feed back obtained will help us to re think, reformulate the IMM and end up with a better self-learning package.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Thanks Geetha, for providing more background about your great project!

A Bacteria Learning Object Gets User-Tested

Last week I was giving a tour around the OUSL facilities and when I reached the Computer Training Lab in the Media House, I came across two people I didn’t recognize on the computers.A bit of an odd site I thought, since I did not recognize the program the two were working on, either.Then Geetha Kulasekara, whom I did recognize as a common fixture doing development work in the lab, explained she was doing user-testing.As my eyes widened with both interest and surprise, I knew I had to learn more!

I discovered Geetha was finishing up a project under the direction of Dr. Gayathri.Geetha was performing a usability test on a product she created for Microbiology.Dr. Gayathri told me that Geetha had first surveyed the students in this level 5 course to discover the ‘stumbling blocks’ or difficult sections of the course.In some learning object design circles these would be called the “hiccup points” in a course. Next, she created a program to help students learn these concepts. She chose content that could be better explained using animations rather than the text found in a textbook.She also included self-correcting tests to help the students learn whether or not they understood the concepts. What amazed me further was that Geetha developed the program in Director… an application she learned as she developed!!

Here is a photo of Geetha’s usability testing in action.She is using real students, doing real tasks within the program – She explained that she could not go near the students but must observe from afar so as to make the experience more realistic (excellent methodology!):

You’ll notice she is taking notes as the students work through the product.She also explained that she has created a questionnaire for the students to complete once they are through her software.

Geetha will have a great future in instructional design, teaching, and course software development with such a logical and scientific approach to the design of learning materials!

Testing a Virtual Meeting Set-Up

Last week some of the OUSL-CE staff were involved in a virtual meeting test. Mike Harttrup, the new Instructional Design DEPP Consultant wanted to see how the internet connections would hold up under the load of an intensive online application such as GoTo Meeting. Several people from around Colombo were connected within a virtual meeting once they had downloaded the GoToMeeting software. Mike said things worked surprising well with all 6 participants not only viewing his desktop but at several times throughout the meeting, different participants were given “presenter” control and therefore shared an application on their desktop. At one time, Mike started a word document and had different people adding to the active document open on his desktop!

Although it is likely participants could have been further connected through a Skype conference (view a "how to" screencast), the chat room facility within the GoToMeeting environment provided adequate communication.

In the coming weeks we are going to continue our investigations into Web 2.0 Communication and Education tools so if you’d like to be on our calling list, just email me sl_info AT yahoo DOT com - a few possible investigations include: Skypecasts, WebHuddle, Vyew, DimDim, Gliffy, PowWowNow, FlashMeeting, Spresent, meetingwizard Our purpose for researching synchronous delivery modes is because it gives one more way for online instructors to develop 'community' online. Right now, in Moodle the only synchronous tool available is the Chat Module.