After being with Carleton for nearly a month, I've just been given my first Instructional Design related project. Thus far, I've been mainly dealing with helping instructors with the Moodle courses and looking at other training option for getting everyone transferred over from the old WebCT system. While those were challenging in their own right, I'm pretty excited about this opportunity that I've been given.
What I've been asked to do is to develop a workshop type of independent study course that will help students succeed in their studies. There is current training currently being offered F2F, but putting the information online will be a first for this department. They are looking to start with just one workshop, but over time there are at least five different workshops that will be going online.
I met with the subject-matter expert this morning briefly to outline the capabilities and limitations of Moodle and to discuss what her expectations are for the workshop. She gave me a pretty good picture of what she is looking for. I gave her a few questions to think about so that we can create strong learning objectives and expected outcomes and we'll meet again next week to discuss further.
I've done some reading and I'm trying to decide what the best strategy to take for this type of course could be. I looked at problem-based learning to allow students to work through some issues and transfer the knowledge gained to the problem, however, this will be an independent course and I could see that it may be difficult to manage without more instructor support. I also looked at cognitive strategy instruction, and while this does seem to be a good fit for it, it may pose a challenge for first-year students who aren't really cognitively aware of when they should put these strategies into place.
I'll follow up with further posts as we move along in the process, but if anybody has any insight they wish to share, please provide them in the comments section below.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Monday, April 22, 2013
So in a twist of fate and good fortune, I have managed to find myself in a new position outside of the ESL industry. Last month I accepted a position with Carleton University as an Educational Technology Consultant. Now, I know with my education, this sounds like a perfect fit, but I've never really viewed myself as a pure techie, but then I realized, hey, I know this stuff. Sure there are some things that are somewhat over my head, but so far, I've been able to find solutions to everything that I've been working on.
Some of the bigger problems I face revolve around the Moodle grade book. There are certain problems with the way that it is scored that cause issues. Perhaps it's just the system that the profs here use, but often the letter grades in the system don't match up with the scale that has been in use. I would suggest not using that scale, but it's very important to some people, so I need to find a way around it. Thus far, I've come up with simply adjusting the University's official percentage breakdowns in individual courses, but this won't be a long term solution for so many classes.
One of my colleagues who is much more of a techie than me and mathematically inclined has been working on a more accurate formula that can simply be plugged in, but we'll see how well it works over time.
Other than the gradebook, I've been working on developing Moodle (cuLearn) training, as well as taking the lead on software integration, such as project management software (activeCollab) and community feedback software (useResponse). Developing training and other methods to integrate software isn't completely new to me, but it is a new approach to training that I'm not really used to. Also, I'll be training some staff who are quite comfortable with technology, so I'm hoping that will make the transition easier.
Finally, one of my more 'big picture' projects involves trying to develop new ways to evaluate the effectiveness of our department. For this I've been looking more on the theoretical side of things, such as Kirkpatrick's 4 skills and Diffusion of Innovation theory.
At any rate, wish me luck as I embark on this adventure and new career path.
Some of the bigger problems I face revolve around the Moodle grade book. There are certain problems with the way that it is scored that cause issues. Perhaps it's just the system that the profs here use, but often the letter grades in the system don't match up with the scale that has been in use. I would suggest not using that scale, but it's very important to some people, so I need to find a way around it. Thus far, I've come up with simply adjusting the University's official percentage breakdowns in individual courses, but this won't be a long term solution for so many classes.
One of my colleagues who is much more of a techie than me and mathematically inclined has been working on a more accurate formula that can simply be plugged in, but we'll see how well it works over time.
Other than the gradebook, I've been working on developing Moodle (cuLearn) training, as well as taking the lead on software integration, such as project management software (activeCollab) and community feedback software (useResponse). Developing training and other methods to integrate software isn't completely new to me, but it is a new approach to training that I'm not really used to. Also, I'll be training some staff who are quite comfortable with technology, so I'm hoping that will make the transition easier.
Finally, one of my more 'big picture' projects involves trying to develop new ways to evaluate the effectiveness of our department. For this I've been looking more on the theoretical side of things, such as Kirkpatrick's 4 skills and Diffusion of Innovation theory.
At any rate, wish me luck as I embark on this adventure and new career path.
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