June 22nd, 2009 — Uncategorized
It has been a few months now since Easter and Mary and I have dropped the ball in regards to the facilitation and reporting of the online course. Manly due to the rolling intakes of another regions students and a feeling of a sligt loss of control.
Mary has found the importance backfill will be for freeing up her time to work on this project. The second trial will need Mary to be the driving force as I step away and into the background.
Because of lack of numbers in the online course (we think is due the the marketing of the Polytech brand) it has been hard to address the group as a whole class, therefore Mary will be comining her face to face and online student into a blended delivery model.
This way Mary can monitor her students more closly to make sure they are on the right track.
The blended delivery model will consist of three face to face full day workshops, the first will be an induction into the course outline and technology they will be using which will combine demonstration and active participation activities. The students will also be given hardcopy resources on their request (as a learning option).
After this workshop learning will be through the a revamped version of the online course which will include the use of the learning modules feature on WebCT and will also use selective release so as not to overwhelm students with massess of information.
We have started customising the toolbox braking it down into chucks of learning (three topics per unit) and then chucking up activities with instruction and clear documentation of what is required of them.
We will also be using Elluminate four times throughout the course for different purposed. Early in second semester we will have a guest speaker chat via Ellumnate and we will also use sessions for mentoring and coaching purposes and well as to go over and summaries content.
April 23rd, 2009 — Uncategorized
What’s next in the course?
This unit was started after the Easter break and they will only have two weeks to work on it. Since the previous unit took longer that expected Mary has decided to clam down on finish dates of the following units.
We spent time blocking the weeks out on the calendar and looking at how much time students will have to complete work and be ready for the final unit when they put the proposal together.
The homepage has been changed with the new info about this unit and today Mary will make sure that the learning module page reflects all the activities and tasks they will need to complete for the unit. We also discussed what was necessary for her to see and know how they are progressing. We discussed that a simple email with the student up dating their progress should be fine for this unit, as most of what they will do, will be passed in with the feasibility report. At this stage the strategy is just monitoring the students to make sure they are on track.
Mary has decided that this unit should only take 2 weeks to complete. Again the worksheets they complete will be submitted with report; however Mary will need to monitor their progress through the discussion – Mary to create another discussion area.
This will be a challenging unit for the students where they will be required to complete a case study assignment. This assignment was specially developed so that it covers performance criteria’s in the unit which is not covered. There is some work that we will need to do to prepare for this unit including gathering other existing resources and making it accessible for the student and the possibility of customising an exe resource Mary developed last year. We will also need to source charge out rates resource material and information. Students will need to submit this case study by the end of the June holidays. Lauren will also be asked to work on the case student assignment coversheet.
We discussed the business name discussion and felt that an Elluminate session with the owner and creator of Brapp would be advantageous. I have finished the into to elluminate resource and will place on the course. I will also organise a plan for the trial of the Elluminate sessions. Mary to talk with the owner of Brapp for his involvement.
The main evaluation point we came to today was to make sure the first unit in completed earlier.
Mary pointed out that so far there have been low numbers in the f2f and flex enrolments for Cert III Small Business. One strategy we came up with was to role the f2f and the flex into one delivery option and tweek the online course to suit. This may mean that it becomes a blended delivery modle with most of the work done in the online and self directed (but supported) environment and there are a few planned workshops through the lafe of the course to suit the students whom like or need f2f delivery. This may also work in Marys favor as she will be privy to the incidental conversation where she can assess students understandings and progress much more accurately.
April 14th, 2009 — Uncategorized
Great news, Mary and I won funding for the project – say hello to just under $19,000,00. Wow now it started getting serious. We will have to document and report on what we are doing with this course. Good job we are already doing it!
Last Wednesday we attended a innovations funding workshop day – Getting Started.
This was Mary’s first time and she got the opportunity to meet all the people involved in funded projects like this, including Fiona whom we will be communicating with on a regular basis. Fiona will act as a mentor for us making sure that we are doing all the right things and are able to provide Skills Tasmania and the Flexible Learning Framework with what they need.
We had the opportunity to meet with other participants whon are receiving funding for their projects and it was great to see a few people whom have had experience in this before and listen to advise and helpful tips.
A few projects are going down the road of social learning, using web2.0 tools like facebook – I though this was great and something Mary could investigate for next semester.
March 29th, 2009 — Uncategorized
It looks like students are using the online course how we want them to, that is to say they re-visit the course frequently to catch up on what is new and what has been changed – we hope this creates a sense of engagement, interaction and activity.
The course sessions are up 19 sessions from this time last week with an average of three sessions per day.
The use of the Toolbox is down from last week; however students are using more of the WebCT tools. Mary and I are still looking at how students are using the toolbox and if they know where to go to find the relevant information for the activities. We will stick to the strategy of giving instructions on where to go in the toolbox on the Learning Module page with the info about the activities required to complete.
Students are working to the deadlines given to them quite well.
Students have almost completed the first unit in the course – Investigate Opportunities. This week Mary will wrap up market research for this unit and collect worksheets. This Friday Mary will look over the students work and give them a general feedback post on the Learning Modules page (Again to wrap up the unit) and email personal feedback if required.
Mary will use the wrap up on the Learning Modules page to illustrate 5 key understandings/knowledge that students should have received from this unit.
The next task for us to complete is the lead in to the next unit – Legal req. Mary has completed the Learning Modules page for Legal req and posted their first activities to complete. Mary will give them a timeline for completion. Mary will add another discussion topic around the legal req of the business name.
Mary has identified a ATO weblink to a publication with case studies for me to post on the Learning Module page. I will also hunt around for a video on small business legal req.
Investigative report is due on Friday. Unfortunately the feasibility assignment is not ready for posting up to students due to changes being made. Hopeful it will be ready soon.
March 19th, 2009 — Uncategorized
Mary and I started the meeting by going over the actions items from last week. We found most of the items we wanted to get done we alreadyuploaded to the course including:
- Change of activity to SWOT – changed Homepage and LM page to reflect this, added an announcement and recorded due date in calendar.
- Using announcments to update students of changes and activities
- Creating the interview video.
Unfortunately I did not get around to any of the tasks I had set myself.
Mary and I evaluated the tracking reports and synthisised that most of the student in the flex are using the course on average twice a day for 30 minutes. This figure was up from last weeks 25 minutes.
Students are looking at and using the discussion area as the pain tool in the course. Whiles some are posting and replying others have been identified as lurkers, however they are reading the posts and spending most of their time reviewing the content within the course.
One students has logged on once. Mary has phoned for feedback and the student is doing another course at the same time and may drop out of this one.
We are reading the e-tivities book by Gilly Salmon – Using the 5 stage framework.
March 14th, 2009 — Uncategorized
March 14th, 2009 — Uncategorized
Keep the course engaging for students by:
Changing module pages – adding activities and instructions to complete the activities (Hopefully this will encourage students to keep on logging into the course as information changes and is not stagnent – however keep the old info and add the new on top, similar to the posts of a blog).
Add another visual media element into the course – Develop a video interview with Graham discussing business idea research and feasibility
Add some podcasts – either create our own or fins some/ maybe there are some good youtube vids on small business.
Develop a video with an example of an Investigative report – Mary takes then through the key features and what they need to complete, how they complete it, cover sheet, signing it, what performance criteria it covers etc – all that a student would get face to face when assessing.
Keep activities small, chuncked, give direction and instruction with scope to move and grow if students wants too. Place time frames on this.
Think about a chat session for the due date of the Investigative report. It could be a couple of days before and gives students to drop in and ask questions, get some mentoring and coaching.
March 13th, 2009 — Uncategorized
Mary and I took some time out yesterday morning to reflect on how the course is going so far. We started by brainstorming issues, comments and good news stories and documented them down on butchers paper. The main topics were:
- Discussions
- Toolbox resource
- Engagement
- Tracking and reports
Discussions
Observation
We were very happy to see that there had been a lot of activity in the discussion area and recorded 16 posts in the introduction topic. The next topic that the students were requested to contribute to also had a great responce with quality posts about what we all thought the meaning of feasibility was and how it relates to developing your business idea.
Evaluation
We discusses that the posts were quality discussion where students were putting their own opinion forward while also contributing weblinks to other feasibility resources. Students were replying to each other and the e-facilitator. The question is how does the e-facilitator respond to posts in meaningful and educational ways. We decided that in class the teacher would facilitate the discussion asking questions and leading the students to a number of possible conculsions whiles covering particular skills and knowledge required from the Training Package. Mary and I decided that it was important not to respond straight away and leave time for other students to respond and form oppinions and facilitate their own direction, however in class the teacher will pull everyone back on track to make sure they are heading in the right direction. The teacher would use strategies of formal and informal discussion as well as writing objectives and key points on the whiteboard. Mary and I decided that the e-facilitator should think about the responce and what is the necessary learning outcome for the students and discuss that in the rely post. This may be a reply that addresses everyones commernts in the one post, whiles asking questions to prompt the students on the right track, if applicable. We also discussed the need for a conclusion or wrap up to the conversation. In the face to face setting this would be done verbally as well as written on the whiteboard in a set of key points. Mary and I decided that allong with the careful and strategic replys to students posts that we would also sum up the discussion on the learning module page as text content with key points that sudents nee to know about feasibility. We aslo discussed a video interview between Mary and Graham discussing the key points of feasibility and what research must be undertaken.
Mary and I evaluated that the student discussion has been facilitated to introduce Market research which is the next step in the Investigate Opportunities unit. We reflected on how we could successfully scaffold the learning for the students building the bridge between the initial ideas of feasibility and conducting the research. Fortunately students identified strengths and weaknesses in business ideas in relation to the research that may of not been undertaken with scenarios presented to them. Students quickly identified that they (business/ideas person) is the most important position in the development of a new business idea. Mary and I discussed that a a summary of the discussions on the learning module page could introduce them to the SWAT analysis and the activity of identifying their own strength and weaknesses. We hopefully will build that bridge of understanding for them:
Strengths and weaknesses of research and person – Strength and weaknesses of themselves and their idea
Mary and I also discussed that it was important to now summaries the discussions so far to wrap them up and introduce the next phace of the unit – Market research. To start this off Mary developed a set of activities which instructions were recorded on the learning module page and delivered as an announcement to make students aware of the changes and as a calendar appointment. We though that it was important to put a time frame on these activities to get students out of the habit of discussions and into the habit of using the toolbox and starting to complete their Investigative report.
Toolbox
Mary had a concern that students were not using the toolbox resource. We pondered over whether the toolbox needed to be broken up in bit size chunck or whether we needed to give them more direct instruction of what to do (on each module page) and how to get there. We ran off a few WebCT reports to track where student had been in the course and how long they had spent in the course. To both our surprise the flex students had spent 3-4 hours so far with about 40-50% of their time in discussions, about 30% of time could be tracted to using files of which the toolbox is one. Although we can not identify just how long students are spending time in the toolbox alone we can synthisise from this data that students are using the full features of the course and participating.
Mary and I decided to instruct students with directions on where to find the relevant info and worksheets accompanying the activities requested by Mary for them to do.
Tracking
Today was the first time that we generated tracking reports. We tracked individual students time in the course and discussed the reality of the data. We concluded that it was to early in the course to make valid conclusions on how students were going with the course and learning material. We decided to make weekly times to generate reports and evaluate the data from them.
Mary and I discussed the development of a survey monkey to get feedback from the students on how the course is working for them. We though that we needed to give students a bit of time to get involved and decided that a survey monkey will be sent to the participants at the end of unit 1.
Engagement
Mary and I discussed the importance that the course remain engaging for students. We though that the discussions had been a good start although did not want to rely on this alone. We discussed the idea of developing a vodcast of a interview with Graham discussion small business research and feasibility.
We also discussed the importance of hiding discussions and resources that have been used and are not applicable anymore so that the course remains as uncluttered as possible. We decided that at the end of next week we will hide the introduction topic and possible the business idea topic. These topics will still be available to students in the main discussion tool, however will be changed as the course progresses on the learning modules pages.
March 10th, 2009 — Uncategorized
It was a great start to the week with 13 discussion posts.
Jacquie and Mary decided to upload and reply to posts using a profile picture. We felt that this was adding to the personal feel that is removed when only text is visible.
Mary use a Welcome announcement to greet the students with instruction to view the video introduction.
Mary has completed text content for underpinning and instruction for all learning modules and discussion topics.
Set up, and design has been completed and Implementation has just started.
Jacquie and Mary have collaborated on designing the day to day and weekly strategy of delivery for the online course – dates will be set in our calendars to make sure we keep a check of it.
Butchers Paper planning
Jacquie and Mary will begin observing and recording the implementation of the course.
Funding application has been forwarded to Kirsty Sharp and Skills Tasmania for review.
Tasks for next week
- Jacquie to start on developing the formal template for Sml Bus, Bus, ICT and A&F
- Jacquie to input test content into WebCT Quiz
- Mary to develop a small quiz for self assessment on terminology (Investigate opportunities)
- Jacquie to set up Twitter group and strategy to introduce/induct students into using Twitter (Captivate/KompoZer)
- Jacquie to set up learning content for using RSS feed (Captivate/KompoZer)
- Add update into Micro Bus blog
- Start pre planning for Elluminate Trial
- Start preparing Elluminate Induction
March 10th, 2009 — Uncategorized
Happy Happy Joy Joy – It has been exciting to watch the course being used by the students through the discussions. It was like christmas all over agian.
Mary and I discussed the use of profile pictures in the discussion post and replys. We have not asked the students to put up profile pics, however we feel that by use placing up profile pics we are creating a social, visual environment where student can see our faces to the comments, identify the facilitator and I believe it adds to a more personalised feel – we also think we are modeling good practice and hope the student take a leaf…
We even had a positive comment on the online course itself! Yay we may be going in the right direction…to soon to speculate though!
