curriculum design for online learning dr christine armatas
TRANSCRIPT
Curriculum Design for Online LearningDr Christine Armatas
About me
• PhD from University of Melbourne
• Psychologist by training• 25 years experience as
an academic• Educational consultant
Expert in e-Learning and curriculum design
Specialist skills in research and evaluation
About you
• What is your role at the Open University of China?• What do you find rewarding about your role?• What do you find challenging?• What are your students like?
Overview
• Program
• What we will cover:– Educational challenges and trends– Curriculum design and online learning– Creating and delivering an online course– e-Assessment– Useful applications
• Format
• Outcomes
Learning objectives
At the end of this training you should be able to:
1. Describe challenges facing higher education now and in the future and discuss expected trends in the field
2. Understand the significance of changes in higher education and their impact on teaching and learning
3. Explain the concept of constructive alignment and its relationship to curriculum design, learning outcomes and assessment
4. Design learning activities and assessment tasks which address learning outcomes
5. Recognise different types of assessment be able to make judgements about whether they are authentic, valid or reliable
6. Create and deliver online learning activities and assessments in Moodle
7. Apply principles of constructive alignment and constructivist pedagogy to designing and delivering online learning
Topic 1. Challenges for Higher Education
According to the PEW Research Center (2012) by 2020universities will :
– increase their online courses– shift to lifelong learning models– offer different ways of certifying courses– adopt new teaching approaches to meet student demand– embrace peer learning and reduce the reliance on
traditional lecture/tutorial formats
Discussion
Do you think this will be true of Chinese universities too? Why or
why not?
www.sydney.edu.au
Key trends
2013 Horizon Report by The New Media Consortium :
– Technology trends to watch• Massively open online courses (MOOCs)• Tablet computing• Games and gamification• Learning analytics
– Key trends• Openness• Informal learning experiences• Changes to the role of educators• Learning paradigms that are :
– Online– collaborative – personalised
Significant Challenges
• Responding to the importance of digital media literacy
• Assessment practices that are:– Valid– Scalable– Sustainable
• Systems and processes inhibit change
• Competition from new educational models
• Achieving customised learning
• Getting educators to use technology
(Horizon Report – 2013 Higher Education Edition)
Discussion
• How true are these challenges of Chinese universities?
• What are the most significant challenges facing Chinese higher education institutions and how does this impact on your role as a teacher?
The impact of labour markets
Driving factors:• Need for high level skills• Skills shortages in specific areas• Employment prospects
Bridging the gap between higher education and the labour market• Strengthen employer engagement and investment in
skills training• Ensure that providers understand what is required in the
workplace• Widen participation in higher education• Collect, analyse and utilise data in decision-making
(DeWeert, 2011)
Producing work-ready graduates
What skills
and
capabilities do
your students
need to be
ready to work
in their chosen
careers?
How does the curriculum help your students
develop these skills and
capabilities?
www.prezi.com
Topic 2. Curriculum Design
5 steps in Curriculum Design
Describe subject aims
Write learning outcomes
Design assessment
Develop teaching activities
Check alignment
2.
1.
3.
4.
5.
What are learning outcomes?
Definition:• Statement identifying what students should have
achieved as a result of completing a learning experience– What they should know, understand and be able to do– Can include attitudes, behaviours, values and ethics
Benefits• Identifies what learners should focus on • Sets expectations • Dictates the learning activities and assessment
Types:• Subject mastery
– Understanding – Knowledge– Subject-specific skills
• Personal abilities– Cognitive skills– Employability skills– Professional awareness
Knowledge:• Factual• Conceptual• Procedural• Metacognitive
(Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001)
Learning Activities
Should be:• based around teaching
strategies that help students to achieve the desired learning outcomes;
• Relevant, challenging & interesting;
• Directly linked to one or more learning outcomes;
• Accommodate different learner preferences. Learning Activity
Interest
Learning Style
Motivation
Assessment
Assessment can serve different purposes such as to motivate students, to provide
feedback and for quality assurance.
Types of assessment:• Formative versus
summative• Criterion versus norm-
based
Assessment needs to be:• Reliable• Valid• Authentic
Discussion
In small groups discuss your responses to the questions below. Record notes about the discussion and be prepared to report back on your discussion to the larger group.
1. What does it mean for assessment to be reliable, valid and authentic?
2. How do you design assessment so that it meets these criteria? How do you evaluate the extent to which an assessment task is valid, reliable or authentic?
Constructive alignment
Constructive alignment (Biggs & Tang, 2007) is where learning activities and assessment are designed around
learning outcomes. This alignment is crucial to assessment as learning.
Benefits of a constructively aligned curriculum:• Ensures that students can demonstrate achievement
of learning outcomes• Helps students to see what is important in the course• Guides teaching approaches and feedback• Can be mapped to show relationships between
learning outcomes, learning activities and assessment tasks
Curriculum mapping
• allows educators to review the curriculum to check for unnecessary redundancies, inconsistencies, misalignments, weaknesses and gaps;
• documents the relationships between the required components of the curriculum and the intended student learning outcomes;
• helps identify opportunities for integration among disciplines;
• provides a review of assessment methods; and• identifies what students have learned, allowing
educators to focus on building on previous knowledge.
www.educationworld.com
Whole-of-course perspectives
• Curriculum maps can be used to show how learning outcomes are addressed across the whole program, as well as within individual courses
• Help to show development of learning outcomes and distribution of types of assessment
References
Anderson, J.Q., Boyle, J.L. & Rainie, L. (2012). The Future of the Internet. http://www.pewinternet.org/topics/Future-of-the-internet.aspx?typeFilter=5
Anderson, L.W. & Krathwohl, D.R. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Longman.
Biggs, J. & Tang, C. (2007). Teaching for Quality Learning at University. 3rd ed. England and NY: Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press.
De Weert, E. (2011). Perspectives on higher education and the labour market: Review of international policy developments. Center for Higher Educational Policy Studies. http://www.utwente.nl/mb/cheps/publications/Publications%202011/C11EW158%20Final%20version%20Themarapport%20onderwijs%20-%20arbeidsmarkt.pdf
Krathwohl, D.R. (2002). A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy: An Overview. Theory into Practice. 41(4), 212 – 264. http://rt3region7.ncdpi.wikispaces.net/file/view/8+Perspectives+on+RBT.pdf
New Media Consortium (2013) . Horizon Report – 2013 Higher Education Edition. http://www.nmc.org/publications/2013-horizon-report-higher-ed
Topic 3. Creating an online course
What
differences are
there between
face-to-face
teaching and
fully online
teaching?
How does this impact on how
you teach online?
Course design
Plan
Design
DevelopDeliver
Evaluate
What is the difference between
designing for a program, a course
or a lesson?
What is meant by horizontal and
vertical integration of the curriculum and why are they important?
Designing learning activities
Learning activities need to be linked to learning outcomes and aligned with the assessment.
When developing learning activities:
– Ensure activities are:• scaffolded • resourced• suitable for the level of study• explained clearly
– Cater for individual preferences
– Check alignment with the overall curriculum
Learning activities in Moodle
What tools are there in Moodle that you can use to create a learning activity?
How could you use these
resources to create a lesson?
Assessing the role play activity
Previously we have emphasised that learning activities need to be linked to learning
outcomes and aligned with the assessment.
Questions for discussion: 1. Would you want to assess the role play? Explain.2. How could you assess the role play?3. What would students need to know if the role
play was assessed?4. How could you incorporate assessment of the
role play into your Moodle site?
How to assess?
When deciding how to assess a learning activity, the following considerations are important:• What would be evidence
that the learner had met the desired learning outcomes?
• How much weighting should the task be given?
• Is the assessment formative or summative?
Topic 4. Groups & Group work in Moodle
Employers complain that graduates cannot work in teams, a skill which they believe is essential.
This generic skill, along with others such as problem solving, communication, critical thinking and ethics are now being developed through the curriculum.
Team work
What emphasis are employability skills such as teamwork given in your curriculum?
How much group work is there in your courses and how is this managed?
What are some of the benefits of working in a group?
What are some of the challenges of team work and how do you manage them?
Group activities in Moodle
What tools are there in Moodle that you can use to create a group activity?
How could you use these
resources to create a lesson
requiring students
to work in groups?
Assessing group work
1. Would you want to assess group work? Explain.
2. How could you assess a group learning activity?
3. What would students need to know if group work is assessed?
4. How could you incorporate assessment involving group work into your Moodle site?Discuss and answer the above questions in
small groups – again take notes and be prepared to report back on the discussion to
the large group.
How to assess group work
“Getting the assessment right is critical. Decisions need to be focussed around four factors:
1) whether what is to be assessed is the product of the group work, the process of the group work, or both (and if the latter, what proportion of each)
2) what criteria will be used to assess the aspect(s) of group work of interest (and who will determine this criteria - lecturer, students or both)
3) who will apply the assessment criteria and determine marks (lecturer, students – peer and/or self assessment or a combination)
4) how will marks be distributed (shared group mark, group average, individually, combination)”
Centre for the Study of Higher Education, The University of Melbourne
Resources for group work
For consideration
How could you incorporate these resources into the group lesson you designed previously?
What additional learning outcomes could you achieve by adding these types of resources?
What other resources could you suggest that would help students to learn to work effectively
in teams?
Tips for effective team work
1. Set clear guidelines for the team activities and put in place measures to manage team dynamics
2. Ensure students understand the benefits of working in a team and why this is part of the curriculum. Start with a small activity and then build up to a larger group task
3. Get students to research the stages of team formation and the different roles people can take in teams so they understand how teams work– if possible make sure teams roles and membership are appropriately balanced
4. If assessing team work, consider including a component of peer-assessment to help manage the team process and ensure it is fair
6. Using Moodle
Good practice for online teaching
What makes a good online course?
What constitutes good online teaching?
What advice would you give to teachers new to teaching online?
A+
A toolkit for online teaching
What are the basic tools that you need to design, prepare and
deliver online learning?
Online Publishin
g
Resource
Sharing
Communication Tools
Information Tools
Your toolkit
Top 10 tips for online teaching
1. Start small and work your way up
2. Make your resources re-usable
3. Where possible use tools in Moodle
4. Share your teaching experiences
5. Make it active and fun
Top 10 tips for online teaching
6. Interact with your students
7. Keep your learning goals in mind
8. Put learning in the hands of your
students
9. Remember the basics of good
teaching
10. Content is KING!
But usability, design and curriculum alignment are
critical too!
Top 10 tips for online teaching