Task

Task Context

Imagine your university has asked you to convert an existing online or classroom course in your area of teaching to an online course based on authentic learning principles where students use new technologies as powerful cognitive tools to learn and demonstrate their achievement of the learning objectives.

You are not that familiar with the concepts of authentic e-learning design and new technologies so you have enrolled in an online professional development (PD) course to experience online learning from a student’s perspective, to learn about authentic learning principles, online pedagogies and new technologies and to network with other online higher education lecturers, tutors and course designers.

To complete this task you need to:

• • Create a blog where you can record your reflections about your learning throughout this course. Example blog "ethoughts" by jennip98

  • Join the Authentic eDesign groups

  • (Diigo, Google Docs, Skype)

  • Learn about the concepts of authentic learning and using technology as cognitive tools

  • Analyse your course requirements

  • (Authentic edesign framework)

    • Articulate your learning objectives as measurable outcomes

    • Identify a real-life learning context for your course task(s)

    • Identify appropriate resources and supports for student learning

  • Self-evaluate your course outline against the elements of authentic learning & authentic tasks

  • Publish your context online so your peers can view & provide feedback. (e.g., on your blog or upload analysis worksheet to Google docs)

  • View some of the contexts & tasks created by your colleagues (link to peer review file on LMS) & provide feedback (e.g., comment on blogs)

  • Explore new technologies and identify resources to support student learning

  • Develop a written learning and assessment course outline for your online course

  • Publish your course outline as an online document so your colleagues can access it to review and provide feedback

  • Review a colleague’s authentic course outline and provide them with feedback for suggested improvements (link to peer review file on LMS)

  • Modify your course outline (if desired) based

  • on feedback provided

  • Record a 5 minute video presentation to describe your course to your colleagues and publish it to a video sharing website

  • Invite your colleagues to view your video presentation (link to peer review file on LMS)

Preparing your online course outline

Clearly introduce your area of teaching and identify your target audience. Produce a polished word processed course outline (eg; Word or Pages) with headings to clearly identify the relevant sections. Upload it to an online document sharing website (e.g., Google Docs) or your own website (e.g., eLearnOpen research website).

• Example course outlines (unit guide extracts)

Preparing your video presentation

Ensure you clearly introduce yourself, your course, and the course student cohort. Provide an overview of the learning context, the tasks students will complete and the key learning resources and supports. Your introduction should include video footage of yourself and the body should include images and links to relevant resources to support the verbal information you provide. Abide by copyright laws and acknowledge all third party resources and information using in-text citations and add a final slide listing all your references (APA 6th style) so that your colleagues can follow up your sources.

• Example videos (course overviews)