Distance education:Creating learning materials

Caroline Williams

Liverpool University Centre for Archive Studies (LUCAS)

Overview My aim:

– to demonstrate how to create learning materials

My objectives:– supply a brief background to learning– give you a task to do

Your learning outcomes:– demonstrate what makes learning effective– test success of the materials you created

Materials in context

Effective planning Resources Institutional support Who are the

learners? Learning materials

Communication Evaluation Measuring

performance Quality assurance

Learning materials

Delivery options– print– voice, video, cd-rom, audio– computer applications

• e-mail and bulletin boards• web-based teaching• home-page facilities

Which is best?

before selecting a delivery system focus on instructional outcomes, not

technology of delivery– needs of learners– requirements of content– constraints faced by teacher

typically you will end up with a mix of media each serving a specific purpose

Adapting existing materials

By adding– user-friendly objectives and outcomes– responses to questions/tasks/activities– self assessment tasks– written study skills help– assessment criteria– summaries/reviews/checklists– feedback questionnaires/evaluation

Learner centred materials design

Successful learning programmes allow for: wanting

doing

feedback

digesting

Creating the ‘want’: motivation By first attracting, then stimulating to start and

continue, and encouraging to persist by:– attractive title– good design– aims, objectives and outcomes they want

to achieve– address them personally: you will be able...– a compelling introduction (written last)– demonstrating they can already do it

Enabling learning by doing learning by having a go as soon as possible and getting it right (and wrong) by being well briefed for the task tasks should involve more than just recalling students can decide, prioritise, attack,

summarize, defend, propose, analyse, evaluate etc

self assessment activities, test your learning with answers or other feedback

Learning from feedback

which makes them feel good whether right or wrong more than mere answers your responses are the most important

part of your open learning materials integral not last minute

Digesting

making sense of the learning experience

sorting out what is important from what has been learned

putting things into perspective taking ownership designers must factor these four in

Workshop Aim: to create three or four pages of material

which enable the undergraduate learner to define the attributes of a record.

You are supplied with:– definitions of a record from ICA, AS4390,

ISO 15489– UK PRO and ICA definitions of context,

context and structure– a doctor’s prescription, medicine packaging– sample of existing material

Tasks Create an ‘interesting’ title Define your aim Define student’s learning outcomes A compelling introduction Include three or four activities. The task and

its response should be clearly indicated on the page

Provide responses which will lead on Test it out on another group

Remember to facilitate

Wanting

Doing

Feedback

Digesting

Useful sites

www.unesco.org/webworld/portal_archives (lists delivery sites)

www.uidaho.edu/evo/distglan (how to) World bank(delivery site)

http://wbln0018.worldbank.org/archives/learning.nsf/HomePage/1?OpenDocument

http://www-icdl.open.ac.uk/ International Centre for dl Educating Society through its records

http://john.curtin.edu.au/society/