|
Table of Contents
|
Carpe Diem Resource Page
Etivities
Background
Background to associated projects
Credits
The Carpe Diem process is based on research by Professor Gilly Salmon, with input from teams at Caledonian Business School. The model was tested and refined at the University of Bournemouth and Anglia Ruskin University, and further developed by the ADELIE, ADDER and CHEETAH teams, including Dr Alejandro Armellini (main Carpe Diem facilitator), Olaojo Aiyegbayo, Roger Dence, Dr Sylvia Jones, David Shepherd, Matthew Wheeler and Helen Whitehead.
Introduction
Why are you here?
• To help develop an understanding of the pedagogy that drives the Carpe Diem process.
• Develop working online learning activities called e-tivities.
In the next two days you will go through a series of activity tasks that will lead to the production of working learning tasks, e-tivities, by the end of day two. You will develop a blueprint and storyboard for your course that will help you to focus the development of the e-tivities. You will also develop an action plan for the future.
Ask yourself:
How can e-learning address the challenges on your course?
What is the question to which e-learning is that answer?
Are you a team?
An opportunity to ice-break for people in the room who may not have met each other. This exercise needs to make transparent the roles of individuals relating to the course team.
Discuss the roles that my be absent that would be useful:
- Course leader
- Course team
- E-learning developer
- Course librarian
- Learning technologist
- Course technician
What about the course?
Further to the pre-meeting, the facilitator can clarify the nature of the course - for example, is it predominantly face-to-face or distance? - This exercise leads into the Blueprint activities.
Handout
Stage One: Blueprint
(1) Our mission is…
Agree on the overarching aims and intentions of your course. Write a statement that captures those aims and intentions. This is the text you might want to write just above the module's learning outcomes.
This is a useful activity to get the staff not directly on the course team to understand the essence of the course. These people should act as 'critical friends' to the statement developers, making suggestions on how to improve them. This includes suggesting to critical friends that the majority of mission statements include the same features: WHO it is aimed at, WHAT it does, and in what CONTEXT.
(2) The look and feel of your online course
In pairs agree on five words that describe the look and feel of your course. You can use words from the list or generate your own but you must be in agreement.
This activity should run parallel to the mission statement activity. Words may well end up in the mission, but this is not essential. After these discussions have taken place in small groups, write the missions on the whiteboard with the 5 words.
DECISION TIME: The course team must now decide which modules they are going to work on for the two day workshop. Work in pairs, this should probably be split to include two from the core team in each group.
(3) Learning outcomes
What are your learning outcomes as specified in you module descriptors? Decide on the major ones, and proceed with these.
(4) Assessment
Q. What must be assessed?
A. The simple and straightforward answer to be reached is: The learning outcomes.
At this juncture, examples of innovative e-learning practice may be given. Ale provided us with the following:
(1) An essay needs to be written by the student. The tutor writes the rubric for the essay and the student responds. However, the essay is not what counts in assessment. Part of the task is to ask students to critically respond to one another's essays. This response is what is assessed. A further layer of complexity can be added by asking the students to generate the rubric for the essay.
(2) Curtis Bonk's activity where he asks his students to find something that does not yet have a page assigned to it on Wikipedia. They are to generate content on their chosen subject and submit it to Wikipedia. If it survives intact for one week, the student has passed. If it does not, the student has failed.
The following exercise involves the small groups working together to clarify the ways that the learning outcomes will be assessed and exploiting which technologies. In addition, the groups should tackle the three questions on pg 8 of the handout.
- Will the work done during the course contribute to the assessment?
- Can you identify, from the courses you teach, examples of formative feedback that worked well?
- Will peer-assessment be built into your course?
Each of these are important considerations for when the design of learning activities takes place.
(5) The five stage model
Introduction to Gilly Salmon's five stage model of teaching and learning online.
Salmon, G (2002) 'Model of teaching and learning online through online networking', All things in moderation, Available online at: http://www.atimod.com/e-tivities/5stage.shtml (Accessed 29 May 2008)
- Step one, at the base of the flights of steps, is about success in accessing the system and generating motivation.
- Step two involves individual participants establishing their online identities and then finding others with whom to interact and socialize.
- At step three, participants share information relevant to the course with each other.
- At step four, course-related group discussions occur and the interaction becomes more collaborative. The communication depends on the establishment of common understandings. Learners depend on each other's contributions to complete tasks.
- At step five, participants look for more benefits form the system to help them achieve personal goals, explore how to integrate online into other forms of learning and reflect on the learning processes.
Click here for further resources and information about the five-stage model.
(6) Planning for active and participative engagement
EXAMPLE: We plan for participative engagement of our students by:
- Shifting from a content-focused to a task-based approach
- Planning group work to take place in the classroom but also providing opportunities for students to collaborate actively online
- Designing activities to facilittate access, motivation and socialisation (getting students started!)
(7) Content
What parts of the content…
- …are appropriated fairly easily?
- …cause problems?
The content that adds most value is:
(8) Alignment
Do the goals, learning outcomes, teaching methods and assessment align?
How can this be evaluated?
EXAMPLE: We know that the learning outcomes, our teaching methods and our assessment are aligned because:
Every outcome is addressed by at least one e-tivity and the results of the e-tivities build towards the assessment report.
Stage Two: Storyboard
As a team, use the ideas from your blueprint above to develop your storyboard, adjusting the blueprint as necessary. An example template to create a storyboard is provided. This can be amended to suit individual needs.
1) Use a separate horizontal bar for each module or section of the course (if you are planning a short online event you may only need one bar)
2) Divide the content into a series of discrete topics and write each in a box (use the pink post-it notes)
3) Use the yellow notes to represent assessment. If assessment only occurs at the end of the module, you should just have a single yellow post-it with a brief description of this, at the end of the storyboard. If assessment instances occur during the module, please use post-its throughout to reflect this. This should align with STAGE 1; ITEM 4 (Assessment)
4) Rewrite and move notes until satisfied.
5) Add possible learning activities (or e-tivities) appropriate to each section using the third colour post-its (green). Use one note per activity identified. Include at relevant points on the storyboard. At this stage: write the PURPOSE of the e-tivity.
Stage Three: Planning and building your prototype online
1) Consider the sample etivities. Discuss these to assess how appropriate these types of e-tivities might be in your own context.
2) Work in pairs. Refer to the storyboard and select e-tivities that use content that you have available to you now.
3) Agree who will design what.
4) Draft the e-tivity onto the paper template using the format: LABEL > SPARK > PURPOSE > TASK > RESPONSE. Specify how much time you expect the e-moderator to spend on this activity as the course unfolds. What does the e-moderator have to do? PRODUCE AS MANY DRAFTS AS POSSIBLE IN THE TIME AVAILABLE
4a) Use the 'critical friend' model to split up pairs temporarily and move them around other pairs. Each member of the new pair should describe the e-tivity. The 'critical friend' can then report back to the whole group for discussion. This activity generates an opportunity to consolidate the value of having a new academic team involved.
5) When you have an e-tivity that you think will work, move to the computer. Each pair builds one e-tivity directly online into the VLE.
6) Insert clear markers (such as a holding image or alternate coloured text) where you need to return later or ask for technical support - e.g to insert a video
7) As soon as the e-tivity looks usable, move on to another one.
Stage Four: Check reality
Ensure that by the time the reality checker arrives that several aspects of the e-tivity and online course have been built and are ready for them to try out. Providing the 'reality checkers' template, the reality checker visits each of the e-tivities produced and completes feedback for them.
- Sit out of the way, but where you can see them, observe and relax!
- Do not interrupt.
- If they ask for help or explanation, offer enough to get them started again.
- Do not enter into explanations but encourage them to work online as much as possible.
Stage Five: Review and adjust
As a team, list the reality checker's main concerns and suggestions. Talk through the impact of these comments. Decide whether you need to:
- Adjust the blueprint and the storyboard.
- Adjust the online course.
- Especially consider navigation, timings and assessment.
Consider also the process since day 1:
- Note what worked and what didn't.
- Can you offer any changes based on your experiences so far?
Go back to the online environment:
- Make some of the suggested changes, in consultation with other team members.
- Explain to colleagues and the facilitator what you have changed and why.
Stage Six: Planning your next steps
- Refer to the storyboard.
- Refer to the suggestions made by the reality checker.
- What else needs doing and who will do it?
- Assess the risks (how are you going to find time to complete the work, what might interfere, who else ight need to be involved)
- Consider what other resources you need to acquire or include, as well as resources you had avalable but didn't use.
- Set clear deadlines.
- Set a date for your next team meeting when you will review progress.
Additional notes
Day 2
AM
• Participants require a Blackboard site and login details ready.
• Commence by reviewing the five words generated at the beginning of the previous day's session. Acts as a refresher of what took place and gets people back on track.
• Use of computers to develop e-tivities should take place on the morning of day 2 fairly intensively. They need to be in a state of readiness for the reality checker - lunchtime.
• Build in an opportunity to 'showcase' e-tivities to the rest of the group to provide a first proof stage. 'What can be changed to make it better?' Make updates.
13:00
LUNCH
13:30
Reality checker
14:00
Reality checker to provide feedback on each of the e-tivities.
14:30
Redevelopment of e-tivities based on reality checker feedback. It may be useful to have a critical friend around to make sure that the relevant feedback is being applied.
15:00
Demonstration of how the functioning e-tivities can be placed into a learning unit sequence of activities on Blackboard, and the flexibility of using this model.
- Reduction of clicks
- Increases navigability
- Good for holistic and sequential learning styles
Progress through sequence of activities and ask for responses from pairs about the final updates they made.
15:30
Action planning.
