A popular professional development module in use at the Open University (UK)

1. Professional development for teaching online Dr Janet Macdonald The Open University in Scotland 12th International Conference on Distance Education Quality, Moscow, Dec 2010

3. Largest University in the UK

4. Over 570 courses

5. 250,000 students

6. Over 2 million have studied with OU

7. 1 in 4 of UK’s part-time undergraduates are OU students

8. 10,000 staff (8,000 part timers)

9. The OU in Scotland: 15,000 students Population 5m 78,000 sq kilometres 790 islands

10. What do students need to be able to do? How do we support their learning? Who does this?

11. What do students need to be able to do? Listening, reading and sense making (Course content) Communicating and community (Learning, belonging in groups) Searching and researching (Using online resources) Writing and speaking (Preparing assignments) Macdonald & Creanor (2010)

12. Reading andmaking sense of course content - still mostly print

13. Course quiz

14. Communicating and community - Mostly online using forums, wikis, blogs, synchronous tools

15. Elluminate synchronous web conferencing

16. Writing and presenting- assessments mostly online submission; some courses have online assessment

17. Searching and researching- most courses have links to approved resources

18. How I do teach online? Some anxious, others terrified Under skilled 10000 staff Highly motivated to learn A significant quality issue for the university

19. Online professional development:VLE Choices

20. Let’s start with the job..

21. Learning from peers VLE-Choices: Teaching difficult concepts

22. Visit an online tutorial in Elluminate

23. Activity using Audacity

24. Activity checklist

25. Automated certificate production

26. Awareness of ways to support students using VLE tools

27. Which parts of the course were most helpful to you?(106 respondents, 48% response rate) Examples of good practice Activities using the tools

28. Activities using the tools Being given the chance to try out various tools was the best part of this course as it's so difficult to see the possibilities until you are actually using them. Seeing how others used the tools and then discussing my thoughts with others and gaining new perspectives.

29. Examples of use The case studies are really useful, it's always an advantage to see what other people have tried on similar courses - and to see what worked.

30. Peer support It was useful to have the course in order to set aside dedicated time to look at the tools, and knowing that colleagues were doing the same so that we can discuss these together.

31. Making it work! Learning by doing activities and reflecting with others Peer learning: a sense of presence and community Near-synchronous activity Activity checklist and certificate

32. OU in Scotland www.open.ac.uk/scotland