Update on eCommuncations FdA Project: 14 May 08

Background

We are now in week 11 of the delivery of Semester 1 to the first cohort. To date we have had very few withdrawn students, there are currently 26 live students out of an initial cohort of 28. As retention is good, it is hoped that the two classes which started in February 2008 will progress to Semester 2 in September 2008.The students are progressing well with the work and we believe we have pitched the course at the right level and provided interesting and engaging individual and collaborative activities.

Workload

We do need, though, to reduce the workload for future delivery. We have addressed this issue this semester by making some activities optional and lightening the workload in the PPD module. In future we could reassign optional activities to another category, for example call these activities ‘eNotebook activities’, the idea here being that students would keep an electronic notebook of the non assessed, optional activities for future reference. We might also ask them to evidence a selection of these eNotebook activities for their ePortfolios. In future the forum activities will not be assessed individually but students will be asked to provide evidence of contributing to a required number of forum activities. A final point here is that we are considering beginning the assessed activities later in the modules to give students time to feel comfortable with the skills, knowledge and content.

Activities

Some of the activities need a bit of fine tuning. For example we have added word guides to activities now; these were not in place at the beginning of the Semester. We are examining the activities to ensure that they give clear direction and whether examples are needed for some activities to clarify what we want the students to produce. We will make changes accordingly for the next delivery. We will also be fine tuning the assessment criteria for each activity to ensure that tutors have no ‘hidden’ outcomes when they are marking.

Deadlines for activities

It has been decided to make the end of each module the official deadline for all of the activities. Students who require extensions will have to go through the official SHU processes. We will, though, still retain ‘course’ deadlines (unofficial deadline) in order to be able to manage the student completion of activities throughout the course. We are therefore asking students to complete activities within one or two weeks and to ask for extensions if they can not meet these ‘course’ deadlines.

Social Software

phpBB Forum

Initially many students found it hard to navigate through the forum. It is not as intuitive or visually accessible as the educational alternatives such as Moodle or WebBoard. Having said that, now that the students have gained some facility, they are engaging with the forum activities and producing high quality work. It is interesting that some of the learning sets in the forums are making more postings now than in the opening weeks – evidence that they find this tool useful and appropriate to their needs.

Blogger

Reflective blogging is difficult to achieve and maintain and we have been impressed by the general success of our students here. It is early days, but most of our students have set up and are maintaining a reflective blog. They have engaged with the technology and produced some appropriate and exciting work.

Deki Wiki

As with the forum, there has been some impressive work here. There has been some real collaboration and The Social Web activity requiring the students to produce a student handbook was a real success. Students took charge of their learning and managed the activity well. A few students controlled too much and others were a bit too quiet, but overall sound collaborative work was produced. I don’t think we could have expected more here. An issue was that the wiki was not ready for the students to use over the end of the Easter holidays, as had been hoped. This issue will not occur in future years as the wiki has now been set up.

Evaluation to Date

Data has been gathered on:-
The process of selecting the social software solutions for the course.
Staff experience of trialling the social software.
Student experience of using social software prior to the course.

Data is being gathered on:-
Staff and student experience of using the social software in delivery to the first cohort.
Evaluation questions are being drawn up to give to the students shortly.
Some of this data has already been placed on the project wiki.
In the wiki, there is a section in the last Interim Report to JISC (Jan 2008) on the process behind the decision to use dekiwiki. There is also a section on The implementation and justification for using social software on the course. We have captured some student responses to the social software by evidencing forum postings from the first cohort .

BA Hons Progression

A meeting was held with TSC and SHU on Tuesday 7th of May to discuss and finalise the form of the top up year. I’ll place the minutes of this meeting on this wiki when I receive them.

Authoring of Content for Semester 2 and 3

Module 4 has now been placed on the online pages. Module 5 and 6 are being written.The minutes of the meetings related to these modules are being placed on this wiki.

External Examiner

Deirdre Hynes has been confirmed as our external examiner; I will be contacting her shortly.

Marketing and Publicity

A brochure about all the College’s online courses is now in draft form and will be mailed out to past online students. The eComms FdA is publicised in all the College’s HE brochures and the team will do as much as possible to publicise it online.