CURepRODUCE

We had a teleconference with the JISC team today to discuss issues and challenges arising out of the project. I found it a useful experience to sit down and take stock of progress so far and relate it back to the original objectives and outcomes that we had set out for ourselves at the beginning of the project. I also found it useful to talk to Heather and Liam on the JISC team to clarify aspects regarding repurposing and reusing content as well as issues surrounding deeplinking content material into the teaching and learning activities. I felt that the meeting went off quite satisfactorily and I am looking forward to the start of teaching activities next week. We also found it necessary to rearrange some of the web pages of the ReProduce project so that access to relevant material would be easier.

I met with Joanne Marsh - our university repository development officer today to discuss issues arising from depositing the learning objects designed for this module into our university repository. The eventual aim of this project is to be able to showcase the module as an exemplar for e-learning within the university and as such provide opportunities for demonstrating the range of e-learning tools that we have embedded within the module. A lot of these tools use materials from both within and outside the university. Jo was part of our original discussions with CASPER when they met with us at the start of the project to discuss copyright issues. I thought it prudent to brief Jo on progress on the project and also run by the list of content sources by her.

I found the meeting to be very reassuring and satisfying. While I have taken great care in navigating the copyright minefield by using only material that is freely available on the internet and ‘directing’ students to those links, I also need to be doubly sure that there werent any hidden snags that I was unaware of. The meeting provided me with an opportunity for this.

I have been getting my report templates mixed up and have ended up overlooking the actual progress report template. However I have managed to get around it and submit the actual report - hope it works. reproduce-progress-report-template2003.doc

I have been in constant email contact with Amanda and Juliet since our last meeting following up on the developments to the construction of the module web. When we started working together our main objectives were to complete the activities for the first term of the academic year before actual start of term. Now that these activities have been satisfactorily completed, I now need to start cracking on the activities for the second term.

I am hoping to include a lot more e-learning points into these areas as this term will coincide with some major pieces of assessment that students will be working on. This gives us an opportunity to examine different ways of not just delivering blended learning but also migrating some of the regular activities online. I am hoping to experiment with online collaborative working practices including online peer assessment, online audit trails of group collaborative activities, e-assessment, voice activated feedback etc.

Our meeting today was to start discussing ideas for the assessment and how to start breaking it down into weekly tasks to provide continuity with the set of online tasks designed for the first term. I came away with plenty of ideas and it is going to be a while before these can take shape but it would be great if I can get around to them before the end of the month to give me a headstart.

One of the most important demands of this project has been to identify and source content material from external sources of material for my learning, teaching, and assessment activities. There is a wealth of advertising material available on the internet and sometimes it requires directing students to the appropriate sources carefully. In the process of designing these activities, I have stumbled upon a wealth of sources which can be repurposed and reused for student activities. A lot of this material is available for free especially for educational purposes and range from company hosted sites to commercial archival sites. I have found it useful to compile a checklist of these sites and categorise them according to their inputs to the project. I am hoping to have these cross verified by our Repository Development Manager Joanne Marsh as well but I am quite confident that there wouldnt be any major problems. I am aiming to send this off to CASPER. website-checklist2003.xls

I am somewhat chuffed at the progress made on the project. I have been reflecting a lot on my work in this project this week - for two reasons. One, I have used a lot of the material relating to my experiences on this project for my PGCHE portfolio. I see my work on this project as part of an iterative and free flowing circle of curriculum development and I think despite working with this module for a while now, I have still managed to bring a fresh pair of eyes to the material. Two, I have been very busy juggling too many deadlines along with the demands of this project and because I have handed in my portfolio and my leg is healing along satisfactorily, I have had a chance to sit back and claw some headspace for myself in thinking about how far I have come along and how to proceed from here.

I have to admit that getting to grips with the overall design of the project initially was somewhat of a challenge. I had to learn to look at the material from different perspectives and from the view of different platforms of delivery. Further as someone who has been closely involved in the development of the project and the module for a while now, I found it difficult to cede ownership of the content and accomodate critical perspectives. I found navigating the language of pedagogy very difficult. I was coming from a business and marketing background and was used to plain speaking; I found some of the terminologies and the conceptualisation of the learning design hard work.

However as we progressed, I found it easier to break down the tasks into little bits, into small bite sized pieces and approach them. Once I had the overall design sorted in my mind, it was a question of assembling the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. I know that some of my colleagues find this a weird approach - they often prefer to keep the boundaries fuzzy and work from inside out. However I have to confess to an extreme case of OCD personally and this impels me to have clearly defined goals and then work backwards to accomodate them.

This way I think I have been very productive in completing all the documentation, and all the necessary learning, teaching, and assessment material needed for the module. The module web is now under construction and some of the new learning tasks designed are being Course-Genied. We are aiming to have it ready for the start of the academic term which is almost six weeks away. I have approached our Subject Librarians for help with the Reading List Software Talis in designing and uploading the reading list for the module.

I feel very satisfied with the project and also quite excited about the future. I am somewhat nervous about the uptake of some of the learning activities by students. However I am also conscious that what we are doing is an experiment and that it needs evaluation. It is a work in progress and I am quite looking forward to the start of the academic term.

I met with the Principal Investigator of the Project David Morris today to finalise details of the web template. I am usually not comfortable with doing reports - but I realise the sensibility of it. It is of course satisfying for me to know that I am quite far ahead of the project requirements - I am aiming to finish it well ahead of the final deadline dates for various reasons. And I need to create an audit trail. We managed to finish off the web template and send it off today. interim-report-web-template.doc

I met with Amanda today to interrogate in fine detail the first three weeks’ version of online tasks according to the Course Genied template. It was a long and laborious, not to mention an intensive process but very rewarding and worthwhile. Save minor changes most of the task methods were in the right format.

If students are able to embrace these tasks, they will benefit enormously from the overall learning and teaching activities. I am keeping my fingers crossed that they would find the experience as challenging and creative as I have found creating them.

There is some more minor work to be done but we have covered more than enough ground to meet the requirements of the interim deadlines. I am finishing off the other tasks and mailing them to both Amanda and Juliet.

In September we would have sufficient time to finish these off so that we are all set for the new academic term.

After our last meeting, there has been rapid progress. Amanda uploaded two different versions of a sample online task - one using Word format - and the other using Course Genie showing the different links for web content. This version would also enable students to have several windows open at the same time including the lecture notes which would be available to them in PDF form. This was done the very next day after our last meeting.

I have spent the last ten days reworking all the task sheets to accomodate the new Course genie format including designing new answer sheets that would enable students to plot their answers to the tasks. The learning objects are now looking more comprehensive. They are clearly structured with appropriate subsections; they flow logically from one task to another, progressively addressing each of the main concepts that they learn in the lecture, and increasing the challenges for students gradually.

I have done this but have emailed Amanda the first three weeks’ versions so that we could get together just to check if I am on the right track or not

It is almost three months to the day since my last collaborative meeting with Learning Technologists Amanda and Juliet. I cannot believe it. However I have done pretty much 90% of the work for the module - designed all the lectures, all the seminar/workshop tasks, all the online task sheets with the appropriate links and sublinks to different websites and their content material, formative and summative assessments with the assessment criteria, marking schemes, briefing material etc. Only the end of year exam paper needs to be written. I have also designed reading material for students outside of their essential textbook and it includes peer reviewed papers to be sourced from the electronic library databases.

I have spent the best part of the morning printing and photocopying all the material so that we would have a reference from which to work. We started the meeting today by deciding that we would interrogate the first three weeks of learning and teaching activities. Obviously a lot of the discussion centred around the online task sheets designed.

Again here after some initial difficulties in trying to bridge a gap of understanding in the terminologies of pedagogy, I was able to conceptualise the process of learning that would take place within the classroom and the learning scaffolding provided by the online environment.

The learning technologists felt that most of the hard work had been done - what was now needed was to do some tinkering, putting on the finishing touches to the task sheets, designing material which would enable students to log their progress on the tasks and build up an online journal that would be of use to them not just for this year but for the entire duration of their degree program for this particular field - advertising.

To a small degree it was challenging for me to visualise the end product format but the overall progress of the meeting and outcomes were very satisfactory. I was happy that we were on the right track. Amanda has promised to set up a rough template that would visualise a sample online task for me to see how it would look. I could use that as a model to tinker around with the rest of the sheets and modify them.