The document provides tips for developing online activities. It stresses the importance of having clear aims and objectives, recapping prior learning, introducing new content, and revisiting aims. It also emphasizes making the content accessible across devices, being prepared to update it, keeping it interesting and interactive, fostering a community of practice, including self-assessment and microlearning, having fun, reusing and repurposing content, and keeping things simple.
There are lots of models and taxonomies out there: ADDIE, SAM, Carpe Diem…above all, remember that whatever you do, your module, and the lessons within need to have a clear beginning, middle and end. So, as with all pedagogy, you need:
Aims and objectives
Recap of prior learning
(Ideally linked) to new content,
At end of session, revisit aims,
Self reflection and evaluation of learning
Many people STILL make the mistake of thinking that uploading ‘slidey and wordy’ PowerPoint presentations and PDFs of book chapters makes for elearning. Reading and clicking ad nauseum makes for a boring, demotivating and passive experience.
Online learning can be a lonely experience, and students can become quickly disillusioned and unmotivated. Etienne Wenger-Trayner Communities of Practice
Anecdote: did a futurelearn course, learned more from peers in the chatroom than from the actual content.
How do students know they have learned? Ensure there is some way that students can self or peer–assess. And although MCQs are a quick, easy way to check attainment – you can have too much of a good thing…and they are called ‘multiple guess questions’ by students for good reason…
If you add some peer assessment, then peers learn from one another (so they learn better anyway!), it also reinforces the CoP thing!
Consider microlearning: many adult students simply do not have the time to log into their learning and sit in front of a screen, uninterrupted, for hours at a time. And, to be honest, even if we did have the time, is this something we want to do?
Anytime, any place, anywhere…
Microlearning consists of short ‘bursts’ of learning that can be donme any time, any place, anywhere….
We learn more when we are happy / enjoying ourselves. That’s not to mean that elearning should be taken lightly – there’s a fine line between being so formal that students cant relax / get bored and being so flippant that nothing you say is taken seriously. But as a rule of thumb, keep the tone informal / conversational, and don’t be afraid to throw in the occasional one-liner or meme (especially if it aids remembering)
Microlearning consists of short ‘bursts’ of learning that can be donme any time, any place, anywhere….